Approximate U.S. federal debt, including unfunded Medicaid, Social Security, etc: $59,100,000,000,000 (about $193,000 per person) ¹

Approximate yearly spending on interest on federal debt: $240,000,000,000, 9.5% of the federal budget (about $783 per person) ¹

2007 inflation rate: 3.9 ²

Average increase in teacher salaries in 2007: 2.9 ²

Percentage of Swedish gross national income given to aid developing countries: 1.03 ³

Percentage of U.S. gross national income given to aid developing countries: 0.17 ³

Amount the U.S. government just deposited in my bank account in the hopes that I will spend as recklessly as them: $600

Amount I am to donating to places the government should be funding instead of trying to get people to buy new TVs: $600

Join me.

The list so far:

The IRC

Save Darfur

Environmental Defense

Doctors Without Borders

The Polaris Project

Suggestions?

_{1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt}

_{2. http://educationalissues.suite101.com/article.cfm/teacher_salaries_cut_by_inflation}

_{3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_development_assistance}

We have proved, at least, that it would save more power for our lawmakers to sell their SUVs than it does when they pass boneheaded bills to make it look like they’re doing something about the environment.

This year’s switch is especially exciting, since the last Congress decided to extend Daylight Saving Time, ostensibly to save even more oil. Never mind that we got better gas mileage 20 years ago; clearly the problem is the precise time at which we turn on our lights. And never mind the time and money the IT industry spent installing DST updates. I’m starting to suspect that the lawmakers think that changing our clocks actually changes the amount of daylight.

Either way, the change of DST dates is important for one reason: statistics. Someone will generate a statistic purporting to prove that the extension of DST saved, say, x gallons of oil. Then we’ll also get a statistic, y, of how many school children died after being hit by cars because they were walking to school in the darkness of an artificially-early morning. And you know what we’ll know then? We’ll have x over y, precisely how many gallons of oil the life of a child is worth, according to our government. With some extrapolation, the number could be applied to certain war policies, but I won’t go there.

[I wrote this post a few weeks ago after working on DST changes, and forward-dated it to today. Then I planned a trip to Boston, so I gained an hour today anyway. So much for laughing at the rest of the nation. Incidentally, it was 85 degrees in Phoenix when we left on a red-eye flight, and 4 when we arrived in the morning.]

Thus spake Obama in Selma, Alabama yesterday.

What’s stopped us from meeting these challenges is not the absence of sound policies and sensible plans. What’s stopped us is the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics – the ease with which we’re distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems.

[This message was approved by Al Gore.]