Kevin Drum 🕸

Earlier this morning I said there were two recent Supreme Court cases that left me conflicted. One of them was the decision that killed off the student loan forgiveness program, so let's take a closer look at that. The easiest legal argument in favor of allowing the program to continue is a simple syllogism: The ...continue reading "Why can the Supreme Court overturn the student loan forgiveness program?"

The Washington Post has a devastating but deadpan story today about the efforts of a private equity firm to buy up anesthesiology practices all over the country and then jack up prices for everyone. It starts in Denver: The multibillion-dollar private equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe took less than a year to create, ...continue reading "How to build a monopoly in less than a year"

I suppose it's just a coincidence that these three headlines all appeared on the same day from major new outlets: Republicans are "divided" about impeaching President Biden. Sure. Is it possible that this is because he's obviously done nothing wrong aside from pursuing policies that many Republicans don't like? Is it possible that modern Republicans ...continue reading "Republicans desperately want to impeach Biden, but for what?"

The Supreme Court ended its term with a flurry of important decisions that covered a lot of important ground. How did it do? There are some clunkers on the list, but overall I think their performance was better than most liberals give credit for. Affirmative action: A poorly argued decision that relies on a time ...continue reading "The Supreme Court didn’t do too badly in its flurry of late decisions"

I've been thinking all evening about just how crazy this latest court order from Louisiana is. You really have to read it to believe it. The whole 155-page opinion is an insane, rambling stew of right-wing paranoia about "mass censorship" and "unrelenting pressure" from an Orwellian White House that you'd sooner expect to see at ...continue reading "Right wing paranoia takes over the judiciary"

What the hell? A federal judge ruled that the Biden administration likely trampled on the First Amendment in trying to eliminate what it saw as disinformation on social media, issuing a broad preliminary injunction limiting the federal government from policing online content. In a 155-page ruling issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty of Louisiana ...continue reading "Another Trump judge, another ridiculous national injunction"

The Wall Street Journal concedes that remote work is down since 2020, as are job listings that advertise remote options. But remote work is "sticking" anyway: Many lower-wage office and call-center jobs went remote at the onset of the pandemic. Business executives viewed the shift as a temporary emergency measure, said Julia Pollak, chief economist ...continue reading "Home workers spend a ton of time goofing off"

Flags waving in the breeze at the United States of Ikea.

I've been obsessing over an obscure part of the Supreme Court ruling on student loan forgiveness. The relevant text of the HEROES Act says the Secretary of Education can "waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision applicable to the student financial assistance programs under title IV," but Chief Justice Roberts makes a startling claim ...continue reading "Are students required to pay back loans in the first place?"

I've been aware of the "odd" anti-gay video that the Ron DeSantis campaign promoted on Friday, but I hadn't bothered to actually watch it. A few minutes ago I finally did. It is not "odd." It is completely, beyond-all-parody batshit deranged. What the possible fuck could any of these people have been thinking? Be sure ...continue reading "That Ron DeSantis video is far more lunatic than I imagined"

The Wall Street Journal reports that inflation expectations are down: Consumers expect to see 4.1% inflation a year from now, the lowest such reading in two years and down sharply from its recent peak of 6.8%, according to the median response to the New York Fed’s May survey, for example. A year from now? The ...continue reading "Consumers have no idea how high inflation is"

Our long national egg nightmare is over: Well, mostly over: There's been a brief spike upward in June for some reason. However, the average since 2022 is $2, and that's exactly where we are now. METHODOLOGY NOTE: For some reason the USDA's weekly price survey occasionally covers only a tiny number of stores, which produces ...continue reading "Raw data: Eggs"

This is a bright white clapboard house on the Eastern Shore of Virginia across the Chesapeake Bay from Richmond. It's on Highway 13 about an hour north of Norfolk. The setting sun provides a beautiful warm light, though only for a few minutes before everything sinks into shadows.

We're getting an early start to the silly season. Writers are getting bored because there's no interesting campaign news, so they're pulling out all the hoary cliches: Give it up folks. RFK Jr. is a crackpot who will be soon forgotten. There will be no meaningful third-party competing in the general election. Republicans will not ...continue reading "Stop the silly season before it gets started"

In the recent case 303 Creative v. Elenis, Lorie Smith asks the Supreme Court not to allow Colorado to force her to create websites for gay marriages. A day before the ruling was handed down, it was discovered that a customer request for just such a website, which was part of the judicial record, was ...continue reading "Are wedding websites protected speech? Or protected conduct?"

Construction spending increased in May across the board. Nonresidential construction continued to grow, while residential construction increased for the first time in over a year: Nonresidential construction was up at an annualized rate of 4%. Residential construction spiked upward at a 17% rate, though it was still 13% lower than a year ago. The nonresidential ...continue reading "Raw data: Construction spending in May"

What with summer here, I had forgotten all about Southern California's huge spike in natural gas prices during the winter. Whatever happened to that? Here's the answer: The whole thing lasted two months. Daily spot prices shot up in December from 100¢ per therm to 500¢ per therm and were back to 100¢ by February. ...continue reading "Southern California’s natural gas shock lasted two months"

For the past few months I've been more fatigued than usual thanks to the CAR-T treatment. So I've been drowsily watching lots of prestige TV on HBO, which I accidentally subscribed to just before I went to City of Hope. First I watched five seasons of The Wire. Then three seasons of Deadwood. Then eight ...continue reading "HBO sure does like whorehouses"

Something peculiar occurred to me recently about the pandemic year of 2020. Obviously a lot of things changed: businesses shut down, office towers emptied out, product shortages were endemic, and so forth. But there were also a number of sharp changes that had no obvious connection to the pandemic. For example: Pedestrian deaths were up ...continue reading "2020 was a very odd year"

For 20 years the safety of US mass transit systems remained about the same. In the pandemic year that ended: the injury rate went up by half and the death rate more than doubled. The change in 2020 is explicable as related in some way to COVID. But why have death and injury rates stayed ...continue reading "Mass transit deaths have skyrocketed since the pandemic"