COOKING SIMPLY IS NOT CHEAP:

I don’t need to tell you that food has fashions. Remember when every restaurant with any ambition had a spinach salad with pecans, goat cheese and some sort of onion shaving? That’s now passé even in its last refuge, the twee cafes of Rust Belt suburbs. Or when truffles seemed to sprout from menus like, er, mushrooms, only to disappear almost as quickly, presumably off to hibernate in some subterranean darkness?

We are currently living through what I like to call the salted caramel inquisition, with every perfectly law-abiding caramelized dish in the land, however perfect in its simple sweetness, assaulted and forcibly converted to its more aggressive modern version.

For the last 5 to 10 years, the most notable fashion has been for the complex, spicy and exotic. Foodies exchange worried tips for storing the “basic” spices now grown too numerous for any sort of conventional cupboard. Bitter supertasters exchange angry polemics on the snobs who don’t seem to realize that those of us with less blunted palates might not want every alcoholic beverage well fortified with hops, Campari and an extra-strong helping of Angosturas. Those whose sensitive or aging gastrointestinal tracts cannot cope with all that glorious capsaicin sigh, and order the roasted chicken. Again.

History is reaction and counterreaction. The pendulum is swinging back, as gravity says it must, and I detect a new movement afoot: KISS. Which means, yes: Keep it simple, stupid. And I have to say, I like it.

But women and minorities will be hardest hit.

GARLAND UPDATE: Another “Known Wolf” Attack.

Related: Richard Fernandez: Obama’s Legacy: No One Is Safe.

ANOTHER DEMOCRATIC PARTY PROSECUTOR ABUSING HIS POWER AGAINST A REPUBLICAN: Lawsuit spells out ‘nightmare’ for California man accused without evidence.

MICHAEL TOTTTEN: The Iranian Leader’s Bizarre Twitter Feed.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN IS ON AL SHARPTON’S LATEST LOUSY IDEA: Want a lawless police force? Federalize it. Accountability comes from having law enforcement under multiple umbrellas.

NICK GILLESPIE: Free Speech: Never Give In To The Thug’s Veto. “The future must belong to those who recognize a categorical difference between free expression and violent reprisals. The future must belong to those who affirm speech over silence and freedom over fear, regardless of who is speaking and who is offended.”

Meanwhile, Stephen Green notes that the New York Times’ Liam Stack tries to make it sound like Pam Geller is the crazy one — not the Muslim terrorists who wanted to shoot up her art show. Or course, as someone noted last night, it’s Texas, so even the art shows will probably have you outgunned.

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: IRS Approved Clinton Foundation And Scientology, But Targeted Tea Party. “Will there be an IRS investigation of the Clinton Foundation? Even suggesting it sounds laughable, for few can stand up to the Clintons, let alone to a Democratic administration. Besides, the IRS Exempt Organizations Division used to be run by Lois Lerner, and it isn’t clear how much has changed.”

SALENA ZITO: A Disturbing Intersection for America.

The economic and political turbulence of the past decade is jarringly similar to the Panic of 1893 and the unsettling elections of 1884 to 1896. Those were eras when extraordinary wealth was created for the elites, and when ferociously competitive elections and ineffectual, corrupt government collided with an agitated, cynical electorate.

Progressives of that previous era — very different from our modern liberal brand — were born of economic dislocation that pressured the establishment, not unlike what is happening today.

In each era, both parties promised reform but didn’t deliver.

Consider Baltimore, ruled by Democrat machine politics for decades. What does the city have to show for that?

A jarring 37 percent unemployment rate for black men ages 20 to 24, a statistic that should be completely unacceptable in any American city.

Disruption and energy should be felt in Baltimore’s ballot boxes, not on its streets as a matter of violent protest and thuggery. Its communities should not allow themselves to be used to keep a political machine in power but then to be promptly forgotten when it comes to governing. . . .

It used to be that both blue-collar and white-collar workers held stable jobs, and living standards for all social classes steadily rose. That model has buckled and bowed until it no longer exists, and people are getting left behind at a staggering rate.

The gap between all things big (government, business, banks), the American people, and their political leaders is greater today than at any time since our little quarrel with England in the 1770s.

