This is a story I ran over at my other blog, A Green Idea. I thought it important enough to mention here too.
Jess Bachman, A freelance designer in Burlington, Vermont, has built this awesome representational graph of the federal discretionary budget. He calls it, Death and Taxes. It represents the amount of money that is spent at the discretion of our elected representatives in Congress. Basically, our federal income taxes.
The circles on the graph are relative in size to the amount of money being spent. They can give you a good visual representation of where our priorities currently lie.
For instance… even though the United states is the largest contributor to global warming, the circle for Clean Air and Global Climate Change is relatively tiny. I had a hard time finding it.
There are several ways to get your hands on the chart. An interactive version is available on the site. There are jpegs in several sizes and cut-away views also available for download… go to the about section, and scroll to the bottom. You can also buy a 24″x36″ poster of it for $24.
For just $10, you can arrange to have a poster, and a personalized note, sent to any Senator and Congressperson. Don’t know your representative’s name? You should, but don’t feel to bad, I didn’t either. Luckily, the site gives us a list to choose from for every state. [LINK]
I’m not normally one to preach to people about writing to their government officials, but if you don’t like what you see on this chart… you need to tell them, and soon. After all, this is YOUR money.
My hat goes off to Jess Bachman for creating this… nice job!
found via BoingBoing