DO WE REALLY WANT THAT? Neuroscience will give us what we’ve sought for decades: computers that think like we do.

BLUE STATE BLUES: Connecticut’s Tax Comeuppance – With the rich tapped out, the state may resort to Puerto Rico bonds.

Last month the state Office of Fiscal Analysis reduced its two-year revenue forecast by $1.46 billion. Since January the agency has downgraded income-tax revenue for 2017 and 2018 by $1.1 billion (6%). Sales- and corporate-tax revenue are projected to fall by $385 million (9%) and $67 million (7%), respectively, this year. Pension contributions, which have doubled since 2010, will increase by a third over the next two years. The result: a $5.1 billion deficit and three recent credit downgrades.

According to the fiscal analyst, income-tax collections declined this year for the first time since the recession due to lower earnings at the top. Many wealthy residents decamped for lower-tax states after Mr. Malloy and his Republican predecessor Jodi Rell raised the top individual rate on more than $500,000 of income to 6.99% from 5%. In the past five years 27,400 Connecticut residents, including Ms. Rell, have moved to no-income-tax Florida, and seven of the state’s eight counties have lost population since 2010. Population flight has depressed economic growth—Connecticut’s real GDP has shrunk by 0.1% since 2010—as well as home values and sales-tax revenues.
…
The state treasurer has advocated “credit bonds” securitized by income-tax revenues to reduce the state’s borrowing costs. Investors beware: Puerto Rico tried something similar with its sales tax, and bondholders might not get back a penny.

They’ve run out of other people’s money — unexpectedly.

QUESTION ASKED: Is Feminism to Blame for Obesity Epidemic?

PAUL KRUGMAN ON ELECTION NIGHT: “If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.”

CNBC Today: Stocks close at all-time highs as Street shrugs off jobs report.

FLASHBACK: Weaponized Science.

WHAT YOU’RE MISSING WHEN YOU WORK FROM HOME:

Don’t get me wrong; remote work has real benefits. I shave two hours of commuting off of every workday, time that I can instead spend getting work done. Early in my telecommuting career, in fact, I had the following conversation with a manager who wanted me to spend more time at the office.

“I’ll be happy to. But I’m already working more than 12 hours a day, so my commute is going to have to come out of my work output, not my personal time.” (Pause) “What do you want me to do?”

“Enjoy your home office.”

These benefits are obvious. And thus, as far back as the science-fiction stories of the 1950s, people have been predicting that telecommunications would one day take the place of face time and cubicles. Yet these expectations have been steadily disappointed by reality. It turns out that some kinds of information travel very well by wire, but others get lost in transmission. It also turns out that those kinds of information are often vital to a company’s work.

To understand why, it may help to go back to the theory of the firm, and a question that economists have struggled with: Why do companies exist? Why don’t we all act as free agents, bidding our services out in the marketplace, rather than binding ourselves into subordinate relationships with larger entities?

There are a lot of answers to that question, but one of the biggest ones, provided by the eminent economist Ronald Coase, is “transaction costs.”

Yes. Though working in an office means you’re under the eye of HR, which is a transaction cost all its own.

WE MAY NEVER KNOW: Family of Ohio State Terror Jihadist ‘Mystified’ Over What Drove Him to Attack.

PROF. JACOBSON: How can Ruth Bader Ginsburg participate in Travel Order case after her *campaign* statements about Trump?

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Teenager Gets Into Yale With Essay About Papa John’s Pizza, Then Chooses Auburn.

But as usual, it’s IowaHawk who has the best take:

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THE CON-GAME OF “GENDER STUDIES:” Do penises cause climate change? Discuss: The academic hoax that shows how generations of kids are paying good money to study pure, unmitigated, mind-warping drivel.

CALIFORNIA: Knowingly exposing others to HIV should no longer be a felony, state Senate says. “The state Senate on Wednesday voted to no longer make it a felony for someone infected with HIV to knowingly expose others to the disease by having unprotected sex without telling his or her partner about the infection. The crime would be downgraded to a misdemeanor, and the bill would also apply to people who donate blood or semen without telling the blood or semen bank that they have acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS, or have tested positive for human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, the precursor to AIDS.”

SPYING: Lindsey Graham: I Have Reason to Believe I Was Surveilled, and Maybe Unmasked, by the Obama Administration. “I hear that Jake Tapper’s non-coverage of this is very in-depth and balanced.”

CONRAD BLACK: The Anti-Trump Tide Recedes. Perhaps Trump Derangement Syndrome is yielding Trump Derangement Fatigue. But I’m not so sure the Dems won’t come back and double down on a losing strategy.

I’M OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER WHEN MENTIONING VALERIE PLAME — WHO WAS NEITHER UNDERCOVER NOR AN AGENT — WAS TREASON OF THE FIRST ORDER: New York Times defends decision to identify undercover CIA agent.

