Heather and I went to the Progressive Activist Conference at the University of Utah Saturday. We only caught a couple panels, but they were informative even if we could hardly stay awake. The presenters are doing great work for their respective causes, but they could probably benefit from sharpening their presentation skills. One powerpoint had a lot of good information on it, but it was just so much to take in I probably couldn’t repeat even one of the statistics.

Some argue that we progressives shouldn’t even focus on the numbers, but focus more on telling the stories of these numbers - see Drew Weston’s “The Political Brain” (also see theRadioWest interview with the author). Myself, I like a good story AND statistics, and while at the conference I picked up a flyer that tells stories and also shows some numbers. The flyer was put out by American Friends Service Committee.

AFSC has calculated that the per day cost of the Iraq war for the first 4 years has been $720 million. So they’ve figured out how far that $720 million would go for various things:

• Health Insurance for an adult costs $4,403 per year. $720 Million could cover 163,525 people.
• The average cost of a new elementary school is $8,497,627. $720 Million could pay for 84 brand new schools.
• It costs $624 to give a child free school lunches for a year. $720 Million could buy lunch for 1,153,846 kids.
• An affordable housing unit costs around $111,061. $720 Million could buy 6,482 homes.
• A year of Head Start costs $7550. $720 Million could open 95,364 new slots.
• The average cost of renewable electricity for a home is $565/year. $720 Million could pay for 1,274,336 homes to have it.
• An average school teacher’s salary is $57,000. $720 Million could put 12, 478 new teachers in the classroom.
• The average cost of a four-year state university is $20,628. $720 Million could put 34,904 students through college.
• Health insurance for a child costs $1,700 per year. $720 Million could cover 423,529 kids.

Those figures really but the cost of the war into perspective, and it’s pretty damn despicable how much we’re spending as our own democracy crumbles. Getting out of this war seems like a no-brainer to you and I; let’s hope our next President feels the same way.