READER BOOK PLUG: Reader Joel Engel asks me to plug his L.A. ’56: A Devil in the City of Angels. “It’s a true-crime story, written novelistically, about a previously untold and otherwise phenomenal story.”

MORE AMMO SHORTAGES? “Those of you shopping for economically priced .223 and 5.56 ammunition may be discovering that it is getting harder and harder to find. There is significant demand for these calibers at this moment, with the US Army the main buyer of the lower-priced ammunition. From our various sources, we are hearing that the Army is bringing their reserves back up to a reasonable level in anticipation of the perceivable conflicts our military may be engaged in over the next 24 plus months.”

REMEMBERING Sergio Pininfarina.

RANDY BARNETT: The Declaration of Independence, Annotated.

IN THE MAIL: Infamous Players: A Tale of Movies, the Mob (and Sex).

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!

JOE PAPPALARDO: Video: Inside Spec Ops Armored Vehicles During Live Fire.

JUSTICE: Ex-Commerce chief won’t face criminal charges in hit-and-run.

AT AMAZON, coupons galore in Grocery & Gourmet Food.

Also, today only: The Twilight Zone on Blu-Ray, 24 discs for 179.99.

I’M GLAD THAT Dan Riehl finally found the courage to come out.

READER JOHN CASTEEL SENDS A TALE FROM BIZARRO-LAND: “Glenn, my 29 year-old daughter, who has no medical insurance, badly cut her hand a short time ago. She had to go to the emergency room to have it cleaned and stitched. And, who paid for the medical expense? Why, she did! Interesting concept, that.”

Is that allowed?

SCOTT JOHNSON: The Eternal Meaning of Independence Day.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The Declaration of Independence, modernized. “As part of our ongoing project to update and improve the core documents of American history, we present the opening sections of the Declaration of Independence as they ought to have been written, and indeed as it would have been written if the still primitive colonial political process had only been sophisticated enough to restrict participation at important conferences to the appropriately certified, trained and peer-reviewed experts who could have produced a document worth remembering.”

BUT HE’S VERY POPULAR: More Dems Refusing to Endorse Obama. “Earlier today, news broke that North Carolina congressman Larry Kissell is refusing to endorse President Obama and might not attend the Democratic convention later this year in Charlotte, N.C. And now, there’s word that Rep. Hayden Rogers won’t be endorsing Obama or even attending the convention.”

Nothing to see here, move along. But even Andrea Mitchell isn’t buying it.

UPDATE: The quote above says Rep. Hayden Rogers, but reader John Richardson writes: “Rogers is the chief of staff to Rep. Heath Shuler and is the Democrat nominee for the 11th District. He is not a Congressman. Given the elimination of the Democrat stronghold of Asheville from the 11th District, Rogers has to do everything in his power to distance himself from Obama.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Report: Rep. Cuellar to skip Dem convention. “Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar is joining a growing list of lawmakers who will be skipping their party’s nominating convention this September. The four-term lawmaker from Texas says he wants to focus his efforts on his reelection bid in his district and will not attend the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, Politico first reported.”

You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

JIM TREACHER: Hey, Remember How Obama Admitted He Eats Dogs?

WHAT’S “LET’S ROLL!” IN CHINESE? “Six hijackers were in for a surprise last week when they tried to commandeer a Tianjin Airlines jet bound for Urumqi, China. The passengers overpowered the gang, apparently killing two, and averted disaster.”

WAIT, WE VOTED FOR HAPPY SOCIALISM, NOT THIS! French voters get a wake-up call via harsh message on national finances. “Although Mr. Hollande campaigned on a promise to avoid harsh cuts, he may have little choice.” Do tell.

HMM: Doctor: Zimmerman had black eyes, broken nose.

KEITH HENNESSEY: A Strategy To Undo ObamaCare.

RULING ON BLOGGER sparks First Amendment debate.

VIRGINIA: Neighbors Helping Neighbors in Burke, Springfield.

ROGER SIMON: The Last Fourth of July.

UPDATE: Holy crap, he may be right!

I DREAMED I SAW ANDREW BREITBART LAST NIGHT, ALIVE AS YOU AND ME. It was at some conference, and he had faked his death as part of some sort of Breitbartian scheme. I wish it had been true.

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: “Have fun at your spanking party!” “Sure, this online dating guy was technically a stranger, too, and we hadn’t met in person yet, but we’d been messaging online for a few days so at least I would know someone there. A weird technically-first date? Yes. But you only live once.”

