It's not just Phil Mickelson — plenty of high-income athletes want out of California taxes.

Mickelson was just the one who was PR-deaf enough to let us know how he feels.

Why do you think Tiger Woods lives in Florida?

In November, voters in California approved a ballot measure raising the top rate on income over $1 million to 13.3% (the increase applies retroactively to last year). ... Mr. Woods grossed $56.4 million in 2012. As a Floridian, he will keep about $7.5 million that he otherwise would have owed to the state of California. His net tax savings over his 16-year career come to about $100 million. Mr. Mickelson last year earned $60.7 million. Paying the 13.3% California rate, he will owe the state $8 million.

That takes Mickelson down to $52.7 million, putting him behind Woods, when he was ahead of him on the money list. Aggravating! (I know, I'm failing to take account of the way state taxes are a deduction on your federal income taxes and everything else that affects after-tax income.)

The benefit of living in a state without an income tax can be diminished by the "jock tax" that states impose on money earned by athletes when they're playing or training in the state. (Luckily for baseball players, spring training is in no-tax Florida or low-tax Arizona.) But in sports like tennis and golf where athletes can train anywhere in the world, a preponderance happen to migrate to states without an income tax.

These celebs — with their endorsements — need good PR, as the Mickelson slip proved. State tax proponents could get proactive and actively shame the sports stars who live in Florida without an adequate cover story. 

For instance, Serena and Venus Williams grew up in Compton, Calif., but moved with their father to Florida in the early 1990s.

Krugman sees a "major rhetorical shift" from Romney's campaign to Bobby Jindal's recent speech.

Krugman's column is titled "Makers, Taker, Fakers." Here's one thing that seemed off to me:

Mr. Jindal posed the problem in a way that would, I believe, have been unthinkable for a leading Republican even a year ago. “We must not,” he declared, “be the party that simply protects the well off so they can keep their toys. We have to be the party that shows all Americans how they can thrive.” After a campaign in which Mitt Romney denounced any attempt to talk about class divisions as an “attack on success,” this represents a major rhetorical shift.

There are 2 propositions: A. Those who are successful should be able to keep the fruits of their efforts, and B. All Americans should have the opportunity to work toward their own success.

Krugman comes close to saying Romney only said A and Jindal only says B.

But Romney continually said both things. His opponents worked constantly — and successfully — to make people feel that he was only saying A.  And Jindal is also saying both things. That's the function of the word "simply."

Jindal — in the quoted sentence — isn't saying Romney only said A. He's talking about the way people think about the Republican Party, which is in A terms, because that's the way Democrats have successfully framed them. Jindal is saying the B frame is better political rhetoric.

Krugman goes on to explain why B rhetoric doesn't properly apply to what Jindal and the rest of the GOP are really doing. That is, he's continuing the process that was used so successfully in the campaign to defeat Romney — pushing A, obscuring B.

There is no major rhetorical shift. Not from Jindal and not from Krugman. Everyone is doing, rhetorically, what they've been doing all along.

There are 2 propositions — A and B — that relate to GOP policy. GOP proponents portray them as 2 sides of the same thing: The reason why A makes sense is that it's part of how B works. Opponents of the GOP de-link A and B and portray B as a trick to get people to vote for the party that's only about A.

2 questions for the GOP: 1. How can you truly be about B, with A as a subordinate proposition? and 2. Can you get people to believe that's what you are?

Bill Clinton says: Do not look down on the bitter clingers.

"Do not patronize the passionate supporters of your opponents by looking down your nose at them..."

"A lot of these people live in a world very different from the world lived in by the people proposing these things... I know because I come from this world."...

"A lot of these people … all they’ve got is their hunting and their fishing... Or they’re living in a place where they don’t have much police presence. Or they’ve been listening to this stuff for so long that they believe it all."

He feels their pain...



He feels their pain, which includes feeling that they are getting looked down on, so don't let them notice, he's saying, even as he lets the big Democratic donors see that he knows just as well as they do that the bitter clingers are a bunch of losers.

Don't look down you nose at them. Whenever you eyes are trained on the bitter clingers, project feel-your-pain empathy. Save your condescension for the off-camera, off-mike back rooms.

"I knew the other clerks and young bond-salesmen by their first names, and lunched with them in dark, crowded restaurants on little pig sausages and mashed potatoes and coffee."

