MICKEY KAUS: 3 Predictions I Couldn’t Make If I Had An Editor!

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Students Seeking Skills, Not Degrees. “Schools are responding to these students by creating specialized programs, including short-term programs to help the unemployed return to the workforce with updated skills. Some colleges may even offer certificates, though the skills learned will probably be more valuable than the credential.”

AT AMAZON, new releases in Video Games.

Also in Movies & TV.

HE DIDN’T QUALIFY FOR THE DAVID GREGORY EXEMPTION: Replica Bullets, Dud Shell Earn Weapons Conviction For Former Washington Man. “The Judge and Prosecutor didn’t know what a muzzleloader is.”

NEPOTISM: “The fact that Harry Reid’s political and influence operation includes his five children has been established for some time.”

WELL, IT ALREADY APPEARS TO BE BEYOND REPAIR: Is ObamaCare Beyond Repeal?

If it were impossible to ever cut off an expensive entitlement that goes to the middle class, TennCare would never have been cut.

True, but Tennessee is more civilized and sensible than many places.

SMART DIPLOMACY^TM‘S FRUIT: The World’s Post-Crimea Power Blocs, Mapped.

KNOW YOUR PLACE, PEASANT! Man ordered to take down police officer’s name and picture from Internet. The officer’s name is Jerry Bledsoe. Here’s the video. Officer Bledsoe, meet the Streisand Effect. It’s also disgraceful that a judge — in this case, one Scott T. Horman — would issue such an order.

THIS IS ONLY NEWS TO PEOPLE WHO WEREN’T PAYING ATTENTION: How You, I and Everyone Got the Top 1 Percent All Wrong.

For years, I’ve been making the same embarrassing mistake about U.S. economic inequality. Sorry.

I’ve written, over and over, that the most important divide in our wealth disparity was between the 1 percent and the 99 percent. For example, when I compared the evolution in investment income since the late 1970s, I often imagined a graph like this from the Economic Policy Institute, showing the 1 percent flying away from the rest of the country.

It turns out that that graph is somewhat misleading. It makes it look like the 1 percent is a group of similar households accelerating from the rest of the economy, holding hands, in unison. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Yeah, well, it’s a graph from the Economic Policy Institute. Duh.

It turns out that wealth inequality isn’t about the 1 percent v. the 99 percent at all. It’s about the 0.1 percent v. the 99.9 percent (or, really, the 0.01 percent vs. the 99.99 percent, if you like). Long-story-short is that this group, comprised mostly of bankers and CEOs, is riding the stock market to pick up extraordinary investment income. And it’s this investment income, rather than ordinary earned income, that’s creating this extraordinary wealth gap.

The 0.1 percent isn’t the same group of people every year. There’s considerable churn at the tippy-top. For example, consider the “Fortunate 400,” the IRS’s annual list of the 400 richest tax returns in the country. Between 1992 and 2008, 3,672 different taxpayers appeared on the Fortunate 400 list. Just one percent of the Fortunate 400—four households—appeared on the list all 17 years.

Now there’s your real 1 percent.

Now why would the Economic Policy Institute — and all the other folks peddling this dumb “one percent” lie — want to mislead us about that?

BOSTON GLOBE: Documents: How the Aaron Swartz case unfolded.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Fish Instead of People, Ideologies without Consequences. Oh, there are consequences. Just not for the ideologues.

Quoth Hanson: “There is a great sickness in California, home of the greatest number of American billionaires and poor people, land of the highest taxes and about the worst schools and roads in the nation. The illness is a new secular religion far more zealous and intolerant than the pre-Reformation zealotry of the Church. Modern elite liberalism is based on the simple creed that one’s affluence and education, one’s coolness and zip code, should shield him from the consequences of one’s bankrupt thoughts that he inflicts on others. We are a state run by dead souls who square the circle of their own privilege, who seek meaning in rather selfish lives, always at someone else’s expense. It is that simple — that pernicious.”

IS CALIFORNIA OVERDUE FOR A BIG EARTHQUAKE?

Thoughts on earthquake preparation, here. Plus, an earthquake preparedness list. But everyone, everywhere, should be prepared for disasters.

THE ATLANTIC: The NRA Wins By Countering Shame With Persuasion. I’m surprised that people on the right looking for ways to counter lefty messaging don’t take more lessons from the biggest victory over lefty messaging in the past century.

TRADITIONAL ACADEMIA IS ONE OF OBAMA’S BIGGEST SOURCES OF SUPPORT AND DONATIONS. ONLINE EDUCATION IS A COMPETITOR: Department of Education Throws Up A Roadblock to Online Education. “The Department of Education is revisiting a fight it lost in 2012: to make states authorize every distance education provider that enrolls students within their borders. Ever since a federal judge struck down this requirement on procedural grounds, states have been able to exempt online programs from the authorization process as long as it’s accredited somewhere else.”

RACIAL POLITICS AND THE DEMOCRATS: What That Ebony Mag-RNC Thing Was Really About.

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: Renegade Government Agency Silences Political Opponents.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: How Law Schools Goose Their U.S. News Ranking by Hiring Their Graduates.

ELIANA JOHNSON: Inside The Koch-Funded Ads That Are Giving Dems Fits.

SMART DIPLOMACY: Is Obama pivot to Asia on hold? Watch what China does as Putin keeps attention pinned to Ukraine.

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: The price of a product is a function of the demand for it — or should be.

WELL, WE CAN’T ALL HAVE INSTAVISION’S AUDIENCE: Ratings may sink Ronan Farrow’s show on MSNBC: ‘Ronan Farrow Daily’ came in 708th in the Nielsens on Wednesday, and a network source says he ‘sort of stinks on TV.’

But he won an award after three days!

WELL, THERE’S AT LEAST ONE OF THOSE THINGS THAT KRUGMAN DOESN’T PRACTICE: Krugman and Mankiw Debate Optimal Tax Theory, Economic Models, and Civility.

KNOW YOUR PLACE, PEASANT: Capitol ‘Kerfuffle’: Reporter Detained for Asking Question. “Capitol Police briefly detained a reporter on Friday, after the journalist lodged a question at a high-ranking administration official being escorted through the hallway.”

If I were an editor in DC, anyone who hassled one of my reporters would become the focus of a special investigative unit organized for just that function.

DEBRA SAUNDERS ON LELAND YEE: Whom do you trust: ‘Shrimp Boy,’ the FBI or neither? “Were the feds snowed, just as Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Mayor Ed Lee and Assemblyman Tom Ammiano were snowed, when they hailed Chow for leaving a life of crime and turning himself around? Or did they know their onetime asset was a liability but, for some dubious reason, think they could control him? Were the feds uninterested in pursuing Chow unless an investigation – in this case a five-year undercover operation – netted a high-profile arrest? Enter Yee, with his hand out. . . . Like Calderon, Yee enjoys the presumption of innocence. Still, it doesn’t look good when more than 10 percent of the Senate Democratic caucus is looking at prison time. The next time you hear a California Democrat extol “public service,” hold onto your wallet.”

REGULATORS WILL PROTECT YOU FROM EVIL CAPITALISTS: Regulators Twice Failed to Open GM Probes: Internal Email at Agency Asked Why Airbags Weren’t Deploying.