KURT SCHLICHTER: ObamaCare: Don’t Get Mad, Get To Work. Indeed.

CALLING THE HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE: “At what point does entrepreneurism replace post-secondary education as the new normal?”

FREE ENTERPRISE: U.S. C0₂ Emissions Falling Toward 1991 Levels.

#NARRATIVEFAIL: Obama plans fundraisers in Switzerland then tries to slam Romney … on Switzerland.

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PRACTICE SAFE FARTING: Fart deodorizers. “Flat-D disposable fart deodorizers are the product that people with digestive disorders have been dreaming of. There is no cure for gas, but this product is a simple solution which will allow everyone to fart with confidence. Just place the pad inside your underwear and let your gaseous emissions activate the carbon in the Flat-D pad, which absorbs and masks fart odor. For additional flatulence support at work, you can purchase Flat-D chair pad. I know some people whose lives will be changed by the Flat-D, although I’m not mentioning any names.”

UPDATE: Reader Paul McKerley writes: “FWIW, you won’t find this in Taubes or Atkins, but my experience, and that of other I’ve spoken to, is that a low-carb diet almost entirely eliminates flatulence. It also cured my acid reflux, which was eating away my oesophagus, and for which proton-pump inhibitors had rapidly diminishing effectivenss.”

And reader Alan LeWinter writes: “Do they make a Biden Brain Fart version?” It’s science, not magic. There are limits.

ALEISTER G. AT AMERICAN GLOB could use some help. I donated.

BOB BECKEL’S weaponized misogyny.

DEDICATION: When His Project Was Canceled, an Unemployed Programmer Kept Sneaking Into Apple to Finish the Job.

CONFESSIONS OF A DRIVING INSTRUCTOR.

“Did you forget your glasses?” I asked the driver as politely as possible, hoping to hide my frustration under a joke. (The other choice was to throw my helmet, which is frowned upon but not unprecedented.) “I left them at home,” she said, her right foot planted firmly on the accelerator, and traffic cones flying everywhere. “I can’t see a thing!”

Heh.

AT AMAZON, hot new books on Cooking, Food & Wine.

DAN RIEHL: “So that’s a derecho.”

Three days was enough, though. I had pretty much what I needed to get by, or you could get it by then. This was not a catastrophic event, as some homes, public buildings and stores of all stripes within driving distance were spared. Had this been truly catastrophic, say like an EMP attack? I’m fairly convinced the whole thing would have started to come apart pretty fast. You could tell by how many people reacted. . . .

An event like this does focus you, somehow – gives you a certain perspective it’s easy to lose sight of day-to-day. It also reinforced an old Clint Eastwood line from Magnum Force, believe it, or not: “a man’s got to know his limitations.”

Strange, perhaps. But I guess it was a teachable moment, or held a few of them, in some ways. I’m simply not altogether sure what else, if anything, I learned for now. I guess over time, maybe I’ll find out. It was an interesting three days.

Maybe gratitude has something to do with it. It almost sounds silly, now. But if you’re sitting there suffering somehow, large or small – and trust me, people were and still are from this …. The minute it all came back on, when you heard and felt that air conditioning kick on and you knew you could take a hot shower, again – or just go to the refrigerator for a cold drink, or something you wanted to eat? Strange as it may sound to you, there’s a gratitude, a beauty in that moment you can only hope to never forget. Imagine that? Hmm. What can I say? It was an experience. Leave it at that.

Here’s a post on low-budget disaster preparation, and some bug-out bag recommendations. Also, stuff to keep in your car or SUV. More here. And you might want to check out Bill Quick’s disaster-preparedness forum.

FEDS LOOK TO FIGHT LEAKS WITH “FOG OF DISINFORMATION.”

Pentagon-funded researchers have come up with a new plan for busting leakers: Spot them by how they search, and then entice the secret-spillers with decoy documents that will give them away.

Computer scientists call it it “Fog Computing” — a play on today’s cloud computing craze. And in a recent paper for Darpa, the Pentagon’s premiere research arm, researchers say they’ve built “a prototype for automatically generating and distributing believable misinformation … and then tracking access and attempted misuse of it. We call this ‘disinformation technology.’”

Two small problems: Some of the researchers’ techniques are barely distinguishable from spammers’ tricks. And they could wind up undermining trust among the nation’s secret-keepers, rather than restoring it.

