SOME THOUGHTS ON POLITICS WITHOUT FOUNDATIONS.

COARSENING CULTURE: Ed Driscoll: Christmas Dignity.

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MICKEY KAUS: “Two bits of spin in Mike Allen’s Politico ‘Playbook’ that seem like obvious BS (obvious even to me).”

POPULAR CHRISTMAS REQUEST: “A Dad.”

HAVE YOURSELF A CHINTZY LITTLE CHRISTMAS: The last holiday shopping weekend falls short of expectations. Well, the Retail Support Brigade has been thrown into the breach too many times, with too little support. Even the best troops give out at some point. Especially when they’re poorly led and provisioned.

I did notice that the parking lots at my nearby mall — usually jam-packed the last week or two before Christmas — were looking surprisingly un-full.

WE REALLY ARE living in the Crazy Years.

SO YOU’RE DRIVING YOUR TRUCK ACROSS A FROZEN LAKE. It falls through, you rescue your daughter from the icy water, and you’re a hero. Not driving the truck across the ice wouldn’t have made you a hero. But maybe a bit smarter?

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IT’S A WONDERFUL FOUNTAINHEAD: Surprising Commonalities Between George Bailey And Howard Roark?

BUT, I THINK, NOTHING COMPARED TO WHAT YOU’D SEE HERE, NOW: Gun Restrictions Have Always Bred Defiance, Black Markets. Especially with all the eliminationist rhetoric coming from the left lately.

MORE ELIMINATIONIST RHETORIC: Prof. Richard Parncutt: Death Penalty for Global Warming Deniers? People certainly do seem to be trying to push the idea of violence against folks on the right lately, don’t they?

UPDATE: Reader Allen S. Thorpe writes:

What amuses me is how so many of these people claim to be anti-violence and pacifistic until someone disagrees with them. Apparently it never occurs to them that these ideals can never be met until we learn to disagree without rancor. It’s a symptom of childishness to throw a tantrum when you don’t get your way.

That’s probably obvious, but it keeps happening and they never seem to get it. You can’t maintain a republic when there are too many people like that allowed to vote.

It’s a problem.

ED DRISCOLL ON NEWSWEEK’S DEMISE: Give The People What They Want, And They’ll Come Out For It In Droves. “Tina was simply duped into becoming an unwitting fall-girl for brand far, far too damaged to be salvaged.”

FROM ROGER KIMBALL, thoughts on the art of persuasion.

Related: Roger Simon: A Failure to Communicate: The GOP’s Public Relations Debacle.

FREE ON KINDLE TODAY: A Magic Broken.

EGYPT: AP Interview: Opposition leader says constitution illegitimate, vows liberal parliament win. Well, he’s at least half right. But the liberals should have been scoping out their opposition and its weaknesses from the beginning, and laying plans accordingly.

SHAKING THE KALEIDOSCOPE. “We are the dregs, the rebels, the rejects of Europe. . . . You see, we are part of Western civilization, but not part of European civilization. Even our parent, Great Britain, is only half digested into Europe. We are the castoffs, the redheaded step child. Part of them, but not.”

FREE ON KINDLE TODAY: Target: Santa (A Holiday Black-Ops Campaign). (Bumped).

THE STORY ISN’T DEAD: Benghazi Questions, State Department Answers. According to a spokesperson, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was recuperating from “a really painful bunion” and was thus unable to comment.

BY ITS FRUIT THE TREE IS KNOWN: 440+ School Age Children Shot in Gun-Controlled Chicago. “In a gun-control-utopia such as this, you’d expect school-age children to be safe from all harm, if you buy into the theories of Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY). Yet the truth is more than 440 school-age children have been shot in Chicago in 2012. This is not to say that 440 school-age children died, simply that more than 440 school-age children were at least wounded. The number of school-age children killed is reported at approximately 60.”

