"Ohio Slipping Away?"

I get 20 emails a day from Democrats trying to scare me into donating, so I know to take campaign emails that raise an alarm ("we're being outspent!) with a grain of salt.  Ergo, I'm not going to get too excited by this campaign email from Josh Mandel, the GOP Senate candidate in Ohio, relayed by National Review. But it is rather cheering -- and a jarring counter-narrative to the one put forward by Romney momentum-mongers. Subject line: Ohio Slipping Away?

I would add, too, that by current American standards it's a fair pitch. The enemy is liberalism, spending, taxes. Nothing incendiary.  But there is a, shall we say, archetypal subtext: Democrats are voting early by the busload (you know what kind of people rely on buses); they want to bank enough \votes to win before election day (clever thieves that they are); I need you (patriotic American) to stand with me (the marine) and block the invading end-running busloaders marshaled out of their "strongholds" by the "Obama-Brown machine." We few, we happy few....

Here's the letter:

Dear Patriot,

Early voting has begun in Ohio.

And the Obama campaign is turning out Democrat voters by the busload.

The Great Risk Shift, updated

The Times' front page story today about the enormous growth in student loan debt loads is long on personal narrative, but also tells a succinct story in numbers:

From 2001 to 2011, state and local financing per student declined by 24 percent nationally. Over the same period, tuition and fees at state schools increased 72 percent, compared with 29 percent for nonprofit private institutions, according to the College Board. Many of the cuts were the result of a sluggish economy that reduced tax revenue, but the sharp drop in per-student spending also reflects a change: an increasing number of lawmakers voted to transfer more of the financial burden of college from taxpayers to students and their families. (Local funding is a small percentage of the total, and mostly goes to community colleges.)