MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Technology Is Killing ObamaCare, But It Might Save The Rest of Us.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 166.

REALITY-BASED POLICY: ABC News: Exclusive: After Westgate, Interpol Chief Ponders ‘Armed Citizenry’. “Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said today the U.S. and the rest of the democratic world is at a security crossroads in the wake of last month’s deadly al-Shabab attack at a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya – and suggested an answer could be in arming civilians. In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Noble said there are really only two choices for protecting open societies from attacks like the one on Westgate mall where so-called ‘soft targets’ are hit: either create secure perimeters around the locations or allow civilians to carry their own guns to protect themselves.”

Score one for the pack-not-a-herd approach. More on that here.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Boomers to Generation Y: Are You Experienced?

As the American economy continues its crawl from the financial crisis, members of generation Y are being left behind: Almost 6 million young Americans aged 16 to 24 are neither in school nor working, according to a new report by the Opportunity National Coalition.

The consequences of long-term unemployment can bedevil young americans long after they find a job. Skills depreciate, savings either empty out or fail to accumulate in the first place, and lack of experience or a professional network can make it even harder to find work. Worse still, it’s no secret that the current structure of Social Security and Medicare is unsustainable, and generation Y will bear the brunt of the shortfall.

Perhaps an unlikely spokesman for the interests of young people, Wall Street billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller is leading a charge to illuminate the issue he has termed “generational theft.” …

The dearth of investment in young workers has them in a Catch-22: employers are less willing to make the effort to train recent college graduates—pulling up the ladder they once climbed to labor market success—and at the same time they cite inexperience as the operative fault of generation Y.

The longer millennials are out of the work force, the less likely they are to earn middle-class wages in their future careers, yet they will be expected to finance entitlement programs for boomers. Perhaps the boomers don’t recognize this trend, or perhaps they are, as Mr. Druckenmiller suggests, deliberately thieving from younger Americans. Either way, at some point members of generation Y will heed this warning. When they do, let’s hope their indignation generates the political pressure needed for serious reforms.

Indeed.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Until Last Week, GWU Told Applicants Admissions Were Need-Blind. It Wasn’t True.

JOHN TIERNEY: What Would an Ideal College Look Like?

AT AMAZON, hot new releases in Electronics.

Also, it’s not too late to shop the Amazon Halloween Store. Costumes, candy, decorations, and more.

And, today only: 55% Off Rockport Men’s Dress Shoes. I have a pair of those. They’re good shoes, and comfier than my much-more-expensive Church’s handmade English shoes, bought back when I was a highfalutin’ DC lawyer.

STAGNATION: September jobs report shows only 148K net jobs added. “The participation rates remained unchanged, with the civilian labor force participation rate remaining at its 35-year low.”

NARRATIVE: “Hey, remember the fierce moral urgency of invading Syria? What happened to that?”

OLD SPIN: Death Panels are just some crazy thing Sarah Palin made up.

New Spin: Hey, Death Panels Are Actually A Good Thing!

UPDATE: A reader emails about classism in the ObamaCare setup:

With regard to the ACA roll out, one of the things that is striking to me is how different the new insurance enrollees who receive press coverage seem than the majority of uninsured patients with whom I deal as a physician. In general, those highlighted in the press seem well-educated, self-motivated, and well-organized rather than living the very difficult, impoverished, chaotic, and marginalized lives that many of my uninsured patients need to navigate. Perhaps this just reflects PR spin or journalistic biases toward individuals who are more like themselves, but I don’t think so.

Rather, my impression is that the healthcare.gov website (when functional) will serve the needs of people like my neighbor, who is the graduate of an elite business school and who struggled to find insurance in the 18 months he was unemployed after selling his company. However, I just can’t see a lot of my patients having the wherewithal to go online, navigate the long and confusing process, and ultimately sign up and pay for a plan that costs “only” a few hundred dollars per month. Healthier uninsured individuals in whom health issues and costs aren’t in the first tier of their daily challenges seem even less likely to do so.

In short, I suspect that the website and the ACA enrollment plan in general were designed by individuals without a good feel for the needs of the people they intended to serve. Rather it was designed for people fundamentally like themselves (educated, upper middle class) who lack health insurance but lack for much else. Even when the website is fixed, this will be a huge problem.