COOL: SpaceX’s reusable rocket lifts cowboy into the air and lands vertically. In Alex Pournelle’s words, “As God and Robert A. Heinlein intended.”

RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISTS POST ASSASSINATION HIT LIST. “In fact, the newsletter conveniently provides the names, addresses and phone numbers of the assassination targets.”

UPDATE: Reader Warren Bonesteel writes: “The ‘narrative’ is about making it socially acceptable to start killing Republicans and conservatives. This type of ‘narrative’ is always a precursor to such events, historically speaking.” We do seem to be hearing a lot of eliminationist rhetoric lately.

CLASSY: Intimidation: NY Newspaper Publishes Names, Addresses of Gun Permit Holders. I guess nobody could object to people putting the newspaper staff’s addresses on the Web now, right?.

UPDATE: Sauce for the goose. Meanwhile, several readers suggest that it’s mean to the non-gun-owning populace to post the gunowner list, since burglars and home invaders can now just check their addresses against the list to ensure that they’re safe to rob. . . .

You know, other newspapers have done this sort of thing, and they’ve pretty much all gotten terrible PR out of it. You have to wonder why people keep doing it. I can’t help but feel that they’re not trying to maximize shareholder value.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Jeff Brown writes: “So is that NY newspaper going to pay to relocate the women who have gun permits due to stalkers and abusive spouses now that the paper has revealed their new addresses? What about the children who will now spend Christmas in a shelter or motel because their mother had to run?”

MORE: Moe Lane: “You know who should be ticked about this? People in those counties without handgun permits. Because burglars are gonna burgle.”

GOOD TIDINGS TO YOU, AND ALL OF YOUR CRONIES: While Much of America Suffers with Stagnation, Washington’s Political Class Is Having a Very Merry Christmas. “Why should ordinary taxpayers be coerced to subsidize Washington’s high-flying parasite economy? Redistribution is a bad thing in most circumstances. But when you redistribute from poor to rich, that’s utterly perverse.”

A WHITE HOUSE PETITION: Press charges against David Gregory for possession of a 30-round, high capacity assault rifle magazine in Washington D.C.

UPDATE: Well, it’s easy to see where Gregory gets his scofflaw attitude: Hey David Gregory, Wasn’t Your Wife a Fannie Mae Executive?

JACK REACHER sounds better than I expected.

THE AUDI electric bike.

OOPS: Toddler Hides Eggs In His Closet; Hatches 7 Deadly Snakes.

LARRY CORREIA: An Opinion On Gun Control. (Reposted).

OKAY, SOME PEOPLE PREFER REAL BOOKS TO KINDLE BOOKS, AND I’M COOL WITH THAT. But this is pretty darn cool, too: Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, All 6 volumes plus Biography, Historiography and more. Over 8,000 Links (Illustrated) — for $2.99. And particularly apt reading these days.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

Great timing. A friend and I were just bemoaning the state of public education yesterday, and I commented to him that I did a huge (for me, then), foot-noted, research paper on Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in HIGH SCHOOL. Handwritten notecards, drafted longhand, and transferred to typewriter. That was in 11th grade, I think, about 1976 or 1977, and I picked the book. I remember only one volume, so it must have been an abridged version, but it was still well over 1000 pages.

From what I read of today’s education system, I can hardly imagine a college student doing this, never mind a high schooler. The kid would probably sue if assigned today.

Decline and fall, indeed.

I’m sure there are high schools where this is done. But, yeah.

PRINCE HARRY KILLS TALIBAN.

FLIPFLOP: What Obama said about mass murder after the Aurora massacre, at the second presidential debate. “If reelection gives special weight to Obama’s policy preferences, we should hold him to what he said to [get] the votes.”

SCIENCE: Study: Women With Larger Breasts Are Smarter.

A BOOK THAT SHOULD BE GETTING MORE ATTENTION AMID TODAY’S MEDIA FUSILLADE: The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow’s Headlines. (Bumped).

