The TrueMajority Oreo video is to my mind a very well-crafted political ad (done as a Flash animation). It shows dramatically just how much money goes towards US national defence and how much goes to – say – renewable energy programmes or food aid.
It gets around what I see as the biggest problem there is in trying to tackle macroeconomic issues seriously – nobody outside of a few policy wonks can juggle government programs costing hundreds of millions and billions of dollars and keep them all in proportion.
“TrueMajority.org”:http://www.truemajority.org was founded by Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry’s fame and is a broad-based liberal lobbying organization based around getting people to respond to monthly action alerts and send faxes to their political representatives by filling out web forms. I suspect fax deluges are getting to be a discredited tactic as they are relatively cost-free for the participants – I hope that truemajority will take the “Dean Road” instead and start getting these people to organize themselves.
The problem with the cookies flash-movie is that it’s every bit as slanted as the next statistic, despite being extremely “cute”.
The implication in the video is that all K-12 education in the US is funded by the federal government, and that it is their responsibility to do so. This is incorrect at least on the first part: the majority of K-12 education is funded by the states. For instance, California’s education budget is $46 billion:
http://www.ose.ca.gov/02-03budghilites/2002budgetoverviewk12.pdf
So, having the Feds add $10b to K-12 education is going to be something like a 3-5% increase nationwide. I have a hard time beliving that will solve all the education problems we have.
And, as a scientist, there is *no way* simply throwing $10B at alternative energy will make the oil problem go poof. If only it were that simple.
Remember, statistics can lie, even if they’re simple.
Comment by cookies — 12 February 2004 @ 3:06 pm
I agree it is slanted the other way – it would be hard not to be given the limited time available for explanation. But $10bn a year for alternative energy research (for example) would certainly make a substantial difference…
Comment by David Brake — 12 February 2004 @ 3:50 pm