It means something that F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote "pig" instead of "pork." I think about how George Harrison sang about piggies, the bigger piggies, "in their starched white shirts... stirring up the dirt" as well as "the little piggies... crawling in the dirt." (He stirred up Charles Manson to deliver "a damned good whacking.")

Life was "getting worse" for the little piggies, while, by contrast, the bigger piggies "always had clean shirts." Now, I'm not going to veer off into the topic of The Great — big pig — Gatsby's shirts. You know if you've read "The Great Gatsby" or seen the movie that a huge to-do is made at one point about how many beautiful shirts Gatsby had.

But here in this Gatsby project, we look at one sentence in isolation. That way, everyone's on the same footing. You don't have the little readers and the bigger readers. Life isn't getting worse for some of us and just fine for others. We gather here, in the daily post, to consume one sentence, so let's lunch.

Let's know each other by first names. Here we are equals. We have all read the sentence, and we can all very well speak out about it. Here, we actively exclude extrinsic evidence. About the book, I mean. We're free to drag in anything else, such as The Beatles, as betamax3000 did so well in yesterday's Gatsby thread, the one about warm human magic.

So pig, then. Pig, not pork. Which makes us think that the clerks and bond-salesmen are little piggies. The men eating humble food — all the humbler for saying pig, not pork — in a dark, crowded place. A pigsty? Our narrator is crammed in close quarters with them as he chows down. He's on familiar terms with them: He calls them by their first names. He's a member of the herd of little piggies.

Did you notice the words are right there one after the other: little pig? As a competent and tolerant reader, you can tell it's the sausages and not the pigs that are supposed to be little, and as a picky reader, you might say it's bad writing to permit that ambiguity to survive the final draft. But maybe the writer wanted you to see little pig. And the bigger question is why insert the pig at all? We'd presume that sausages were pork. Obviously, Fitzgerald wants us to think about pigs and think about the men as pigs. He wasn't as blunt as Mr. Harrison, but he was calling these guys pigs.

Another reason to throw pig in there, permitting the ambiguity, is to call the sausages little without being too aggressively Freudian about saying little sausages and making us think too quickly — before we'd noticed all these other things — of pricks.

ADDED: Meade, helping me proofread, questioned "herd" as the proper collective term for pigs. I know there are some other options, but I like it because it evokes Jesus:

Some distance from them a large herd of pigs was feeding. The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.” He said to them, “Go!” So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water. Those tending the pigs ran off, went into the town and reported all this, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men. Then the whole town went out to meet Jesus. And when they saw him, they pleaded with him to leave their region.

"It’s almost always a mistake to read only a first-rate writer’s masterpieces."

"A great deal of Fussell’s best, most perceptive and, frankly, most hilarious work arrived in books like 'Class: A Guide Through the American Status System' (1983). The idea of talking about social class is so taboo in America, Fussell reported, that when he explained his book’s topic to strangers, they reacted as if he had said, 'I am working on a book urging the beating to death of baby whales using the dead bodies of baby seals.' It’s a book that, especially if you are uncertain of your own class status, can still draw blood."

Ha. Well, I loved that book.

"The Ultimate Amenity: Grandparents."

A NYT article about highly affluent couples who are spending their copious money to purchase housing for their own parents, so that their immensely privileged children will have the ultimate amenity: grandparents in their daily life.

Published the very next day in the NYT is an article — charting at #1 on the NYT most-emailed list — "For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall." ("Melissa, an eighth-grade valedictorian, seethed over her mother’s boyfriends and drinking, and Bianca’s bubbly innocence hid the trauma of her father’s death.") Proposed alternate title: The Ultimate Privation: No parents.

Gawker tells Steven Crowder to "stop whining, take your licks, and accept that getting hit in the face is a hazard of inserting yourself..."

"... in the middle of an argument between billionaire-funded know-nothing ideologues and people whose livelihoods and stability are being threatened by the insatiable greed of the super-rich and the blind extremism of their wooden-headed political allies. In exchange, liberals will buy you a band-aid for the cut on your forehead and re-iterate that Punching Is Bad. Sound good?"

I know. They're asking for it: a link. I'm a sucker... must say what baited to say blah blah blah blah liberals blah blaming the victim blah blah if a conservative said that about a woman blah blah blah blah she was asking for it blah blah wearing that smirking look short skirt on his face her female body blah blah....

