A cool new Web site, DoesCongressReallySuck.com, tries to answer the question as to whether this Congress is truly worse than the previous ones.
The site isn’t perfect, but it’s quite cool nonetheless, and a neat example of using the Internet to uniquely present information in a new way that helps you crunch data, and understand it, better.
Let me walk you through it.
Here’s the home page:
Among the data points looked at is the number of bills passed by each Congress (every two years). Now, some might disagree with this as a metric – I’m sure conservatives think the fewer bills the better. Still, it is potentially an indication of gridlock, or the relative lack thereof, the changing numbers of bills passed during each Congress.
Probably the neatest section of the site is “The Money Trail.” This section looks at how many money lobbyists have been pumping into Congress, and which members are taking the most from each industry. You can click on different years and see how much each industry gave in each year. This is 2013:
Then when you click on a particular industry – I chose “pharmaceuticals” – you get the breakdown of the relative amount given to each political party, and who the top benefactors were in Congress.
This next metric, “Partisanship” based on how many independents were elected to the House, I’m not sure I buy. America isn’t terribly fond of electing independents, so I’m not wholly convinced that this tells us much. Maybe it does.
The last section is a live twitter feed about Congress. Meh.
Still, it’s an innovative way to use the Web to present information in a new, more informative manner.
Though an entirely different story, this made me think of the NYT interactive Web story about “the avalanche at Tunnel Creek.” It’s a neat way of using the Web to make a story richer. Go to the story, then keep scrolling down and watch what happens. It’s rather amazing. This is the home page, below – but seriously, click through to the story and scroll. It’s brilliantly presented.
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