We are over-regulated, forgotten and over-taxed by a national capital that has become the Versailles of its time — the seat of not only political power but of unprecedented wealth, with a desire to emulate Hollywood rather than the regular people who have carried the burden of building and protecting that pretentious city.

Nothing brought that image into perspective better than watching a week ago as the cable-news networks covered their own press staffers attending the White House Correspondents Dinner with President Obama, the cream of Hollywood and selected members of Congress — while rioting young men stormed the city of Baltimore.

It was an unsightly, disturbing intersection for America.

We have the worst political class in American history.

JOEL KOTKIN: America’s Cities Mirror Baltimore’s Woes.

Certainly Sandtown-Winchester—where Freddie Gray, whose death sparked the riots, grew up—fits this mode. As the liberal Think Progress website explains, more than half of that neighborhood’s people between the ages of 16 and 64 are out of work and the unemployment rate is double that for the rest of the city. Median income is below the poverty line for a family of four, and nearly a third of families live in poverty. About a quarter to a third of the buildings are vacant, compared to 5 percent in the city as a whole.

Yet the people in these neighborhoods do not represent the majority of black America. Besides the gap between blacks and whites, there is also a growing one among African-Americans themselves. This is painfully obvious in the Baltimore region which, extending to the Washington, D.C., suburbs, has some of the highest black wages and homeownership rates of any of the county, and ranks among the best places for African-Americans in a new study I co-authored for the Center for Opportunity Urbanism.

In fact, five of the ten wealthiest black communities in America are in Maryland. Needless to say, residents in those towns are not rioting. There is an increasingly enormous gap between entrenched poor communities, such as those in Baltimore, and a rapidly expanding black suburban population. Barely half of the 775,000 African-Americans in the Baltimore metropolitan region live in the city, and those outside do far better than inside the city limits. In the last decade, suburban Baltimore County added160,000 blacks, far more than moved into the city (PDF). The black suburbanites not only make more money than their urban counterparts but their life expectancy (PDF) is at least eight years longer.

These trends can be seen nationwide.

Flee to the suburbs for the same reason white people did — to escape entrenched, corrupt urban political machines.

WELL, I GUESS IT’S TOO LATE NOW. MIGHT AS WELL BUY THAT SUV I’VE HAD MY EYE ON: Eight Years Ago Today: UN Scientists Say We Have Only Eight Years Left To Stop Global Warming.

On the other hand, maybe we managed to bring things under control just in time: Seven years after former US Vice-President Al Gore’s warning, Arctic ice cap has expanded for second year in row.

Related: Ed Driscoll: Snowfalls Are Now Just a Thing of the Past.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Washington Post: The Clintons, a luxury jet and their $100 million donor.

ROSS DOUTHAT: Our Police Union Problem. All public employee unions should be banned. But people who carry guns for a living especially shouldn’t be unionized.

IT’S ALWAYS NICE TO MAKE TWITCHY. And, really, NPR should be ashamed of that piece, and its dishonest headline, which was corrected to another that was . . . still wrong.

TO BE FAIR, HE’S THAT WAY ON MOST STUFF: Obama is all talk on press freedom, say many critics.

In advance of World Press Freedom Day on Sunday, President Obama took other nations to task for being openly hostile towards reporters, accusing them of squashing the free flow of information.

First Amendment advocates and White House reporters counter that Obama should perhaps first look in the mirror.

As he admonished foreign governments for suppressing the fourth estate, the United States ranked 49th (down three places from the year before) on the 2015 World Press Freedom Index, a list compiled by Reporters Without Borders.

Obama holds the distinction of prosecuting more journalists and whistle-blowers in leak investigations than any of his predecessors. It is that track record that has earned him comparisons with President Richard Nixon in media circles.

Yet, the president still insists that his administration is the most transparent in history, a model for other nations.

Yes, well, he engages in a lot of self-praise, too.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: US advisers in Iraq settle into life, daily work as part of Inherent Resolve.

Comments one observer: “It’s almost like we never left.”

Well, except that we did leave, creating a vacuum that ISIS filled. And with our once-extensive intelligence networks shut down, we didn’t even know about it until it was too late to nip it in the bud. But aside from that, sure.