Mile
Zero

One of my pet peeves are those big, intricately-designed infographic "posters," partly because I think they tend toward smugness, but also because they're very good at setting up a simplistic narrative from a series of loosely-related statistics. They lead the reader from one isolate number to another, often without establishing a clear connection between them--and because they're just giant JPG images, they don't lend themselves to easy fact-checking via links to source data. If there's one thing I've learned at CQ, it's that the policy situation is rarely that simple.

So of course, look what the White House is doing now.

It was probably inevitable that politicians would jump on the visualization bandwagon at some point, and given Congress's penchant for signs that would look underdesigned at a Lyndon LaRouche campaign table, it had to come from the executive branch. It isn't surprising that this administration--with its affection for social media as a political tool--would be the one to take action. But somehow I didn't expect it so soon, or to look so polished--several of these wouldn't be out of place in the New York Times.

I am not so much concerned that the government is creating slicker graphics--in these troubled economic times, I'm happy to see any jobs being created, even for designers!--as much as I think this is a good chance to consider "ethical" information design. What the White House is doing is different from data that comes from the CBO or the GAO, because it's rhetoric, not research. And while I don't necessarily think that the administration is lying to us with each graphic, even my hackles are raised by the matter-of-fact presentation of political data through flat, opaque graphics. Here are some measures I'd like to see the White House, and other political actors considering data visualization, take in the future:

• Release the data sets and tools. This is a no-brainer. These are interactives made by government employees on the public dime. We should be able to view the datasets that they're using, and the equations they're running to extract visual information from them. If the data is online, as with CBO data, the page should link to it. I should not have to know how to hunt through government agency sites to verify a White House visualization. Which leads to...
• Eat the (government API) dogfood. For all the government data out there, it is still often an oddball collection of badly-documented, infrequently-updated files in a wide range of formats, many of which are not easily machine-readable. There are legal requirements for agencies to publish data, but a White House that actually uses that data adds a whole new incentive (as well as a feedback loop within the government) to make information easy to retrieve, use, and understand.
• Create interactives, not JPGs. This may just be my bias as an interactives programmer, but I think they're more interesting than static pictures, and I think they're harder to tilt ideologically. That's especially true if we can see the source--examine how the numbers were translated into their visible representations.

I admit, these suggestions aren't necessarily good for the White House from a political perspective. But then, as a citizen I'm not really interested in what's good for the White House from a political perspective. I'm interested in national policy and a more informed debate--which shouldn't be mutually exclusive with political influence. You can still make shiny graphics for a rhetorical goal without sacrificing transparency and honesty. The question is whether politicians will do so, or if they'll use the public's general cluelessness about data visualization to their own advantage.

Well, the election's over. Commence endless speculation about how the Obama presidency is doomed, and will never be able to enact its socialist agenda! Will he govern from the left, or the center? How will he deal with the train wreck that's been left waiting for him?

Now I'm just some guy who works in the city, but I have a suggestion for DC's soon-to-be resident-in-chief if he wants an easy, yet bold, policy fix: get rid of the gigantic concrete security barriers surrounding the White House and blocking off Pennsylvania Avenue.

For those who don't live near the district, here's what I'm talking about:

Image by flickr user Daquella manera, used under Creative Commons license

According to Wikipedia, these kinds of concrete blocks--also known as Jersey barriers--were originally invented to minimize the chance that car accidents would cross lanes into oncoming traffic. But if you live or work in DC, you're probably used to seeing them surrounding almost every landmark in the city, as the Wikipedia article drily continues, "as a means to keep car bombs away from perceived targets."

If you see enough of these things--and that's easy enough since they are, literally, everywhere around here--it's easy to become desensitized to them. But take them out of the blind spot for a second and think about what they mean. The ubiquitous Jersey barriers are not just ugly breaks in the landscape that ruin tourist shots of DC's buildings and monuments. They're the physical embodiment of our fears. Each of those barriers is the end result of a train of thought that began with the assumption that our government is under attack from shadowy figures, and ended with fantasies of kamikaze car bombers. It's the same kind of bureacratic panic that leads to the TSA's mindless inspection theater at the airport, checking for high-tech bombs and guns even though the 9/11 hijackers carried nothing more sophisticated than boxcutters.

