ON THE INTERNET, INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE. SO DO CONVICTS. South Dakota Becomes First State with Online Pardon Application.

GOLDEN STATE BLUES: How some Southern California drug rehab centers exploit addiction.

His hair is dirty and matted. His voice is raspy. And on this sunny Tuesday, Solomon is dragging around a bag full of cans and bottles that he hopes to sell to the RePlanet Recycling station behind the Ralph’s in San Clemente.

He wants to raise $20 so he can get high one last time before he goes into rehab.

As a kid, Solomon was taught not to steal or use drugs. But today, at 28, he’s grown up to become a shoplifter and a junkie, addicted to heroin and meth and benzodiazepines, one of the hardest drugs to kick.

Those aren’t the only contradictions in Solomon’s life.

As broke as he is, Solomon is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Chronic drug users like Solomon are commodities, exploited by a growing world of drug and alcohol rehab operators who put profit ahead of patient care. Everything from the opioid epidemic and Obamacare to prison realignment and legal loopholes has created conditions in which unethical operators can flourish, using addicts to bilk insurance companies and the public out of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Though many legitimate centers remain, critics and long-time insiders say a darker version of the industry is emerging, built around an illicit world of patient recruiters, fraud-driven clinics and drug-testing mills.

Southern California, where the implementation of Obamacare makes it easy for recent arrivals to sign on for insurance, is on the front line of the conflict.

Read the whole thing, if you can.

JEFF REYNOLDS: Tom Coburn Says Millennials Must Embrace a Convention of States.. “We’re now up to $124 trillion in unfunded liabilities, which, over the next 50 years, the major portion of that is going to have to be paid back. Guess who’s going to have to pay that back? Millennials. That’s $30,000 per year per millennial.”

The bright side, which you can see if you squint just right, is Millennials’ lowered income expectations — they won’t pay those taxes on income they’ll never earn.

HAVE YOU MET MISS ROSY SCENARIO? Mnuchin Comments On Trump’s “Historic” Budget Proposal: “It Will Prevent Taxpayer Bailouts”

In a statement issued moments ago discussing Trump’s proposed, if completely impossible, budget proposal, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that Trump’s “budget will achieve savings through reforms that prevent taxpayer bailouts and reverse burdensome regulations that have been harmful to small businesses and American workers.” Translation: taxpayer bailouts are imminent, especially now that the current economic cycle is the 3rd longest of all time and a recession grows likelier with every passing day.

Mnuchin also said that Trump’s proposed initiatives “coupled with comprehensive tax reform and other key priorities, will move America one step closer to sustained economic growth of 3 percent or higher.”

While we will clearly take the under, what we find most amazing about Trump’s budget proposal, is that it does not anticipated a recession until 2027. That would imply 18 years of economic growth since the 2009 recession, without a single contraction! Good luck with that.

That does seem a little optimistic.

THE ANGEL OF MANCHESTER: Paula Robinson shepherded 50 terrified teenagers to safety and then posted her mobile number on social media so worried parents could contact her.

DAVID FRUM: Take a moment while mourning Manchester dead to remember Trump’s intel leak.

You stay classy, David.

ANDREW MCCARTHY: Condemning Manchester Terrorist Murder of Children … in the Company of Abbas.

ANOTHER VICTIM OF T.D.S.? Max Boot, the Perpetually Unhappy Camper.

WILL NO ONE RID ME OF THIS MEDDLESOME REGIME? Venezuela’s paradox: People are hungry, but farmers can’t feed them.

With cash running low and debts piling up, Venezuela’s socialist government has cut back sharply on food imports. And for farmers in most countries, that would present an opportunity.

But this is Venezuela, whose economy operates on its own special plane of dysfunction. At a time of empty supermarkets and spreading hunger, the country’s farms are producing less and less, not more, making the caloric deficit even worse.

Drive around the countryside outside the capital, Caracas, and there’s everything a farmer needs: fertile land, water, sunshine and gasoline at 4 cents a gallon, cheapest in the world. Yet somehow families here are just as scrawny-looking as the city-dwelling Venezuelans waiting in bread lines or picking through garbage for scraps.

Having attempted for years to defy conventional economics, the country now faces a painful reckoning with basic arithmetic.

“Last year I had 200,000 hens,” said Saulo Escobar, who runs a poultry and hog farm here in the state of Aragua, an hour outside Caracas. “Now I have 70,000.”

As the wise man once said, “Get the hell out of my way!”

AFTER MANCHESTER: Are we, the West, ready to get serious?

UNEXPECTEDLY: San Francisco’s Higher Minimum Wage Costing Hundreds of Jobs.

R.I.P.: First victim of Manchester bombing named as Georgina Callander, 18.

The story reports that some parents are still waiting for news of their children.

BREAKING: Police arrest 23-year-old man in connection to Manchester suicide bombing that killed 22.

