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NICHOLAS JOHNSON: Gun Control’s Racist Origins.

CHANGE: Two new libertarian student organizations set to launch at U. Richmond.

MICHAEL BARONE: Soul-Crushing Dependency.

“This is painful for a liberal to admit,” writes liberal New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, “but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in soul-crushing dependency.”

Kristof is writing from Breathitt County, Ky., deep in the Appalachian mountains, about mothers whose Supplemental Security Income benefits will decrease if their children learn to read. Kristof notes that 55% of children qualifying for SSI benefits do so because of “fuzzier intellectual disabilities short of mental retardation,” far more than four decades ago when SSI was just a new program.

Evidently SSI administrators decided to be more generous to parents of such children. But, as Kristof notes, giving parents an incentive to keep children from learning to read works against the children’s long-term interest.

Kristof’s column makes a point similar to that in my De. 2 Examiner column on the vast rise in people receiving Social Security Disability Insurance payments. As with SSI, one imagines that those responsible for extending benefits to those not previously eligible did so out of a sense of generosity. But as I noted, “there is also a human cost. Consider the plight of someone who at some level knows he can work but decides to collect disability payments instead. That person is not likely to ever seek work again, especially if the sluggish recovery turns out to be the new normal. He may be gleeful that he was able to game the system or just grimly determined to get what he can in a tough situation. But he will not be able to get the satisfaction of earned success from honest work that contributes something to society and the economy.” Generosity that produces “soul-crushing dependency” is not really generosity.

No, it’s not about generosity. It’s about power. They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.

SUPPORT FRACKING, FOR GAIA’S SAKE. “America’s carbon dioxide emissions are actually falling. In fact, they have not been this low since 1992. And while no single factor can account for the entire shift, much of the credit goes to something environmentalists often detest: hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. . . . All of that was achieved without government direction — and in the face of considerable environmental resistance. Now the world’s worst CO emitter, China — which gets 80 percent of its electricity from coal — has taken up fracking, too. China’s natural gas reserves are 50 percent bigger than America’s. If climate change is the worst danger facing the planet, as some environmentalists contend, then Chinese fracking should be good news. But most environmentalists hate fracking.”

I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.

IT’S FROM BEFORE THE ELECTION, but the Epilogue from Mark Levin’s Ameritopia remains worth reading.

WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF VALERIE JARRETT?

ROGER SIMON: “If you ever wondered how Hitler happened, you have part of your answer on this video.”

LARRY LESSIG: Why We Need A Democratic Tea Party.

JOURNALISM: “Justice Antonin Scalia believes the law can and should enforce moral standards,” says David Savage, incorrectly.

TIM CARNEY: Jim DeMint was the libertarian hero of the Senate.

DEMOCRATS AND TAX HIKES: Giving It To Them Good And Hard. “We Republicans might also want to reconsider our blind opposition to estate taxes. Presently there are many huge trusts, including the Ford Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, the MacArthur Foundation, and multi-billion dollar college endowments. Many of these organizations do good work, but most now bankroll left-wing groups and causes while they pay their executives huge salaries. Ordinarily, the Democrats would loudly oppose allowing the wealthy to continue influencing U.S. policy even after they are in the grave, but they fall silent because so many of these foundations may have started as conservative organizations but now firmly veer to the Left. Thus, it might behoove Republicans to see whether these foundations, which frequently support bigger and more expensive government, might want to support larger government by paying their fair share of taxes as well.” Plus many other ideas for “targeted” tax increases.

Pass ’em in the House, send ’em to the Senate, and then make popcorn.

YEAH, PRETTY MUCH: Rolling Stone: Now that states have started legalizing recreational marijuana, will the president continue the government’s war on weed?

A 25-YEAR RECESSION in legal employment?

JIGGERY-POKERY: Jobs Data Remain At Recessionary Levels: “And by the way, remember those big payroll gains in September and October, right before the election? Forget it. The Labor Department has revised down its job estimates for those two months by 49,000. . . . And it may get worse. The quarterly Wells Fargo/Gallup small-business survey found that 21% plan to cut jobs over the next six months — a surge from 10% last June and a record high.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Bankruptcy, Not Forgiveness, for Student Loans. Yes, but make the institutions pick up part of the tab.

HOW WISE IS THE SAGE OF OMAHA? Megan McArdle Checks Warren Buffett’s Numbers. Meh. These days I just think of him as another crony capitalist.

SPECIAL FAVORS: A waiver for Hollywood on the Animal Welfare Act. Introduced by a Republican. Why is the GOP doing favors for Hollywood, again?

SHELDON RICHMAN: Romanticizing Taxation: The irresistible temptation to spend other people’s money.

MATTHEW CONTINETTI: The Media Mogul Protection Racket: Want a pass from negative coverage? Fund the liberal press. “What is most remarkable is that these moguls are exactly the type of characters liberals would otherwise despise and delight in cutting down. Take for example the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim, a Mexican national of Lebanese descent who is insanely wealthy thanks to the endemic cronyism of the Mexican telecommunications industry. He also bailed out the New York Times Company with a $250 million loan in 2009 and as of October 2011 owned a little more than seven percent of the property. What do you know, the Times is not exactly flooding-the-zone with reporting on Slim’s treasure chest, his interconnectedness with global politics, and the outer limits of his ambition. When Slim visited Washington, D.C., in February to huddle with Hillary Clinton, Janet Napolitano, Ron Kirk, Gene Sperling, Julius Genachowski, John Bryson, John Kerry, and others, only Univision and the WFB deigned to mention it.”

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Foodstamps Soar By Most In 16 Months: Over 1 Million Americans Enter Poverty In Last Two Months.

They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.

CLIMATE CONFERENCE ENDS IN DISGRACE. “Climate negotiators at the most recent conference on global warming were unable to reduce expectations fast enough to match the collapse of their agenda. . . . The only real winners here were the bureaucrats in the diplomacy industry for whom endless rounds of carbon spewing conferences with no agreement year after year mean jobs, jobs, jobs.”

JOHN HINDERAKER: An Administration That Will Live In Infamy.

FLYING MALWARE: The Virus Copter.

HOPEY-CHANGEY: Air Force May Be Developing Stealth Drones in Secret.