UPDATE: And here come the copycats. “Four volunteer firefighters responding to a pre-dawn house fire were shot Monday morning, two fatally, leading to a shootout in suburban Rochester, N.Y. with the alleged gunman found dead the scene, police said.” It was apparently set up as an ambush.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Chuck Simmins has much more. Including this: “Chief says Spengler, as a convicted felon, not allowed to possess weapons.”

MORE: Professor Stephen Clark writes:

Spengler is perfect example of Correia’s point that government will not be the last line of defense against the bad guys. Bad guys don’t care about law, they break it; it’s what they do. As for the copy-cat effect, so noted. But…and I keep hammering on this…characters like Spengler are not the only ones watching.

Correia mentions Mumbai. Might the people who produced Mumbai be watching us; watching how our society reacts? What lessons are they drawing? If you are a terrorist organization and want to provoke an overreaction by the state and federal authorities that might, just might, provoke a backlash apropos the last part of Correia’s post, what would you do?

Just another thing to worry about.

WAR AGAINST THE YOUNG: Debt obligations will hit young hardest.

IN THE MAIL: From Stephen T. Asma, Against Fairness.

REASON TV: A Joe Biden (War On) Christmas.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Putin Whistles In The Dark As Russia Declines:

President Putin is doing his best to spin the numbers on Russian demography. After catastrophic declines in population since the death of the Soviet Union, Russia saw births outnumber deaths last year and, temporarily, the demographic numbers look better. As the Financial Times reports, the ebullient sounding President remarked that the solution to Russia’s demographic problmes ar at home: “Our women know what to do, and when,” he remarked.

In 2012, births outnumbered deaths in Russia from January through September — the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union that this has happened. Putin would like to claim this as a long term trend that could reverse Russia’s geopolitical slide, but there are two reasons for doubting that the baby boomlet means what he says it does.

The first is numbers: demographers note that the increase in Russian births this year reflects the coming of age of the relatively large generation of Russian millennials. These children of the optimistic perestroika years are now having children. Russia had something of a baby boom in those joyous and optimistic late Soviet days when the doors to a better life seemed to be opening wide. As the privations, lawlessness and social collapse of the ensuing era appeared, Russian women cut back on child bearing and once the echo of the perestroika baby boom fades away, Russia is looking at decades of shrinking numbers of women of child bearing years. The demographic good news is a blip, not a trend.

Much worse from President Putin’s point of view, one suspects, is the question — not addressed in the FT article or mentioned much in polite company in Russia — of just who is having babies in Russia today.

Read the whole thing.

NATIONAL JOURNAL: White House Wavers on Hagel, Considers Others for Defense.

THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS: 卐mas Caroling: The Extremes Hitler Wanted to Go To in Order to Replace Christianity with the “Religion” of National Socialism.

John Gibson, call your office!

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REASON TV: Grandma Got Indefinitely Detained.

LAW ENFORCEMENT: “England has 39 police forces, headed by 39 chief constables or commissioners. In the past 18 months, seven have been sacked for misconduct, suspended, placed under criminal or disciplinary investigation or forced to resign. That is not far off a fifth of the total. In the same period, at least eight deputy or assistant chief constables have also been placed under ongoing investigation, suspended or forced out for reasons of alleged misconduct. No fewer than 11 English police forces – just under 30 per cent – have had one or more of their top leaders under a cloud.”

SHELDON RICHMAN ON GERARD DEPARDIEU: Taxpayers Aren’t Stationary Targets: Raising tax rates in a struggling economy will help assure that the economy keeps struggling.

Change the tax environment by raising rates or adversely modifying the rules, and taxpayers, especially those in the upper echelons of earners, can be counted on to modify their conduct accordingly; there’s no reason to think their wish to hold on to their money has diminished just because the tax code has changed.

