MATT WELCH: The Only Thing Missing From “The New Declaration of Independence”: Any Sense That Adults Are Responsible for Their Choices.

Cradle-to-grave employment (at least outside the public sector) has been dead since at least the end of the Cold War. Undergraduate degrees in English and Film and Sociology and Philosophy (and a thousand other subjects) have had debatable workplace utility for as long as I’ve been alive. There have even been previous housing bubbles and busts in Alex Pareene’s lifetime.

I don’t recall anything like the promises so cruelly unkept in Salon’s list. I do remember my father warning me that an engineering degree would be much more useful in the workplace than English, to which I uttered a phrase available to 18-year-olds everywhere: Thanks, Dad; not your call. Ditto for the legions of well-meaning adults urging me to finish my undergraduate degree, to sign up for the Selective Service, and even (when I finally attained a decent living in the second half of my 30s) to pay a mortgage instead of paying rent. One of the best perks about being a grown-up is that you get to make your own choices, and to own the results, good and ill.

Which is why phrases like “wage slaves,” “inescapable debt,” and “force” “force” “force” leave me feeling like a brother from another planet. Adult human beings have agency, the ability (even responsibility!) to run their own cost/benefit analyses and choose accordingly.

Well, some people are doing their best to stamp that out.

Plus this: “And since when have right-thinking liberals from the creative class bragged about ‘playing by the rules’ anyway? Is it really my imagination that the point used to be something closer to the opposite?” That was then, when the pie of Other People’s Money seemed endlessly expanding. Now that it’s contracting, things are different.

CHANGE: Euro Factories Sink Deeper Into Decline in October.

THOUGHTS ON the higher education bubble. “Perhaps it would be good if the bubble should happen to burst. We might then be able to speak freely about the real and varied purposes of post-secondary education (some ‘higher,’ some more or less vocational).”

NEW CLASS INFIGHTING: “Lower Elites” vs. “Upper Elites,” cont’d: NYC arrest records: Many Occupy Wall Street protesters live in luxury. “Among addresses for which information is available, single-family homes listed on those police intake forms have a median value of $305,000 — a far higher number than the $185,400 median value of owner-occupied housing units in the United States. Some of the homes where ‘Occupy’ arrestees reside, viewed through Google Maps and the Multiple Listing Service real estate database, are the definition of opulence.”

NANNY OF THE MONTH GOES GLOBAL: EU Bans Free-Range Kids!

CHANGE: ADP Number Confirms Relentless Erosion In US Manufacturing Base.

THE BEGINNING OF A Romney-Ryan Policy Alliance?

TRANSPARENCY: CREW calls for investigation into use of private email accounts at SEC. “Today Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) called on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Inspector General (IG), H. David Kotz, to investigate reports that SEC employees are using private email accounts to conduct agency business. According to a report in Bloomberg, these actions were taken with the express purpose of evading a series of recent IG investigations.”

A JOURNOLIST REMINDER: There was this email group, called Journolist, where journalists got together and talked about how to bury stories that hurt Democrats and push stories that hurt Republicans. Here’s a list of the members.

UPDATE: Who, exactly, is the Cain story hurting? “Much to my surprise the two most liberal members of my game group expressed support for Herman Cain. One a solid anti Palinite who follows the BBC has decided on him and the other who supports Deval Patrick and is an MSNBC guy is just about there. Both were very aware of the Politico story and their only questions were along the lines of: ‘Will Cain survive it?'”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Well, this might hurt: Consultant Witnessed Cain Harassment – Says If Woman Is Allowed to Talk, Cain Is Finished. Assuming that’s true, then there’s a real story — but note that this is the kind of specific that Politico’s reporting didn’t include. As the Pro Publica critique pointed out, in fact, this is the kind of specific that Politico should have gotten before they published, instead of running a weak and vague report in the hopes, I suppose, of smoking out the kind of actual facts they should have run down first.

VIDEO: DIY Airship Sets Altitude Record.

TRANSPARENCY: Supercommittee’s secrecy disappoints Republican House freshmen. Hey, you think you’re disappointed now . . .

