Category: Newspapering

You’re Gonna Hate Yourself

Do you know what kills  educationally challenged people?  Think about it.  This is not as hard as it might first appear.

Give up? 

You’re gonna hate yourself when I tell you the answer.

*  * *

That's me, with some of the 9-track tapes of government database.
That’s me about 1994, with some of the 9-track tapes of government databases I acquired.

I found the answer to that age-old question, OK, OK, just my question: What kills people who have relatively little formal education?   I also discovered what kills rich people and what kills, or at least used to kill, the best educated among us.   I’m going to throw those answers in for free. 

In the early 1990’s I was the database editor at The News and Observer, acquiring, loading, and analyzing mostly government databases. One day I got to messing  around with North Carolina’s death database, trying to find out what kills people who aren’t all that smart.

That database told me each dead person’s sex, race, and years of education, date of birth and, of course, date of death.  I lumped all the males together, by race, and by year of birth, and had the computer calculate the average years of education for white men, and black men, by year of birth. Same for females.

Then I compared each dead person’s years of education to his/her group average and put the difference between those two numbers in a separate field. For each person it was plus this or minus that, depending on how much education they had compared to people of the same sex and race, born the same year they were born.

[I eliminated everyone under age 24 because they may have died while they were still in school, before they had completed their education.]

Now I could compute the average education level for each cause of death. And I could find out what killed people who did not have as much schooling as other folks.

Have you guessed correctly?  People in North Carolina who  got run over in the street had a lower level of education than people who died from any other cause of death.

I told you you’d hate yourself.

* * *

Common sense, as well as various studies, tells us there is a correlation between how much education a person has and how much money he or she makes.  That allowed me, by grouping dead people with the best educations compared to their peers, to figure out what kills rich people.

The answer? Cancer.

Why is that?

Tell you what I think: highly educated people don’t have dangerous jobs.  They don’t roof houses or cut timber or climb power poles — they don’t get killed on the job.  They don’t get drunk and get in fights at bars at 2 in morning.  They don’t smoke but they do wear seat belts and go to the gym.  And they can afford to  go to the doctor when they feel bad.

But sooner or later every one of us has to die and if something else doesn’t get you, cancer will.

*  *  *

Now this may surprise you: What single cause of death claimed the best educated group of people compared to their peers — same race, same sex, same year of birth?

The answer: AIDS.

In the early years, before AIDS began killing drug addicts who shared contaminated needles, it was mainly a plague afflicting homosexuals.  And homosexuals, as a group, are well educated.

Postscript: This post is not “old news.” It’s new news.  I was not reporting when I did that data analysis and, in any event, this is not the kind of story I worked.  For some reason I wasn’t able to get other N&O reporters interested and it never appeared in the paper. Don’t ask me why because I think it’s a good one.

Coming Friday: Why Her And Not Us?

Wasting Taxpayers’ Money

David Raynor and I reported to readers of The News & Observer that North Carolina state government had wasted at least $400 million on a mental health “reform” program.  And when the smoke cleared, it turned out our estimate was low.

Herblock
Herblock, who won three Pulitzer Prizes, lampooned Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger as Santa Clause wearing the $640 toilet seat like a collar.

But you know what? I don’t think people who are living paycheck to paycheck –that’s almost all of us at one time or another– pay much attention to numbers that big.  We pay attention to things we can related to.  I bet almost everyone who who saw it remembers the Reagan-era story about the Pentagon buying toilet seats for $640 each  [$1,429 in 2019 dollars].  We can related to a toilet seat, can’t we — and we know that price is outrageous.

When I was an investigative reporter I found and reported some big money waste stories, but I suspect some of the smaller waste stories I reported had more impact. Here are five examples, following by my favorite waste story.

* * *

“On Wednesday, July 31, the state Department of Public Instruction abolished [a man’s] $26.11-an-hour [$36.85 in 2019 dollars] job to comply with cost-cutting orders from the General Assembly.  The very next day, [he] returned to work in the same building, at the same desk, doing the same job — at a cost to taxpayers of $75 [$105.86 in 2019 dollars] an hour.”

[How could that be? DPI leaders paid a contractor to hire the fellow and assign him to the same job.]

* * *

“The government program to provide temporary housing to victims of Hurricane Floyd has cost taxpayers about $2,250 [$3,186 in 2019 dollars] per family per month, about three times the going rate for a two-bedroom apartment in Raleigh.”

* *  *

“Nine new 1986 Ford Crown Victories, which cost the state $10,721 each [$25,094 in 2019 dollars], have been parked in a fenced yard near the N.C. State Fairgrounds for a year awaiting assignment to agents who enforce state liquor laws.”

* * *

“[The] state superintendent of public instruction, stayed 10 nights in a free hotel room in Asheville this summer and then collected $441 [$1,023 in 2019 dollars] from the state for lodging.  Nine of [his] subordinates also stayed in ‘complimentary’ hotel rooms for up to 10 days while attending business meetings and then billed the state for lodging.”

* * *

“Gov. Bob Scott hired an old political friend last week, at a salary of $25,410, [$157,159 in 2019 dollars] as director of a department that no longer exists.  If he had wanted to, the governor could have given the legal responsibilities of that directorship to someone already on the state payroll…”
* * *

This is my favorite, about the secretary of the state Department of Human Resources’ self-improvement course.  Before he took the course his subordinates were required to evaluate him so, when he finished the course, he could see how much he had improved, I guess.

Here goes:

“When subordinates of  [the boss] were asked to list his strengths as an executive, they said he works tirelessly. They called him brilliant. They praised him as committed, compassionate, honest, insightful, loyal and tenacious. And that was before he spent $29,000 [$48,691 in 2019 dollars] of taxpayers’ money to get better.”  

Coming Friday: A Man Of Influence