So according to the VA…

… a veteran of the U.S. armed forces kills him (or her!) self every 80 minutes, ’round the clock, all day long, every day except Christmas — when the rates go up.

A last call every 80 minutes means 18 veterans dead by their own hand, every. single. day.

The great State of Wyoming recently calculated that the loss to society of a taxpaying citizen averaged out at $1.3 million dollars. If that same formula could be applied to scabby old vets (and 28-y.o. Iraq and Afghanistan vets), then the cost would be … let’s see … uh, that’s right: $23.4 million.

A day.

Or, let’s say, eight and a half Billion dollars every year. A suicide here, a suicide there, pretty soon you’re talkin’ real money…

Some say math is hard, but this math doesn’t seem so hard. Pretty sure $8.5B is enough to pay the entire annual endowment for the University of California system, including UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Los Angeles, UC Merced, UC Riverside, UC San Diego, UC San Francisco, UC Santa Barbara and UC Santa Cruz. All of ’em.

In other words, stop the suicides — just that one thing, complicated as it is — and you’ve paid to endow perhaps the greatest university system extant.

There’s clearly a problem here. Inquiring minds would like to know what the budget is to fix it. Oh, you say the sequester means even less money for PTSD research and treatment?

Oh, my.

That math may not be hard to do, but the answer is pretty hard to take… because it’s only an answer, and no kind of a solution. So here’s another equation for you to solve, and this one comes in the form of a two-part story problem:

(1) Is there one single United States Representative or Senator currently serving whom you would support for reelection?

(2) Why?

Please show your work.