Wasteful US Government Earmarks in 2008

Spending money on energy efficient streetlights is wasteful because Detroit has bigger problems? Why should we trust this graphic to know what's worthwhile and what isn't? McCain listed science education (esp. astronomy) spending as wasteful earmarks, which is ridiculous. This graphic also considers energy efficiency wasteful, it repeatedly criticizes historic (and "historic"--why the quotation marks?) preservation as wasteful. Spending money protecting lakes (what does 'already thriving' mean?) and supplying water that's 'not needed' (citation needed) might be wasteful, but I'm not going to take their word for it.

And the formatting is all about emotional impact. They clearly don't want you thinking rationally about the subject. There are a lot of BIG BOLD buzzwords and scary adjectives considering we're discussing 0.0067% of the 2008 Federal budget (which excludes war spending).

I'm happy to see you mention the States and Representatives involved in the spending. It is clearly not one political party taking control and spending. This is Republicans and Democrats, Red States and Blue States.

Every representative says don't spend on waste full projects but then when it comes down to their state or their interestes it's spend spend spend.

This is a terrible infographic because it doesn't do the one thing that an infographic is good for: make numbers clear using visual representations! After staring at it for several minutes, I still don't have a good grasp on how the pork is distributed.

Nicely presented

What a shame! And we are paying for this?? Whats wrong with this picture?