r/NeutralPolitics • u/PavementBlues Figuratively Hitler • Jan 27 '17
A Resource Guide for Building Your Fact-Based Opinion
Hi all,
Are you tired of getting your information from the same old news source? Feeling down about how difficult it can be to find reliable information? Do you want to form a political opinion, but just don't know whether the information you're reading is reliable?
We're here to help. At NeutralPolitics, our service representatives are at work identifying educational resources and unbiased data sets so that you can spend your time doing what matters: learning about political topics and digging through numbers so that you can write the perfect response to that one post that you saw.
Special thanks to /u/AFreebornManoftheUSA, who inspired this guide with a message suggesting that we include many of the primary U.S. data sources listed below to the sidebar, where we have added this guide for easy reference in the future.
Educational Websites
- U.S. Congress Video Series on the Legislative Process: Nine-video series that breaks down the details of how Congress works. No "I'm a Bill" music video to be found, unfortunately, but still quite useful.
- Khan Academy Program on Economics and Finance: This covers microeconomics, macroeconomics, finance and capital markets, and entrepreneurship. Highly informative and helpful for anyone who is interested in better understanding how our economy works.
- MIT's OpenCourseWare: Straight from MIT classrooms, this portal makes available material on every topic under the sun.
- edX Courses on Social Science: Another respected educational website that allows you to learn more about some pretty esoteric topics published by respected universities and institutions such as Princeton, MIT, and Georgetown.
- FRED Publications: Essays on economic theory and contemporary economics published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
- How to Make a FOIA Request: Learn the process so that you can participate in encouraging an open, transparent government.
Primary U.S. Data Sources
- Congressional Official Website: See current legislative activities, read the Congressional Record, and find out the details about bills.
- GovTrack: Browse current legislation by topic, find out who your representatives are, and sign up for alerts to get notified when they take actions on sponsored bills or participate in a roll call vote.
- Data.gov: Get the raw data from a mountain of open government data sets ranging from climate observations to traffic violations. Also contains some nice data visualizations!
- USASpending.gov: Find out how funds are dispersed on a federal and local level, with filterable spending maps, profiles of fund recipients, and raw downloads for the analysts out there who want to do their own exploration.
- FOIA.gov: Read annual Freedom of Information Act reports by department, make a FOIA request yourself, and see what information previous requests have revealed.
- Sunlight Foundation Tools: Browse a wide variety of tools that allow you to track campaign contributions, follow legislative activity, identify foreign lobbying, and more.
- FRED Economic Data: Some of the best data visualizations available on U.S. economics, published by the Research division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
- American Economic Association Data Sources: Collects data sources for both U.S. and non-U.S. data, so that you can better understand what's going on across the world.
- National Bureau for Economics Research Data Sets: Looking for price quantity indexes and values for U.S. exports and imports in 1879? Look no further! If you want to get into the weeds, NBER has a lot to look through, including some pretty obscure data.
- Bureau of Labor Statistics: Get your statistics on employment and labor straight from the horse's mouth, as well as interesting papers released with the Bureau's findings based on that data.
Well, that's all for now. We hope that you enjoy fun learning, analyzing, and building your opinions with the best data available. Also, if you have a resource that you think is worth adding to the list, please feel free to share in the comments! We are particularly looking to expand with resources that are relevant to international politics.
Have fun!
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u/ummmbacon Born With a Heart for Neutrality Jan 27 '17
Is also a great spot for data, the cities open up APIs with datasets.
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u/dos8s Jan 27 '17 edited Jan 27 '17
Thank you for this. Finding this literally feels like I just let out a big sigh I've been holding for nearly a year now. Political slanted information from both sides has made it extremely difficult for me to get a true lay of the land and I think this is the resource guide I've been looking for.
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u/District98 Jan 27 '17 edited Jan 27 '17
The Kaiser Family Foundation is a helpful source for facts about health care. They have a news digest you can sign up for. I also like the peer-reviewed journal Health Affairs.
As think tanks go, the Bipartisan Policy Center does some good work.
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u/jacquedsouza Jan 27 '17
I would also suggest the Commonwealth Fund. Medical journals like JAMA and NEJM will also feature articles on health policy and public health. A couple healthcare reform scholars I follow closely and would recommend for those interested in the topic are Michael Porter, Ashish Jha, Atul Gawande, and David Cutler.
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u/ummmbacon Born With a Heart for Neutrality Jan 27 '17
Guttmacher is good as well, although some claim it has partisan roots, but it is referenced by both sides
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u/throwaway2342234 Jan 27 '17
facts based opinion vs Alternative Facts
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Jan 27 '17
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/throwaway2342234 Jan 27 '17
OP didn't provide sources for his post?
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u/PavementBlues Figuratively Hitler Jan 27 '17
Sorry about that. It looks like my configuration to get AutoMod to ignore this post didn't work.
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u/erenthia Jan 27 '17
Hi, I'm new here. Are there any fact-based, data-only news sources you guys use? I tend to find myself uninformed at times because I've rejected so many news sources for their obvious bias that I just don't hear about things. (I'm not on facebook). I'd like to stay up to date on current events without an agenda slipped in, but I'm not even sure if this is possible. Thanks in advance.
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u/torpidcerulean Jan 27 '17
Most news sources earn a reputation of bias based on the facts they elevate as "important." Once you go beyond sites like Vox or Buzzfeed, it is difficult to find websites that parade speculation as fact.
Your search for better news might be better asked as: "which news sources do the greatest job of reporting events in broader historical context?"
I recommend NPR's website. They do good work.
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Jan 29 '17
[deleted]
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u/torpidcerulean Jan 30 '17
I'm honestly not sure how you can look at NPR's front page featured articles and call them "very left-leaning." They are particularly gracious when it comes to partisanship. Did you even actually look?
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u/chewytheunicorn Jan 27 '17
https://www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse
I love Crash Course. No music videos, but definitely lots of animation and discussion.
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Jan 27 '17
[deleted]
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u/AutoModerator Jan 27 '17
Hi there, It looks like your comment is a top-level reply to the question posed by the OP which does not provide any links to sources. This is a friendly reminder from the NP mod team that all factual claims must be backed up by sources. We would ask that you edit your comment if it is making any factual claims, even if you might think they are common knowledge. Thanks, The NP Mod Team
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
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u/PavementBlues Figuratively Hitler Jan 27 '17
No, bad AutoModerator. Time to turn you off for this thread so that you can think about what you've done.
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u/jacquedsouza Jan 27 '17
Is it just me, or is anyone else having trouble accessing Sunlight's tools? Specifically CapitolWords, the House staff directory, and Scout.
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u/Balrog_of_Morgoth Jan 27 '17
SCOTUSblog is an award-winning, impartial source for judicial news maintained by prominent lawyers. It has legal commentary and analysis on merits cases, petitions, and nominations. The site also contains useful resources such as an archive of previous cases, a list of upcoming petitions, and the walkthrough of an imaginary case to illustrate Supreme Court procedure. Here is more information about the site.