A very charitable year so far

As noted in the January 16 New Yorker (dead tree version, so no link), in just the first two weeks of January some 65 members of the 109th Congress dumped $417,000 into charitable donations, with Dubya himself adding six grand to the sum. Ahh, Abramoff.

"Were they to keep up the pace for the remaining fifty-one weeks of 2006, their collective cheritable giving would add up to about twenty-one million dollars - enough to make up for more than four years' worth of the cuts their latest budget made to the Mine Safety and Health Administration," the magazine adds.

How long has it been since we had such a charitable bunch of public servants in Washington?

Come to think of it, how long has it been since we ha public servants?

Speaking of "money" - and "long" - and just so there's a link in this post, my calculator claims that if you were to buy one Massachusetts Mega Millions lottery ticket every day, always with the same number, the odds are you should win a jackpot in about 370,000 years. By then you would have paid upwards of $135 million for the tickets, so that's where the mega part comes in. Still, if you get plenty of exercise and eat your brocolli, who knows?

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