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I feel like there is zero reason everyone shouldn't be watching all John Oliver video's already

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Gerrymandering: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

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French Elections: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

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The presidential election in France could determine the political future of Europe. John Oliver visits an excessively French bistro to deliver an urgent message to voters. Connect with Last Week Tonight online...

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Balmer's new project: how public money is spent

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Balmer's new project: how public money is spent

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I don't have much of an opinion on Balmer, but this is good stuff. It's basically what I was thinking about in grad school, trying to follow the money to understand what something is.

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Her answer: "A, it won't, because there are things government doesn't get to, and B, you're missing it."

Mr. Ballmer replied, "No, I'm not."

That conversation led Mr. Ballmer to pursue what may be one of the most ambitious private projects undertaken to answer a question that has long vexed the public and politicians alike. He sought to "figure out what the government really does with the money," Mr. Ballmer said. "What really happens?"

On Tuesday, Mr. Ballmer plans to make public a database and a report that he and a small army of economists, professors and other professionals have been assembling as part of a stealth start-up over the last three years called USAFacts. The database is perhaps the first nonpartisan effort to create a fully integrated look at revenue and spending across federal, state and local governments.

Want to know how many police officers are employed in various parts of the country and compare that against crime rates? Want to know how much revenue is brought in from parking tickets and the cost to collect? Want to know what percentage of Americans suffer from diagnosed depression and how much the government spends on it? That's in there. You can slice the numbers in all sorts of ways.

Mr. Ballmer calls it "the equivalent of a 10-K for government," referring to the kind of annual filing that companies make.

"You know, when I really wanted to understand in depth what a company was doing, Amazon or Apple, I'd get their 10-K and read it," he told me in a recent interview in New York. "It's wonky, it's this, it's that, but it's the greatest depth you're going to get, and it's accurate."

In an age of fake news and questions about how politicians and others manipulate data to fit their biases, Mr. Ballmer's project may serve as a powerful antidote. Using his website, USAFacts.org, a person could look up just about anything: How much revenue do airports take in and spend? What percentage of overall tax revenue is paid by corporations? At the very least, it could settle a lot of bets made during public policy debates at the dinner table.

"I would like citizens to be able to use this to form intelligent opinions," Mr. Ballmer said. "People can disagree about what to do - I'm not going to tell people what to do." But, he said, people ought to base their opinions "on common data sets that are believable."

So how exactly does one go about collecting and ordering the nation's data?

Before he started, Mr. Ballmer was convinced someone must have already done this.

His first instinct, naturally, was to go to a search engine. "My favorite one, of course: I go to Bing," he said. "And by the way, I check it with Google, just to make sure there's nothing I'm missing."

But neither option led him to what he was looking for.

"You've got to look at federal, state and local together," Mr. Ballmer said. "Because I'm a citizen, I don't care whether I give my money to A, B or C. I just want to know how it lands, how it impacts what's going on."

With an unlimited budget, he went about hiring a team of researchers in Seattle and made a grant to the University of Pennsylvania to help his staff put the information together. Altogether, he has spent more than $10 million between direct funding and grants.

"Let's say it costs three, four, five million a year," he said. "I'm happy to fund the damn thing."

For Mr. Ballmer, the experience has been worth every cent simply for the surprises that he has discovered looking at the data.

"I love this one!" he said, showing me a slide of information about government employees. "Don't look, don't look!" He instructed me to cover my eyes from the number at the bottom of the page.

"How many people work for government in the United States?" he asked, with the excitement of a child showing off a new toy, before displaying the answer. "Almost 24 million. Would you have guessed that?"

"Then people say, 'Those damn bureaucrats!'" Mr. Ballmer exclaimed, channeling the criticism that government is bloated and filled with waste, fraud and abuse. "Well, let's look at that. People who work in schools, higher ed, public institutions of education - they are government employees." And they represent almost half of the 24 million, his data shows.

"And you say, O.K., what are the other big blocks?" Mr. Ballmer continued. "Well, active-duty military, war fighters. Government hospitals. Really? I didn't know that."

Suddenly, he explained, the faceless bureaucrats who are often pilloried as symbols of government waste suddenly start to look like the people in our neighborhood whom we're very glad to have.

"Now people might not think they're government employees, but your tax dollars are helping somehow to pay 24 million people - and most of these people you like," Mr. Ballmer said.

His other big surprises?

"Most of the not-for-profits we work with would be 50 to 90 percent government funded," Mr. Ballmer said, referring to various efforts to fight poverty that he has supported. "I mean it's funny, but I didn't realize all these not-for-profits were in a sense almost like government contractors."

Mr. Ballmer said he wanted the project to be completely apolitical. He has given money to candidates on both sides of the aisle. But as he speaks, you can tell that some of his preconceived notions could change his own politics.

