Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Harpooned, Again

From the Index in the latest number of Harper's magazine:
  • Percentage of political ad spending during 2010 election that would have been prohibited before Citizens United: 72  An amazing number, don't you think? I see that two Supreme Court justices--Breyer and Ginsberg--are calling for the court to reconsider the decision. Gee, ya think? The dollar amounts reported for the GOP primaries are astounding, and almost all of it not accountable. See correction below.
  •   Percentage increase since 2009 in investment fraud targeting adults over 50: 100  More good news for us seniors.
  • Age at which a typical person's financial decision making peaks: 53.3  So the swindlers ain't no dummies.
  • Estimated number of parking spaces per car in the United States: 3
  • Years by which the average life span of a homeless person is shorter than the overall average: 30  And we have how many hundreds of thousands of homeless in U.S.? and how many are children? About 842,000 in a given week. I checked. And approximately 1.5 million children are homeless in any given year, that's 1 out of 50.
  • Annual savings the U.S. Mint estimates will result from aborting its efforts to circulate $1 coins: $50 million. Are you kidding me? What the hell in wrong with the American people they cannot deal with coins? Which makes everything cheaper and simpler.
  • Minimum number of persons whose remains the U.S. Air Force dumped in a land fill between 2003 and 2008: 274  Support the troops!
  • Number of U.S. servicepeople dismissed for pre-existing "personality disorders" between 2002 and 2007. Don't know all of the personality disorders involved, but you can bet they include aversion to war or to killing people the government has decided are our enemies this week.
  • Percentage of Americans who have been arrested by the age of 23: 30  Just let that number circulate in your brain . . . 3 out of every 10? Really?
  • Rank of the Mafia among Italy's largest lending institutions: 1
  • Rank of Goldman Sachs employees among the largest funding sources for Mitt Romney's campaign: 1
  • For Obama's 2008 campaign: 2

8 comments:

Tanya said...

Actually, it's not cheaper to use coins as opposed to paper money. Paper money lasts a lot longer now then it used to, and the fact of the matter is, American's don't like coins for good reason: they are heavy. YOu can't argue that point.

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=138616763&m=138616782

15 minute mark.

Unknown said...

"It costs ~16 cents to make $1 coins, and each has a life span of about 30 years. It costs ~ 6.2 cents to make $1 bills, and they have a life span of about 21 months"

http://www.coinnews.net/2008/06/10/paper-dollar-versus-the-1-coin-fun-facts-comparison-4161/

I won't argue the point that they are heavier, less bulky, more malleable, etc. But they ARE cheaper.

Don't understand "15 minute mark"

Montag said...

Like Hank Hill, I am gluteally challenged, and the coins are just too heavy. Along with one's keys in one's pockets, they are the "straw that breaks the camel's back"....
Surely even you do not wish to see such a spectacle at High Noon on Main Street.

Tanya said...

15 minute mark was where they started talking about the cost of paper vs silver coins.

Tanya said...

And this info is three years newer than yours, as the podcast just aired last summer.

Your numbers may be true in theory, but in reality if no one uses the coins and they end up sitting in vaults, which is the case now, then they are much more expensive than paper money. If memory serves, the president dollar coins cost 30 cents to make.

Unknown said...

Well, yeah. But I'm not being theoretical. We're talking actual production costs and durability. Whether they are used or not is another way of looking at it, so let's call this a wash. But the expense of producing coins is trifling compared to oh, say one week in Afghanistan.

Anonymous said...

The 72% figure is wrong, and Harper's has printed a correction. http://harpers.org/archive/2012/02/hbc-90008454. It's 72% of independent spending. It's about 4% of all spending - the vast majority of political spending is totally disclosed and done by candidates and political parties. http://www.campaignfreedom.org/2012/02/22/seventy-two-percent-of-harpers-index-numbers-about-campaign-spending-and-citizens-united-bear-no-resemblance-to-reality-more-or-less/

Unknown said...

Thank you very much for the information. I have posted a correction.