The Fog Computing project is part of a broader assault on so-called “insider threats,” launched by Darpa in 2010 after the WikiLeaks imbroglio. Today, Washington is gripped by another frenzy over leaks — this time over disclosures about U.S. cyber sabotage and drone warfare programs. But the reactions to these leaks has been schizophrenic, to put it generously. The nation’s top spy says America’s intelligence agencies will be strapping suspected leakers to lie detectors — even though the polygraph machines are famously flawed. An investigation into who spilled secrets about the Stuxnet cyber weapon and the drone “kill list” has already ensnared hundreds of officials — even though the reporters who disclosed the info patrolled the halls of power with the White House’s blessing.

The country’s in the very best of hands.

ORDER EFFECTS: To Influence Choices, Get There First. “The study found that especially in circumstances under which decisions must be made quickly or without much deliberation, preferences are unconsciously and immediately guided to those options presented first. While there are sometimes rational reasons to prefer firsts, e.g. the first resume is designated on the top of the pile because that person wanted the job the most, Carney says the ‘first is best’ effect suggests that firsts are preferred even when completely unwarranted and irrational.”

FROM THE FUTURECRIME DEPARTMENT: L.A. Cops Embrace Crime-Predicting Algorithm.

CBS: Anger over power outage festers in sweltering mid-Atlantic.

SCIENCE: More Women Look Over the Counter for a Libido Fix. “In the absence of a government-approved female counterpart to men’s potency drugs like Viagra, Cialis and Levitra, many women are turning to over-the-counter products, including lubricants, arousal gels, massage oils, nutritional and herbal supplements, and vibrators. Drugstore chains are now selling these products right next to the bandages and heating pads.”

BILL WHITTLE: Afterburner: The Glorious Fourth.

ALEX NUNEZ: Hands-on with the ridiculous Bentley Supersports Convertible.

HOW TO MAKE FAMILY ROAD TRIPS SUCK LESS: Leave the kids behind? (Just kidding.) But the reader who sends the link emails: “I am on a family road trip right now, and can tell you half of these don’t work. But you can try them anyway.”

SUPERMARKETS: So very 20th Century? I enjoy grocery shopping, but I wouldn’t mind doing most of it online.

READER BOOK PLUG: Clayton Cramer’s book, My Brother Ron: A Personal and Social History of the Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill is now out. On Kindle, too.

THE PLOT THICKENS: Report: Brandon Darby Defamed by Kimberlin Associate Neal Rauhauser; Pursues ‘All Legal Remedies’ Against SWATting Charge.

THE SPIRIT OF FREEDOM breathes on Europe:

Tours to Chernobyl, scene of the world’s worst nuclear accident, are popular with tourists visiting the Ukraine, but an even bigger attraction, particularly with football fans and gun enthusiasts, are the city’s shooting ranges.

Since the collapse of communism in Europe some 20 years ago, shooting ranges where tourists can fire automatic and semi-automatic weapons have sprung up on the outskirts of Kiev and in eastern European countries.

Everyone from businessmen to members of bachelor parties turn up to fire a few rounds from weapons most Europeans only ever see in the movies.

“There are shooting ranges in France but nothing like this. And certainly not an AK-47,” said Phillippe, a security consultant from Paris, who preferred not to give his surname.

Each member of the group of French tourists at the Falcon Sport Shooting club near Kiev had a chance to fire an AK-47 in automatic and semi-automatic modes, before switching to the Soviet-made Dragunov rifle.

“Previously our business was mostly British groups,” said Vika Dobrovolska, operations manager at Kiev Tours, which arranged the shooting practice session.

“But during Euro 2012 (Football Championship) we’ve had hundreds of Swedes out here, French, Italians, often several groups a day. I would say it’s our most popular activity by far,” she said.

Dobrovolska said shooting is a very “manly activity,” and that most of the visiting football fans are men.

Actually, plenty of women dig it too.

GREGG EASTERBROOK ON POWER OUTAGES: The Politics of Electricity. “Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley wants to run for president in 2016, but he can’t even deal with a dismal power utility in his home state. . . . Montgomery County, Maryland, is one of the nation’s bluest and wealthiest counties; its perennially awful power service raises the question of whether liberals can make the trains run on time.” Plus, corruption in the news media. . ..

ED DRISCOLL ON THE POWER OUTAGES: Question Asked And Answered.

CREDIT MYTHS that even smart people believe.

IF ADDING 4 TRILLION DOLLARS TO THE NATIONAL DEBT WAS “UNPATRIOTIC,” then what about Obama’s $5 Trillion?

“The RNC certainly remembers this attack — and they’re featuring it in a new ad this week. While Bush added $4 trillion in eight years, Obama has added $5 trillion in just over three — and deficits will remain over the Bush-era deficits for the next several years in Obama’s own budget projections.”

