YESTERDAY I MENTIONED THE GROWTH OF THE NONPROFIT SECTOR, and reader Toren Smith sends this story as a followup: Bay Area nonprofit executives rack up big salary gains:

Laurance Hoagland, chief investment officer of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, had the biggest paycheck in 2003 with a total of $738,094. Though that represents a 54 percent jump in cash compensation for Hoagland, it included a $215,000 retention bonus paid that year. Without that bonus, Hoagland would have ranked second on The List, earning exactly $1 less than the $523,095 paid to Richard Schlosberg, president of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

The San Francisco Business Times annual compensation survey of nonprofits and foundations found that 23 of the top 50 executives enjoyed double-digit compensation increases in their most recently available fiscal year. The survey is based on nonprofit’s tax returns, which are publicly disclosed. The Business Times survey excludes hospitals and research institutes. . . . The San Francisco Symphony’s musical director, Michael Tilson Thomas, does not appear on the list because he provides his services through a $1.5 million annual contract between the symphony and his corporation, MTT Inc. That’s up from $1.4 million in 2002.

No starving artist, he. The nonprofit sector is huge and lucrative, but perceptions and scrutiny haven’t caught up, though this article suggests that’s beginning to change: “Daniel Borochoff, president of the Chicago-based charity watchdog group American Institute of Philanthropy, said there’s a lot more scrutiny being paid to nonprofits, including an Internal Revenue Service review of 2,000 nonprofit groups as part of an investigation into compensation of nonprofit executives.”

BETTER ALL THE TIME: Phil Bowermaster rounds up a bunch of good news you probably missed.

JOE THE PLUMBER hits back at the press.

UPDATE: Ross Douthat on media hypocrisy.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Fairer election coverage from Al Jazeera?

THE CREDIT CRUNCH DOESN’T SEEM TO HAVE HIT BOTTOM: In the line at Target yesterday, I watched a woman have her credit cards declined. The response: Want to take out a Target Credit Card? On the other hand, her instant application for that was declined, too. She wound up writing a check for several hundred dollars worth of cakes, pies, and cookies. Meanwhile, I keep getting mailers from my credit-card companies inviting me to use the credit line with handy “checks” that produce an instant high-interest loan.

OBAMA RAISED $150 million last month. No word on how much came from Mickey Mouse. Or “Doodad Pro.”

HMM: Schumer Ripped IndyMac as Democratic Donors Probed Books. “New York Sen. Charles Schumer’s public criticism of IndyMac Bancorp last summer, which critics say helped spark a run on deposits that took under the troubled thrift, came while IndyMac’s assets were being eyed by investors who are major donors to the Democratic Senate campaign committee the senator chairs.”

ANOTHER SET OF TARGETS IF the “Fairness” Doctrine comes back: “If you’re a fan of Jay Leno or David Letterman, you may already know this: You have to listen to seven Republican jokes for every one the late-night comedians tell about Democrats.”

OBAMA’S LEAD slips to three points? Should we believe that? Beats me. Polls have seemed especially volatile this time around. It makes sense for both the campaigns to act as if it’s true, though.

UPDATE: Colin Powell endorses Obama. Dog bites man?

Meanwhile, spread the wealth around:

Currently, Barack Obama is outspending John McCain on the airwaves by something like four to one. It seems likely that he will succeed in buying the Presidential election.

But wait! We know that Obama is in favor of “spreading the wealth around” so as to achieve what he thinks is fairness. So presumably Obama will be willing to share his vast resources with the McCain campaign so the playing field will be level for the last weeks of the campaign. That’s only fair, right? What do you say, Barack? And if not, why not?

PAUL responds: Obama didn’t break his promise to rely on public financing (if McCain did too) for nothing.

If Obama can opt out of public financing for campaigns, can the rest of us opt out of public financing for everything else? . . . .

MORE: Roger Simon: Powell’s Obama Endorsement: the religious factor.

