"Today, American conservatism has degenerated into an intellectually and morally bankrupt ideology. It offers nothing more than bumper-sticker slogans that pander to the prejudices and ignorance of the lowest common denominator in order to enrich and empower an oligarchic elite. Angry, cruel and sneering, it is exemplified by the carnival barkers on talk radio and Fox News. High in volume, but devoid of substance, it has no long-term future because it lacks credible solutions to the range of very real problems American society is facing.
Indeed, what passes for “conservatism” today is actually nothing of the sort. Modern American conservatism has forgotten its rich legacy and betrayed its best traditions. It has become infected with a virulent strain of extreme libertarianism heavily influenced by the thinking of Ayn Rand."

A Phoenix Rising: Common-Good Conservatism (via azspot)

theatlantic:

Who Has the Right to Fly a Drone Above Your Head?

While the government’s use of drones in other countries has drawn scrutiny, there are plenty of drones flying in American skies on behalf of the military, law enforcement, universities, and local governments. 

Just how many drones are zipping around is not clear, but thanks to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s  Freedom of Information Act request with the Department of Transportation, at least we now know which government agencies can fly drones. There are 58 institutions in total, including both active and expired “certificates of authorization” from the Federal Aviation Administration. They range from DARPA to the city of Herrington, Kansas to the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. The individual list is interesting, but we thought the aggregated pie chart above made it easier to take in the data at a glance. 

Perhaps most interesting is how many universities have applied for permits. Some may be working with military grant money. There are relatively few law enforcement agencies using drones, maybe because of the expense involved. Only 11 local law enforcement districts have tried out the technology: Arlington PD, Gadsden PD, Georgia Tech PD, Mesa County Sheriff’s Office, Miami-Dade PD, Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, Ogden  Sheriff’s Office, Polk County Sheriff’s Office, and the Seattle PD. 

Keep in mind, as the EFF points out, the number of certificates are not equal to the number of drones. So the military may have many, many drones flying while a city government might just have one.

Read more.

The NYC Department of Records has launched a gallery of over 870,000 photos dating back to the late nineteenth century.

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Prisoners, whose ranks increasingly consist of those for whom the legitimate economy has found no use, now make up a virtual brigade within the reserve army of the unemployed whose ranks have ballooned along with the U.S. incarceration rate. The Corrections Corporation of America and G4S (formerly Wackenhut), two prison privatizers, sell inmate labor at subminimum wages to Fortune 500 corporations like Chevron, Bank of America, AT&T, and IBM.

Nearly a million prisoners are now making office furniture, working in call centers, fabricating body armor, taking hotel reservations, working in slaughterhouses, or manufacturing textiles, shoes, and clothing, while getting paid somewhere between 93 cents and $4.73 per day.

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Sweatshop labor is back with a vengeance.  (via motherjones)

jonathan-cunningham:

After a surge of voter interest and participation in 2008, a wave of anti-democratic voter suppression laws — designed to disenfranchise huge numbers of voters who are African-American, elderly, students or have disabilities — threatens to keep up to 5 million eligible voters from casting a ballot in 2012.

The ACLU points out that the new voter suppression laws are expected to decrease the amount of voters by roughly the same amount that the voting population increased in 2008, and the laws happen to be proposed in the five states with the highest rates of voter turn out in 2008.

theatlantic:

U.S. Teen Birthrates Are Down, But Still High in the Bible Belt

Teen birthrates are highest in Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas, and New Mexico, with slightly lower concentrations in the neighboring states of Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Arizona. New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and Massachusetts have the lowest rates of teen births.

What factors lie behind this geographic pattern? […]

Teenage births remain high in more religious states. The correlation between teenage birthrates and the percentage of adults who say they are “very religious” is considerable (.69). The 2009 study posited that attitudes toward contraception play a significant role, noting that “religious communities in the U.S. are more successful in discouraging the use of contraception among their teenagers than they are in discouraging sexual intercourse itself.”

Teen birthrates also hew closely to America’s political divide. They are substantially higher in conservative states that voted for McCain in 2008 (with a correlation of .65) and negatively correlated with states that voted for Obama (-.62).

Class plays a substantial role as well. Teen births are negatively associated with average state income (-.62), the share of the workforce in knowledge, professional, and creative class jobs (-.61), and especially with the share of adults who are college graduates (-.76). Conversely, teen birthrates are higher in more working class states (with a positive correlation of .58).

jacobsoboroff:

American voter turnout sucks. Like near the bottom of all countries in the world sucks. So why in the world do we vote on Tuesday, smack in the middle of the work week? I explain in this TED talk, a part of the TED-Ed education initiative.

For more on my work to move Election Day from Tuesday to the weekend, check out WhyTuesday.org and sign our petition in support of The Weekend Voting Act.