RICHARD EPSTEIN: How Democrats Stifle Labor Markets.

TACKLING THE IMPORTANT ISSUES: Here’s a PHENOMENAL Way to Explain Donald Trump to Your Kids…Dr. Seuss Style.

ASHE SCHOW: Hillary Clinton Has Nowhere To Go But Down: The former first lady has a habit of being less popular the more she’s seen.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 845.

REFORM YES, CHANGE NO: Defying the EU the Italian Way.

Laws are passed, prime ministers take bows for the camera, and then…nothing.
Why? For one thing, even after parliament passes a bill and the president signs it into law, it isn’t quite law yet. The bureaucrats still have to issue an implementation decree that defines how, exactly, the law will be carried out. This can take months, years, even forever—and by the time the implementation protocols emerge from the bowels of the bureaucracy, they have often been amended and weakened to the point that they change little or nothing.

And the bureaucrats have an easy time of it; Italian reform laws tend to be thought through poorly and drafted poorly, and they are then amended in a complicated legislative process that usually both weakens the intent of the law and complicates its execution. All of that provides plenty of grounds for the bureaucrats to “interpret” what’s left into something bland and ineffective.

The second big reason is that the Italian state is weak—it is not very good at making people do what they don’t want to do, especially in the South. After all, the Mafia and other organized crime associations have been defying governments since the Middle Ages. They are still at it today, and Italy is a prime case. The politicians and even the bureaucrats in far away Rome may have decreed reforms, say, in the trash hauling business, but what matters much, much more to the officials on the ground in South Italy is what Tony Soprano thinks about the reforms.

Beyond that, Italy has far too many local governments. It has twice as many municipalities and towns, for example, as the much larger and more populous United States. The central government doesn’t have enough inspectors and overseers to keep them all in line, and even if it did, the inspectors and the overseers would often sympathize more with their fellow bureaucrats than with the grandstanding politicians in parliament. Beyond that, firing a tenured civil servant in Italy is virtually impossible, meaning that bureaucrats can pretty much run their offices to suit themselves.

Italy is far more sophisticated and clever, that is, than the hot-headed Greeks. Syriza is a party of naifs who made the mistake of attacking Germany and Brussels head-on. Italy is savvier than that: it knows how to say “yes” and look busy while doing little or nothing. Italy has a long history of using that strategy. The Goths conquered Rome and did a lot of damage—but they didn’t change Italy much. German emperors strutted through the halls of Italy’s palaces and issued decrees to both princes and popes—and Italy kept on being Italian all the same.

Perhaps we Americans should deal with our own ruling class the same way.

GLAD I PUT IN A GENERATOR, I GUESS: Electric Grid Reliability Fears Remain in Wake of Climate Rule.

COMMIES GONNA COMMIE: How Hugo Chavez Trashed Latin America’s Richest Economy. Note, however, that he left his daughter the richest person in Venezuela. That’s “socialist equality” for you!

AT AMAZON, fresh deals on bestselling products, updated every hour.

Also, coupons galore in Grocery & Gourmet Food.

Plus, Kindle Daily Deals.

And, Today’s Featured Digital Deal. The deals are brand new every day, so browse and save!

TIME TO DEFUSE CAMPUS RAPE HYSTERIA: Serial predator in your campus closet? Not likely: Research showing serial predators commit most campus rape includes just 1 flimsy study.

The truth is that there is no campus rape “crisis.” Instead, rape rates on campus are plummeting, just as they are everywhere else. What there is instead is a war on male students, and a power grab by campus educrats.

TODAY IN IMMIGRATION CRISIS NEWS: Hungary halts rail traffic in bid to stop migrants.

ONE TAKEAWAY FROM LAST NIGHT’S HILLARY EMAIL RELEASE:

THE FEDS DIDN’T MAKE HER TREAT AN ENTIRE FRATERNITY AS GUILTY BASED ON A FALSE ACCUSATION AGAINST A FEW MEMBERS, OR LEAD A LYNCH MOB AGAINST IT. U.Va. president blames feds for response to Rolling Stone debacle.

University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan blamed federal privacy regulations for her school’s failure to debunk the Rolling Stone gang-rape story.

Those regulations did not stop her from treating innocent people as rapists, however.

