Parsing

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This is an excerpt from What Matters Now — Parsing, by Clay Johnson.

How many times have you paid your taxes? Ever get a receipt back telling you what you bought? You’re paying for something, right? Why is everybody arguing about taxes and deficits when they don’t know how their money is being spent?

What if you went to Lowe’s, and paid to improve your home, then Lowe’s did work but didn’t tell you what they did. Would you notice if they fixed faulty wiring?

It is time for us to rationalize the debate. Let’s parse the data and free the facts.

Imagine if we organized around meaningful data instead of vapid rhetoric. What if you could see how much you spent on your commute to work this year, or defending your country, or keeping your neighbor healthy?

What if there was as much data about John Barrow (DGA) as there was about Manny Ramirez (LF-Dodgers). There are 750 players in Major League Baseball, and only 535 Members of Congress.

Most of the data exists and what doesn’t we need to demand. The answer to healthy democracy lies not in rhetoric, but in our data.

That’s parsing I can believe in.

Clay Johnson is the Director of Sunlight Labs for the Sunlight Foundation. He tweets at cjoh.