As I tell my Administrative Law students, poor people don’t deal well with bureaucracies, something you find out over and over again.

TO THE RESCUE: Bloomberg To Make Big Ad Buy For Terry McAuliffe.

GALLUP: Obama’s Job Approval Down 3%. “The 19th quarter, which ran from July 20-Oct. 19, is now the third in a row in which Obama’s job approval rating has declined.” Imagine what it would be if the press covered him the way they’d cover a Republican. . . .

HERE’S A CHEERFUL THOUGHT: What If We Thought of ObamaCare as a New Model for Future Government Programs?

LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE (CONT’D): “The Obama administration is inflating deportation numbers while ordering immigration agents to ignore the law they are sworn to uphold, the head of the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents’ union told Fox News.”

WELL, THAT’S HILLARY’S MAJOR AREA OF EXPERTISE: State Department swept sex scandals under the rug. “Months after whistleblowers accused the State Department of covering up employee sex scandals, most of the cases have been ignored or swept under the rug, critics charge. Records show that staffers were given cushy jobs or allowed to retire, and watchdogs say the feds have hardly bothered to investigate since the shenanigans came to light this past summer.” Rules are for the little people.

I MISS THE GOVT. SHUTDOWN ALREADY: Air Force To Fly Congress To Florida. “Congress will shut down on Thursday, and leaders have told lawmakers the Defense Department will fly them to Florida for the funeral of Rep. C.W. Bill Young, who died late last week.”

JAMES TARANTO: Vaporcare: Obama delivers an infomercial when an accounting is due.

“The Affordable Care Act is not just a website,” President Obama said at the Rose Garden today. “It’s much more.” It’s like a chamois, it’s like a towel, it’s like a sponge.

Another way of putting it is that ObamaCare isn’t just a technical failure. And it isn’t just an economically unsustainable scheme. Now it’s a rhetorical disaster too. Even by the standards of Obama speeches it was terrible. It was so bad, it was the ObamaCare website of political oratory.

Fine, blame us. After all, we called for an Obama speech. But remember that what we called for–it was right there in the subheadline–was an accounting. What he gave us was an infomercial.

All sham, no wow.

MORE OF THAT “MYTHICAL” VOTER FRAUD: Fla. congressman’s ex-chief of staff jailed for voter fraud scheme. “The former chief of staff of a Democratic Florida congressman will serve 90 days in jail after admitting to a voter fraud scheme during the 2012 election. WSVN reports Jeffrey Garcia pled guilty Monday to one felony charge and three misdemeanor charges after admitting he illegally requested hundreds of absentee ballots while he was running the campaign for Rep. Joe Garcia, who he is not related to.”

TIP OF THE ICEBERG: Investor’s Business Daily: ObamaCare Website Troubles Are Just The Beginning.

Related: The Hill: ObamaCare Website Debacle In The Spotlight. “The disastrous rollout of ObamaCare’s insurance exchanges has brought into sharp focus the GOP charge that President Obama is better at campaigning than governing. Republicans have long needled the president as unable to convert adoring crowds and electoral momentum into inside-the-Beltway success, and the failures of the ObamaCare website has given them new ammunition.”

THE HILL: Embattled Sebelius to testify next week on ObamaCare rollout.

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: Conservative group widens IRS lawsuit. “The American Center for Law and Justice, which first sued administration and IRS officials in May, says it is now including a string of other officials from the tax agency to an amended lawsuit. Those officials include Doug Shulman, the former IRS commissioner who was at the helm when the targeting occurred, and William Wilkins, the agency’s chief counsel and one of only two political appointees at the IRS. Sarah Hall Ingram, now a key IRS official helping to implement President Obama’s healthcare law, is also named in the new suit.”

Related: Obama’s fingerprints all over IRS Tea Party scandal.

MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY: Indiana pastor pulls gun on man, stops robbery.

FROM PAUL CARON: LawProf blog traffic rankings.

FORCES OF REACTION: Big Labor threatens to end careers of Democrats who support entitlement reform. “In a shot across the bow of political moderates, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka threatened Monday to use Big Labor’s resources to unseat any Democrat who supports entitlement reform. Trumka made the comments in a speech at the annual meeting International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans in Las Vegas. He was reacting to reports that lawmakers may pursue some type of restraint in the ever-rising costs of programs like Social Security and Medicare.”