Katie Roiphe tries to fathom the depths of why she's buying really expensive shoes.

She writes about herself in the second person saying things like: 

You have read Adorno. You are able to think critically about your desire for the shoes. Furthermore, you have a healthy class-hatred for people who dress habitually in clothes from this store...

And:

If you do walk out with the shoes...  they work like a drug—the anxieties that were plaguing you before you enter the store have lifted. As you step out into traffic, the still and stagnant city is suddenly charged with possibility

The parties you have scribbled in your calendar seem more glittery or interesting or fun, and you in the shoes, more daunting, more sylphlike, more free, more invulnerable....

Do you want to be the kind of person who sacrifices, overreaches, for a pair of shoes, who imbues them with a romantic overlay that a material object cannot possibly sustain?

That's where the internal argument ends up, and obviously she buys the shoes. Obviously, there's a huge mental element to consumerism, both before and after the purchase. Note that anxieties must be stirred up to provide an additional argument: I need to dispel these anxieties! She gets off on the purchase.

My question: Why shoes? There's some discussion of how shoes "will transform you into someone else" — special shoe magic. (See "The Wizard of Oz.") There's oddly little reference to sex. Roiphe ignores Freud, who famously saw shoes as vagina symbols. Roiphe wants — or wants "you" — to be daunting, sylphlike, free, and invulnerable.

A sylph is a female fairy. In Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock," "women who are full of spleen and vanity turn into sylphs when they die because their spirits are too full of dark vapors to ascend to the skies." (Here is "The Rape of the Lock," with the illustrations by Aubry Beardsley, for only 99¢ on Kindle!)

So, maybe, why shoes? Why not dresses, jackets, jewelry, sweaters? I think it's that you've got to specialize — unless you're actually rich — if you're going to shop in the really expensive places. You can trick yourself into thinking you've been indulged. Still, why specialize in shoes?

"In the name of equality, the French government has proposed doing away with homework in elementary and junior high school."

"French President Francois Hollande argues that homework penalizes children with difficult home situations, but even the people whom the proposal is supposed to help disagree."

ADDED: Emmanuel Davidenkoff, editor-in-chief of L'Etudiant, is one of the critics:

"Poor people want homework because they know that school is very important, and the only chance — the only possibility — they have to give their children a better life is if their children succeed at school.... Mostly, wealthy people don't want homework because when the kids are at home, they make sports or dance or music. They go to the museums, to the theater. So they have this access to culture, which is very important.... In poor families, they don't have that, so the only link they have with culture and school is homework."

What?! Everyone — rich or poor — can make sports or dance or music. You don't even need as much as a ball or a jump rope to have sports. You don't even need as much as a cheap radio or a harmonica to do music and dance. The best American music, dance, and sports have come from the poorest people. Leave the kids alone, let them go out and play, and the forces of nature should do more than wealthy parents taking them to lessons. The only link they have with culture and school is homework... that's so insulting!

Let the kids out to play as long as there is daylight. Isn't that better than holding them inside until they have their homework done? And we wonder why there's so much obesity! They're incarcerated during school hours, then worked through lessons when they get home. And we wonder why there's such a problem with hyperactivity. After dark, how bad is it not to have homework? Let them choose their own books and read if you think they should have more cultural enrichment. That has so much more potential that more lessons from school (which is already appropriating too much of their youthful souls).

By the way, Hollande's equality theory coincides with my own rejection of take-home exams in law school. Students have different life situations, and one can go home to a solo environment and work late into the night. The other has a husband or wife and a couple of children making reasonable/unreasonable demands and nowhere to find quiet and concentration. So my exam is an intense 3-hour session that's the same for everyone. And when it's over, it's over.

"Listen, I like stopping by Althouse, but let's get real. Althouse and Meade are living a high-income, privileged life that many of us can only dream about."

Rants Jeffrey in my "time to stop talking about the election and have our lives be about love and beauty" post.

It takes a day like today to put all of that into focus. Cultivate your garden?! I've seen the photos of where she and Meade live. C'mon. Many of us would love to live surrounded by all those expensive toys and have the summer off to order a pile of books for the Kindle and take a few leisurely vacations.

