When is...?

When is 44,395 not 44, 395?  When it's 23,970 or 48,716 or something else!  No, that's not a trick question either.

Those are the total number of votes Mike Duggan received in the Detroit mayoral primary.  Of course, Benny Napoleon received 28,352 or 28, 391.  It's all in the details or, rather, who is counting the votes. Tallies came from the city of Detroit, another from the county of Wayne, and the third from the state of Michigan.  Sure seems like someone needs to take arithmetic classes again.

Of course, the question of valid or invalid write-in votes is the difficulty.  Still, with all of the other problems in Detroit, here we go again.  Why such a discrepancy between jurisdictions counting?  One might logically guess there are politics involved??????  So, what's new?

Other numbers are more encouraging--the numbers of apples the state is growing this year.  In 2012, only three million bushels of apples were harvested.  I don't know who counts them, but the estimate for this year is about thirty million.  That's the biggest yield in decades, about 50 years.  Good news!  Some might also hail as "good news" that the prices for cider are declining, too.  Some mills last year charged $10.50 to $12.50 a gallon for that good stuff.  The price this year is in the mid-$8 range.  Hmmm......  The increase in the apple harvest is ten-fold, but the price decrease is about one-third??????  That's more than the price of gasoline.  Has anyone tossed out the term "greedy" yet?  Oh, that's just for Big Oil, Wall Street, bankers and CEOs, but not athletes, hippy-rock stars, Hollywood-types, etc.  I'm sure I'll take the kids apple-picking this year after last year's drought, but I likely will skip the cider.

OK, I think all those millionaires and, esp, billionaires are "greedy."  Why in the world does one need or even want tens of millions of dollars to live?  What could they possibly want that they don't already have?  I think it is a problem that many of those of the upper crust have difficulty relating to us making 1-2% of what they earn, but......  But that's the point--they've earned their money.  I don't necessarily like it that the CEO of, say Burger King makes about $7,000,000 a year and the Whopper-flipper gets $8.50.  But it's not as if the CEO is stealing the money.  He doesn't just give it to himself.  Others decide he deserves it, that he can't be replaced while the flipper can easily be so.  Consider this analogy.  I went to a Tiger game the other night. My main reason was to see Miggy Cabrera.  My guess is that if he wasn't on the team, I wouldn't have gone. Therefore, all those other players, making millions were not as important to me as, say, the candied almonds vendor from whom I purchased almonds for Bopper--he loves them and what is a Grandpa to do?  Would anyone argue that the players are like the CEO and the vendor like the flipper--pay-wise?  I can't imagine that.  I don't like people making so much money, but I'm not going to demonize them for it.  As one of my buddies and I always ask, rhetorically, "How much money is enough?"  We then joke with a reply from John D. Rockefeller, likely the wealthiest man in the history of the world, "Just a little more; just a little more."  I guess......