Harper's Index for July 2005

FROM Harpers.org: Harper's Index for July 2005 Posted on Thursday, August 11, 2005. Sources Estimated amount spent lobbying Congress last year: $3,000,000,000 [The Center for Public Integrity (Washington)] Number of former members of Congress or federal-agency heads who are now lobbyists: 240[The Center for Public Integrity (Washington)] Total value of congressional earmarks to appropriations bills last year: $32,700,000,000[Taxpayers for Common Sense (Washington)] Factor by which this exceeded the amount in 1998: 3[Taxpayers for Common Sense (Washington)] Minimum amount that members of Congress have paid their own relatives since 2001: $3,000,000[Los Angeles Times (Washington)] Number of Americans who spend more than a quarter of their income on health care: 14,300,000[Families USA (Washington)] Estimated amount that illegal immigrants pay into Social Security each year: $6,400,000,000[Center for Immigration Studies (Washington)] Average percentage of the U.K. population that Britons believe to be immigrants: 21[Market & Opinion Research International (London)] Actual percentage: 8[Office for National Statistics (London)] Amount slated to be spent by 2007 to build a theme park in honor of Charles Dickens: £62,000,000[Dickens World, Ltd. (Chatham, UK)] Number of free copies of Don Quixote being distributed by the Venezuelan government this year: 1,000,000[Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Washington)] Tons of CO2 emissions that would be replaced each year by a proposed windmill project on Long Island: 235,000[Renewable Energy Long Island (Bridgehampton, N.Y.)] Tons produced each year by a single jumbo jet making a round-trip trans-Atlantic flight daily: 210,000[U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] Minimum number of ExxonMobil-funded groups that have disputed mainstream scientific findings on climate change: 31[Chris Mooney, Mother Jones (Washington)] Percentage of U.S. auto travel that occurs on two-lane roads: 28[The Road Information Program (Washington)] Percentage of traffic fatalities that do: 52[The Road Information Program (Washington)] Mass, in tons, of a comet that NASA plans to ram with a spacecraft on the Fourth of July: 1,000,000,000[Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena, Calif.)] Total cost of the mission, called “Deep Impact”: $330,000,000[Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena, Calif.)] Year that the first planet outside our solar system was discovered: 1995[Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena, Calif.)] Number discovered since then: 145[Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena, Calif.)] Date on which the proposed EU constitution was taken into space: 4/15/05[European Commission (Brussels)] Portion of the German Catholic Church’s income that derives from a government tax on members: 1/2[Carsten Frerk (Hamburg, Germany)] Total value of bets taken by a U.K. bookmaker this spring on the identity of the new pope: £50,000[William Hill Organization (London)] Number of the fifteen previous Pope Benedicts who were eventually deposed: 4[Harper's research] Number of U.S. public-school districts that have adopted a class in which the Bible is the primary textbook: 301[National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (Greensboro, N.C.)] Percentage of Bill Frist’s medical-school class that sent him a letter accusing him of misusing his degree: 18[Muriel Gillick, M.D. (Boston)] Rank, in the current line of succession to the U.S. Presidency, of the first non-Christian: 16[Harper's research] Number of America’s nine “Founding Fathers” who denied the divinity of Jesus: 7[Frank Lambert, Purdue University (West Lafayette, Ind.)] Minimum number of illegitimate children had by the nine: 9[Harper's research] Chance that a woman in one of the U.S. military’s three service academies claims to have been sexually harassed: 1 in 2[U.S. Department of Defense, Office of Inspector General] Number of national parliaments that have a greater percentage of female members than the U.S. Congress: 71[Inter-Parliamentary Union (Geneva)]