U. of I. pledges free tuition to students in families earning less than $61K.

Everybody who makes $62,000+ heard the news and felt deep hatred for the higher education system.

The funny thing, as the linked article points out, is that these students already pay pretty much nothing in tuition. This announcement helps nobody. But it turns a huge number of people into enemies of higher education.

It’s as if universities competed in who did the worst in PR.

It looks like the networks filmed their documentaries on McCain long before he died and we’re sitting on them, waiting for him to die. It feels kind of disgusting, so I can’t even watch them. He had terminal cancer, OK, but still it’s an icky thing to do.

I’d be happy to support Social Democrats, who represent a venerable political tradition that has done a lot of good. Social Democrats were viciously persecuted by Socialists and slaughtered by them in huge numbers, so it’s not like one can use these appellations interchangeably. It’s pretty much like confusing socialists and national socialists (aka Nazis.)

“Social Democrats” is easier to pronounce than “Democratic Socialists.” Yet that’s not the term that was chosen. This is not a bug but a feature. But folks are so starved for a progressive alternative that they are choosing not to notice how much the alternative they are getting stinks.