At one point, as he showed me the value of certain tax deductions and blurted out, "If you look at these tax deductions for employer-provided health or for state and local taxes or mortgage-interest deductions, they're really subsidies to the affluent, which I guess I hadn't thought about them."

"Take the mortgage deduction," he continued. "This is to stimulate homeownership amongst people who are already going to own homes. That is worth, to a middle-income family, a hundred bucks a year. I was a little surprised by that. You can have your own reaction; I was a little surprised by that."

One rule Mr. Ballmer said his team made early on was to use only government data - no outside providers - to avoid accusations of bias. But this created its own challenges.

For example, Mr. Ballmer, said: "You know it's not legal to know how many firearms that are in this country? The government is not allowed to collect the number."

There is data for the number of firearms manufactured, licenses, inspections, "along with other data, but not a total," he said. "I can't show it! I'm shocked! But the N.R.A. apparently has lobbied in such a way government can't report the data."

Mr. Ballmer is hoping that the website is just the beginning. He hopes to open it up so that individuals and companies can build on top of it and pull out customized reports.

"We're making philanthropic donations elsewhere - I think of this as another," he said, referring to himself and his wife. "I don't even deduct this for my taxes. I pay this with after-tax money, no pretax money, because I don't want anybody being able to think that factors in. But I feel like it's a civic contribution more than anything else."

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Steve Ballmer Serves Up a Fascinating Data Trove

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Her answer: "A, it won't, because there are things government doesn't get to, and B, you're missing it." Mr. Ballmer replied, "No, I'm not." That conversation led Mr. Ballmer to pursue what may be one of the most ambitious private projects undertaken to answer a question that has long vexed the public and politicians alike.

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Dirtbag Left podcast

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Listen to Chapo Trap House episodes free, on demand. Podcast by Chapo Trap House. Listen to over 65,000+ radio shows, podcasts and live radio stations for free on your iPhone, iPad, Android and PC. Discover the best of news, entertainment, comedy, sports and talk radio on demand with Stitcher Radio.

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Good Podcast Episode on Current Politics 

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Good Podcast Episode on Current Politics 

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Steve Bannon and pals have a bad week, Trump goes full Globalist, and still tries to hold health care hostage. Then, Obama pollster Cornell Belcher joins Jon and Dan to talk about the Democratic coalition, and Indivisible's Ezra Levin talks about how you can get involved in the Tax March and Congressional Recess.

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Voting: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

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Every American deserves an equal vote. But in some states, access to voting is becoming less and less equal. Connect with Last Week Tonight online...

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Political Parties: Crash Course Government and Politics #40

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The U.S. Constitution gives very few specifics about the way U.S. immigration policy should look, but it provides broad guidelines as to who has authority to make such policy, as well as the legal means for challenges to elements of that policy.

In Article I, Section 8, the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the responsibility "To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization," determining how immigrants can become citizens. Despite this charge, many states enacted their own immigration policies during the Republic's early years. According to the University of California, Irvine law professor Jennifer Chacon, "for the first century of the United States' existence, many states enacted laws regulating and controlling immigration into their own borders. Various states passed laws aimed at preventing a variety of populations from entering the borders of their states, including individuals with criminal records, people reliant on public assistance, slaves, and free blacks."

Since the late 19th century, the U.S. Supreme court has consistently backed the federal immigration regulations against constitutional challenges. Still, Chacon writes, "Notwithstanding the letter of the law, federal immigration law is always mediated by powerful intervening forces at the state and local level."

The Constitution allows immigrants who become naturalized citizens to serve in any government office except for one - the presidency itself. In Article II, Section 1 the Constitution affirms that "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."

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The U.S. Constitution gives very few specifics about the way U.S. immigration policy should look, but it provides broad guidelines as to who has authority to make such policy, as well as the legal means for challenges to elements of that policy.

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Presidential Powers 2: Crash Course Government and Politics #12

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This week Craig continues our conversation on presidential powers by looking at those NOT found in the Constitution - implied or inherent powers. We'll talk about how the president uses his or her power to negotiate executive agreements, recommend legislative initiatives, instate executive orders, impound funds, and claim executive privilege in order to get things done.

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Presidential Power: Crash Course Government and Politics #11

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In this week's SYSK Select episode, although lots of people incorrectly believe the filibuster was an intentional rule created by the founders of the U.S., this ancient method of stalling legislation was actually brought about in America by accident. Learn the ins and outs of this contentious quirk of parliamentary rules that allows a single senator to hijack the proceedings of the entire legislative body in this episode.

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In this week's SYSK Select episode, although lots of people incorrectly believe the filibuster was an intentional rule created by the founders of the U.S., this ancient method of stalling legislation was actually brought about in America by accident.

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Schoolhouse Rock- How a Bill Becomes a Law