Okay, Let’s Do It by the Numbers

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer
Sometimes numbers are very important.  Lucky numbers win lotteries and specific numbers score in blackjack and dice games.  One of my favorite poems is “Madam and The Number Writer” by Langston Hughes. In a few short phrases it covers the elation and frustration of any game with numbers. A lot of numbers don’t mean much. Playing the numbers game in the black ghettos often erased the boredom of the day–and sometimes Madam got lucky.

                      Madam and the Number Writer
                       
                          By Langston Hughes
      Number runner come to my door. I had swore I wouldn’t play no more.
      He said, Madam, 6-0-2 looks like a likely hit for you.
      I said, last night, I dreamed 7-0-3.  He said, that might be a hit for me.
      He played a dime, I played too. Then we boxed ‘em.  Wouldn’t you?
      But the number that day was 3-2-6 and we both were in the same old fix.
      I said I swear I ain’t gonna play no more til I get over to the other shore–
      Then I can play on them golden streets where the numbers not only comes
      out–but repeats!!
      The runner said, Madam, that’s all very well—but suppose you goes to hell?

It seemed that almost every story I picked up this week had an important number in it. The numbers ranged from 1 to 14,000,000,000,000. Some number nuts would recognize that the last number represents our national debt limit now. We will be close to it soon. But some of the other numbers I read about are perhaps more interesting.
Let’s start with the Number One.  The state of South Carolina, the home of many a fundamentalist religious nut, has a rule that only one book has been authorized to be used as reading material in all of its jails.  I realize the Bible has all kinds of interesting historical tales, Harry Potter mystical shenanigans, and large dollops of Hustler-type sex, but shouldn’t an imprisoned banker or insider trader be allowed to read The Wall Street Journal to keep himself in the game? the American Civil Liberties Union is suing the state on behalf of the Prison Legal News, an organization that claims restricting the access to other materials violates free speech and other constitutional rights. The Prison Legal News has attempted to send self-help books and magazines to prisoners for years–but only soft-back Bibles have been accepted.  I wonder if prison authorities have kept track of the number of atheists who have been converted because they have been forced to read the Bible in order to conquer boredom.
I found an interesting fact about the number 85 in an article about health insurance when Obamacare becomes fully implemented.  Under this new legislation , health insurance companies will be required to spend 85 cents of every dollar’s worth of premiums–on actual health care instead of lining their pockets with millions of dollars of executive pay!  Most private health insurers now burn up about 30 percent of premiums on “administrative costs.”  The administration of Medicare takes about three percent of total costs –but Medicare does not pay its executives in the hundred-million dollar range like United Benefit does.
Finding the truth in politics is a very hazardous occupation, so it is sometime difficult to find a reliable source.  The Republicans are always screaming about the “failed stimulus bill” and its “job-killing policies.”  When Obama took office in 2009 he inherited a 7.7 unemployment rate from Lurch. Since then it has risen to 9.6 percent.  The Democrats, failing to recognize that we were entering a deep recession instead of a normal one, promised they would reduce unemployment to 7 percent by this August.  Wrong, and the Republicans are mashing the Democrats because of it, reminding the country they were opposed to any stimulus.  But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, used by both parties for research, estimates that the stimulus has created between 1,400,000 and 3,300,000 jobs. I have used the conservative number. What if the stimulus created the median of 2,350,000 jobs?
Let’s move to a big number for a moment, if you want to call $1,100,000,000 a big number.  The national debt is about $13,000,000,000,000 and certainly the $814,000,000,000 allocated for stimulus will add to the national debt.  But what is the Republican plan to get us out of the recession? First, they want to extend $700,000,000,000 in tax cuts to the most wealthy Americans over the next ten years. They want to repeal the new health care reform. The Congressional Budget Office says that repeal would add $455,000,000,000 in increased costs to the deficit over ten years. The CBO also says keeping the health reform will cut the present deficit by $170,000,000,000 in the next ten years.

