Kevin Drum 🕸

The Guardian has a dramatic headline today: A groundbreaking study shows kids learn better on paper, not screens. I apologize in advance for going down a very long and very complicated rabbit hole on this, but you can always scroll past it if you get bored. Needless to say, I got curious and decided to ...continue reading "Kids learn better on paper? Don’t be so sure…."

During most of the time that Obamacare has been around, more people have benefited from its Medicaid expansion than from buying insurance on the marketplaces. But that's no longer true. Final numbers aren't in yet, but Andrew Sprung reports that enrollment in the marketplaces is already up 25% compared to last year and up nearly ...continue reading "Raw data: The uninsured rate has dropped dramatically since 2021"

A couple of days ago I wrote about the new bipartisan bill to expand the Child Tax Credit and lower taxes on business. The topline numbers were simple: over ten years the CTC would be increased by $33 billion while taxes would be lowered by $33 billion. But David Dayen says this is misleading. We ...continue reading "Maybe that Child Tax Credit bill isn’t so great after all"

Peter Biskind says the golden era of cable/streaming TV is over thanks to cost cutting and a reduced taste for innovation. Maybe so. But along the way he says this: In 2023, HBO had a whopping four shows up for outstanding drama series, including the eventual winner, “Succession,” as well as “The White Lotus,” “The ...continue reading "Everyone has gone mad over Max"

Here's your quick recap on the E. Jean Carroll affair. In 2019 Carroll claimed that Donald Trump had raped her in a dressing room a couple of decades ago. Trump denied it and said a bunch of nasty things about her, so she sued him for defamation. She won and was awarded $5 million, but ...continue reading "Trump’s latest trial has turned into a clown show"

Adam Ozimek points to something interesting today. It turns out that when CBO estimates the budgetary impact of increasing the number of work permits for highly-educated immigrants, it only calculates the cost—which comes to about $4 billion over ten years. But what about the benefits? Following the population-change approach of incorporating all of the direct ...continue reading "Increasing skilled immigration would help cut the budget deficit"

Sunrise over downtown Los Angeles.

If you haven't been keeping up with all things internet you might not have heard about Bronze Age Pervert, an inexplicably popular writer on the right whose real name is Costin Alamariu. The briefest nutshell description I can think of is that he's the latest iteration of Jordan Peterson, the momentarily popular anti-woke Canadian professor ...continue reading "Conservatives need to learn how to call a bigot a bigot"

Back in 2021, as the Department of Justice was looking around for the best way to prosecute the January 6 insurrectionists, one of the tools they landed on was charging the rioters with "obstructing an official proceeding." A guy named Joseph Fischer was convicted on this basis but appealed on the grounds that the law ...continue reading "Will the Supreme Court let Trump off on a technicality?"

Over the past few years California's population has stabilized and then begun to drop slightly. But that isn't necessarily bad for California: In 2022, almost two-thirds of those who moved to California from another state had a bachelor’s degree or higher, as did more than half who moved from other countries, according to census data. ...continue reading "College grads are moving to California"

Problems in the Red Sea began around early December and picked up steam in the middle of the month. So shipping stocks must have taken a beating, right? Nope: Exchange Traded Funds are sort of like mutual funds for a particular industry: they represent the performance of a basket of related stocks. In this case, ...continue reading "Shipping companies are doing great as Houthis attack"

Bob Somerby has been watching a lot of Fox News lately: We've been surprised by one persistent talking-point as we've come to watch more and more of the nation's red tribe "cable news:" We've been surprised by the persistence with which red tribe stars pound away at electric vehicles. Funny thing: I've been meaning to ...continue reading "Conservatives hate electric cars"

Back when I was a tiny tot—let's say around 1990 or so—I learned that the Federal Reserve controlled monetary policy via open market operations that influenced short-term interest rates (the "fed funds rate"). High rates slowed the economy and low rates gave the economy a boost. The Fed pushed the fed funds rate up and ...continue reading "How does the Fed control interest rates?"

This is the dome above the main altar at the Church of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine in Paris. Whenever I see it in thumbnail mode it reminds me less of Jesus and more of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Now that I've finally posted it, however, I'll never see it in thumbnail mode again.

In the latest CBS/YouGov poll, Republicans were asked: If Trump wins, do you want him to take revenge against his enemies? No shilly shallying, no euphemisms. Do you want him to take revenge? Nearly half said yes: On the other hand, a mere 24% of Republicans want Trump to shut down media that's critical of ...continue reading "Poll: Republicans want revenge, fear Biden will sell out whites"

Gaza is getting worse: Famine is looming in Gaza, the United Nations warns. The World Food Program estimates that 93 percent of the population faces crisis levels of hunger. Disease is spreading rapidly. The World Health Organization predicts that the death toll from sickness and starvation in coming months could eclipse the number of people ...continue reading "Can the US bring in aid to Gaza directly?"

That's not me saying it, it's Donald Trump saying it. Based on a discovery request filed Tuesday night, this is apparently going to be his defense in the classified documents case: The court papers, filed in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., gave the clearest picture yet of the scorched earth legal strategy that ...continue reading "Everybody hates Donald Trump"

How did Christmas turn out for our nation's retailers? Sort of meh: December retail sales were down a fraction of a percent from 2022 but still well above their pre-pandemic trend.

China's crude birth rate dropped again in 2023: China's birth rate dropped from 6.77 per thousand in 2022 to 6.39 in 2023, a decline of 6%. China's net population declined for the first time in 2022 by about one million. In 2023 it declined by 3 million.

As you know, the maternal mortality rate has been increasing steadily in the US. Except, as Noah Smith informs us, it turns out it hasn't. This is a bizarre story. In 2003 the standard US death certificate added a pregnancy checkbox. As more and more states adopted the new certificate, reports of maternal mortality went ...continue reading "Mind blowing: The CDC is publishing maternal mortality figures it knows are wildly wrong"