Dataviz by Sunlight

How the NSF allocates billions of federal dollars to top universities

As another college year begins, tens of thousands of academics will once again be scrambling to submit proposals to the National Science Foundation, hoping to secure government funding for their research. Each year, the National Science Foundation (NSF) bestows more than $7 billion worth of federal funding on about 12,000 research proposals, chosen out of about 45,000 submissions.

Thanks to the power of open data, we can now see how representation on NSF federal advisory committees connects to which universities get the most funding. (Federal advisory committee membership data is a feature of Influence Explorer.)

datahacker:

contributions to scott walker’s wisconsin recall campaign. circles sized by amount donated (per address). first photo is on a light background, which serves to eliminate noise and focus on point density/clustering. the dark version makes it easier to see regions where contributions aren’t concentrated. the next two photos use rounded latitude and longitude points to get a cleaner picture, with the first overlaying all points on top of each other, and the the next showing aggregated amounts for each rounded lat/long pair. (data from http://data.influenceexplorer.com/bulk/)

Presidential Candidates Raised Money

The video shows how presidential candidates raised money in each state over time. The circle sizes indicate the amount of contribution per capita giving to the candidates by each state. The timelines show the overall money per capita raised by candidates during a particular time.

umdwatershed:

Energy subsidies: The price that you pay for energy isn’t actually the price the market would set for that energy.

Curious about how the industry is using its dollars to lobby Congress?

Comparing national corporate tax rates

Last week came news that GE has avoided having to pay any — ANY — corporate income tax in the United States. As reported in the New York Times, that feat, despite earning $14.2 billion in worldwide profits ($5.1 billion in the U.S.), is due to “innovative accounting” and “fierce lobbying,” as well as a large stable of former government officials from the IRS and tax-writing Congressional committees. The article goes on to state that the U.S. has one of the highest corporate income tax rates in the world. But that statement is somewhat misleading, as you’ll see below: like General Electric, the effective tax rate of U.S. companies—what they actually pay—is a lot lower than the statutory tax rate—the percentage of corporate income Congress says they should pay.

General Electric on Influence Explorer

Watching Costco warehouses open over the years

Continuing our habit of mapping store openings, we take a look at the growth of Costco, the largest membership warehouse club in the United States. We start with its first location in 1976 and go through 2010. They started in southern California and went from there.

Check out who Costco is influencing in Congress and other Costco related news on Sunlight.