A HOUSE FULL OF questionable voters in Ohio: “Likely among them are the 12 people who have registered to vote since August using the address of the 1,175-square-foot Brownlee Avenue house. Some of them already have voted. Others requested absentee ballots but have yet to return them to the Franklin County Board of Elections. None of them, however, seems to have ties to Ohio — no close relatives, no public-records trail, no obvious intention to stay in the state past the election. The owner of the house also is coming under scrutiny. He has voted in Ohio even though he has lived and worked in New York since 2004.”

R.S. MCCAIN on Young Turks and Old T-Shirts.

WHAT? THEY’RE NOT REALLY ALL SPARTACUS? False Claims By Defeated Slaves Undermine Their Campaign.

SARAH PALIN ON SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE: You can see the video here. I think Amy Poehler gets the best-of-show award, though.

AIRPORT SECURITY REMAINS PATHETIC:

As a screener at Newark Liberty International Airport, Pythias Brown was supposed to keep deadly objects off airplanes. But for the past year, authorities allege, Brown has been swiping electronic equipment from luggage of the passengers he was supposed to protect.

A laptop here, a cell phone there. Within months, he had snatched more than 100 items, authorities say.

But this summer, Brown got too ambitious for his own good, allegedly stealing a $47,900 camera from an HBO crew and a camcorder from a CNN employee, authorities said. Brown attracted the attention of one of his victims — and eventually investigators — when he tried to sell the equipment on eBay, the online auction site, authorities said.

I’ve been complaining about airport security for years. Just remember: If he could get away with stealing things from checked baggage, someone else could have just as easily planted a bomb in checked baggage.

GAY PATRIOT: Three Democratic Scandals, Minimal Media Coverage.

Yes, following this election you can see how important a free, responsible, and unbiased press is — and how different things might be if we had one.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “Would someone please clue the DemSM that it wasn’t Joe the Plumber who caused our financial mess. It was Joe the Derivatives Banker , Joe the ACORN activist and Joe the Congressional Fannie Mae enabler.” One of those Joes is actually on the ticket . . . .

IF YOU WANT TO FEEL BETTER ABOUT BARACK OBAMA, Mickey Kaus has a suggestion.

UPDATE: Eric Scheie emails: “Oddly enough, Obama started out as a nice guy, and I remember liking him. It was refreshing the way he tried to de-racialize things, but I think he’s so wedded to the left and they’re so wedded to these things that he’s hamstrung. ” Yes, if the Obama running now were the Obama I saw when he started his campaign, I wouldn’t be terribly interested in the outcome of this election. I’m most troubled by the thuggish attacks on critics.

ARE WE FACING A LARGELY self-imposed crisis on energy?

ROSS DOUTHAT: What Is The Conservative Cocoon?

WHILE I FIND THE IDEA OF LARRY SUMMERS AS SECRETARY OF TREASURY COMFORTING, I can’t say I feel the same way about John Kerry as Secretary of State, or — perhaps worse yet — Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense.

THE NEW YORK TIMES stock price since 2004.

SQUABBLING OVER RECUSAL at the Sixth Circuit.

DID WASHINGTON waste millions on faulty voting machines? Hey, it’s not like this is a problem without a solution. Related item here.

REASON TV’S new talk show.

IN FORBES, HENRY MANNE is worried about the prospects for freedom. “We can anticipate a new reign of mercantilism, as the protectionists among us wield this strong new weapon against globalization and open markets. And all of this is true in large degree regardless of who wins the forthcoming election.”

What do I think? There is no fate. But there’s too much doomsaying nowadays, and not enough action against the predicted dooms. And even Manne ends on a hopeful note.

CINDY MCCAIN’S LAWYER pushes back at the New York Times. “It is worth noting that you have not employed your investigative assets looking into Michelle Obama. You have not tried to find Barack Obama’s drug dealer that he wrote about in his book, Dreams of My Father. Nor have you interviewed his poor relatives in Kenya and determined why Barack Obama has not rescued them. Thus, there is a terrific lack of balance here.” Ouch. More here.

UPDATE: Related thoughts from Jennifer Rubin: “If MSM wants to be treated as impartial arbiter, a ‘watchdog’ and not a lapdog of one candidate, its members should consider some behavior modification.”

FIVE WAYS to save money on tech in today’s economy.