Here are some excerpts from the April Harper’s Index:
• Number of Americans aged 60 and older who have outstanding student loans: 2,800,000
• Portion of those borrowers who have taken on debt to pay for a child or grandchild’s education: 3/4
• Factor by which more Americans work in the solar industry than work in fossil fuels: 2
• Percentage increase in IUD prescriptions and procedures in the two months following Donald Trump’s election: 19
• Number of U.S. states in which women would be at risk of losing their abortion rights were Roe v. Wade overturned: 33
• Percentage by which the average amount of gun violence in popular PG-13 movies exceeds that in popular R movies: 23
• Portion of U.S. police officers who believe that fatal encounters between police and black Americans are isolated incidents: 2/3
• Who believe protests over black victims of police violence are driven by anti-law-enforcement bias: 9/10
• Minimum number of states in which laws to criminalize political protest have been introduced this year: 9
• Number of FBI confidential informants who worked for Best Buy’s Geek Squad between 2008 and 2012: 8
QUOTATION OF THE DAY
“Rather than justice for all, we are evolving into a system of justice for those who can afford it. We have banks that are not only too big to fail, but too big to be held accountable.”
~Joseph E. Stiglitz, remarks to the AFL-CIO convention on Sept. 8, 2013.
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2008—The FBI: Retroactive blanket immunity in action:
The Justice Department's Inspector General published a report (PDF) today on the FBI's continued abuse of National Security Letters. However the IG postponed reporting on the abuse of "blanket" NSLs. We learned about the existence of these only today from the NY Times. They're an example of how the Bush "administration" actually employs retroactive immunity to shield its own lawbreaking.
In 2006 the FBI, having issued truckloads of warrantless NSLs illegally, decided it needed a way to make all of them legal retroactively. So it did what any agency would do under this "administration" - it waved the magic wand handed over to it by Congress, and presto! The FBI simply issued "blanket" NSLs to each of the telecoms in question to justify after the fact all the records it had previously scooped up.
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