Washington Post's (Partially) Misleading Graphic: Can Anyone Do Better?

A nice little graph today by the Washington Post, where you can sort each Congressperson by the amount of campaign contributions from the Health Care industry, and relate that to their predicted vote on the health care bill.

When you do so, you'll find that Charlie Rangel - who received the most in campaign contributions from the health care industry - is actually voting against the bill.  Of course, as the chair of the powerful Ways and Means Committee - overseeing things like Medicare and Social Security - Rangel is bound to receive more cash from the health industry, and relatively more contributions overall.

A better measure would certainly be the percentage of all the congressman's contributions furnished by the health care industry.  That would help control for the fact that powerful people get more funds and are less susceptible to one industry pulling its support.   One could argue that this still doesn't control for the germaneness of the industry (in Rangel's case, for instance), but this shouldn't matter in a measure of financial influence.  After all, the fact that they're on a more germane committee doesn't make that money any less attractive.