There are other elements of the stimulus in play, but in the end Democratic actions would worsen the deficit by $640,000,000,000 while Republican plans would worsen the deficit by $1,100,000,000,000–or almost twice as much.  Don’t these figures drive you into the five percent “crazy” bracket? The Republicans say that the rich should retain the Lurch tax cuts because they provide jobs.  I suppose when the rich furnish their second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh homes they do buy another refrigerator, stove, sauna, hot tub, HD TVs, and other necessities of life, but how many jobs in China do they create?
Why would it cost $47,000 to destroy 9,500 copies of “Operation Dark Heart”, a memoir by an Army officer who served in Afghanistan?  That’s what our Defense Department paid somebody because supposedly the book contained some secrets about our losing war effort. I could have gotten 50 elementary school kids to do the job for nothing. What government contractor got $4.94+ each to burn a book?  No wonder this country is broke.
There’s a new health drink in India flavored with four different flavors–orange, khus (a fragrant Asian grass), rose, and lemon–that the originator says is a “drink from the land of cow.”  It sells for $3.00 a “pop.”  The principal ingredient is cow urine, which has great religious significance in India in that cows are sacred animals. I don’t know how they catch the urine from cows, but being an old farm boy, I do know that it could become a rather messy collection process.  It brings to mind the old farm expression about rain: “It’s raining so hard it’s like a double–bladdered cow peeing on a flat rock.”  The urine pop is supposed to be a good-for-you beverage. The pop, sold under the brand name of Gauloka Peya, is a product of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Hindu group.  They also sell soaps, shampoos, toothpastes, and skin-care potions that contain cow urine and dung. I would suppose those Hindus seeking long life through worship of the sacred cow would be steady and confident users.
Perhaps some oldsters will remember the movie “How Green Was My Valley” starring Walter Pigeon and Greer Garson about the hazards or working in English coal mines in the early 20th century.  The movie was beautifully done, staffed with a host of great English actors. In a way it was the first great environmental movie, covering the destruction of the “green” of the valley and the complete heartlessness of the absent mine owners.  Massey Energy, the killer of 29 miners in the Upper Branch Mine through negligence and the breaking of mine safety laws by the thousands (over 65,000 violations at last count), is at it again. A surprise inspection caught the company violating rules about cutting deeply into coal veins, skipping tests for explosive gases, and eliminating the use of mandatory ventilation curtains for miners. Isn’t it about time this crazed outfit is put out of business before it kills again?

The typical American woman spends 30 years trying to avoid pregnancy. The typical Afghan woman has 15 pregnancies over the same period. There is some question whether new health care legislation will cover birth control pills and devices. Of course, Viagra will be covered.
If you’re born again, do you have two belly buttons?
Just because you have one doesn’t mean you have to be one.
We currently have over 7,000,000 persons in jail or in the parole system.  Over 2,200,000 are actually incarcerated in county, state, or federal jails and prisons.  We lead the world in that category. With so many people in jail or being checked on, what is the cost of crime in this country?  Iowa State researchers have been studying this issue for years.  They have come up with the figure of $17,250,000 for each murder. Using data from Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Texas, they determined that this figure is based “on victim costs, criminal justice system costs, lost productivity for both victim and perpetrator, and on future costs for security measures.” Certainly there is wiggle room in this stat, but the researchers say our 18,000 homicides (12,000 by the gun) each year cost us $300,000,000. In addition to murder, they calculated that reach rape costs us $448,532, each robbery $335,733, each aggravated assault $145,379, and each burglary $41,288.  Our murder rate is twice that of other rich countries and is even higher than Rwanda, Angola, and Mozambique.
Do you think it is good public policy for health insurance policies to pay $93,000 for a one-time use of the drug Provenge that extends the life of a man with advanced prostate cancer only four months?
Just because you have one doesn’t mean you have to be one.
According to Time magazine, 73 million sharks are killed each year for their fins so that $100 a bowl shark-fin soup can be served at important corporate and private celebrations, primarily in Asian countries. The traditional nine-course Cantonese wedding banquet requires shark-fin soup. It’s to show others that you have had good fortune.  Shark meat is not a big item on the world market so after the fins are chopped off the carcass is dumped back in the sea.
In that I imagine some readers have sickened rather early from all these zeros, I’m going to conclude early this week.  But I have one more numbers shot.  According to legend, A Grand Vizier (a big shot) of Persia invented the game of chess. His king was delighted with the new game, so the king told the vizier to name his reward.  The vizier, being a conservative politician, told the king he wanted only one grain of wheat on the first square of the chess board, two grains on the second, four on the third, and so on, with twice as many grains on each square as on the last.  Not being a mathematician, the king agreed to his aide’s proposal.  The formula for the 64-square deal is 2 to the 64th power, or 18.6 quintillion. That number equals the wheat production of the world for 150 years. I only have a math minor so this is way above my skill level. Will some math person check this out and let me know if the figure is right?
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