Here are some excerpts from the July Harper’s Index:
Number of states that prevent cities from enacting rent control laws: 37
Amount a US company is charging for an eleven-night stay at a luxury space hotel scheduled to open in 2022: $9,500,000
Number of reservations made during the first month bookings were available: 22
Percentage of first-time US home buyers who are single men: 7
Who are single women: 18 [...]
Chance that an ad for a Chinese central-government job specifies a preference
for men: 1 in 5
That it specifies a preference for women: 1 in 31,733 [...]
Amount of public money Mexico has spent since 2013 on ads promoting government accomplishments: $2,000,000,000
Portion of money spent by Donald Trump’s reelection committee this year that has gone toward legal fees: 1/5 [...]
Portion of high-net-worth US investors who regard health care as their greatest financial concern: 7/10 [...]
Total amount owed by Pennsylvania’s top 100 evaders of highway tolls: $3,400,000 [...]
Projected percentage increase in energy consumption from
cooling appliances by 2050: 90
TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES
QUOTATION
“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”
~~Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook, 1962
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2003—McKiernan’s dilemma:
Lt. Gen David McKiernan faces a problem as old as Iraq: how to keep the tribes and various factions under control.
His methods have involved sweeps and nightly patrols in a war which may go on as long as Americans are in Iraq.
The White House and Defense Department are using loaded words like terrorists and Baathists, which may sound nice on Fox News, but does little to explain how complex the politics of Iraq are.
One must keep in mind Saddam used a complex series of bribes and a secret police establishment to work his magic. He rarely acted overtly, except when needed. But even he couldn't prevent a full-scale Shia uprising and many of the secret dead come from that period.
The US faces a grim series of realities and some military choices.