Here are some excerpts from the June edition of the Harper’s Index:
- Portion of Oklahoma school districts that have switched to four-day weeks because of budget cuts: 1/5 [...]
- Percentage of Americans who estimate they will need at least $1,000,000 to retire: 37
- Of Americans aged 55 and older with retirement plans whose accounts contain more than $250,000: 35
- Portion of American workers who are looking for a new job: ½ [...]
- Amount awarded to wrongfully convicted individuals for each year they spent in a Texas state prison: $80,000
- In a Wisconsin state prison: $5,000
- Number of U.S. states in which wrongfully convicted state prisoners aren’t entitled to monetary compensation: 18 [...]
- Percentage of invitees from Africa to a U.S. conference on African economic development who were denied visas: 100 [...]
- Minimum number of U.S. states in which spring arrived early this year: 35 [...]
- Number of countries in which U.S. Special Operations Forces were operating in March: 102
TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES
QUOTATION
“The test of a progressive policy is not private but public, not just rising income and consumption for individuals, but widening the opportunities and what Amartya Sen calls the 'capabilities' of all through collective action. But that means, it must mean, public non-profit initiative, even if only in redistributing private accumulation. Public decisions aimed at collective social improvement from which all human lives should gain. That is the basis of progressive policy—not maximising economic growth and personal incomes. Nowhere will this be more important than in tackling the greatest problem facing us this century, the environmental crisis. Whatever ideological logo we choose for it, it will mean a major shift away from the free market and towards public action, a bigger shift than the British government has yet envisaged. And, given the acuteness of the economic crisis, probably a fairly rapid shift. Time is not on our side.”
~Eric Hobsbawn, 2009
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At on this date in 2006—Billmon: Surveillance Polls Don’t Matter:
Billmon gets "a little crazy in the head" as he contemplates the arguments over whether two-thirds, or one-half, or one-fourth of Americans support being spied upon for their own alleged well-being.
The whole point of having civil liberties is that they are not supposed to be subject to a majority veto. Hobbes may not have believed in natural rights, but our founders did. And their opponents, the anti-Federalists, were even more zealous about restraining the powers of the federal superstate, which is why they forced the Federalists to write the Bill of Rights directly into the Constitution.
It defeats the purpose of having a 4th Amendment if its validity is entirely dependent on breaking 50% in the latest poll. It would be nice to have "the people" on our side in this debate, and obviously a lot of them are, even if Doherty's plurality still prefers Leviathan's crushing embrace. But some things are wrong just because they're wrong -- not because a temporary majority (or even a permanent one) thinks they're wrong.
...We can't do anything about how a corrupt, oligarchic system works (or rather, doesn't work) but we can at least stop accepting the other side's terms for the debate. What the government is doing is illegal and unamerican, and that would still be true if the polls showed 99% support -- in fact, it would be even more true.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: The president is still crazy, with few exceptions. Armando joins us for more discussion of the continuing fallout from the Comey firing, the three latest bizarro interviews, etc. Plus an explainer on discharge petitions, and some recommended weekend reading.
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