Sullivan, speaking to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, said the school couldn’t counter the Rolling Stone article about a now discredited accusation of a brutal gang rape because of a law known as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

“The university couldn’t say it wasn’t true because of FERPA,” said Sullivan, referring to federal student privacy law. “And the only reason I can say it to you now is because there’s a police chief’s report, which is not FERPA-protected.”

But in the wake of the Rolling Stone hoax, Sullivan, despite now admitting the school knew all along that the claims were false, spent little time suggesting evidence be collected before punishment meted out. Two days after the article was published, the Inter-Fraternity Council decided to suspend social activities for one weekend. Sullivan immediately expanded that suspension to two months, and only allowed fraternities and sororities to resume social activities after signing new agreements with the university.

Sullivan told the Times-Dispatch that universities should not “run roughshod over student privacy,” but that schools “are put into a position in which we cannot defend ourselves.”

Sullivan did try to defend her school – by placing blame on the fraternities when she and her administration had access to the reports made by the Rolling Stone accuser, Jackie, that did not line up with the magazine article.

Sullivan also said that the rector who apologized to Jackie during a board meeting did so due to “emotion” and “pressure.”

Her behavior has been disgraceful, a complete breach of the duty of fairness she owes to all students, even fraternity guys accused (falsely) of rape. She should resign — or be fired.

WAPO: Glenn Beck got 20,000 people to turn out for an ‘All Lives Matter’ rally. But the national media “was largely absent.”

WAYNE W. DYER HAS DIED. The king of ’70s self-help, in many ways. I read his Pulling Your Own Strings in college — my psychologist-stepmother liked it — and as I recall it was actually quite good.

IF YOU THINK KANYE’S GOT NO CHANCE, THEN YOU HAVEN’T BEEN PAYING ATTENTION FOR THE LAST EIGHT YEARS. A 24-year-old black Republican has launched a ‘Ready for Kanye’ PAC.

On Sunday night, Kanye West got a five-year jump on the next presidential election. “I have decided in 2020 to run for president,” he said, after accepting a lifetime achievement prize at the MTV Video Music Awards. “It ain’t about me, it’s about new ideas, bro, new ideas. People with ideas, people who believe in truth.”

West, at 38, is both old enough to meet the constitutional requirements of the presidency, and slightly young to be receiving recognition for “lifetime achievement.” His announcement moved Eugene Craig, a black Republican activist from Maryland, to create a new PAC: Ready for Kanye.

“If Mr. West is to seek the presidency in 2020, and if there is no incumbent Republican president, I would absolutely encourage him to run,” said Craig, 24, who has already created a Facebook group for the cause. “I think he will bring an interesting dialogue to our party, and he’ll find a lot of people who want that dialogue. He’s pointed out the crippling racial disparities in the law and the economy. He’s talked about the pipeline of private prisons. He’s a genuine entrepreneur. Oh, not to mention that his first big single was ‘Jesus Walks.'”

Craig also runs the Young Minority Republicans Fund, but said his filing was totally separate from his work for Maryland’s GOP. He was a fan on a mission. His favorite Kanye album was My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy; his favorite Kanye song was “Never Let You Down.” And his favorite cause was introducing the Republican Party to skeptics.

Well, this will get some attention.

DAVID SOLWAY SPOTS NINE SIGNS OF THE IMPENDING AMERICAN COLLAPSE. Nonsense — as President Obama and/or legendary Faber College ROTC man Chip Diller would calmly declare, remain calm, all is well!

THE DIOGENES FACTOR: WILL SUCCESS SPOIL BEN CARSON? As Roger Simon writes, “The country, as we know from the immense success of Trump, is fed up with the political class:”

Diogenes of Sinope, it will be recalled, was the ascetic ancient Greek philosopher famed for spending his life, or a good part of it, looking for an honest man. Carson, at least to some degree, is the man Diogenes, and a significant part of today’s Republican electorate, was and is searching for.  Given the other side has as its leading candidate someone who is quite literally the poster child for total political and ethical dishonesty, with a complaisant media doing cartwheels to ignore her behavior, it’s no wonder such a person as Carson is attractive.  And this is not even counting the serial prevarications of the incumbent, from “you can keep your doctor” to we will have “anytime, anywhere” inspections of Iran, among a host of others.  Most of us are up to our eyes in lies and are in desperate search, like Diogenes, of an “honest man.”

Read the whole thing.