Economists as far back at J. B. Say and Gustave de Molinari in the 19th century understood this. As Molinari wrote in his 1899 book, The Society of To-morrow, “The laws of fiscal equilibrium set a strict limit to the degree within which it is possible to impose new taxes, or to increase the rates of those already in force. The relative productivity of taxes soon shows when this point has been overstepped, for then returns not only cease to rise, but immediately begin to fall.”

Things can work in the other direction too. Other things being equal, cutting tax rates can prompt revenues to rise. This is not to say rising revenue is a good thing. As Milton Friedman once said, if a tax-rate cut brings in more revenue, the rates weren’t cut enough. Hear, hear! . . .

Leaving recessions out of the account, for the past 60 years federal tax revenues have been rather steady at just under 19 percent GDP regardless of the tax rates. The top income-tax rate has ranged from a low of 28 percent in 1988-90 to a high of 92 percent in 1952-53, yet the flow of money has been a fairly constant proportion of the economy. This would seem to confirm the apparently controversial hypothesis that taxpayers are purposive human beings who can be counted to modify their behavior according to the incentives and disincentives that government places in their paths.

Yet most politicians don’t get it.

Two things. First, most politicians aren’t good at math. That’s one reason they went into politics in the first place. Second, it’s not so much about revenue as it is about control. Particularly in Obama’s case, it’s about punishing high-earners — or as he puts it, “fairness.”

Also, while revenue may be roughly the same at different tax rates, higher tax rates produce more distortions in the economy, and inflict deadweight losses from conduct that is driven by taxes rather than economics. That’s why research shows that GDP grows faster when tax rates are lower. But if you derive your own sense of importance from slicing up the pie, you don’t care as much whether the pie grows or not.

WE’VE BEEN ZIRPED:

Father-son talks are always difficult, but it was time to teach my teenager about how things work. I dragged him to our local branch of Wells Fargo and opened a checking account with ATM card privileges and a savings account where he deposited his hard-earned umpiring cash. Having worked on Wall Street for 25 years, I stroked my chin and provided some sage advice: Checking accounts don’t pay interest, so keep your money in the savings account and just move it to checking when you need it. None other than Albert Einstein, I noted, said, “compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe.”

His first bank statement showed interest income of $0.01​—​and a series of $35 fees for insufficient funds, wiping out all his money. I got a “You’re a financial genius, Dad,” dripping with sarcasm.

My son got ZIRPed. Senior citizens living on fixed incomes are getting ZIRPed. We all are. Since December 2008, when Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve started buying mortgage backed securities in order to “solve” the financial crisis, we have all been subject to a zero interest rate policy. . . .

Conceptually, ZIRP has worked. The stock market is up 12 percent in 2012. Bank stocks like Bank of America’s have doubled off their lows. Real estate investment trusts, or REITs, are up 15 percent. Yet in the real world, ZIRP is a huge FAIL. GDP growth in 2012 will come in at an anemic 2 percent after a 1.7 percent tick up in 2011. ZIRP is not growing the economy. And no growth means no jobs.

Unemployment is still a nasty 7.7 percent. And talk in hushed tones to Wall Street hedge funds, and they may explain the dollar carry trade, the one where you borrow or even short U.S. dollars and buy currencies, bonds, and stocks in higher yielding, emerging market countries​—​yes, the Fed is stimulating, but in places like India, South Africa, and Brazil. . . . Savers are getting ripped off. Interest rates are near zero, yet the inflation rate as of October 2012 was 2.2 percent, which means real interest rates are negative 2 percent, so savings are being diluted by 2 percent a year. It’s a stealth, non-voted-on tax, maybe as much as $200-300 billion a year.

It’s behind the Senior Squeeze.

IN BRITAIN, A DAWNING REALIZATION: The truth is that politicians are telling lies: Government is simply unaffordable. “The immediate emergency created by the crash of 2008 was not some temporary blip in the infinitely expanding growth of the beneficent state. It was, in fact, almost irrelevant to the larger truth which it happened, by coincidence, to bring into view. Government on the scale established in most modern western countries is simply unaffordable.”

