From a Bloomberg Businessweek profile of economist Janet Yellin: [At the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco], "Yellen continued her tradition of standing in the cafeteria lunch line with the proletariat and eating with the staff, which was unheard of at the time."

Is there are profession other than journalism where in 2013 people actually use the word "proletariat" in a non-ironic way? (Sociology professors? Community organizers?) Or is this supposed to be ironic? And do staff members at the central bank — who presumably include some more junior economists as well as janitors and office support staff — really qualify as the "proletariat"?

From the Freakonomics radio show, a great example of how the press works:

carpal-tunnel syndrome is, unfortunately, alive and well. Among construction workers and food-processing workers, among chefs and professional musicians. Even among some journalists here and there. But it no longer captures the attention of journalists – and, therefore, you no longer hear about it so much. Journalists, as you probably know, we love to write about ourselves. So if carpal-tunnel syndrome isn't happening so much in the newsroom – well, if a tree falls in the forest, and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound?

When even the Gawker web site, normally devoted to gossip, celebrity news, and related snarkiness, goes on a rant against New York's rent control laws worthy of Milton Friedman or the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (well, almost, if you subtract the banker-bashing from the Gawker post), it's something to behold. You'd think maybe that the issue might get some critical attention in New York City's ongoing mayoral campaign, but not yet so far.

President Obama's struggle to appoint a new chairman of the Federal Reserve is the topic of my column this week. Please check it out at the New York Sun (here), Reason (here), and Newsmax (here).

Peter Beinart wrote an article for the Daily Beast heralding Bill de Blasio's victory in the New York Democratic mayoral primary as the "rise of the new new left." It describes Americans aged 18 to 30 as "Millennials" and claims, "unlike older Americans, who favor capitalism over socialism by roughly 25 points, Millennials, narrowly, favor socialism."

The Beinart article has attracted a lot of attention. Paul Krugman mentioned it and linked to it in his New York Times column. Ezra Klein, who writes for the Washington Post and Bloomberg, tweeted a link to it, as did The New Republic magazine's Jonathan Cohn.

Via Mike Allen's Politico Playbook comes a report on the top editor of Time magazine, Richard Stengel, leaving to go work for John Kerry at the State Department: "Stengel will find himself in the company of other veteran journalists. Last week, … Douglas Frantz, late of The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, [was] named the State Department's assistant secretary for public affairs. Glen Johnson, formerly The Boston's Globe's political editor, took a position as a senior state department advisor earlier this year."

Bloomberg News has an article reporting on estate-tax-reduction maneuvers including a "Walton GRAT" and a "Jackie O. Trust." The article reports that:

Estate and gift taxes raised only about $14 billion last year. That's about 1 percent of the $1.2 trillion passed down in America each year, mostly by the very rich, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers estimated in a December blog post on Reuters.com. The contrast suggests "our estate tax system is broken," he wrote.

"Only" $14 billion? That's a lot of money to the people who paid the taxes. And it's a framing game: compare $14 billion to $1.2 trillion and it looks small. But compare it to some other number, like, say, the $14.6 billion that was the entire revenue of the federal government in 1942, and it looks large.

The article says:

Jake Tapper has a post attempting to recap and untangle the story of Elizabeth O'Bagy and her Wall Street Journal op-ed piece about the Syrian opposition. He writes, "it is a reminder that a lot of stuff going on in D.C. is not organic, and is a lot more coordinated than many realize."

More coverage by Mr. Tapper, or by other Washington and New York journalists, of other examples of this phenomenon would be most welcome. Who is doing the coordinating and how does it work? A news organization that pledged itself to additional transparency on this front might gain some additional credibility with readers. And the lack of space constraints that come with the Web make it easier than ever for a news organization to provide additional disclosures at the bottom of an article.

A Bloomberg News article about Beny Steinmetz, described by the wire as "the billionaire natural-resources investor who is Israel's richest person," carries a reader comment that says, "Surprise a Jew with no conscience."

Using the tool on the site, I flagged the comment for attention by a moderator this morning but at this writing it is still up.The space above the comments claims, "Bloomberg moderates all comments. Comments that are abusive or off-topic will not be posted to the site. Excessively long comments may be moderated as well. Bloomberg cannot facilitate requests to remove comments or explain individual moderation decisions."

Scott Sumner makes a good point against the claim in a news report based on an economic study that "the rich got richer" in 2012 as they sold stock ahead of an expected increase in the capital gains tax: "it claimed that America's richest got much 'wealthier' in 2012 by selling stocks ahead of the tax increases. Seriously."

While the sale of long-held stock and the accompanying recognition of capital gain income (and payment of capital gain tax) may make it look like the rich are getting "richer" because they are recognizing more income, in fact someone who sells stock and pays taxes doesn't end up any richer at all. They end up poorer (if you hadn't counted the future tax obligation as a liability), or the same (if you had counted the future tax obligation as a liability)

Mr. Sumner's complaint is against NPR, but the New York Times made a similar error in its headline.

USA Today has a fascinating op-ed by Gretchen Hamel about the "Christmas in September" phenomenon of federal agencies rushing to spend their entire budgets before the fiscal year ends Sept. 30:

Washington trade publications are filled with articles offering advice to businesses that want to hop on the federal spending gravy train by taking advantage of the year-end spending spree...

This summer, as furloughs were set to begin, officials at a Defense Department agency sent an e-mail to colleagues urging them to burn through their budgets. Meeting spending deadlines was "critical in our efforts to (spend) 100% of our available resources this fiscal year," the e-mail said.

"Why Aren't There More People of Color In Craft Brewing?" is the headline over an NPR article.

The article displays a surprising lack of curiosity about religious and gender diversity in the Craft Brewing industry.

I suppose it's good news that race relations in America have progressed to the point that these are the cutting-edge questions, and if there's a news organization that wants to explore this question (the answer doesn't seem to be racism), it's fine with me, but I'm not sure I see the logic to using federal tax revenues to subsidize this sort of journalism.

Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein's column this week is about Nobel laureate economist Ronald Coase and what Professor Epstein calls a "graceless" article about Coase by John Cassidy of the New Yorker:

Cassidy's crude effort to debunk property rights advocates is oblivious to the risks of his own doctrinaire approach to environmental issues. The strongest defenders of nineteenth-century laissez-faire had no wish to run roughshod over environmental interests. Indeed, like Baron Bramwell, they developed with great sophistication the common law backdrop that is still essential for the environment's proper protection. Writers like John Cassidy seem fundamentally unable to get off their high horses to examine how various schemes of regulation actually work.

The similarities between President Obama and a Democrat running for mayor in New York, Bill de Blasio, are the topic of my column this week. Please check it out at Reason (here), the New York Sun (here), and Newsmax (here).

President Obama is scheduled to make a televised speech to the nation tomorrow about Syria. And Apple is scheduled to announce some new products tomorrow, too.

What does one have to do with the other?

Well, recall that the biological father of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was none other than one Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian professor of political science who came to America and gave Jobs up for adoption.

The people in the White House drafting the Syria speech probably aren't thinking much about Steve Jobs or the Apple product announcement or Abdulfattah Jandali. And the people in Cupertino, Calif. drafting the Apple product presentation probably aren't thinking much about Syria.