ballmer

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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/04/18/524553683/former-microsoft-ceo-launches-new-tool-for-finding-government-data</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tax Day, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer launched a new tool designed to make government spending and revenue more accessible to the average citizen.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The website — <a href="https://www.usafacts.org/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">USAFacts.org</a> — has been slow and buggy for users on Tuesday, apparently due to the level of traffic. It offers interactive graphics showing data on revenue, spending, demographics and program missions.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For example, the site prominently features an infographic created to break down revenue and spending in 2014. Revenue is broken down by origin; spending is broken down by what "mission" of government it serves, based on the functions laid out in the Constitution.</font></p><div id="res524577315" class="bucketwrap internallink insettwocolumn inset2col " style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 27px 15px; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative; float: right; width: 330.781px; clear: right; z-index: 1; background: 0px 0px rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="bucket img" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 1px 0px 0px; border-top-style: solid; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: rgb(224, 224, 224); border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; overflow: hidden;"><a id="featuredStackSquareImage152671813" href="http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/05/14/152671813/50-years-of-government-spending-in-1-graph" data-metrics="{"category":"Story to Story","action":"Click Internal Link","label":"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/money\/2012\/05\/14\/152671813\/50-years-of-government-spending-in-1-graph"}" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><img src="http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/05/14/gr-pm-budget-462-01_sq-0eac73363d24f09772dc0d064f8964a1d550ed7d-s400-c85.jpg" class="img" alt="50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 10px 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: none; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 100%; height: auto; float: left; width: 80px;" /></font></a><div class="bucketblock" style="box-sizing: content-box; margin: 0px 0px 0px 80px; padding: 9px 11px 9px 17px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; min-height: 62px;"><h3 class="slug" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.27273; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;"><a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/money/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-font-smoothing: subpixel-antialiased; text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: 1px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">PLANET MONEY</font></a></h3><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.27273; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;"><a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/05/14/152671813/50-years-of-government-spending-in-1-graph" data-metrics="{"category":"Story to Story","action":"Click Internal Link","label":"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/money\/2012\/05\/14\/152671813\/50-years-of-government-spending-in-1-graph"}" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; -webkit-font-smoothing: subpixel-antialiased;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph</font></a></h3></div></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's a big-picture view of where U.S. tax dollars come from, and how they're spent. But click on a subcategory and you're taken to a more detailed, granular view of that spending.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ballmer didn't create the site because he was an expert on government data. Quite the opposite, according to <em style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">The New York Times' </em><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/business/dealbook/steve-ballmer-serves-up-a-fascinating-data-trove.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Dealbook</a>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The <em style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Times </em>says that Ballmer's wife was pushing her newly-retired husband to get more involved in philanthropy. Ballmer said — according to his own memory, as he described the conversation to the <em style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Times </em>— "But come on, doesn't the government take care of the poor, the sick, the old?"</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ballmer's wife suggested there was more to the story than he understood. So Ballmer tried to look up exactly how much money the government had, and how it spent it, and how effective those programs were.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Surely it was out there somewhere, he thought. He started with a search on Bing (former Microsoft CEO, remember). Then he tried Google. When it turned out no one-stop way of accessing that data existed, Ballmer decided to spend millions of dollars creating it.</font></p><aside id="ad-backstage-wrap" aria-label="advertisement" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><aside id="ad-mobilebackfill-wrap" aria-label="advertisement" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div id="ad-mobilebackfill-News_Technology_Digital_Life" class="ad-mobilebackfill" data-ad-config="{"network":"\/6735\/n6735","site":"NPRMOBILE","zone":"News_Technology_Digital_Life","targets":{"testserver":"false","containscenterstage":"true","storyId":"524553683","agg":"103943429","blog":"103943429"},"location":"mobilebackfill","deferred":false,"isBetweenContent":true}" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; clear: both; text-align: center;" /></aside><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Wired </em><a href="https://www.wired.com/2017/04/steve-ballmers-usa-facts-uses-smart-design-make-sense-government-spending/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">notes</a> that Ballmer's site is not the first attempt to bring this kind of data to the people. On the bureaucratic side, <em style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Wired</em> writes, "[The] government launched <a href="https://www.data.gov/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">Data.gov</a> in 2009 to centralize its stats, and President Obama passed the DATA Act in 2014 to get record-keeping standards up to snuff." On the startup side, there's <a href="https://opengov.com/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">OpenGov</a>, "which also tries to organize and parse government data."</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the tech site argues that Ballmer's project stands out for its use of custom graphics to make abstract, complex numbers quickly comprehensible.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The site says it is "factual and unbiased" and doesn't "make judgments or prescribe specific policies."</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ballmer, for his part, "said he wanted the project to be completely apolitical" and "has given money to candidates on both sides of the aisle," the <em style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Times </em>reports.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But data never exists in a vacuum, and as Wired says, "infographics are inherently editorialized."</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Still, the site avoids taking positions on policy.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.17647em; padding: 0px 15px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.70588; vertical-align: baseline; max-width: 680px; position: static; float: none; width: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Whether government money is spent wisely or not, whether our quality of life is improving or getting worse – that's for you to decide," the website <a href="https://www.usafacts.org/about" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">says</a>. "We hope to spur serious, reasoned, and informed debate on the purpose and functions of government."</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></div>