Greater Manchester Police say they have arrested a 23-year-old man in connection with the apparent suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in the English city.

Police say the man was arrested in south Manchester on Tuesday, a day after the explosion killed 22 people and injured 59, many of them teenagers.

They did not provide details.

More to come.

GOOD MORNING: Liz Sheld’s morning brief has almost everything you need to know.

THE NEW COKE OF NEWS! As Fox News Moves to the Left, Its Ratings Plummet.

BIGGER IS BETTER: Gas Guzzlers Rule in China.

Official targets call for 40% of cars bought in China in 2030 to be pure electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids. The country already is the world’s largest electric-vehicle market. Roughly half the 700,000 electric cars sold world-wide last year were sold in China.

In all, China will have 30 million electric cars on the road, 9% of the country’s total passenger-car fleet, by 2025, Bernstein Research forecasts. While that’s likely to eclipse the number of electric cars operating in any other country, China’s appetite for electric cars still looks modest alongside the craze for SUVs.

From four million SUVs in 2010, China will have 150 million—45% of its entire passenger-car fleet—by 2025, Bernstein estimates. The sedan has long been king in China, but SUVs will start outselling sedans next year, says Bernstein auto analyst Robin Zhu, and by 2023 SUVs will outnumber sedans nationwide.

SUVs are so popular that one of China’s biggest auto firms, Great Wall Motors Co., makes nothing else.

Even in China, consumers foil central planners’ demands.

TWITCHY: ‘F*ckin’ scumbag’: Verified Twitter account tweets VILE ‘jokes’ about incident at Ariana Grande concert.

DAVID HORNIK: Trump’s First Day in Israel: An Encouraging Performance.

UNEXPECTEDLY: The price tag on universal health care is in, and it’s bigger than California’s budget.

California would have to find an additional $200 billion per year, including in new tax revenues, to create a so-called “single-payer” system, the analysis by the Senate Appropriations committee found. The estimate assumes the state would retain the existing $200 billion in local, state and federal funding it currently receives to offset the total $400 billion price tag.

The cost analysis is seen as the biggest hurdle to create a universal system, proposed by Sens. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, and Toni Atkins, D-San Diego.

Steep projected costs have derailed efforts over the past two decades to establish a publicly funded, universal health care system in California. The cost is higher than the $180 billion in proposed general fund and special fund spending for the budget year beginning July 1.

Californians already pay some of the highest tax rates in the nation, which have all but driven out the state’s formerly robust middle class.

Single payer — and the taxes required to pay for all that paying — would be the final nail in California’s coffin.

FRANKENARMY: Germany Is Quietly Building a European Army Under Its Command.

Germany and two of its European allies, the Czech Republic and Romania, quietly took a radical step down a path toward something that looks like an EU army while avoiding the messy politics associated with it: They announced the integration of their armed forces.

Romania’s entire military won’t join the Bundeswehr, nor will the Czech armed forces become a mere German subdivision. But in the next several months each country will integrate one brigade into the German armed forces: Romania’s 81st Mechanized Brigade will join the Bundeswehr’s Rapid Response Forces Division, while the Czech 4th Rapid Deployment Brigade, which has served in Afghanistan and Kosovo and is considered the Czech Army’s spearhead force, will become part of the Germans’ 10th Armored Division. In doing so, they’ll follow in the footsteps of two Dutch brigades, one of which has already joined the Bundeswehr’s Rapid Response Forces Division and another that has been integrated into the Bundeswehr’s 1st Armored Division. According to Carlo Masala, a professor of international politics at the University of the Bundeswehr in Munich, “The German government is showing that it’s willing to proceed with European military integration” — even if others on the continent aren’t yet.

What could go wrong?

YUM: The 12 Sexiest Warplanes of All Time.

Good list, but no love for any enemy aircraft? Nasty regimes, but the Mitsubishi A6M Zero and the Sukhoi Su-27 are hot rides.

CUT HARD, CUT DEEP: EPA braces for Trump budget.

SPLITTING HAIRS: Girl in Weiner sexting case lied to damage Clinton.

In a report published Monday, the website said the girl who exchanged the messages with Weiner was closer to 17 and not 15, as initial reports said. That also puts her above the age of consent in North Carolina, which is 16.

In addition, she and her family were also not Clinton supporters, as the girl claimed in a letter published by BuzzFeed, according to social media posts unearthed by the website. The report also says the girl initiated the contact with Weiner and then sought advice from a GOP figure behind “prior efforts to harm Weiner and other Democrats.”

The website suggests this could mean that Weiner was the target of a politically motivated plot.

Perhaps. But the fact remains that he was sexting with a 16-year-old girl.

REINFORCING FAILURE: Citing Disparities, Dem Wants to Sink $100B Into Dilapidated Public Schools.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Venezuela holds 5,000 Russian surface-to-air MANPADS missiles.