This webpage is from the folks behind geocommons finder and maker. I like this economy dashboard because it is simple and it appears to have up-to-date information (as of March 2009). The other nice aspect about geocommons in general is the access to the tabular data, and also to shapefile format for use in GIS.
Do you like some of the New York Times maps and graphics? If so, you can view some of the projects here. Also, at the bottom of the page is MapShaper, which looks like it could be very useful for simplifying shapefiles for KML use.