What's Balmer up to?

[rcjordan]

he will launch a website on Tuesday called USAFacts.org which will show US government spending at a local, state, and federal level.

http://www.businessinsider.com/ex-microsoft-ceo-steve-ballmer-spent-10-million-on-usafactsorg-2017-4

[rcjordan]

Site's open.

http://usafacts.org/

[ergophobe]

That plus gapminder is a lot of data....

[rcjordan]

Is there a 'drain the swamp' -type political motive, I wonder?  Sort of a spending fact-checker?  That's sorta the way I'm seeing the announcements spun.  If so, ho-hum, yet another dataset. 

[littleman]

I like the idea, but I am not really crazy about the search results so far.  Hopefully they get that sorted out.

[rcjordan]

>like the idea

Me, too. But it'll take more than just assembling a website to make it work as a gov-oversight tool. Someone is going to have to pump out finds and feed them to the press.

[ergophobe]

>> not really crazy about the search results so far

Agreed, but it's quite early. I looked up median income and there's no indication whether it's nominal dollars or indexed and no way to index it. It will be interesting to see what it has in six months to a year.

As for motive, he says he's trying to keep it non-partisan and provide a resource of "facts," a quaint term that we used to use back in the 1900s. We have definitely arrived at a point where large numbers of people don't agree with the old saw that everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts. Balmer seems to think that putting "facts" out there can solve that.

Of course, it can't. Try going to a McClintock town hall (as I did recently) and telling the crowd (as someone else did), that according to the FBI, violent crime is down dramatically over the last 20 years. About one third of the audience just booed and said it was "lies." While that may or may not be true, they of course have no data source other than Alex Jones.

[rcjordan]

Andrew Cunningham gets it.

Steve Ballmer's new gov't data project assumes that facts change minds
Op-ed: Showing where taxes go is a valuable service, but facts are beside the point.

https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/04/steve-ballmers-new-govt-data-project-assumes-that-facts-change-minds/

[Mackin USA]

The Use — and Misuse — of Statistics: How and Why Numbers Are So Easily Manipulated

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/the-use-and-misuse-of-statistics-how-and-why-numbers-are-so-easily-manipulated/