Harper’s Index

Estimated amount spent lobbying Congress last year: $3,000,000,000¹

Number of former members of Congress or federal-agency heads who are now lobbyists: 240²

Total value of congressional earmarks to appropriations bills last year: $32,700,000,000³

Factor by which this exceeded the amount in 1998: 3⁴

Minimum amount that members of Congress have paid their own relatives since 2001: $3,000,000⁵

Number of Americans who spend more than a quarter of their income on health care: 14,300,000⁶

Estimated amount that illegal immigrants pay into Social Security each year: $6,400,000,000⁷

Average percentage of the U.K. population that Britons believe to be immigrants: 21⁸

Actual percentage: 8⁹

Amount slated to be spent by 2007 to build a theme park in honor of Charles Dickens: £62,000,000¹⁰

Number of free copies of Don Quixote being distributed by the Venezuelan government this year: 1,000,000¹¹

Tons of CO2 emissions that would be replaced each year by a proposed windmill project on Long Island: 235,000¹²

Tons produced each year by a single jumbo jet making a round-trip trans-Atlantic flight daily: 210,000¹³

Minimum number of ExxonMobil-funded groups that have disputed mainstream scientific findings on climate change: 31¹⁴

Percentage of U.S. auto travel that occurs on two-lane roads: 28¹⁵

Percentage of traffic fatalities that do: 52¹⁶

Mass, in tons, of a comet that NASA plans to ram with a spacecraft on the Fourth of July: 1,000,000,000¹⁷

Total cost of the mission, called “Deep Impact”: $330,000,000¹⁸

Year that the first planet outside our solar system was discovered: 1995¹⁹

Number discovered since then: 145²⁰

Date on which the proposed EU constitution was taken into space: 4/15/05²¹

Portion of the German Catholic Church’s income that derives from a government tax on members: 1/2²²

Total value of bets taken by a U.K. bookmaker this spring on the identity of the new pope: £50,000²³

Number of the fifteen previous Pope Benedicts who were eventually deposed: 4²⁴

Number of U.S. public-school districts that have adopted a class in which the Bible is the primary textbook: 301²⁵

Percentage of Bill Frist’s medical-school class that sent him a letter accusing him of misusing his degree: 18²⁶

Rank, in the current line of succession to the U.S. Presidency, of the first non-Christian: 16²⁷

Number of America’s nine “Founding Fathers” who denied the divinity of Jesus: 7²⁸

Minimum number of illegitimate children had by the nine: 9²⁹

Chance that a woman in one of the U.S. military’s three service academies claims to have been sexually harassed: 1 in 2³⁰

Number of national parliaments that have a greater percentage of female members than the U.S. Congress: 71³¹

Number of Saudi men who were imprisoned and flogged for “behaving like women” at a party in March: 100³²

Price for a set of six Harley Davidson‒brand votive candles: $19.95³³

Price, from a Florida company, for an RV that protects riders from biological and chemical attack: $1,200,000³⁴

Percentage of the 651 fatal or wounding terrorist attacks worldwide last year that took place in Iraq: 32³⁵

Percentage that took place in India: 44³⁶

Average number of Americans injured on amusement-park rides each year: 7,900³⁷

Chance that a four-to-six-year-old U.S. boy plays video games every day: 1 in 4³⁸

Number of previous baseball seasons that Washington, D.C., fielded a professional team: 89³⁹

Chances that it had a losing record: 4 in 5⁴⁰

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