Something that can’t go on forever, won’t. Debt that can’t be repaid, won’t be. Promises that can’t be kept, won’t be.

MEDIA HYPOCRISY UPDATE: David Gregory Mocks LaPierre for Proposing Armed Guards, but Sends Kids to High-Security School. Same school where the Obama kids go.

UPDATE: Did NBC’s David Gregory Violate D.C. Gun Law on National TV? That 30-round magazine he held up is illegal in DC.

STACY MCCAIN WONDERS what happened to all that “new civility” stuff?

Related item here. “I notice that Mr. Farrell did not respond to my most serious charge against Crooked Timber: that they systematically left out Professor Loomis’s most-vile comments. This omission probably gained many signatures for their statement but cost Crooked Timber some credibility.” Meh, it’s not like they had much to lose.

UPDATE: Henry Farrell responds.

MY MENTION THE OTHER DAY of the Orgreenic Frying Pan produced this email from reader Scott Boone:

I know you probably don’t want to do a whole big bleg on cookware, but I saw your post earlier on the Orgreenic frypans. Of course, you’ve used them personally, so that’s a pretty strong endorsement, I wanted to throw a hat in the ring for SCANPAN too. I’ve been using mine for years and it is awesome! They were one of the first ceramic-coated nonsticks, I believe. (ceramic titanium…oooooh) They’re more expensive than the Orgreenic, but have a lifetime warranty (a Danish company that’s been around) and you can use METAL UTENSILS with them! And I do, regularly–forks, knives, turners–never a problem. Can cook a steak tonight and do an omelet or fried eggs tomorrow morning. Really fantastic cookware.

http://amzn.com/B0000CDUUH

Also, another kitchen essential that I think NO chef should be without, a good silicone spatula/spoon.

(I don’t personally like the black color, I have white…and a red one, for tomato sauces. But looks like Amazon doesn’t have those in stock right now.But this design is great; all enclosed construction with no wood or stick-hole to trap nasty bacteria. Yuck.)

Maybe I’ll try the Scanpan out next time I’m looking for nonstick cookware. It’s pricier, but the construction quality seems higher.

AMY ALKON’S RADIO SHOW STARTS IN TWO MINUTES: Find And Keep Love Through Attachment Science.

JANICE FIAMENGO: Manufacturing Racism: Academic Hiring and the Diversity Mandate.

NEW JERSEY TOWN FOLLOWS THE NRA’S ADVICE: “We’ve made a collective decision as a town that we need armed security in each of our schools.”

UPDATE: Reader Mark Simon points out the political genius of the NRA: “NJ will have cops at every school for one reason. UNIONS. The cops are being driven back in their Over-time and the schools just provided justification as well as another local need for those hundred of so township police departments.”

THE PARANOID STRAIN IN AMERICAN POLITICS via Michael Mann. “The return label says COSTCO Photo Center, not Heartland, not Koch Brothers World Headquarters, and not ‘Skeptic Lair’. I guess Dr. Mann really is out of touch with the common man, because all he had to do was visit COSTCO photo center to see for himself that ANYONE can create and order calendars, and have them sent to friends or family, just like I did. No Koch Brothers credit card needed.”

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LARRY CORREIA: An Opinion On Gun Control. (Reposted).

JAKE SHIMABUKURO: Bohemian Rhapsody on ukelele. “You know, this is the underdog of all instruments.” He’s the Stevie Ray Vaughan of the ukelele. No, really.

THE ARCHIES: Sugar, Sugar.

MARIO LOYOLA: The Federal-State Crackup.

For decades, Democrats and Republicans alike have invested heavily in governance schemes that erode the Constitution’s separation of powers and mar its proper functioning. The Federal judiciary has uniformly rubber-stamped these schemes. The consequence has been an unsustainable spree of borrowing, spending and overregulation at the Federal level, cyclical fiscal crises at the state level, and less accountable and less representative government at every level.

