In honor of Obama's first hundred days in office, here's a list of mind-numbing facts about American government and life (and no, I don't think Obama is personally responsible for all of them.)
1) The U.S. tax code is 67,000 pages long, and so complicated that even Treasury Secretary Geithner can't figure it out.
2) 43% of Americans will pay zero or negative federal income taxes in 2009 according to the Brookings Institution.
3) 48% of Americans say the amount of federal income taxes they pay is "about right" according to a recent Gallup poll. (If I were part of the 43% that paid no taxes I guess I would say that it was about right, too. The other 5% that are happy to pay taxes are just stupid.)
4) After promising to eliminate wasteful earmarks, Obama signed a budget bill with 8,600 of them.
5) The top ten earmarking senators brought home $767 million in pork from the budget bill. Six of the top ten earmarkers were Republicans.
6) Obama has pledged to halve the deficit by 2013. That shouldn't be hard to do considering that he started by quadrupling the deficit of his predecessor.
7) High school teachers earned an average of $42,000 in 2008.
8) Joe Cassano, the man behind AIG's losses, earned an average of $35 million a year for 8 years.
9) The AIG bailout cost taxpayers $180 billion.
10) $11 billion of the AIG bailout money has gone to French bank Societe Generale, and $5.4 billion has gone to Germany's Deutsche Bank.
11) Merrill Lynch awarded bonuses of $1,000,000 or more to 696 people at the end of a quarter where it lost $15 billion.
12) Fifteen members of Congress are currently under investigation by ethics committees or law enforcement agencies. (8 Republican, 7 Democrats)
13) William Jefferson, who was caught with $90,000 in his freezer, is using the constitution's "speech or debate clause" to squash his bribery probe. Other corrupt politicians are following his lead.
14) Nancy Pelosi argued that money for birth control in Obama's stimulus bill would boost the economy by creating fewer people for the government to support.
15) Obama burned thousands of gallons of jet fuel to fly to Denver and sign the stimulus bill so he could stand in front of solar panels and preach to America about the virtues of green energy.
16) The government spent $120 million on Obama's inauguration, four years after people complained that Bush's $42 million inauguration was extravagant.
17) After promising to keep lobbyists out of the White House, Obama decided to let them in if they signed a waiver.
18) Former Raytheon lobbyist William Lynn is now Obama's Deputy Secretary of Defense.
19) The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) continues to lobby Congress, even after the FBI declared it a front for HAMAS.
20) The California legislature is planning to ban black cars from the state to help reduce global warming.
21) Attorney General Eric Holder called America "a nation of cowards" because of its record on race relations.
22) The U.S. spent $68 billion on prisons and other correctional costs last year. The Department of Education spent $56 billion.
23) 1 in 31 U.S. adults are in jail, on parole or on probation, according to a recent Pew Center report. Twenty-five years ago, the rate was 1 in 77.
24) Georgia leads the nation with 1 in 13 adults in jail, on parole or on probation.
25) You still can't buy a six-pack of beer in Georgia on a Sunday.
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