Governor faces 37 flavors, uh, charges

The AP has reported that:

SC gov faces 37 charges he broke state ethics laws
SC State Wire

JIM DAVENPORT
Published: November 23, 2009

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford faces ethics charges he broke state laws more than three dozen times by violating rules on airplane travel and campaign money, according to details of the allegations released Monday.

It’s up to the state attorney general to decide whether to file criminal charges. Sanford’s lawyers have claimed the allegations involve minor and technical aspects of the law.

The second-term Republican governor has been under scrutiny since he vanished for five days over the summer, reappearing to tearfully admit to an extramarital affair with a woman in Argentina he later called his “soul mate.”

A series of Associated Press investigations into his travel showed the governor had for years used state airplanes for political and personal trips, flown in pricey commercial airline seats despite a low-cost travel requirement and failed to disclose trips on planes owned by friends and donors.

The State of Columbia newspaper also questioned whether Sanford properly reimbursed himself from his campaign cash.

Of course, you come here for instant analysis, which I provide when I feel like it. My instant analysis of this situation, of which I learned while surreptitiously checking Twitter during Rotary, is that this revelation means the following:

The number of charges leveled against the governor is a prime number, which means it is divisible only by itself and 1.
The particular prime number is the one that comes right after the prime number that is the number of original flavors at Baskin Robbins. This is 20 less than the number of flavors for which Heinz is famous, which is not a prime number even though it looks like one.

Not bad for analysis done while eating dinner, huh? And no, I was not eating mushrooms or anything else untoward. My stomach is still a bit uncertain today…

I’ll get back to you when I have further observations. In the meantime, y’all have at it.

By the way, have you ever heard of that “State of Columbia newspaper” that the AP referred to? Neither have I. Perhaps they meant “The State newspaper of Columbia…” Oh, and by the way, as I’ve been stating for decades, you wouldn’t have to say “newspaper” if you’d just use the italics as God intended.

12 thoughts on “Governor faces 37 flavors, uh, charges”

Karen McLeod November 23, 2009 at 3:49 pm

What devastating analysis! There’s little I can add to that! The web newsbit I just read notes that the offenses include ” using state-owned aircraft for travel to political and personal events, including a stop at a discount hair salon.” Wow! How frugal can you get?!

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Brad Warthen November 23, 2009 at 4:45 pm

Thanks, Karen. I thought my arguments were pretty airtight.

And lest some of you think my playing with numbers is frivolous, know that to some people, numbers mean just a bit more than they OUGHT to. Here’s what Wikipedia had to say about “Heinz 57:”

Heinz 57 is a shortened, popular form of the “57 Varieties” slogan of Pittsburgh‘s H. J. Heinz Company. In its early days, the company wanted to advertise the great number of choices of canned and bottled foods it offered for sale. Although the company had more than 60 products in 1892, the number 57 was chosen because the numbers “5” and “7” held special significance to Heinz. The number “5” was Henry John Heinz‘s lucky number and the number “7” was his wife’s lucky number.^[1] The company now has more than 6,000 products. Prepared horseradish was their first product.

Oh, and as a further fun fact to know, John Kerry’s lucky number is “Teresa.”

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Karen McLeod November 23, 2009 at 5:41 pm

You do realize that the number 7 symbolizes wholeness, completion, and/or perfection?

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Burl Burlingame November 23, 2009 at 7:27 pm

Don’t forget Roscoe Turner’s Wedell-Williams racer “Ol’ 57′:
http://www.airrace.com/images/57_Turner_1934.jpg

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Kathryn Fenner November 23, 2009 at 8:06 pm

“God may not play dice with the universe, but something strange is going on with the prime numbers.”
Paul Erdos

My husband’s Erdos number is three.

This is like a Kevin Bacon number. The Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos was so prolific on multi-author papers that in mathematics and theoretical computer science, people compute their Erdos number–how many authorships they have to chain until they reach Dr. Erdos.

My husband’s favorite number is P.

Glad you’re feeling better.

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