HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Growing Student Loan Sorrows:

Students voted disproportionately for Barack Obama in 2008, and Obama, as president, reciprocated by nationalizing the student loan program that allowed private banks to offer government-insured loans (“Sallie Mae”). The federal government now issues about 85 percent of student loans. And he more recently pushed Congress to keep the interest rates on those loans from going up to the rate Congress had planned at the time of nationalization.

But this has only intensified a problem inherent in this program from its inception: moral hazard. It has proven powerful at inducing rationally self-interested people to behave badly – in this case, to pile up debt pursuing degrees that are often of dubious worth. . . .

To begin with, the student debt load has skyrocketed. There are now more than 3 million households with debt of more than $50,000, an almost four-fold increase over a decade ago (in inflation-adjusted dollars), and 10 times higher than in 1989. And the debt is rising most quickly among the upper-middle-class households.

Because taxpayer-backed student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, an especially worrisome unintended consequence has emerged: Student loan debt is hurting Americans entering into retirement. The Treasury Department has recently confirmed that it is garnisheeing seniors’ Social Security income for unpaid student loans. And this practice is growing: Only six seniors had student loan debt payments withheld from their Social Security checks in 2000; by 2007 it rose to 60,000 seniors; and it hit a record 115,000 seniors last year.

Gee, if only there were a concise, easy-to-read description of this important national problem.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Americans’ incomes declined more during Obama’s “recovery” than during recession. “Median household income fell 4.8 percent on an inflation- adjusted basis since the recession ended in June 2009, more than the 2.6 percent drop during the 18-month contraction, the research firm’s Gordon Green and John Coder wrote in a report today. Household income is 7.2 percent below the December 2007 level, the former Census Bureau economic statisticians wrote.”

GOVERNMENT IS JUST A NAME FOR THE THINGS WE DO TOGETHER: Like Asset Forfeiture Abuse. Or like raiding a kid’s birthday party for not having a permit. (Construction via IowaHawk).

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VIDEO: I WANT TO BE A CRONY.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: College diploma suddenly worth less on Obama site.

A college degree just lost some value, according to the Obama-Biden campaign website.

Overnight, the expected income of a degree touted by the campaign dropped $5,000, to just $45,000, hardly worth it some might say when up against the median family income average of $45,800.

The changes hit the new Obama education webpage without notice and followed another that removed the word “expensive” from a sentence on where children want to go to school. The opening line used to read: “My child wants to go to an expensive college. Can she afford it?”

It was Jeryl Bier who originally noticed. Good catch. Hey, I was encouraging Obama to do some remedial reading on higher education just the other day. I even suggested he could read the book on a single fundraising trip. Maybe he got the word. . . .

MITT ROMNEY: What I Learned At Bain Capital. “My business experience taught me how to help companies grow—and what to do when trouble arises. When you see a problem, run toward it before the problem gets worse.” That certainly hasn’t been the approach of our current governing class, but then their results aren’t anything to crow about.

BYRON YORK: Voters fret about economy, Dems focus on abortion.

UPDATE: Krauthammer: Obama’s been in office 4 years and he’s running on Clinton’s economy. It’s embarrassing!

REMEMBER WHEN THE ADMINISTRATION USED TO LECTURE US ABOUT OUR CARBON FOOTPRINTS? Republicans Target Attorney General Eric Holder’s Jet Travel. “We are concerned that FBI aircraft are used for extraneous business and personal travel by senior DOJ officials, including the Attorney General.”

MICHAEL WALSH ON BIDEN’S RAID ON TAMPA:

In an electoral season of appalling gutter politics, the Obama campaign is about to test a new bottom. Contrary to tradition — which dictates that Democrats and Republicans respectfully lie low during their rivals’ presidential nominating conventions — Vice President Joe Biden will land in Tampa, Fla., during the Republican convention to try to upstage Mitt Romney’s coronation.

“Are you going to Florida?” Biden joked to reporters during a campaign stop in Minneapolis the other day. “I’m going to be the speaker at the convention.”

Such trash talk is typical of the increasingly deracinated veep, whose motor mouth now seems beyond the control of even campaign consigliere David Axelrod’s well-oiled media machine.

But what’s really behind this stunning example of in-your-face poor sportsmanship?

The heckler’s veto, that’s what.

A “heckler’s veto” is an attempt to shout down political speech by preventing its expression; rather than fighting it with more speech, the heckler seeks to silence his foe, marginalize him as outside the mainstream, beyond the pale of civilized discourse and unworthy of a fair hearing.

Since the day Paul Ryan was announced as Romney’s VP selection, the Democrats have barely missed an opportunity to assault the new GOP team — sometimes even physically.