The New York Times on Friday published the name of what is believed to be an undercover CIA agent leading U.S. operations related to Iran, and defended the move by saying the agent’s name had been published before.

The report said that Michael D’Andrea was recently named as the chief of Iran operations and described him as having the most responsibility in “weakening al Qaeda.”

Major publications typically do not reveal the identities of undercover agents, but the Times reasoned that it was fair to name D’Andrea because “his identity was previously published in news reports, and he is leading an important new administration initiative against Iran.”

The conservative Federalist website took exception with the second half of that. “So the Times has apparently made it the newspaper’s mission to make the agency’s work much more difficult and far more dangerous by publicly identifying the man in charge of its covert operations in the Persian country,” the group said.

The rules are always different this time.

KURT SCHLICHTER’S INDIAN COUNTRY gets a strong review from Don Surber.

PERHAPS IT’S TIME TO WRITE THE ACCREDITORS: Evergreen State faculty demand punishment of white professor who refused to leave on anti-white day.

THE PHOTO SCREAMS “OLD WHITE WOMEN.” Roll Call: EMILY’s List Backs First House Challenger of 2018 Cycle.

IT’S THE DEMOGRAPHY, STUPID: “The number of babies born in Japan fell below 1 million in 2016 for the first time since records began in the 19th century, underscoring the demographic challenges facing the nation with an aging and declining population.”

(Classical reference in headline.)

HMM: Mark Green Will Not Resume Campaign for Tennessee Governor.

Green withdrew his nomination for Army secretary in May due to controversy over his past comments about LGBT and Muslim Americans. He told The Tennessee Star this week that he withdrew his name from consideration because a Democratic senator promised to use a procedural “blackball” to prevent Green’s nomination from moving to a vote.

His decision to bow out of Tennessee’s gubernatorial race comes as speculation mounts that House Budget Committee Chairwoman Diane Black (R-Tenn.) is eyeing a run for the state’s governor’s mansion.

A lot of people in Tennessee think the nomination was intended to take him out of play. If so, it worked!

Some people also tell me it’s Diane Black’s if she wants it. I’m not so sure. She doesn’t have a lot of presence in this part of the state. Knoxville businessman Randy Boyd is running, and campaigning basically as a continuation of the Haslam era.

GEORGE KORDA: Finding rationality in a politically gelatinous world? Not a prayer.

Donald Trump becoming POTUS has created a new stratum of political irrationality among those appalled by his victory.

Before Election Day, when Clinton and her supporters were confident of winning, Trump’s attitude toward the outcome was big news. Would he and his backers accept the results? Clinton said of Trump, “He became the first person, Republican or Democrat, who refused to say that he would respect the results of this election. Now, that is a direct threat to our democracy.”

With Trump’s victory respect among many for the election results disappeared faster than a politician’s promise. On social media, in demonstrations, and in other ways never-Trumpers call themselves the “resistance,” declaring Trump is “Not My President,” and speculate, suggest, or insist he resign, be impeached, or that there should be a do-over election.

Many of these partisans – as well as Democrats in Washington’s halls of power – a few short months earlier insisted that it’s unpatriotic to disrespect a president, and if someone hopes a president fails they hope America fails. That’s when in Barack Obama they had a president they liked.

Those high-minded principles have in many quarters transitioned to it being unpatriotic to not disrespect Trump, and pulling for him to succeed means wanting America to fail.

Those are rational reversals only if principles depend on the politics of the moment. Speaking of irrationality, take Trump, Clinton campaign and former FBI Director James Comey, please.

Indeed.

BILL MAHER’S N-WORD DRAWS OUTRAGE: ‘I’M A HOUSE N—ER:’

The former “Politically Incorrect” host proved he’s still politically incorrect when Republican Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse jokingly invited him to “work in the fields.”

“Senator, I’m a house n—-a,” Maher said, immediately adding: “It’s a joke.”

Many didn’t take it that way. “He said ‘n—er’ with a HARD ASS Rrrrrrrrrruh, so that makes this extra offensive,” said The Root writer Monique Judge, who added: “His show needs to be canceled.”

Griffin, who was forced to apologize this week after widespread outrage over images of her with a fake decapitated head of President Trump, has been a real-time guest before.

Maher was notably silent on her situation — but his egregious N-word helped her as nothing else could have. At least for a night, it drew national outrage toward him, instead of her.

Ironically, Sasse was on the show to promote his new book, The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance.

The N-bomb by Time-Warner-CNN-HBO spokesman Maher, age 61 going on 12, proves Sasse’s timing couldn’t be more apropos.

“TWITTER HAS A REMARKABLE POWER TO MAKE WELL-CREDENTIALED PEOPLE LOOK LIKE FOOLS:” Six Ways Harvard’s Joyce Chaplin Is Wrong About the Creation of the U.S.

Credentialed-but-not-educated, to coin an Insta-leitmotif. Fortunately, Ted Cruz helpfully explains early American history to the James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History at Harvard University in 140 easy to follow characters.