The class (and income) issue rarely comes up here. I think it's about time we hashed this out.

As others have pointed out above, Ann's cavalier, gather-ye-rosebuds response is predicated on being financially stable for the rest of her life. She has the good life NOW and will have it till the day she dies (or almost).

Let me repeat, though. I generally enjoy Ann's blog, but today seems like a good time for people to discuss this issue.

I'd said "cultivate your garden" in a comment in that thread. It's a reference to Voltaire's advice in "Candide" — damn, I typo'd "candidate"! — where it's not just advice for the comfortably affluent. Here, you can put it in your Kindle — in English — for $0.00 — absolutely free. You can read the greatest books ever written and never run out of reading material — all free. 

And I have the summer off because I choose not to teach during the summer. I choose not to make more money. As for Meade's economic choices, you don't know what they are, and I choose not to invade our privacy by explaining the structure of the economic unit that is our household. But we do, in many ways, choose noncommercial activities over moneymaking things, and we take advantage of the wealth that we have built up in our lives by enjoying our home and the natural beauty of our state and our country. We buy a state park sticker for our car every year and county ski and bike trail passes, and we never run out of incredibly cheap things to do.

If Meade and I were starting our lives together and in our 20s — a topic we've discussed many times — we would put a premium on love and beauty and on maximizing our free time... and our freedom generally. But that isn't where we happened to meet. You may be somewhere else, and if you are, use your brain. Figure out what your values really are and what you should be doing with your life. You are not your job. You are not a slave. Think! Pay attention! Do something with what you have. Don't pester your mind with envy. It's perfectly idiotic to wait for the world to change into a form you like.

That's what Voltaire was talking about when he had his long-suffering character Candide say:

"I know... that we must cultivate our garden."

"You are right," said Pangloss, "for when man was first placed in the Garden of Eden, he was put there ut operaretur eum, that he might cultivate it; which shows that man was not born to be idle."

"Let us work," said Martin, "without disputing; it is the only way to render life tolerable."

The whole little society entered into this laudable design, according to their different abilities. Their little plot of land produced plentiful crops. Cunegonde was, indeed, very ugly, but she became an excellent pastry cook; Paquette worked at embroidery; the old woman looked after the linen. They were all, not excepting Friar Giroflée, of some service or other; for he made a good joiner, and became a very honest man.

Pangloss sometimes said to Candide: "There is a concatenation of events in this best of all possible worlds: for if you had not been kicked out of a magnificent castle for love of Miss Cunegonde: if you had not been put into the Inquisition: if you had not walked over America: if you had not stabbed the Baron: if you had not lost all your sheep from the fine country of El Dorado: you would not be here eating preserved citrons and pistachio-nuts."

"All that is very well," answered Candide, "but let us cultivate our garden."

"Billionaire Thomas Peterffy's ‘socialist’ ads raise questions."

Headlines Politico, pointing its readers at a very effective ad that they might otherwise avoid:



The "questions" referred to in the headline are about who is helping Peterffy, a political neophyte, to make and place such ad. But there's nothing interesting there, and Peterffy comes across as an intelligent, persuasive independent:

Typically, such ads call for supporting or opposing specific candidates, but Peterffy’s ad is more vague because it doesn’t mention specific candidates — only an encouragement to vote Republican....

Peterffy said he supports Republican candidates because he sees the rhetoric of social justice and fairness from Democrats, including President Barack Obama, as a slippery slope. He also said Romney’s 47 percent comment reflected his own fears about the future of the country and was taken out of context.

“My understanding was that he said he had no ability to influence the 47 percent,” Peterffy said. “That’s the very logic I’m based on. I’m worried about when that 47 percent goes to 60 percent.”

"Angry residents pelted utility crews with eggs as they tried to restore power in Bridgeport, Conn...."

"... after the mayor claimed the local power company had 'shortchanged' the state's largest city as it tries to recover from superstorm Sandy."

I'm sick and tired of Bridgeport being shortchanged," [Mayor Bill] Finch said, noting that Bridgeport has the largest number of United Illuminating ratepayers and claimingg it should be treated better by the New Haven-based utility.

United Illuminating has denied giving priority to wealthy customers, while ignoring Bridgeport residents.

Class warfare. Ask the eggheads in New Haven about it.

