It is a hierarchy - not a flowchart!

I have just started using StumbleUpon, and literally stumbled upon a web site called The Toilet Paper. Each day they produce an amusing blog on something topical. One of their blogs was composed entirely of the following diagrams to explain U.S.A Federal Government expenditure:

It is a fun, interesting representation but it is also frustrating. The information is a hierarchy but it is being displayed in the style of a flowchart. The reader gets lost as they keep scrolling and scrolling. It is also full of distracting chartjunk. This is O.K. in a satrical blog but the problem is these styles are being used in business settings.

A more informative, though less visually exciting representation is:

We can now see some inconsistencies. The F22 Raptors do not have a second level breakdown. Department of State has an extra level breakdown for Israel. The breakdown for NASA is more of a commentary than displaying extra spending details.

The point is about the target audience. What is suitable for the audience of a blog called The Toilet Paper is not necessarily suitable for people in the workplace who need to quickly make informed decisions.

Inconsistency is death

I went to Wikipedia to see what they had to say about diagrams. In the top right corner was this flowchart:

I could criticise it i.e. why is 'Search Wikipedia' green when other processes, such as 'Think of another term' are red? However it conveys the message and of itself is relatively harmless.

Then I scrolled down the article where there is an example of a flowchart:

Now this is annoying. The notation has completely changed, e.g. decision points have gone from blue boxes to yellow diamonds. My motto is that inconsistency is death and Wikipedia has two flowcharts on the same page that looked completely different.

I also believe that less is more and question the use of showing decision points at all. Also the pink rectangle 'Lamp doesn't work' is a state and is too similar to the green rectangles which are processes rather than states.

Let's try another version:

The lines represent states and the boxes represent processes. The meaning of the message is still conveyed but with less effort for the reader. However does this need to be a diagram at all? For example:

This is less ambiguous and gets the point across.