Beyond Red vs. Blue

And it’s only Wednesday.

The unemployment graph where 8.6 is magically greater than 8.8 or 8.9 floated through the Tumblr on Monday (the horizontal lines have been added to the original Fox graphic).

RON PAUL: “We have dumped the debt on the American people through TARP funding as well as the Federal Reserve. So the debt is dumped onto people. And what did we do? We bailed out the people that were benefiting during the formation of the bubble. So as long as we do that, we’re not going to have economic growth.”

THE FACTS: The $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program was proposed by President George W. Bush and passed by Congress in 2008 to help rescue banks and other imperiled financial institutions. Nearly all of the money has been paid back, with interest.

Most economists credit the program with keeping the financial system from freezing up and helping to prevent the worst recession in 30 years from becoming another Great Depression. The Federal Reserve does not operate on taxpayer money and does not receive any operating funds from the Treasury. In fact, it makes money every year from its banking operations, and turns over profits to the Treasury.

On December 12, 1906 Theodore Roosevelt became the first American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  Roosevelt was awarded the prize for his work negotiating the Treaty of Portsmouth ending the Russo-Japanese War in 1905.

Is public political discourse any different in the new age of social media? Survey says: Yes.

ChicagoLobbyists.org is a great example of what can be done with open data: create a Web app that increases governmental transparency and informs citizens about a key aspect of contemporary governance.

From the creators:

What is this?

ChicagoLobbyists.org is an open data, open government, and open source project intended to improve the transparency of interactions between the City of Chicago and lobbyists and their clients. All data comes from the City of Chicago Data Portal.

Who built it?