After reading the article
Memo to Russert, et al, and the linked
American Prospect article, I thought a diagram may come in handy.
See below the fold.
Please feel free to redistribute, make derivative work, make a more professional looking version, or anything else you like with this diagram.
An explanation of the current talking point that Abramoff "and his associates" gave money to Democrats as well as republicans. The fact is, the money given to democrats by the Tribes Abramoff represented declined when he was hired, and money to Republicans increased dramatically.
But that's all beside the point; all of the contribution money is completely legal and irrelevant, because the crimes are the bribery and money laundering that Abramoff did exclusively for Republicans.
This is a repost of
an earlier diary, taking into consideration some of the comments.
Edit: Suggested enhancements
I won't have time to work on this probably until the weekend, if then. In the meantime, if anyone else (preferrably with some sort of graphic design experience) wants to make a better version, with this as a prototype, please do so. Here are some suggestions from me, and culled from the comments.
- Use some sort of vector-based image format, for easy resizing and editing for new data. I did this using the Gimp, and I'm sure other tools would be more appropriate.
- Fix text/colors for readability (ie black on red, maybe use borders instead of solid colors)
- Is there a way to simply communicate the date issues brought up by RonK?
- We'll have to wait for the updated numbers and other issues RonK is referring to.
- Make the arrow sizes actually correspond to their relative dollar values. Add the numbers for Abramoff's arrow. This would probably be easier in a vector format.
- Add an arrow for the legal contributions from Abramoff and his wife, for completeness.
A lot of this could make the chart too busy, so I'm not sure how much is possible, while still maintaining readability. Again, help from graphic artists is invited.