ANDY GRIFFITH HAS DIED. I prefer to remember him as Sheriff Andy Taylor, rather than as a shill for ObamaCare.

HMM: Poll: Likely Voters Say Carter Was Better President Than Obama.

IN THE MAIL: America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered In the Obamacrats).

IS WALL STREET LEAVING WALL STREET BEHIND?

Wall Street as we know it may not be long for this world—though the movement that occupied its parks has little to do with it. The New York Times reports that, despite good years for America’s investment bankers, the number of mid-level financial positions on the Street is slowly dropping as banks escape the city’s regulations, high taxes, and high labor costs to open offices in friendlier states like Utah, North Carolina, and Florida.

New York city is looking more and more like a Potemkin Village these days. The middle levels of the city’s private sector are hollowing out, with fewer positions between the high wage titans and the low wage service-sector workers. Wall Street’s CEOs may still keep their high-rent digs in Lower Manhattan, but the cohort of well-paid but not super-rich employees that forms the middle class of any investment bank is quietly moving out of the city for cheaper rents elsewhere.

This is a textbook case of how the blue social model creates exactly those conditions that Americans deplore. New York’s complicated regulatory structure, high rents and high welfare costs make it almost impossible for even wealthy companies to maintain mass middle-class employment.

Meanwhile Nanny Bloomberg bans big gulps and ignores the bedbug problem.

FREEDOM: Groups that fought anti-piracy bills post their ‘Declaration of Internet Freedom.’

WAR ON PHOTOGRAPHY UPDATE: Exclusive Video: Bike Cop Shuts Down Video as Protesters Call for Eric Holder to be Fired.

NEW MODEL: Last year, Kickstarter provided more arts money than the National Endowment for the Arts. And without the cronyism and backscratching.

AT AMAZON, Top Deals In Electronics.

Also, today only: Recent hit albums on MP3 for $1.99.

CHANGE: Young Voters Cool On Obama. Probably something to do with massive unemployment and overhanging debt. Just at a guess.

ANOTHER FAKE HATE CRIME: “In March, hundreds of students at Central Connecticut State University held a rally to back Alexandra Pennell, a student who told the crowd that she had been receiving notes in her dormitory room attacking her for being a lesbian. Now Pennell has been expelled from the university and faces numerous criminal charges that she faked the notes.”

MICHAEL WALSH: “I don’t think it’s quite sunk in yet on the Right just how awful the John Roberts Obamacare decision really is, or what nasty consequences will now flow from it.”

YES, YES, YES: Want To Keep A/C On? Bury Power Lines.

Too bad we didn’t use that stimulus money on something useful, like hardening our infrastructure, instead of frittering it away on green payoffs to Obama supporters.

But then, if we’d done that, it would have produced too many jobs for burly men. And we can’t have that.

Related: East Coast Storm Keeps Millions In The Dark.

JOURNALISM: Washington Post Fact Checker: I Don’t Fact Check Our Own Writers.

#GREENFAIL: Bankrupt Colo. solar firm sticks taxpayers for $68 million, doomed by poor quality.

FROM “HOPE AND CHANGE” TO “POLITICALLY TOXIC:” Roll Call: After Health Care Ruling, Law Still Politically Toxic.

The Supreme Court’s decision upholding President Barack Obama’s health care law is a historic policy victory for his administration and the Democrats who lost control of the House and their filibuster-proof Senate majority pushing the reform through Congress in the face of united GOP opposition.

But the politics of the Affordable Care Act — or “Obamacare” — are unlikely to improve for Obama and Congressional Democrats running for re-election in 2012, and in fact could boost presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and GOP candidates running down the ticket. Why isn’t Obama’s victory likely to translate into a political boost at the polls? Because, voters’ negative feelings about Obama’s health care overhaul had little to do with questions of its constitutionality.

Constitutional or not, it’s a lousy idea, and voters know it.

ISRAEL AND ENERGY: “Israel is set to shake up the energy landscape in the Middle East like no one has ever seen before. Last week, Israel Opportunity Energy Resources LP discovered an offshore oil and gas field with an estimated 1.4 billion barrels of oil and 6.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. According to the company’s Chairman, Ronny Halman, “The quantity of gas discovered… makes it the third-largest offshore discovery to date.” It follows last June’s announcement of uncovering 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 800 million barrels of oil in Israel’s Tamar and Leviathan offshore fields. Yet, for Israel, these discoveries are only the beginning.”

