Now you can see where Uncle Sam is spending your money, as plotted on a map! The Sunlight Foundation released a downloadable Google Earth layer that plots what it says are some 1,500 earmarks attached to a proposed U.S. House of Representatives defense spending bill. The Foundation describes its mission as promoting political transparency through use of Internet technologies.
Interesting indeed. If you don’t have Google Earth, it’s a free program you can downoad here. Thanks to Quinn Buchanan for bringing this to my attention, and to News.com for reporting the story.
Nearly Nicole 
How does that map compare with a map of population distribution?
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Good question Dan.
I just did some research and found this tool that lets you layer in population data with certain regions of the US.
http://www.juiceanalytics.com/writing/2006/03/census-data-in-google-earth/
Eyeballing the map, the tax bill spending allocations, overall, are aligned with population, but since the Sunlight Foundation’s layer focuses only on this one proposed bill, the data ultimately is incomplete.
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Sure, the data is incomplete, but it does show that the Sunlight layer tool is potentially useful. Thanks for the post.
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