Now, I've heard tell that once upon a time you could actually drive past the North lawn of the White House on Penn, or the South lawn via E St, but that hasn't been true since I've lived here. Any attempt to do so is blocked by those concrete barriers and police cars. They're even layered--behind the first set, along the fences that already surrounded the building, there's another row of squat, white blocks. For a country that champions its system of representation, the effect is profoundly distancing. Pedestrians are allowed through, but you can almost see the hesitation as they cross the invisible line dividing city from citadel.

You can grow to ignore those barriers, as most of DC's regulars do. But I believe that the fear underlying their placement is not so easily ignored. It forms a pervasive atmosphere of paranoia. I don't know what that means in terms of influence, but it seems hard for me to believe that it has no effect on our policy, and it certainly impacts our image with visitors. Like airport security, the result of so much ritualized watchfulness only seems to breed more fear.

On the other hand, you can do what the Bank did, and disguise the barriers. Visit 1818 H Street today, and you won't see concrete around the World Bank Group buildings, but you will see a series of thick metal posts sunk into the concrete for the same purpose. If anything, this approach is even worse, because it institutionalizes those fears, planting them permanently in the ground, building up paranoia as infrastructure.

No, I don't think these are options that respect the dignity and the openness that lie at the core of American democracy. I don't think they represent us well. And frankly, I don't think they're necessary. Whatever results from the next four years under the new administration, there's no simpler symbol of hope and change than the removal of the barriers around the White House, if not the rest of the capital, to let the people through.

Lines in Arlington were short this morning--much longer at 6am, I heard the poll worker say, but by the time we go there at 7:30 it only took about half an hour. I used a paper ballot and Belle used the machine. We're trying to make Diebold work twice as hard to throw the vote.

Wallace, obviously, does not actually get a vote. But if you give him a sticker, he doesn't know the difference.

I give you the greatest C-SPAN vote count in the history of mankind:

Ending the first week at CQ. I have joked that if they go on vacation and leave me here without more training, the site will be replaced entirely with Congressional LOL Cats by the time they get back.

It surprises me, frankly, that some politicians would even think of not signing onto the lynching apology resolution currently wandering through the Senate. Sure, it's a blatant political ploy, but it's one with no real political drawbacks and it doesn't even require you to be sincere about it. Refusing to sign is like handing ammunition to your competition, from either party, when the next election rolls around. Still, Steve Gilliard has the list of dissenters. It's no secret that ex-Klansman Trent Lott doesn't like black people very much, but what's with the Republicans from New Hampshire and Ohio? And for that matter, what's with Kent Conrad, D-ND? Que extraño. (Note that Steve's list isn't completely reliable--Americablog and the original source he quotes have updated with different counts, and the measure did pass unanimously. What's in question are people who did not co-sponsor the bill, even at the last minute.)

Of course, David Neiwert says what I and every other liberal policy enthusiast thought when we heard about this bill: wonder when they'll actually do something about the problem instead of making empty apologies? Every time meaningful hate crime legislation makes its way through Congress, the Republican leadership kills it because of homosexual protections offered (although it's perfectly possible that they have help from Democrats of the lowest variety--Zell Miller, perhaps).

Many people don't really understand hate crime legislation in the first place. There's a common argument made that we can't read the mind of the defendant, and even if we could that all crimes are hate crimes by definition. Although it's logically compelling, this argument is limited in scope, and breaks down when we consider the whole picture. In summary, the problem with hate crimes is that they are a form of terrorism--they're intimidation and threats aimed at keeping a population under control. That's what burning a cross, or tying someone to a fencepost, or lynching is meant to do: it's not just a simple murder, it's a lesson to all the other members of the target population. Keep your heads down and play along with our rules, it says, or you'll end up like that.

Maybe there's a good reason that this bill was passed with missing co-sponsors, and after hours with a secret vote. If so, I'd like to hear it. I'm sure a lot of other people would too. Since Congress won't create workable solutions to hate crimes of the present, the least they could offer is a united apology for the sins of the past.