This is a really clever infographic by Adam Bonica showing the ideological placement of occupations through an examination of their campaign contributions:

This covers only the 2008 election cycle and shows that, by and large, most occupations fall into the Democratic category aside from the obviously traditionally conservative oil and gas and auto dealer industries. What I would love to see here is what this graphic would look like over time. How would this look in the 2006 cycle or, better yet, the 2002 cycle? I'm pretty sure that you would find major fluctuations in the ideological placement of these industries depending on which party is in charge of Congress. Even more so, the size of the party's majority would matter too.

Wonder just how Wall Street has become so influential on Capitol Hill that it can command the attention of the federal government from the President on down? The answer isn't only in how gyrations in the stock market may affect the real economy. The answer is revealed by the fact that the finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) industries that collectively are at the center of the current crisis are the single largest sector--by far--of all the major economic and interest groupings that give campaign contributions to federal politicians.

Our friends at the Center for Responsive Politics have been keeping track since 1990, and their data tells a compelling story. What you see is a new way of actually picturing the role of FIRE in relation to all these other sectors, and also in terms of how money from FIRE has tilted to one political party and then the other. You can click on the chart, which was built using Google's Motion Chart tool, layered on top of a simple spreadsheet, and mouse over the colored circle to drill down on the data. First, we recommend you watch this explanatory screencast by our very own Larry Makinson.

If you would like to display the chart on your site/blog, the code can be found here.