With affirmative action, "rich students routinely get preference over more accomplished poor ones who do not happen to belong to" the "backward castes."

A NYT article displays sympathy to the victims of affirmative action... in India.

In Tamil Nadu, for instance, 69 percent of university admissions are now set aside for what the state has determined to be “backward castes.” Many of those favored with these set-asides have controlled Tamil Nadu’s government and much of its resources for generations, but they claim special status by pointing to a caste survey done in 1931....

Five prominent university officials in Tamil Nadu said in interviews that those given set-asides at their institutions were generally the children of doctors, lawyers and high-level bureaucrats. The result is that rich students routinely get preference over more accomplished poor ones who do not happen to belong to the favored castes. None of the officials would allow their names to be used for fear of angering the government ministers who benefit politically and personally from the program.

"He didn’t bring up the 47%!"

"He had a whole, you know, area to discuss the role of government and he didn’t talk about a philosophical divide!"

Obama must have determined in advance not to use the 47% material. The question is why. Perhaps the thinking was: Everyone will perk up, this will be the sound bite of the debate, and Romney's expecting it. He'll be prepared. He knows what you'll say, but you don't know what he'll say, in whatever excellent remarks he'll have planned. You'll have to think on the spot, and his whole plan will be to have something you'll stumble over on the spot, perhaps something you once said that you might stammer over explaining, as this sound bite of the evening is being recorded for exploitation everywhere.

He played it safe, which you may say wasn't really safe. But you're not seeing what would have happened down the road not taken.

***

I shall be telling this with a sigh   
Somewhere ages and ages hence:   
Two roads diverged in a debate, and I—   
I took the easy one to travel by,   
And that has made all the difference.

"We don't begrudge Ms. Warren's handsome earnings or her stands on legal principle..."

"... even if those principles do happen to underscore the complex nature of both the law and modern economy."

But when she talks about "the millionaires and billionaires" who supposedly "wrecked our economy" and "still strut around Congress, no shame, demanding favors, and acting like we should thank them"—as she put it at the Charlotte convention—perhaps she ought to recall her own legal strutting.

By the way, Harvard requires its professors to report any extracurricular consulting activities, but Ms. Warren is refusing to disclose this list so voters can decide for themselves if she's really a handmaid to the plutocrats disguised as Robin Hood through November 6. It would be instructive to learn what other corporations, and maybe even a billionaire, have had her on their payrolls.

"Hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Manhattan's financial district early Monday to mark the 1-year anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement..."

"... choking traffic and crowding the area around the New York Stock Exchange but being met at most turns by walls of police who stopped them from occupying anything."

It's not so cute this time around, but it was at first, last time, to some people. Remember?

Who gets free school dinner in Madison, Wisconsin?

"Unlike the lunch program, eligibility for a free dinner is based on whether the school qualifies for the program based on school poverty rates, rather than the income level of an individual student. So any student participating in an eligible after-school program can eat the dinner meal for free."

Eligible schools for the dinner program must have at least 50 percent of students qualify as low-income. In Madison last year, 18 elementary schools, seven middle schools and East and La Follette High schools met that requirement.

To be eligible, students must take part in an academically focused after-school program, not an after-school sport. Memorial is looking into setting up a homework club for athletes between practice and the free meal so that they can participate in the free meal.

So, in this affluent city, we are nevertheless so poor, that the federal government is subsidizing free dinner at 18 elementary schools, 7 middle schools, and 2 of the 4 high schools. And it doesn't matter how much money your parents make, you get free dinner if you go to that school and do an after school activity... as long as your activity is not sports.

Yeah, that makes so much sense. What's with discriminating against the students who, after sitting at desks all day, choose a physically active after-school activity? Aren't they more in need of food? What's the connection between this policy and fighting obesity?

"This progressive city is way behind other cities in that regard," [Mayor Paul] Soglin said. "We should not look at this as a frill, or as an experiment, but something citywide."

This is not a frill. It's an imperative... within the progressive agenda... which seems to have to do with increasing dependency of government and inspiring the young to look to the authorities as their nurturing, nourishing mothers.

Based on Shopbop, I think Obama's going to win.