BUT WHERE’S OBAMA? D.C. Area Power Outages Linger and Anger at Pepco Grows.

LIFE IN MAYOR BLOOMBERG’S NEW YORK: Photograph the Police, Get Named “Professional Agitators” in Wanted Poster. And a semi-literate wanted poster at that. The poster gives a Sgt. Nicholson’s cell number, so I hope some people have called him to point out the inappropriateness of this behavior.

UPDATE: Yeah, they’re big lefties. So what? They still have a right to video the police.

PRIVACY: Twitter complied with 75 percent of US requests for user information. “Twitter received 679 requests for user information from the U.S. government in the last year, according to a report released by the company Monday. The requests from the United States exceeded that of any other country, and Twitter released ‘some or all’ of the information asked for in 75 percent of these requests, the company said.”

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Manufacturing in U.S. Unexpectedly Contracted in June.

BOB ZUBRIN: Incinerating America’s West: The massive western wildfires could have been avoided with intelligent forest management and less hysteria from the greens.

GOTCHER “HOPE AND CHANGE” RIGHT HERE: Obama “Will Pivot to the Drug War” in Second Term, Claim Anonymous White House Sources.

Hey, rube!

UPDATE: Reader Alan LeWinter snarks: “How many terms needed before Obama pivots to the economy?” Heh.

RED-LIGHT CAMERA UPDATE: Pasadena Shuts Down Red-Light Cameras. “City officials decided not to renew a contract with American Traffic Systems Inc. for the city’s seven red-light cameras, citing a lack of enforcement from Los Angeles County courts, time wasted by Pasadena police officers and questions about the cameras’ effectiveness in improving traffic safety. Additionally, the program — while never expected to bring in a lot of money — is running at a $4,487 deficit, the Pasadena Sun reported.” Ha. I don’t believe that about the expectations. There’s a reason they call these things “revenue-light cameras.” But passive resistance — people just don’t pay, and it’s too hard to go after them — seems to be frustrating these things in many places.

IF YOU CANT TRUST THE POLICE, WHO IN THE GOVERNMENT CAN YOU TRUST? Florida Cop Fired for Planting Dope, Says He Did That and More Under Orders.

AT AMAZON, bestsellers in ancient and classical literature.

Also, 55% off on Justice League: The Complete Series.

IF YOU WISH TO BE MADE INTO SAUSAGE, come between me and my ham sandwich.

MARC THIESSEN: Why Are Republicans So Awful At Picking Supreme Court Justices? Because they listen to the media, and because they’re intellectually insecure. Thiessen:

Just compare the records over the last three decades. Democrats have appointed four justices — Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen G. Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. All have been consistent liberals on the bench. Republicans, by contrast, have picked seven justices. Of Ronald Reagan’s three appointees (Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy) only Scalia has been a consistent conservative. George H.W. Bush appointed one solid conservative (Clarence Thomas) and one disastrous liberal (David Souter). With George W. Bush’s appointments of Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Roberts, conservatives thought finally they had broken the mold and put two rock-ribbed conservatives on the bench — until last week, that is, when Roberts broke with the conservatives and cast the deciding vote to uphold the largest expansion of federal power in decades.

So Democrats are four-for-four — a perfect record. Republicans are not even batting .500.

Why is the Democratic record so consistent while the Republican record is so mixed? For one thing, the whole legal and political culture pushes the court to the left. Conservatives are pariahs if they vote against the left on certain issues. But if they cross over vote with the left, they are hailed as statesmen. Just look the pre-emptive attacks on the Roberts Court when everyone thought it was about to strike down Obamacare — and contrast that with all the accolades Roberts is now receiving from his erstwhile critics.

Indeed. But generally speaking, Establishment Republicans care more about remaining part of the Establishment than they do about being Republicans.

UPDATE: On a related matter, reader Eugene Dillenburg writes: “If Chief Justice Roberts’ goal was to reduce political pressure on the Court, it will almost certainly fail. Indeed, his actions will simply encourage more pressure in the future. As a wise man once said, if you reward a behavior, you get more of it.” Indeed.

STACY MCCAIN: A Drawer Full of Sockpuppets: Another Neal Rauhauser ‘Persona’ Exposed. “In recent days, Rauhauser has committed new blunders, and when his latest errors are revealed, his friends will suffer new embarrassments.”

Rick Ellensburg was unavailable for comment, but I imagine these people wish they’d never drawn Stacy’s unrelenting attention by making the — deeply unwise — decision to try to shut him up.