These governance schemes are generally of two kinds: one erodes the separation of powers between Federal and state governments, while the other erodes the separation of powers within the Federal government. In the first category is “cooperative federalism”, whereby the Federal government uses monopoly powers to coerce and subvert the prerogatives of state governments. In the other is Congress’s delegation of vast rule-making authority to administrative agencies.

These two categories of concern are often treated as being entirely distinct, but they share profound similarities. Both are methods for Congress to escape accountability by hiding its power in other institutions of government. Cooperative federalism allows Congress to hide its power within the decision-making of state governments, while its delegation of rule-making authority allows it to hide its power in the far-flung bureaucracy of the Executive Branch.

The Federal judiciary has a crucial role to play in maintaining and policing the boundaries of America’s basic institutions of state. It is a role it abdicated when confronted with the popular nationalist programs of the New Deal. The constitutional doctrines the judiciary has invoked to let Congress blur these critical separations of power are deeply flawed as a matter of constitutional law, and they have ultimately become unsustainable as a matter of political economy.

Yes. And a “living constitution” approach will recognize that the New Deal doctrines are poorly adapted to a changing world, and return to limited government.

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JUST A REMINDER OF ANOTHER CRUSADE TO IMPROVE PEOPLE: The zealous drive by politicians to limit our salt intake has little basis in science.

It’s about control. It’s always about control.

ANN ALTHOUSE: Scenery chewing in the Theater of Outrage over Wayne LaPierre’s unremarkable news conference.

So many violent metaphors from the Apostles Of Nonviolence. And may I note that if teachers are too dumb and undisciplined (“mobs”) to be trusted with guns, then why, exactly, are they to be trusted with our children?

TRIUMPH OF THE NERDS: The internet has unleashed a burst of cartooning creativity.

Well, yes.

THE NEVERENDING SCOURGE OF Ever-Present TVs In Restaurants. “So while we diners polish off our pepperoni, we get to hear about a body being unearthed from a serial killer’s basement in Iowa.”

UPDATE: Yes, there is a technical solution. But is it right?

NEWS YOU CAN USE: What to Expect When You’re Expecting (Your College Kid Home for Christmas).

WHAT TURNED JARON LANIER AGAINST THE WEB.

VIDEO: Ukulele weeps by Jake Shimabukuro. “This guy is a god on a ukulele.”

WELL, THOSE UCLA LAWPROFS ARE A WILD AND CRAZY BUNCH: UCLA Law Prof Lets Needy Strangers Live Rent-Free in His House: Cool or Crazy?

THE NEW SAMSUNG CHROMEBOOK GETS A REVIEW: Samsung’s Chromebook, priced at just $249, is a decent cheap laptop. But it’s not so good when there’s no Internet.

MEETING THE FAMILY: Do’s And Don’ts From The Movies.

WHAT WOULD JESUS BURN? The story of Frankincense and Myrrh.

99 CENTS ON KINDLE: From Joseph Bottum, Wise Guy: A Christmas Tale. You probably know him from his writings in the Weekly Standard.

IN THE MAIL: From Michael McCollum, Euclid’s Wall.

DID WE EVER GET AN ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION? Does Piers Morgan’s Bodyguard Carry A Gun?

Hey, I’m still waiting to find out what kind of gun Rupert Murdoch’s bodyguards carry. And Mike Bloomberg’s. And note this, seen on Facebook:

HARD TO BELIEVE IT’S BEEN SEVEN YEARS since Jim Hawkins died. R.I.P., Jim.

DAVID HENDERSON: Free Speech for Me but Not for Thee: The Case of Erik Loomis.

It turns out, by the way, that Crooked Timber also misled by omission. Everyone knows that the expression “head on a stick” is a metaphor, and that is how Crooked Timber defended Loomis. But see here for some of his truly vile comments. Crooked Timber quoted none of these.

