How does the Graham-Cassidy “repeal and replace” bill compare to current law [aka Obamacare, ACA]? Roll Call has done the hard work of creating an easy-to-visualize chart to help us see the differences. [Spoiler alert: Graham-Cassidy is the most drastic version of “repeal and replace” yet.] Here’s the infographic. View it and weep. Send it to your Senator and Congressional representative, who most likely have no idea because they haven’t bothered to read or analyze the bill and/or are lying about what they do know. [And call, text, fax, and/or email your Senators, or sit-in, lie-in, or scream, kick and protest. This bill must not pass.] Note, too, that virtually the entire health-care world opposes this bill. [To see comments by the major healthcare organizations, click here.]

Graham-Cassidy vs. House-passed AHCA, vs. existing ACA requirements

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Another day, another corporation receiving massive tax breaks by the government. Most recently, it was $7 million from the Trump/Pence administration to Carrier (owned by United Technologies) to stop the company from moving a factory to Mexico. Not all the jobs will be saved, but it’s still being considered a win by the Capitalist-in-chief. Even before he entered politics, Trump the businessman knew how to work the system to get himself millions of dollars in tax breaks. This practice of corporate welfare isn’t new or even that unusual.

Here is a map of the United States, filled in by which company got the largest handout (via targeted tax breaks, grants, and other subsidiaries) in each state.

This infographic was published first on reason.com

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Prison reform and prison labor are topics we’ve written about before on the Occasional Planet. American prisons are making tons of money hiring out their inmates for minuscule wages. It’s more than just breaking rocks and stamping license plates too. Companies like Victoria’s Secret, Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and even Boening use inmates to sew, run phone centers, assemble missiles, and other manufacturing jobs instead of paying full wages to other Americans. But that’s not all. Private prisons make millions of dollars for filling beds and hosting a large number of occupants. When you start doing the math, it makes you wonder if our legal system is more interested in filling quotas than reforming people who break the law.

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Every quarter, Factcheck.org likes to take a look at the numbers since Obama became President. They go deeper than just unemployment and study metrics like corporate profits, the number of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and how other countries view the U.S. Here’s a look at where we stand in July 2016, with just a few months of his presidency left.

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Every election year a familiar threat resurfaces, “If my candidate doesn’t win…I’m going to move to Canada!” The sentiment is posted on social media and drudged up in conversation whenever the opposing politician does something newsworthy.

Fast forward to January when the new President has been sworn in, D.C. is full of politicians you can’t stand, and yet you and the rest of your Facebook friends have not moved up north. Is moving to Canada just an idle threat? How hard would it be to emigrate if Trump becomes president? This infographic by Sparefoot helps fill in some of those answers.

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Whether you’re pro or anti Hillary Clinton, you have to admit that a woman running for President of the United States is a good thing. We live in a county where 50.8% of the population is female and yet historically all 44 presidents have been men. The U.S. is a bit behind when it comes to diversity in political leadership. Other countries have elected female heads of state (Israel, Germany, the United Kingdom, Portugal, India, Norway, Pakistan, and quite a few others) and about 18 nations are currently run by a woman. Despite this, women have been running for president for a very long time. This inforgraphic gives a quick rundown of other times when a woman has run for office. It’s interesting to note that some of them were running before women even had the right to vote.

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Most people understand that there is a problem with money in politics in the United States. Politicians spend countless hours fundraising instead of doing their elected jobs, lobbyists and corporations get special treatment over voters, and a few eccentric billionaires can buy politicians and elections in a way that seems…well undemocratic. The wonderful folks over at the Center for Responsive Politics have been working hard to make sure that someone is paying attention to where the glut of political money comes from and which politicians are accepting it. They’ve just released an interesting infographic that talks about Dark Money (money that’s used to influence voters where the source is unknown) and where it comes from. The infographic and more information on Dark Money can be found here.

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A person in New York is less likely to die by a gun (murder, suicide, or accident) than in Missouri. Are the behaviors of a person so divergent according to where they live, or could the differences in gun laws play a part? (I’m a Missourian myself, so I can attest that the state isn’t filled with violent gun-toting miscreants.) This infographic shows a look at all firearm deaths by state and provides a bit of insight as to how easy (or hard) it is to procure a gun there. Infographic found at https://img.njdc.com/media/media/2015/10/05/firearm-mainchart-oct5-3.png

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Most of us have seen the pictures of the riots from Ferguson, Missouri this past weekend. One of the most startling aspects of the riots (besides seeing the amount of destruction) is the way the police look in contrast to the protesters. It’s hard reconciling the fact that the authoritarian government looking sort are not military personnel at a check point in Egypt, but are the local cops who might pull you over on I-270 for speeding. Here’s an inforgraphic from the New York Times talking about how riot gear has changed in the past 50 years.