Yesterday, I predicted the outcome of the election based on the image chosen by Macy's to illustrate its latest email. But if fashion-commerce email is my election prognostication methodology, I want to look at all the fashion spam. Today's email from Shopbop points as sharply to Obama as yesterday's Macy's email pointed at Romney. I mean, look at this image:



Now, these are not cheap clothes. The coat is $930. The dress is $650. The sweater is $424. Hell, the socks are expensive: $34! The homeless-looking hat costs $187! Shopbop is a business. They want to make money. But the image is poverty-striken. The wealth is applied for the purpose of appearing to be an artsy waif biting her thumbnail and gazing insecurely into the middle distance. Streams of money flow — like the Seine — who knows where and whether it's all to good use? Let's not think about banks as we lean against the embankment. We are children. We are dreamers.  We have hearts, we get sick, we cry, we dance, we live, we love, and we die.

Ironically, the rich-bitch equestrian-print shirt from yesterday's post only costs $89.50. Not only is it pretty cheap, but the price is expressed in that price-sensitive way that shaves off 5o¢ so you don't have to see the 9. In the mindset that loves Romney, $90 is too much to pay for a shirt. Yes, it's a dream that we have a horse-based lifestyle, but we're frugal and practical. We need a shirt, it has a print, and we're going to work and not spending too much money.

There's a distinct choice to be made, and fashion is showing us the distinctions.

A tax policy juxtaposition.

1. "Rep. Tammy Baldwin, who's running against former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson for Wisconsin's open Senate seat, argued in her address to the Democratic National Convention Thursday that millionaires should pay their fair share in taxes."

We believe that if we're going to prosper, everyone has to have a fair shot, and everyone has to do their fair share. That's why I'm proud to lead the charge for the Buffet Rule, which makes sure that millionaires and billionaires don't get to pay a lower tax rate than middle-class families.

Baldwin said that Paul Ryan and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker "don't speak for all of Wisconsin," Baldwin said.

She said, she said. Okay, then. Message received.

2. "Wisconsin collected $126.6 million more than previously expected this year, which may lead to the largest amount of money transferred to the state’s rainy day fund"

Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald said in a statement the positive numbers can be attributed to the “reforms” under Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican Legislature.

“We made the tough decisions required to balance our budget with the next generation in mind but it’s heartening to see our actions having an immediate positive impact on Wisconsin’s economy,” Fitzgerald said.

Fitzgerald also mentioned Wisconsin is “buck[ing] the national trend” by increasing revenues as well as having more people on payrolls.

"The students who make it to us (and especially the ones who end up in schools like Harvard) have learned exactly what they have to do to succeed..."

"... and sadly, that often has very little to do with becoming educated.... Instead, it’s almost solely about figuring out what will be asked (in papers, tests, and other assessments), learning that material long enough to produce it when necessary, and then moving on to the next thing."

That's an article about the cheating scandal at Harvard. It made me think back to this statement from University of Wisconsin historian Bill Cronin, that "he felt his job as a professor was to make his students 'fall in love with the world.'"

What I like about about Cronin's statement, as opposed to the quote from the Harvard-cheating-scandal article, is that it's the professor taking responsibility and not putting the blame on the students. There's also something wistful and weird about what Cronin said. It's wistful, because it's a vision of a job that can't really be accomplished, even as you might admire the prof for thinking of himself that way. It's also weird because... fall in love... and with the world.... Why the romantic/sexual metaphor? (I know there are forms of love other than eros, but you don't fall into them.) And why is the love object the world, rather than the subject matter?

Cronin's a historian, so maybe the world is the subject matter for him, and in that understanding, the lawprof's job is to make students fall in love with the law.

Or is it: fall in love with criticizing the legal system? I've got a lawprof right here: Elizabeth Warren, the lawprof Senate candidate who spoke at the DNC last night and told the world that the system is rigged:

People feel like the system is rigged against them. And here's the painful part: they're right. The system is rigged. Look around. Oil companies guzzle down billions in subsidies. Billionaires pay lower tax rates than their secretaries. Wall Street CEOs—the same ones who wrecked our economy and destroyed millions of jobs—still strut around Congress, no shame, demanding favors, and acting like we should thank them.

Not love. Anger.

She's a professor at Harvard, that place where the students have figured out what will be asked and learned just enough to produce it when necessary and then move on to the next thing. Which is to say: politics. Do you love it? It's the world and if it's rigged, is it possible that the professors and politicos are outside of the rigging?