DESPAIR NOT: Peter Ingemi Responds To Victor Davis Hanson.

THE FUTURE OF SPACE EXPLORATION: Running Down A Dream.

A CAR SERVICE APP THAT USES HYBRIDS: “Uber, a start-up based in San Francisco, has won a following among urbanites with its novel twist on calling a car service: its app lets you summon a luxury sedan with a tap on your phone. Now it is trying to appeal to the less affluent by adding less luxurious cars. In San Francisco and New York on Wednesday, Uber will start to give customers the option of choosing a hybrid car at a price that it says will be 10 to 25 percent more than a taxi. That compares with the 40 to 100 percent premium that customers pay for a black town car.”

AT AMAZON, markdowns on summer fun in Toys & Games.

SOUNDS GOOD TO ME: A Declaration Of Internet Freedom.

ANDREW KLAVAN: Happy Dependence Day!

Like the song says, They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.

NATIONAL SECURITY: Stu Eizenstat says don’t believe Obama on Iran.

STEVE CROWDER: don’t believe what they tell you about marriage and divorce.

CHANGE: Micro-Machines To Start Making Medicine Inside Our Bodies.

CHANGE: Obama Poll Numbers Drop After Court Upholds His Law.

A LOOK AT MITOCHONDRIAL DNA DAMAGE IN AGING.

IT’S A GOOD TIME TO HONOR the Steve Jobs of Air Conditioning.

And don’t forget that air-conditioning in warm climates uses less energy than heat in cold climates. So don’t be ashamed to run the A/C.

ON THE MID-ATLANTIC POWER OUTAGE, reader Wayne Fiebick writes: “Where is the outrage at President Obama at the lack of Federal response that there was over Bush/Katrina?” Ask Kanye West.

LATEST DUMB IDEA: “The salt-and-ice challenge.”

GIVE ‘EM FOUR PINOCCHIOS FOR THE ORIGINAL REPORT: ‘Washington Post’ Backs Off Claim Romney Outsourced Jobs.

BILL WHITTLE: Firewall: Don’t Be Depressed.

DAN MITCHELL: The Laffer Curve Wreaks Havoc In The United Kingdom.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Death By Degrees. “Over the last thirty years, the university has replaced the labor union as the most important institution, after the corporation, in American political and economic life. As union jobs have disappeared, participation in the labor force, the political system, and cultural affairs is increasingly regulated by professional guilds that require their members to spend the best years of life paying exorbitant tolls and kissing patrician rings. Whatever modest benefits accreditation offers in signaling attainment of skills, as a ranking mechanism it’s zero-sum: the result is to enrich the accreditors and to discredit those who lack equivalent credentials. . . . Of course, one man’s burden is another man’s opportunity. Student debt in the United States now exceeds $1 trillion. Like cigarette duties or state lotteries, debt-financed accreditation functions as a tax on the poor. But whereas sin taxes at least subsidize social spending, the ‘graduation tax’ is doubly regressive, transferring funds from the young and poor to the old and affluent. The accreditors do well, and the creditors do even better. Student-loan asset-backed securities are far safer than their more famous cousins in the mortgage market: the government guarantees most of the liability, and, crucially, student loans cannot be erased by declaring bankruptcy. . . . One sort of false consciousness may be involved when a low-income person votes Republican out of mistrust for the credentialed establishment; another occurs when the credentialed establishment denies its own existence. An article in the New Yorker last year demonstrated what might be called the class unconsciousness of the credentialed. There Jeffrey Toobin, a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, profiled the villainous Clarence and Virginia Thomas. Clarence Thomas was born in an impoverished Gullah-speaking community on Georgia’s Atlantic coast, attended Holy Cross and Yale Law School, and eventually became the second African American to sit on the Supreme Court. Thomas’s hatred for the Ivy League is legendary; he felt mistreated at Yale and has claimed that he suffered in the job market because firms assumed he was the beneficiary of affirmative action. Thomas likes to rail against ‘élites,’ a term Toobin smirkingly quarantines in quotation marks, as if the concept to which it referred were a chimera and not a plain reality.”

Obviously written by some sort of radical anti-intellectual type.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Will Rutgers-Camden Fill Only 100 of 269 1L Seats This Fall?

UPDATE: Judge Guts Education Dept’s ‘Gainful Employment’ Rule.

WHEN IT’S COLD IN THE WINTER IT’S JUST WEATHER, but when it’s hot in the summer, it’s “climate change.” Bill Nye should be embarrassed to put this out.