Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Industry Contributions to Political Parties

Political donations by industry separated to reflect the major US political parties from 1990-2010. Based on information from OpenSecrets.org.

I have highlighted the outliers to show which political party receives most from which industry. Industries are sorted by total contributions with major investors first.

  • Laywers/Law Firms: Dem 73% Rep 26% ($1,078.4 M)
  • Health Professionals: Dem 43% Rep 56% ($488.1 M)
  • Insurance: Dem 37% Rep 63% ($327.4 M)
  • TV/Movies/Music: Dem 70% Rep 29% ($266.7 M)
  • Oil & Gas: Dem 24% Rep 75% ($248.8 M)
  • Banks: Dem 41% Rep 59% ($222.7 M)
  • Computers/Internet: Dem 55% Rep 45% ($194.7 M)
  • Pharmaceuticals: Dem 37% Rep 64% ($181.7 M)
  • Education: Dem 73% Rep 25% ($180.1 M)
  • Lobbyists: Dem 54% Rep 46% ($173.9 M)
  • Telephone Utilities: Dem 44% Rep 55% ($119.9 M)
  • Accountants: Dem 41% Rep 58% ($119 M)
  • Casinos: Dem 56% Rep 44% ($92.3 M)
  • Tobacco: Dem 26% Rep 74% ($63.4 M)
  • Hedge Funds: Dem 65% Rep 34% ($41.2 M)
  • Gun Rights: Dem 14% Rep 85% ($21.8 M)
  • Pro-Choice: Dem 81% Rep 18% ($19 M)
  • Pro-Life: Dem 4% Rep 95% ($7 M)
  • Gun Control: Dem 94% Rep 6% ($1.8 M)

The big surprises for me were law firms and hedge funds donating to Democrats. I don't know what that entails exactly.

Interestingly, big pharma overwhelmingly supported Republicans until 2006 when their contributions leveled and actually began to favor Democrats. I wonder why...

Thursday, March 25, 2010

WTF Podcast with Marc Maron

So after seeing him on John Oliver's new stand-up show, I've become a fan of Marc Maron. He has a great podcast called WTF Pod that features Marc talking extemporaneously or interviewing someone... usually a comedian. He's had Patton Oswalt, Sarah Silverman, Jon Benjamin, David Cross, John Oliver, and many, many others that I would rather listen to than whoever is in right now. I definitely recommend it.

But I wanted to share this excerpt from Episode 14 from this "libertopian" nutjob. It got so bad that I thought he was a comedian playing a role, but blogger won't accept my video/audio uploads.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Taglines for the Republican Party

The Republican Party
No problem too complex to simplify or too simple to complicate

The Republican Party
For people who hate taxes and diversity

The Republican Party
What are you a fag?

Thursday, March 11, 2010

The Story of Stuff

Check out this awesome 20-minute video tracking production in this company from resource harvesting and processing through sale, consumption, and finally to disposal. Each step has a non-monetary cost to our society in many ways that we can't clearly see. This video does a great job of demonstrating the process simply but accurately.

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Also, check out the cap and trade video. Great stuff!