Harpooned, Again

From the Index in the latest number of Harper's magazine:

• Percentage of political ad spending during 2010 election that would have been prohibited before Citizens United: 72  An amazing number, don't you think? I see that two Supreme Court justices--Breyer and Ginsberg--are calling for the court to reconsider the decision. Gee, ya think? The dollar amounts reported for the GOP primaries are astounding, and almost all of it not accountable. See correction below.
•   Percentage increase since 2009 in investment fraud targeting adults over 50: 100  More good news for us seniors.
• Age at which a typical person's financial decision making peaks: 53.3  So the swindlers ain't no dummies.
• Estimated number of parking spaces per car in the United States: 3
• Years by which the average life span of a homeless person is shorter than the overall average: 30  And we have how many hundreds of thousands of homeless in U.S.? and how many are children? About 842,000 in a given week. I checked. And approximately 1.5 million children are homeless in any given year, that's 1 out of 50.
• Annual savings the U.S. Mint estimates will result from aborting its efforts to circulate $1 coins: $50 million. Are you kidding me? What the hell in wrong with the American people they cannot deal with coins? Which makes everything cheaper and simpler.
• Minimum number of persons whose remains the U.S. Air Force dumped in a land fill between 2003 and 2008: 274  Support the troops!
• Number of U.S. servicepeople dismissed for pre-existing "personality disorders" between 2002 and 2007. Don't know all of the personality disorders involved, but you can bet they include aversion to war or to killing people the government has decided are our enemies this week.
• Percentage of Americans who have been arrested by the age of 23: 30  Just let that number circulate in your brain . . . 3 out of every 10? Really?
• Rank of the Mafia among Italy's largest lending institutions: 1
• Rank of Goldman Sachs employees among the largest funding sources for Mitt Romney's campaign: 1
• For Obama's 2008 campaign: 2

Related articles

• Homelessness Revealed - our collection of thought provoking images launched on Pinterest (homelessnessinsavannah.wordpress.com)

UPDATE I: A reader kindly informed me that Harper's had corrected the first entry on this list. Here's the text of the correction:

A line in the March 2012 Harper’s Index incorrectly stated that 72 percent of political ad spending during the 2010 election cycle would have been prohibited before the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. In fact, 72 percent of outside political ad spending in the 2010 cycle would have been prohibited before Citizens United and a 2007 decision, Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. Although the item was sourced to the Center for Responsive Politics, the mistake was entirely ours. We regret the error.