HEADLINE OF THE DAY: Lindsey Graham Questions New Hampshire Man’s Virility.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: “Yes, ‘Hillary Clinton Really Is Coming For Your Guns,’ the Daily Beast’s Jackie Kucinich reported Monday. ‘Clinton has been pushing to curb firearms for decades,’ added the subheadline.”

Keep that in mind, when, if like Kerry in 2004 and Obama in 2008, Clinton tries to pretend she’s pro-Second Amendment.

Perhaps someone might ask her point blank if she’s up for amending the Constitution. As Charles Cooke wrote last week in his “Open Rant Aimed at Those Who Would Repeal the Second Amendment:”

And remember, you can’t half-ass it this time. You’re not going out there to tell these people that you want “reform” or that “enough is enough.” You’re going there to solicit their support for removing one of the articles within the Bill of Rights. Make no mistake: It’ll be unpleasant strolling into Pittsburgh or Youngstown or Pueblo and telling blue-collar Democrat after blue-collar Democrat that he only has his guns because he’s not as well endowed as he’d like to be. It’ll be tough explaining to suburban families that their established conception of American liberty is wrong. You might even suffer at the polls because of it. But that’s what it’s going to take. So do it. Start now. Off you go.

How ‘bout it, Hillary?

“THE SILENT MAJORITY:” “I’ve suggested before that 2016 is beginning to look more and more like 1968,” Bill Kristol writes at the Weekly Standard. “This is true in terms of the presidential contests—on the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders is Eugene McCarthy, Hillary Clinton is Lyndon Johnson, Joe Biden will be Hubert Humphrey, and (the big question!) Elizabeth Warren could be Bobby Kennedy; and on the Republican side, where Donald Trump is ‘a kind of cartoon version of Richard Nixon.’”

Nixon won in ’68 in part by promoting himself as the “law & order” candidate, just as Trump is doing on the issue of illegal immigration. But the hangover from Johnson’s Great Society era and the left’s concomitant love of “Radical Chic” terrorism and economic and environmental Malthusianism lasted throughout the rest of the following decade, culminating in Carter’s infamous “Malaise” era.

Assuming a candidate with an (R) after his or her name wins next year, the hangover from the Obama era will be tremendous – as with the ‘70s, so will the punitive anger of the American left; don’t expect it to be “Morning in America” again for quite some time.

RELATED: “It’s GOP’s Race to Lose,” Ron Radosh writes. “Anything can happen, but Democratic prospects are weak no matter the candidate.”

C’mon – if anybody can blow it in 2016, it’s the Stupid Party.

WHY DOES THE EPA HATE NATIVE AMERICANS? Navajo Nation preps lawsuit against EPA over mine spill.

The Navajo Nation is preparing for a legal battle against President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The tribe contends that the EPA’s Aug. 5 accident in Colorado, which made national headlines after turning portions of the Animas River bright yellow, also leaked hazardous substances into the San Juan River — one of the Navajo Nation’s primary water sources.

Now, they’ve hired law firm Hueston Hennigan LLP to represent them in what some are predicting could be a multibillion-dollar lawsuit expected to be filed in the coming weeks, as lawmakers on Capitol Hill prepare for a round of hearings examining the issue.

And heading their legal team is powerhouse attorney John Hueston, who was the lead prosecutor in the 2006 case against former Enron executives Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, who were found guilty of fraud and conspiracy.

Russell Begaye — president of Navajo Nation, which totals roughly 300,000 people — also sent a letter to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) officials on Monday, calling on them to appoint a FEMA official to coordinate their efforts in the response to the spill.

“This expansion into Navajo lands via the San Juan River has critically impacted the River and its dependent ecosystems including wildlife, fish populations, and the land base adjacent to the River,” Begaye wrote in the letter, first obtained by The Hill.

He said that “the nature of this toxic chemical spill will acutely and chronically impact the River and dependent ecosystem if immediate and effective corrective actions and remedies are not taken.”

Navajo Nation Attorney General Ethel Branch said in a statement that the hazardous-material spill “has been devastating to our culture and economy, as well as to the peace of mind of our people.

If an Evil Corporation had done this, Obama would be talking about putting his boot on their neck.

A FRIEND’S BOOK: Sword of Arelion.

SO, WHAT IS ESPN’S PERSPECTIVE: ESPN punished Schilling for telling truth about Nazis and extremist Muslims.

WHO IS TAKING THEM? ‘Hillary for Prison’ signs keep getting stolen in the Hamptons.