Also, the other person, besides the people at Crooked Timber, who is unwilling to defend freedom of speech is . . . Erik Loomis. When given a chance to clarify his views on LaPierre, he wrote, “Dear rightwingers, to be clear, I don’t want to see Wayne LaPierre dead. I want to see him in prison for the rest of his life.”

And what would he want LaPierre in prison for? For murder? No. It would be for speaking out in favor of, and lobbying for, people’s right to own guns. So, again, “freedom of speech for me, but not for thee.”

That’s consistent with their general approach. They’re lefty-defenders, not liberty-defenders.

Plus this: “Reading how vile the comments of this ‘gifted young scholar’ were, I did start thinking that, at a minimum, some people at URI should occasionally monitor his class or question his students to find out whether he brings anywhere close to that amount of venom to discussions with students who disagree with him.”

And, from the comments: “One irony of all this: While FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) is already at work defending Loomis against possible sanction by URI, I doubt very much that Loomis himself would be supportive of other work FIRE does to protect the rights of students who, for example, agree with Wayne LaPierre.”

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Next Step In Kansas’ Red Revolution: End State Pensions?

Since the right wing of Kansas’ Republican party gained control over the state government last month (defeating both Democrats and moderate Republicans to establish perhaps the most pro-Tea Party state government anywhere in the United States), we’ve been keeping an eye on developments there that could tell us what Tea Party governance would look like.

A new proposal on state pensions from the Kansas Chamber of Commerce offers a clue: the proposal would substitute defined contribution plans for the current defined benefit plan that goes to state retirees. For those of you not fully up on pension minutiae, this matters. In a defined benefit program, your employer promises a fixed stream of payments (usually with cost of living adjustments to take care of inflation) to employees when they retire. The amount of your payment is based on a formula that looks at things like your length of service and your pre-retirement pay.

This used to be the standard pension system in the private economy as well as for government workers. It is a very “blue model” system: it assumes a world of lifetime employment and stable employers. Often, defined benefit pensions emerged from negotiations between unions and employers.

In the private economy, the defined benefit system is in rapid retreat. Employers don’t like these pensions because they are both risky and expensive to manage. If the investments set aside to pay future pension obligations don’t perform well enough, companies have to divert current earnings to them or, worse, borrow money to make up the gap. Another problem with these pensions is that they create problems for companies facing fast technological change. Automakers, for example, need many fewer workers today than they did thirty years ago to produce cars; as a result the proportion of pensioners to active workers has shot up, and companies are stuck with legacy labor costs which make it more difficult for them to compete or attract new capital.

It’s not that radical. I have a defined-contribution plan, and it’s been the rule in Tennessee for decades.

RACISM IN OBAMA’S AMERICA: Is The Ivy League Fair To Asian-Americans? “An admission officer’s uncomfortable explanation for why they don’t get in as often as their test scores would predict suggests it’s not.”

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THIS IS LIKE AN OLD LADY WORRYING ABOUT TEENAGERS “SHOOTING UP MARIJUANA:” New York Times calls for limits on “high capacity ammunition.”

UPDATE: Reader James Druse emails: “Too bad the NY Times has only low capacity journalists.” Heh. (Bumped).

OFF-SCRIPT AGAIN: Cory Booker: “Criminals are killing people. Not law-abiding gun owners.” Plus: “We do not need to go after the guns. A law-abiding mentally stable American, that’s not America’s problem.”

A FUN TWITTER FEED: Modern Seinfeld tweets 140-character plot summaries for new Seinfeld episodes set in the present. Examples:

Kramer becomes an Internet famous photo bomber, so Jerry checks his photos and finds Kramer in the background of every single one of them.

Elaine attends a party Michelle Obama is speaking at, offends the first lady when she complains at the buffet about the crappy health food.

George trips, accidentally gropes someone on the train, and a video of it goes viral. Elaine gets a job writing menu copy for Guy Fieri.