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Infographics.  You may not know what to call them, but you’ve seen them. They’re those colorful visual representations of data, economic and demographic trends, or knowledge bases sprinkled liberally throughout print and online media.  If there’s a cache of data out there, a clever graphic designer will come up with a way to represent it as an infographic.  For the visually curious, infographics are a thought-provoking intersection of art and communication that may represent one of the purest realizations yet of Marshall McLuhan’s prescient sixties-era epiphany that “the medium is the message.”

As an adjunct to editorial content, infographics pack a hefty punch.  They perk up the black-and-white page and, at the same time, coddle readers’ computer-age impatience with lengthy narrative content. As news outlets search for ways to compete with one another more effectively and to retain an audience whose attention span is on a downward trend, an increasing number of infographics are being published.  A sampling of a few mass-market magazines demonstrates the trend.  In a single issue, Fortune Magazine had fifteen infographics. Money Magazine had twenty-five. Scientific American ten, and Time and Newsweek seven and five, respectively.

Unlike old-fashioned bar graphs, in which visual representations yield one-dimensional conclusions, infographics present data in a more engaging format and yield multi-dimensional insights. More importantly, the very process of data collection and design reveals interconnections that might otherwise remain opaque when described narratively. Like the tour guide standing in the piazza among throngs of tourists and holding aloft a flag to signal a group’s gathering spot, the infographic designer becomes the viewers’ guide, charting a coherent path through information overload and, along the way, providing insights that are often highly original.

Take a look, for example, at an interactive infographic by Moritz Stefaner called “How scientific ideas flow around the world,” tracking scientific collaboration across the globe.  Stefaner’s graphic demonstrates what is happening in scientific research in an era of ever-faster interconnectivity and efficient data sharing. What the design reveals is that scientists are actively sharing information with other scientists in complex, overlapping collaborations that yield discoveries and innovations across national borders and academic disciplines.

Look, too, at what might be this year’s most important infographic. It was recently published in the New York Times accompanying an editorial by columnist Charles Blow. The graphic presents comparative data gathered by Bertelsmann Stiftung that charts social-justice measurements for member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development.  For Americans, the portrait is anything but pretty. The conclusions pack a powerful punch straight to the core of American self-esteem.  Don’t bother looking at the top or even the middle of the chart. Scroll down to the bottom where the U.S. sits in the bottom five based on measures of poverty prevention, child poverty, senior-citizen poverty, income inequality, and health rating.  The only other countries with overall social-justice ratings below America’s are Greece, Chile, Mexico, and Turkey. The sobering implications make this one infographic that every American citizen and politician (especially in an election year) should closely examine.

These two examples of infographics demonstrate how effectively information can be condensed into easily understood, fact-driven visuals.  There is, however, a glitch. I call it the “Grande Odalisque” problem.  The phrase refers to the image of a courtesan painted by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres in 1814.  In the painting, the courtesan faces away from the observer, displaying her anatomically distorted back and pelvic area.  The painter, with an audacious flourish for the time, made visual through these intentional distortions an idealized form of the female body and of desire itself.

Ingres’ decision to distort the female form for symbolic reasons is the same choice that today’s visual designers face.  They too will need to ask themselves whether they choose fealty to reality or exaggeration to prove a point. And like the audience who first studied Ingres’ painting and struggled to comprehend its radical anatomical exaggerations, today’s viewers of infographics will find it necessary to discern what is fact and what is fiction.

For two graphic designers, Juan Antonio Giner of Britain and Alberto Cairo of Brazil, this issue came to the fore with the killing of Osama bin Laden and inaccuracies in infographics representing the events leading to his death.

What Giner and Cairo observed was that designers (responding to what were, admittedly, early, unverified reports) jazzed up their graphics in a way that confused fiction with verifiable fact. Giner and Cairo reasoned that if infographics purport to give the appearance of reporting factual information, then the standards for their accuracy should be as stringent as those for narrative journalism.  To that end, Giner and Cairo created a six-point checklist that was published on Harvard University’s Nieman Watchdog website (their tag line: “questions the press should ask”). Giner and Cairo reasoned further that graphic designers who produce infographics for news sources should be reclassified as visual journalists and be expected to design within the professional and ethical guidelines of this new designation.

Many graphic designers apparently agree with Giner and Cairo. As of May 2011, 106 of them, from 27 countries, have endorsed and signed onto the following statement of principles.

1. An infographic is, by definition, a visual display of facts and data.  Therefore, no infographic can be produced in the absence of reliable information.
2. No infographic should include elements that are not based on known facts and available information.
3. No infographic should be presented as being factual when it is fictional or based on unverified assumptions.
4. No infographic should be published without crediting its source(s) of information.
5. Information graphics professionals should refuse to produce any visual presentation that includes imaginary components designed to make it more “appealing” or “spectacular.”  Editors should refrain from asking for graphics that don’t stick to available evidence.
6. Infographics are neither illustrations nor “art.”  Infographics are visual journalism and must be governed by the same ethical standards that apply to other areas of the profession.

[Image credit: http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/1105/pundits/flash.html ]

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