- Percentage of independent political spending on television advertising in the past year that came from anonymous donors: 91 [Positively astonishing! And this is a democracy??]
- Number of college graduates currently working as astronomers, physicists, chemists, and mathematicians, or Web developers: 216,000
- As waiters or bartenders: 216,000
- Number of the 30 occupations with the largest projected job growth over the next decade that require a college degree: 4 [Really??]
- Number of dolphins found dead in the Gulf of Mexico since BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill: 496
- Factor by which the rate of dolphin death during this period exceeds the average: 4
- Minimum amount Georgia has lost in fruit and vegetable sales since the passage of a a 2011 anti-immigration law: $75 million [Absolutely worth it to keep those damn illegals out, one supposes]
- Percentage of American households made up of just one person in 1950: 9.3
- Today: 27 [Not sure what this means . . . what do you think?]
- Factor by which a religious website is more likely than a pornographic site to infect a computer with malware: 3 [Ditto]
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Not to Harp on It . . .
Latest facts from Harper's Index. Almost all of these entries are either scary, unbelievable, or just plain stunning. What they have in common is that they're all true.
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2 comments:
In Agriculture.com:
If crop insurance indemnity payments are an accurate picture of the value of crop losses, 2011 was a record year.
Those payments added up to more than $9 billion for the first time in history last year, and that figure's expected to continue to climb as more 2011 crop losses are discovered as farmers get into the field this spring.
Drought in the Plains and parts of the Midwest, flooding along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and untimely freezes in the southeast all triggered about $9.1 billion in crop insurance indemnity payments, beating the previous record of $8.67 billion set in 2008, when flooding ravaged much of the Corn Belt. And, the 2011 number, according to a report from National Crop Insurance Services (NCIS) shows that number could eclipse $10 billion once all claims are settled despite slipping funding for federal crop insurance, says NCIS president Tom Zacharias.
http://www.agriculture.com/news/business/crop-insurce-payouts-top-9-billion_5-ar21787
I'm sure the $75 million in in there... and if $75 million is representative of such losses, the losses due to lack of harvesters would probably be over $1 billion country-wide.
I wasn't aware of the huge agricultural losses. I'm sure the Dept of Agriculture is one the Tea Party/GOP would be happy to allow to stay since it funnels billions into the pockets of agribusiness. I think I remember reading somewhere that there have been hundreds of millions in losses for agriculture in Alabama which have been attributed to lack of field labor.
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