News Factoids for Fourth Quarter 2016

An excellent article in The Washington Post shows how far the country is moving toward becoming an Oligarchy: just ten donors poured more than $1.1 billion into super PACs in the 2016 election alone.

Half of the guns in the U.S.A. are owned by 3 percent of the people, with an average of 17 guns each, while only 22% of the U.S. population own a gun.

Because of the G.O.P.'s defunding of health clinics and of sex education in the schools, syphilis rose 19% to 24,000 cases for the year, gonorrhea is up 13% to 400,000 cases, and clamydia is up 6% to 1.5 million cases.

U.S. coffee consumption pushed global demand to a new record high, and coffee drinkers 19-34 now account for 44% of U.S. coffee consumption.

Official New Mexico results: 804,043 voters cast ballots in November, or 62.4 percent of the 1,289,414 voters who were registered in time to vote in the general election.

Worldwide economic stagnation: Across 25 of the world’s advanced economies, about two-thirds of the population – more than half a billion people – earn the same as or less than their peers did a decade ago.
— per Wall Street Journal and a July 2016 study by the Mckinsey Global Institute

Arctic in crisis: A report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (N.O.A.A.) shows that in 2016 the Arctic experienced the warmest land temperatures on record, the lowest snow cover on record, and the lowest fall sea-ice cover on record.
— TIME Magazine 12/2016

Copyright 2016 by G.E. Nordell, all rights reserved