It makes me wonder if their internal polls say they’re heading for a big loss, leading them to try anything that might be a game-changer. They’re certainly not acting confident. However, I also wonder about the competence of anyone who thinks that the way to boost Obama’s chances is more Joe Biden!

HAPPY FRIDAY! I guess it’s time to run that graphic again! You know, the one comparing the Obama Administration’s stimulus promises with what was actually delivered. . . .

But then, it’s always time to do that! And you can click on the image for a bigger version, suitable for sharing, posting by the water cooler at work, or whatever . . . .

SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO PRESIDENT OBAMA the difference between a General and an Admiral.

MICHAEL GRAHAM: Did I hear Obama complain about “politicians wanting to control your health care?”

You might also find your health information “leaked” at a crucial political moment.

IMMIGRATION AGENTS FILE SUIT AGAINST JANET NAPOLITANO, claiming that she forced them to violate federal law. Given what’s been going on in her office lately, they should be glad that’s all she forced them to do . . . .

NICK DENTON, INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY: “Gawker is organized like an international money-laundering operation. Much of its international revenues are directed through Hungary, where Denton’s mother hails from, and where some of the firm’s techies are located. But that is only part of it. Recently, Salmon reports, the various Gawker operations—Gawker Media LLC, Gawker Entertainment LLC, Gawker Technology LLC, Gawker Sales LLC—have been restructured to bring them under control of a shell company based in the Cayman Islands, Gawker Media Group Inc.” Nobody tell Liz Warren.

Or Joe Biden — because then you’d have to explain what a shell company is, and that the Cayman Islands aren’t part of Oiho.

Meanwhile, Kevin Williamson comments:

So we have evil offshoring — exploting those poor marginalized Hungarian nerds — baroque tax-minimizing schemes, assets that will not be repatriated because of U.S. taxes, and that favorite sin of the Left: hypocrisy. In my mind, hypocrisy is a lesser sin than stupidity, and it is sort of stupid to write up a breathless account about Romney’s doing the precise same thing your company does. Incidentally, there is nothing in the Gawker report or the accompanying documents suggesting that Romney or Bain did anything improper. And neither did Gawker, for that matter: U.S. tax practices create very powerful incentives to pursue avoidance strategies. Gawker’s owners apparently know that, even if its writers lack the guts or the intellectual capability to acknowledge as much.

We eagerly await the next Gawker editorial on the need for corporate-tax reform.

Heh. Hoist, petard, etc.

UPDATE: The Gawker story kind of undermines this leak of Mitt Romney tax information, which, as a reader emails, “has David Axelrod’s fingerprints all over it.”

You know, one reason to abolish the income tax is that it puts private information into the hands of politicians and government officials who are able to abuse it for political reasons.

CHANGE: “To put it crudely, feminist progress right now largely depends on the existence of the hookup culture.”

JAMES TARANTO: The Philosophical Roots of the Obama Cult. “Note carefully what is being asserted here. It’s not just that Democratic ideas are morally superior to Republican ones or that Barack Obama is a better president, or a better man, than Mitt Romney or would be, or is. Rather, the claim is that whereas billionaires who support Romney are greedy and selfish, those who back Obama are altruistic–or, to the extent they have a selfish motive, it is a relatively benign one, a simple desire to be in the presence of the Dear Leader. It’s a leftist cliché that money corrupts politics. These leftists, however, believe that their politics somehow purifies money–that writing a check to Obama for America is an act of moral money-laundering. There’s a word for people who see the world in such stark terms of good vs. evil: Manichaean.”

And leftists used to use that word to denounce their adversaries as simplistic cultists.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Is It Normal To Drink And End Up Naked?

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Think College Is Expensive Now? Wait Until ObamaCare.

BOB ZUBRIN on immigration.

OOPS: Obama’s Rapid Response Director Lis Smith Spins Out Of Control On Twitter.

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IT’S COME TO THIS: BRUTAL: Anderson Cooper obliterates DNC Chair over her lies about Romney’s stance on abortion.

EVOLUTION: The Rise And Fall of Sexual Promiscuity. “Promiscuity is a funny thing in nature. Despite what your mother and youth pastor spent so many years telling you, sleeping around has real (genetic) benefits. Polyandry—in which females take more than one mate—allows for better gene diversity, boots the likelihood of fertilization, decreases infanticide, and means more male providers. Gavrilets acknowledges that in switching from promiscuity to monogamy, females actually risked lower fertility. The tradeoff was security.”

TRANSPARENCY: Liberal Group With Ties to Unions Ends Donor Disclosure.