Kevin Drum 🕸

Bad news today: 🚆NEWS: Over $3 billion in federal funding is headed to California High Speed Rail! That means: ♻️Reduced transportation emissions 🚄Less time in traffic 💸More good-paying jobs Proud to have championed @CaHSRA’s application for this Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding! pic.twitter.com/uwAMUGehOs — Senator Alex Padilla (@SenAlexPadilla) December 5, 2023 Californians passed a bond measure ...continue reading "Feds send good money after bad: $3 billion more in California HSR funding"

Our friends at National Review point us today to Matthew Dickerson's recent review of the federal government's improper payments rate: The Biden Administration has reported a total of $764 billion in improper payments in just three years The improper payment rate has averaged 5.9 percent during President Biden’s administration. The pre-pandemic historical average was a ...continue reading "Raw data: Improper payments by the US government"

This is not news, but here's a recent poll finding about the 2020 election. It's for Republicans only: Among Republican voters who support Trump in the primaries, 86% think he was the rightful winner of the 2020 election and 61% think there was outright fraud from Democrats. Those are basically Trump cultists. But even among ...continue reading "Republicans still think Democrats stole the 2020 election"

This is a municipal bus driver in Paris. She looks kind of bored, like any bus driver, but startlingly elegant. In France I guess even the bus drivers like to look chic.

A couple of weeks ago Speaker Mike Johnson agreed to release the full 40,000 hours of videotape from the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol: He strongly suggested that the videos would contradict the public understanding of what happened on Jan. 6, 2021.... “When bureaucrats and partisan activists withhold data to advance a narrative, it ...continue reading "Mike Johnson: We need to blur January 6 video to keep rioters from getting in trouble"

The Senate seems to be moving closer and closer to overriding Tommy Tuberville's jihad against military promotions. So Tuberville is throwing in the towel before that happens: New: Tuberville announces he will drop his holds on all military officer noms except 4-star generals — Ursula Perano (@UrsulaPerano) December 5, 2023 The vast majority of promotions ...continue reading "Tuberville cries uncle"

PISA test scores for math were released today. As usual, the US trails just about everyone, a result I take with a grain of salt because I've always had some doubts about the PISA methodology. More interesting, I think, is the decline in scores from 2018 to 2022: Whatever my doubts about PISA's methodology, it ...continue reading "US does surprisingly well on COVID-era declines in latest PISA math test"

Hiring data came out today, and October was slightly down over the previous month. However, this is part of a longer term decline: New hires are now back down to their 2019 level and falling steadily. Job openings were down 7% from September, but still well above their pre-pandemic level. It's nothing to be alarmed ...continue reading "Hiring continues to trend downward"

From Dean Baker: I know people say the rationing was the pandemic, but guess what folks, so was the inflation of 2021-2022. It was a worldwide story. That point is too complicated for Donald Trump, but not for most voters. — Dean Baker (@DeanBaker13) December 5, 2023 Unfortunately, I think this is too complicated for ...continue reading "Inflation is all Joe Biden’s fault"

Rep. James Comer has been trying to bushwhack Hunter Biden for months and months and months. He's desperate to prove that Hunter passed along money to Joe Biden, thus showing that Joe was part of Hunter's lobbying operation all along. The problem is that he just outright lies about everything. These are not subtle lies, ...continue reading "James Comer lies his ass off yet again"

Earlier today I wrote about the stalled talks over Ukraine aid. Republicans want border security measures in return for their support, and this morning it looked as though talks had broken down over their unwillingness to compromise. I have an afternoon update on this. It's no longer that it "looks like" Republicans are unwilling to ...continue reading "Republicans clear things up: No aid for Ukraine"

Some farmhouses in front of a peak in the San Juan Range of the Rocky Mountains. This picture was taken a few miles north of Pagosa Springs.

In exchange for more funding for Ukraine, Republicans are demanding tighter border security. Talks have been ongoing for a while, but Sen. Chris Murphy, the lead Democratic negotiator, says they're pretty much dead: “Right now, it seems pretty clear that we’re making pretty big compromises and concessions and Republicans aren’t willing to meet us anywhere ...continue reading "Democrats say Ukraine deal currently has “no path” forward"

California has been experimenting with reading education lately. To simplify a bit, the state chose several dozen of its worst schools and introduced a phonics-based reading program in third grade. Here are the results: The authors say that the gain from the program is equal to 0.14 standard deviations, which is about a quarter of ...continue reading "In California’s worst schools, phonics works"

I haven't looked at the traffic on my blog for a long time, but tonight I got curious. After a bit of fiddling around, I came across this: What happened in August? And it's even stranger than it seems. Traffic didn't drop off a cliff on a single day, but gradually over a week: Monday, ...continue reading "A blog traffic update"

The New York Times has a pretty good piece today about the recent history of AI development among Silicon Valley techbros. (With the exception of a couple of brief asides, not a single woman is mentioned in the story.) I enjoyed reading it even though I'm already fairly familiar with this stuff. My favorite anecdote ...continue reading "Killer robots on Mars"

Tyler Cowen points today to a post from Robin Hanson expressing alarm at declining fertility rates: I’ve recently come to estimate that the world population and economy will suffer a several centuries fall, with innovation grinding to a halt, ended by the rise of Amish-like insular fertile subcultures.... As a result, I’ve been watching many ...continue reading "I don’t think the Amish are the future of America"

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin must be doing something right. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–LetGodSortItOut) has lost confidence in him. Amazingly—even for Graham—all Austin said was that Israel should do more to protect civilians in Gaza or else risk driving Palestinians "into the arms of the enemy." That's it. You'd think even Graham would acknowledge the pragmatic ...continue reading "Lindsey Graham wants more civilian casualties in Gaza"

Paul Graham posted a list of Yale majors yesterday sorted by how easy the grading was in each one. Economics was the toughest: only 52% of all grades were A's. History of Science clocked in as the easiest with 92% A's. This got me curious: does easy grading attract more students? Apparently not: There are ...continue reading "Do Yale students congregate in easy majors?"

When Ron DeSantis was a week away from being sworn in as governor of Florida, aides asked him what Bible he wanted to use for the ceremony: DeSantis, who is Catholic, told them his family did not own a Bible.... Staff members for DeSantis had to buy a Bible for $21.74 on Amazon and have ...continue reading "Ron DeSantis doesn’t own a Bible"