2009 April | BoWilliams.com

A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money

Annoyances, Consumption, Current Events, Politics 3 Responses »

Apr 202009

I posted that little blurb about Obama getting oh-so-tough with the budget at lunch, and I’ve been thinking about the numbers off and on all afternoon. A trillion of something is very difficult to imagine.

I spent a bit of time this evening on everyone’s favorite wiki, looking for fun and alarming ways to convey the amount of money we’re talking about. So how much money—really—is $3,500,000,000,000? Dig:

There’s Gold in Them Thar Hills, and I’ll Take It All: $3,500,000,000,000, as of this writing, is right at the amount of money that would be required to buy all of the gold ever mined.
Those Lucky Nutmeggers: Evenly distributing $3,500,000,000,000 to every man, woman, and child in Connecticut would make all of them millionaires.
The Stadium Promotion to End All Others—Millionaire Day!: Suppose you gave $1,000,000 to every person through the gate at the Superdome. Assuming sellouts, it would take 48 sporting events to give away $3,500,000,000,000.
Well, It Is America’s Sports Car: How about a new Corvette for every licensed driver in South Carolina, Alabama, Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, Indiana, Massachusetts, Arizona, Washington, Virginia, and New Jersey? $3,500,000,000,000 would cover it.
Just Throw It in the Ocean: $3,500,000,000,000 is enough to distribute $25,000 over each and every square mile of ocean on the earth’s surface. Ever look out over the ocean?
All the People: $3,500,000,000,000 is about $11,400 for every man, woman, and child in the United States. It’s about $515 for every man, woman, and child in the world.

Obama gets tough with the federal budget

Annoyances, Current Events, Politics 3 Responses »

Apr 202009

Obviously deeply concerned about out-of-control federal spending, this morning President Obama directed his Cabinet to cut a total of $100,000,000 from the budgets of their respective agencies.

The cut of $100,000,000 represents just under 0.003% of Obama’s $3,500,000,000,000 budget. It is enough to pay the interest on the federal debt for two hours and eight minutes.

Pass It On

Family, Memories, Religion 5 Responses »

Apr 192009

We sang “Pass It On” (aka “It Only Takes a Spark”) in church today. It’s such a beautiful song, and deceptive in its simplicity. I hadn’t heard or sung it since I was a little boy. In fact, I have a feeling it was on the way out of my brain, as I had to pull in the melody a bit when the lyrics popped up on the overhead. So I’m glad it made the set list this morning.

As fondly as I (now) remember it, I can’t place exactly where I sang it in my childhood. The Episcopal Day School and/or YMCA camp are reasonable guesses. Anyway, I’m walking around singing it to myself this afternoon, which is doing good things for my mood. (It’s also a welcome respite from Carly Simon’s “Nobody Does It Better,” which mysteriously and relentlessly pummeled me for two days last week.)

I hope you’re having a good Sunday.

The giving Bidens

Annoyances, Consumption, Current Events, Politics 2 Responses »

Apr 182009

It’s trivially easy to pick on Joe Biden. He’s a walking gaffe machine. He’s the oaf the cool kids let hang around in high school because he was such a rich source of comic relief.

Well, here’s a depressing additional arena for ridicule. (I’m a giver.) The White House recently released the 2008 tax returns of both the Obamas and the Bidens. In 2008, the Bidens earned $269,256, and reported charitable contributions of $1,885.

Yeah. So.

That’s not exactly a high bar to get over. That’s 0.7%, to a couple of decimal places even.

(There’s a whole ‘nother post in the sustained misery a fellow like…oh, say Dick Cheney would receive under similar circumstances, but I’ll leave the blatant, widespread media bias alone following this brief mention.)

Though we try to do a little more every year, we’re not huge givers. In fact, it wouldn’t be so hard for me to go through our budget and identify several expenses that are unambiguous luxuries. Is HD cable really more important that children’s cancer? Than disaster relief? Than shelters for battered women? Most anyone reading this could probably say similar things.

Yet percentage to percentage, we pasted the Bidens last year. Know what else? We even beat them dollar for dollar. Now I’m not going to tell you what I made in 2008, but rest assured it was well short of $269,256. (Despite what you’ve seen on TV and in the movies, the real life of a technical writer is not all hookers, blow, and private jet jaunts to the Caymans.)

When questioned about it, Joe has always been careful to explain that they give of their time as well.

Hey Joe? Us too.

What the hell?

It’s less scary to believe they’re just heartless stingy self-absorbed cheap thrifty. The graver possibility is that their pathetic level of charitable giving says something about what they think Mommy Government ought to be doing for people, which just might be everything but wiping their asses (as of this writing, anyway). Will this administration get away with its stated wish of capping deductions on charitable contributions? Have you heard anyone affiliated with a charity call such a proposal anything but a disaster?

Charity is voluntary giving. Taxes are involuntary confiscation.

Now obviously, I am not privy to the Bidens’ personal finances. I do know, however, that as of January 20, their day-to-day expenses dropped pretty much to zero. Plus, Joe got a raise. Finally, it got a lot tougher for either of them to head down to the homeless shelter, or to a Habitat site for some framing, or whatever the hell they’ve supposedly been doing to feel better/deflect criticism concerning their inability to write a damned check once in a while.

Bidens, y’all step up in 2009.

Friday miscellanea

Menagerie 13 Responses »

Apr 172009

A-Day game. ESPN. It’s all good.
I did some business with 1000bulbs.com this week. They appear to be a great source for 130V incandescent light bulbs. We run a lot of CFs, but in stuff like bathroom vanities and dimming applications, we prefer the old, bad, rainforest-razing, polar bear-killing light bulbs. If you run 130V ones, you’ll get dramatically increased life. (The ones that came in my house are only just now burning out, most of nine years later). The trade-off is you give up a little brightness (a 75W bulb looks like about 66, for example).
The general reaction by a lot of the left to the tea parties isn’t particularly disappointing to me simply because it’s so predictable (and, I believe, ultimately useful). Hey, let’s see how many “teabagging” jokes we can make. That’s funny. Continue the ridicule, please. Nothing to see here. Nothing politically threatening at all about these “Astroturf” efforts.
If that ATM doesn’t look right, it might not be. Here’s a story of a guy who found a “skimmer” attached to an ATM he wanted to use (the card goes through the skimmer to get to the real slot). Never forget: some of the cleverest people in the world are criminals.
Great Britain continues its liberty death march.
The paper wasps really want to live in my gas grill this year. Ah, it is the rare problem indeed for which such an effective and satisfying solution is so readily available.
Blogroll addition: Uncoached. Scantily clad women, crass social commentary, and sports, roughly in that order.

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