THE 1%: Many Michigan Public Employees Among Country’s Top Wage Earners.

MORE LOAN QUESTIONS: GOP senators call for Energy Dept. probe of $730M steelmaker loan. “Two GOP senators want the Energy Department’s (DOE) internal watchdog to investigate a planned $730 million loan for a company to manufacture high-strength automotive steel in Michigan. Sens. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) are asking DOE Inspector General Gregory Friedman to probe whether Severstal North America — a subsidiary of Russian steel giant OAO Severstal — should receive public financing to retool and expand facilities in Dearborn, Mich.”

HOW TO REPLACE an oxygen sensor.

A CENTRAL ASIAN SETBACK for the U.S. military? “For the Kyrgyz, the Russians are the devil they know, the Chinese are the devils flush with yuan, and the Americans, two decades after the collapse of the USSR, are the tight-fisted guys all too willing to cut a deal corrupting the previous presidential administrations of Akaev and Bakiev while delivering lectures about democracy.”

CHANGE: France cuts frantically as Italy nears debt spiral.

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” “Microphones accidently left on after G20 meeting pick up private conversation between US, French presidents. Sarkozy admits he ‘can’t stand’ Israeli premier. Obama: You’re fed up with him? I have to deal with him every day!”

Actually, this is probably just an effort, rather clumsily and obviously executed, to create distance before Israel whacks the Iranian nuke program.

JUST REMEMBER, THE STATE WAS RUN BY DEMOCRATS WHILE THIS WENT ON: Victims speak out about North Carolina sterilization program, which targeted women, young girls and blacks. Because, you know, the press won’t stress that part.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

Google “Wallace Kuralt and eugenics” and you will find that Charles Kuralt’s father was the Mecklenburg County official who oversaw quite a lot of this in Charlotte, NC.

Not something anyone wants to mention, I suppose, but the Charlotte Observer ran a piece on this saga a couple of months ago.

Interesting. There’s more than I knew to the Secret World Of Charles Kuralt.

NOTHING SAYS CREDIBILITY like Gloria Allred!

AT AMAZON, pre-Black Friday markdowns on Toys & Games.

#OCCUPYFAIL: No Breadsticks, No Peace!

#OCCUPYFAIL: THE PROBLEM WITH A LEADERLESS MOVEMENT IS THAT ANYONE MIGHT WIND UP A LEADER: Even Steven Crowder!

SAN FRANCISCO’S pension crisis. “Adachi’s demand that city employees start paying more into their own pensions has not only defined him as a public figure but made him anathema to San Francisco’s political establishment—that is, the mayor, the Board of Supervisors (San Francisco is both a city and a county, so its board serves as city council), and the powerful public-sector unions.”

THE GOVERNMENT THEY DESERVE: “Having just elected its populist Peronist president Cristina Fernandez despite some of the most widespread evidence of government economic malfeasance ever presented to a western electorate, Argentina is now preparing for yet another debilitating economic crisis and meltdown of the kind that have kept the country trapped in a cycle of underdevelopment for most of the last 100 years. As the peso declines (losing 1/4 of its value against the shaky and weak kneed dollar since her first election in 2007 in the face of a commodity boom which under normal conditions should have seen the peso rise), the Argentine government set off a national economic mess by rejiggering rules on currency exchange to make it harder for Argentines to switch pesos for dollars. . . . Typically in Argentina as each failed “miracle” economic solution begins to unwind, governments resort to increasingly desperate and irrational methods to hide the erosion of their program as long as possible. Most Argentines, cynical about their governments to a degree that even birthers and truthers would have a hard time fathoming, do not think the Fernandez government is an exception to the rule.”

#OCCUPYFAIL: Occupy DC becoming increasingly violent, police say.

QUESTION: Why Was Sharon Bialek Fired?

SO IF IT’S A SCANDAL WHEN PENN STATE OR THE CATHOLIC CHURCH cover up sex abuse, then why isn’t it just as big a scandal when the Occupy groups urge people not to report sexual assaults on-site so that they can “deal with them internally?”

AT AMAZON, bestselling children’s books.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: My next Popular Mechanics column: Can Technology Fix the College Debt Crisis?

#OCCUPYHOLLYWOOD: Oprah eyes $68 million mansion.

HAITI: Curbing Cholera in Haiti: What Will it Take to Implement Best Practices? “A year into the epidemic, international attention is waning rapidly even as the number of cases continues to skyrocket. The tally of infections just topped the half million mark and the spread shows little sign of slowing. Nonetheless, the number of organizations providing prevention and treatment services has plummeted from 128 to 40 this year — a loss of nearly nine organizations per month. On top of that, assistance has further been delayed because less than half the promised relief aid has been disbursed.”

OHIO: Big Labor’s Assault On State Reforms. “All eyes should be on Ohio tomorrow as voters decide whether to roll back Gov. John Kasich’s bold public-employee reforms. Passed this year, the much-needed course correction sharply curtailed collective-bargaining privileges for the state’s 350,000 taxpayer-funded workers, giving the state — facing an $8 billion shortfall — a fighting chance to get its budgetary house in order.”

MICKEY KAUS: “I tend to think conventional New Deal style collective bargaining is doomed by large historic forces, whatever the outcome on Tuesday. If Wagner Act unions effectively vanish in the economy’s competitive private sector, how long will voters support them in the public sector, where they are less defensible?”

LOWER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Focus on standardized tests may be pushing some teachers to cheat: The number of California teachers who have been accused of cheating, lesser misconduct or mistakes on standardized achievement tests has raised alarms about the pressure to improve scores.

CENSUS: New poverty calculus: Cause for alarm or political deception? “When the Census Bureau started counting food stamps and tax breaks as income, the poverty rate went up, not down. Some say the new poverty rate is a nuanced picture. Critics say its a ruse.”

A ROUNDUP ON THE LATEST CAIN ALLEGATIONS. Plus, thoughts by Andrew Klavan.

UPDATE: “So now we have a real accuser . . . . And now we have specific details alleged.” You know, all the things that weren’t in Politico’s story. . . .

Plus, from the comments: “How does Gloria Allred hook up with these people, I wonder? I mean, do people just call her (and she has some sort of screener that screens out the nuts, I mean, screens out the boring ones), or does she advertise for this sort of thing in some way, or does she somehow come to them?”