Harper's Index for June

(courtesy of Mason)

Harper's Index for May 2004:

Chance that an American adult believes that "politics and government are too
complicated to understand" : 1 in 3 [National Home Education Research Institute
(Salem, Oregon) ]

Chance that an American who was home-schooled feels this way : 1 in 25 [National
Home Education Research Institute (Salem, Oregon) ]

Number of blank votes recorded by touchscreen machines in a January election for
Florida's House of Representatives : 137 [Florida Department of State
(Tallahassee) ]

Votes by which the race was won : 12 [Florida Department of State (Tallahassee)
]

Number of Haiti's elections since 1994 called "bogus electoral exercises" by the
State Department's Roger Noriega : 3 [U.S. State Department ]

Last year in which one of these elections took place under President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide : 1995 [Harper's research ]

Percentage of Western Hemisphere countries besides Cuba whose leaders Noriega
believes have been "freely elected" : 100 [U.S. State Department ]

Federal funds given last September to a group organizing the recall of
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez : $53,400 [National Endowment for Democracy
(Washington) ]

Minimum number of misleading statements on Iraq made by the Bush
Administration's top officials since March 2002 : 237 [Committee on Government
Reform (Washington, D.C.) ]

Percentage of these that contradicted, made selective use of, or
mischaracterized existing government intelligence : 100 [Committee on Government
Reform (Washington, D.C.) ]

Days before last year's invasion of Iraq that Osama bin Laden called Saddam
Hussein a "socialist infidel" : 36 [Al Jazeera (Doha, Qatar)/BBC Monitoring
Service (Caversham Park, U.K.) ]

Days into the 1999 NATO bombing of Kosovo that candidate George W. Bush
observed, "Victory means exit strategy" : 17 [Houston Chronicle/NATO (Brussels)
]

Months into the war in Iraq that all U.S. personnel there were equipped with
antiballistic body armor : 11 (see page 67) [U.S. Central Command (Tampa) ]

Months into the war that Britain confirmed that all its troops were outfitted
with desert clothing : 9 [Liberal Democrat Whips Office, House of Commons
(London) ]

Estimated percentage of French schoolgirls who wore an Islamic head scarf to
school last fall : 0.02 [Ministere de la Jeunesse, de l'Education Nationale et
de la Recherche (Paris)/Assembl'ee Nationale de France transcript, 12/4/03 ]

Number of Holsteins disqualified from the Ohio State Fair last August because
they were wearing a hair piece : 2 [Ohio Department of Agriculture
(Reynoldsburg) ]

Number of suspensions a Dallas-area high school handed out last fall for
dress-code violations : 1,116 [Duncanville Independent School District (Tex.) ]

Acreage of a Christian nudist colony under development in Florida : 240
[Continuing Care, Inc. (Venice, Fla.) ]

Minimum number of Italian men accused of paying for a "sexual anxieties"
diagnosis to avoid military service last winter : 150 [Sophie Arie, Guardian
(London) ]

Number of times that Everglades saw grass switches gender during a week of
flowering : 2 [Jennifer Richards, Florida International University (Miami) ]

Percentage of the 958 same-sex unions granted to Vermont residents since July
2000 that have since been dissolved : 3 [Vermont Department of Health
(Burlington) ]

Percentage of U.S. heterosexual marriages that are dissolved within five years :
20 [National Center for Health Statistics (Hyattsville, Md.) ]

Median household income a pair of U.S. single mothers would have if they married
each other : $40,568 [U.S. Census Bureau (Washington)/Harper's research ]

Median household income of a U.S. heterosexual couple with children : $59,461
[U.S. Census Bureau ]

Percentage of senior management positions in medium-size Russian companies that
are held by women : 42 [Grant Thornton International (London) ]

Percentage of senior management positions at equivalent U.S. companies that are
: 20 [Grant Thornton International (London) ]

Percentage of U.S. companies that threaten to close the work site when faced
with a unionization effort : 51 [Kate Bronfenbrenner, Cornell University
(Ithaca, N.Y.) ]

Factor by which the unemployment rate of African-American college graduates
exceeds that of white graduates : 1.9 [Bureau of Labor Statistics
(Washington)/Harper's research ]

Average percentage of African-American men age 16 to 64 in New York City who
were employed each month last year : 52 [Community Service Society of New York
(N.Y.C.) ]

Minimum number of Tennesseans who have ordered new license plates bearing the
Confederate flag : 3,000 [Tennessee Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans
(Brentwood) ]

Minimum revenue the Sons of Confederate Veterans stands to collect through such
sales : $20,000 [Tennessee Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans (Brentwood) ]

Amount the federal Individual Indian Trust cannot account for, per Native
American it serves : $26,000 [Native American Rights Fund (Boulder, Colo.) ]

Total overruns at Boston's "Big Dig" attributed to mistakes and mismanagement by
the Bechtel Corporation : $1,100,000,000 [Boston Globe ]

Percentage of the 13,129 varieties of dirt in the United States that are
endangered : 4 [Ronald Amundson, College of Natural Resources, University of
California, Berkeley ]

Amount that Tom DeLay's political action committee spent at the Washington,
D.C., Hooters last November : $117.19 [Federal Election Commission (Washington)
]

Years in prison to which two ex-Pentagon officials were sentenced last year for
taking bribes of money and prostitutes : 24 [U.S. Department of Justice
(Alexandria, Va.) ]

Number of years a North Carolina man has been in prison for stealing a
television : 33 [Rich Rosen, UNC School of Law (Chapel Hill) ]

Days after Smith & Wesson Holding appointed a chairman last winter that he
resigned over old armed-robbery convictions : 38 [Smith & Wesson Holding Corp.
(Scottsdale, Ariz.)/Michigan Dept. of Corrections (Lansing) ]

Caliber of his first gun, a Smith & Wesson used for armed robbery : .38 [James
Minder (Scottsdale) ]