Pretty funny.

JOBS: It’s Five Times Harder To Get A Flight Attendant Job With Delta Than To Enter Harvard.

AN ENTIRE GOVERNING PHILOSOPHY IN ONE SENTENCE: “You get nothing,” the president said. “I get that for free.”

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: “First came the pen, and then the fist.”

EXAMINING SANTA CLAUS for inappropriate messages.

PROF. JACOBSON: I could not accuse Salon.com of tokenism, even if I wanted to.

NEVER: Jonah Goldberg: “When will liberals stop living in the past? Specifically, when will they accept that they aren’t all that stands between a wonderful, tolerant America and Jim Crow?”

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WAIT, WEREN’T THEY TELLING US THAT WORRIES ABOUT GUN CONFISCATION WERE A PARANOID FANTASY? Andrew Cuomo: “Confiscation Could Be An Option.”

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ.

CATALONIA: Secession Looking More Likely. “Catalonia is the richest part of Spain. If it goes, Spain’s tax base shrinks dramatically. If it doesn’t go, but merely uses the threat to get lower taxes and more help with its own very large debts, Spain’s fiscal picture still looks a great deal bleaker. Which means, in turn, that Germany is going to have to pony up a lot more money.”

It seems like every European problem requires the Germans to pony up a lot more money. What if they don’t?

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LARRY CORREIA: An Opinion On Gun Control. (Reposted).

THE WAGES OF “SMART DIPLOMACY:” Egypt constitutional vote: ‘Things are definitely worse than under the old regime.’ Even aside from Benghazi, Hillary Clinton’s diplomatic record isn’t impressive.

Related: In Egypt, Liberals Losing at Polls and in Streets. Their cooperation was essential to bringing down Mubarak, but their cooperation is not essential to ruling Egypt, so they are being discarded.

EVEN SLATE IS MOCKING OBAMA FOR NARCISSISM NOW: Today We Are Gathered … To Hear More About Me: President Obama was supposed to eulogize the memory of Sen. Daniel Inouye. Instead he told us about his favorite summer vacation.

MICHAEL WALSH: ‘Assault’ — The Democrat-Media Complex Strikes Again.

REUTERS: Redistributing Up: The federal government has emerged as one of the most potent factors driving income inequality in the United States – especially in the nation’s capital.

In the town that launched the War on Poverty 48 years ago, the poor are getting poorer despite the government’s help. And the rich are getting richer because of it.

The top 5 percent of households in Washington, D.C., made more than $500,000 on average last year, while the bottom 20 percent earned less than $9,500 – a ratio of 54 to 1.

That gap is up from 39 to 1 two decades ago. It’s wider than in any of the 50 states and all but two major cities. This at a time when income inequality in the United States as a whole has risen to levels last seen in the years before the Great Depression.

Key quote: “We’re seeing an enormous transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the Washington economy.” Well, yes.

SO WHEN A FEDERAL JUDGE ARGUES FOR GUN BANS, I guess he’ll have to recuse himself on gun-rights cases in the future.

AT AMAZON, Top Holiday Deals. New stuff all the time.

FRANCE: After Dissing Depardieu’s Self-Proclaimed Tax Figures, French Government Forced to Admit That 85% Tax Is Entirely Plausible.

Related: While Depardieu Undergoes Criticism, Le Monde Contrasts the Star’s Current and Future Homes.

MEDIA: Senate resolution tells Village Voice to take down ‘adult entertainment’ section.

Lawmakers said that website, Backpage.com, ends up promoting child sex trafficking in the United States. . . .

“As news reports of pimps and traffickers using Backpage.com to advertise sexual services by minors continue to increase, we cannot leave our children defenseless,” Kirk said. “The profit-first mentality at Village Voice Media, which prioritizes the rights of pimps, not children, must end.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) co-sponsored the measure.

Won’t they think of the children?