VOTER FRAUD UPDATE: FBI arrests 8 in Florida for absentee ballot fraud.

STALLING THE KEYSTONE PIPELINE could produce a grim result. “No Keystone XL could mean gasoline shortages.” Well, that would just make the Carter rerun complete, wouldn’t it?

PUBLIC PENSION UPDATE: 3,000 more six-figure pensions in Calif.

It’s Iain Murray’s book, but we’re living it.

CERTIFICATE: A less-expensive alternative to college? Naturally, it must be destroyed. Thus proceeds the higher education bubble.

THIS MUST BE MORE OF THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WE WERE PROMISED: Claudia Rosett On the UNESCO Fiasco. “For the U.S., the UNESCO vote was a debacle, with the assembled states voting 107 to 14 in favor of admitting the Palestinians, and 52 states abstaining. That would have been the moment for the U.S. ambassador to read UNESCO’s assembly the riot act and announce that the U.S. was pulling out, as it did in 1984, under President Ronald Reagan; returning only in 2003, under President George W. Bush. Instead, the U.S. diplomatic message to UNESCO has been one of apology.”

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, AMERICANS’ HEALTH WOULD BE SACRIFICED TO LAME SECURITY THEATER. And they were right! U.S. Government Glossed Over Cancer Concerns As It Rolled Out Airport X-Ray Scanners. “One after another, the experts convened by the Food and Drug Administration raised questions about the machine because it violated a longstanding principle in radiation safety — that humans shouldn’t be X-rayed unless there is a medical benefit. . . . Research suggests that anywhere from six to 100 U.S. airline passengers each year could get cancer from the machines. Still, the TSA has repeatedly defined the scanners as ‘safe,’ glossing over the accepted scientific view that even low doses of ionizing radiation — the kind beamed directly at the body by the X-ray scanners — increase the risk of cancer.” (Bumped).

THE HILL: Senate GOP rips media for Cain story, alleges double standard. As I keep asking: Would Jonathan Martin, Maggie Haberman, Anna Palmer and Kenneth Vogel have put their names on a similar piece, with no named sources, aimed at Barack Obama? Would Politico have run it?

Related: Cain hopes to profit from negative press.

You know who really could have profited here? Perry, Romney, et al. If they had gone after the media — just saying what Pro Publica said about this lame story would have been fine, and perfectly safe — they would have reaped real gains. The Republican primary electorate will look favorably on candidates who stand up against the media, as opposed to those who go along with the media attacks on other Republicans. Just ask Tim Pawlenty.

MORE SUSPICION ABOUT THE MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT’S SUDDEN FLIPFLOP ON THE IMPORTANCE OF EARLY DETECTION: Reader Mike Pendray writes:

Remember when the NYT had that article about how men living longer was going to be a burden to society?

Your wife blogged about it here.

Looks like it’s all coming together. Cutting screening for prostate cancer would certainly help mitigate that problem. Figure the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) might have read that? Wonder what other medical conditions primarily affecting men approaching their retirement (and therefore unproductive) years they will decide don’t warrant preventative screening?

See, when you politicize health care, the suspicion is that all health care decisions are political.

CORZINE AGONISTES: His business-as-usual approach didn’t work any better when he ran New Jersey than it did at MF Global.

THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING: OWS protester talks about assaults inside the camp.

SCANDAL SWEPT UNDER THE RUG: Atlanta to be fully accredited, but on watch. “An ‘elated’ school board announced Tuesday the Southern Associations of Colleges and Schools, one of the nation’s top accrediting agencies, has taken the district off probation. APS was downgraded to ‘advisement’ status, meaning the agency will watch to ensure the district’s progress is sustainable over the next year.” After the teacher-assisted-cheating scandal, this seems like weak tea, and calls into question whether the accreditors provide much actual oversight.

NOT UP TO SPEED: Memo To: The Herman Cain Campaign. Re: China’s Nuclear Capability.

AUTHORSHIP: Rep. Schweikert to Obama: Stop buying your own books with taxpayer money, please.

MICHAEL LEDEEN: Sears Really Does Support The Troops.