Kevin Drum 🕸

NBC News reports that state officials working for Ron DeSantis are soliciting campaign contributions from lobbyists with business before the state: NBC News spoke with 10 Republican lobbyists in Florida, all of whom said they couldn't remember being solicited for donations so overtly by administration officials — especially at a time when the governor still ...continue reading "Ron DeSantis really wants your money"

The Supreme Court today severely curtailed the EPA's ability to regulate wetlands under the Clean Water Act. This was a genuinely complicated case, but the big problem is that the court majority was able to do its work only by twisting the clear instructions of Congress. The CWA defines wetlands as anything "adjacent" to lakes, ...continue reading "Supreme Court blows off Congress in wetlands case"

Sunset and fast food on the Louisiana bayou.

According to the Wall Street Journal, same-sex couples account for 1% of all households nationwide. Of that, half are married and a little less than half are unmarried partners. The remainder live alone or in other arrangements.

The American economy is in very squirrely shape right now. I have two things to show you that demonstrate how weird things are. First, you may recall that there are two basic measures of economic growth: GDP and GDI. They are theoretically identical, but in practice they diverge—sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. For that ...continue reading "The US economy is a riddle wrapped in an enigma"

Over at the Washington Monthly, Robert Shapiro argues that Americans—and Democrats in particular—should be more aware of big wage gains over the past year. It's something to brag about. The problem is that it really isn't true. There are several common ways of measuring wages, and nearly all of them show no gains at all ...continue reading "Earnings are not up"

The Washington Post reports that most book challenges come from a tiny number of activists: The majority of the 1,000-plus book challenges analyzed by The Post were filed by just 11 people. Each of these people brought 10 or more challenges against books in their school district; one man filed 92 challenges. Together, these serial ...continue reading "Book banning is a very, very niche activity"

Rock and sky at sunset near Palm Springs, California.

One of the more mysterious aspects of the debt ceiling crisis is what happens if we actually go over the edge. There are two basic possibilities: Treasury simply pays bills on a first-come-first-serve basis. So if X-Day arrives on, say, June 1, and Treasury runs out of cash at 11 am, all the bills still ...continue reading "Who gets paid if the US defaults on its debt?"

I'm feeling back up to making charts, so I thought I'd show you one that clarifies my progress with the CAR-T infusion. This is just the crudest sort of extrapolation, so take it with a grain of salt. As it turns out, I've actually had three M-protein measurements. The first was several days before the ...continue reading "M-Protein update"

I am definitely on the mend. My counts are practically up to normal; the Bell's palsy is receding; my energy is slowly returning; and my appetite has improved. Everything is getting better. But the bigger news is that I finally got my first M-protein result. As you'll recall, this is a proxy for the total ...continue reading "Health update"

Here are two views of Coachella. The first was taken in the early morning while the second was taken on a moonlit evening.

A few days ago, OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, testified that artificial intelligence posed significant dangers and ought to be regulated. Yesterday, though, he released a short brief on the subject and, remarkably, it turns out he doesn't want anything regulated at all. Not in practice, anyway. For starters, here's what he affirmatively does want regulated: ...continue reading "Should AI be regulated?"

Paul Krugman posted this chart today from the Fed's annual survey of economic well-being: There are two interesting things here. First, if you look at the top line it's nearly flat. This is people reporting on their own finances, and COVID-19 had almost no effect at all. None. There's even a slight uptick in 2021, ...continue reading "I’m OK, you’re not"

Today is the first day of the French Open. It's just qualies this week, but it's still technically the opening. In honor of this, here's a picture of the sculpture of Roland Garros at the front gate of the stadium. Garros was a World War I aviation pioneer after whom the stadium is named.

Matt Yglesias on Twitter: What I do think is true, though, is that: — Under any tactics, Biden would have ended up agreeing to meaningful cuts in discretionary spending. — The case *on the merits* for austerity budgeting is a much stronger today than it was in 2011 — Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) May 22, 2023 ...continue reading "Austerity budgeting? Really?"

I'm flummoxed by Joe Biden's latest on the debt ceiling: Mr. Biden said on Sunday that he believed he had the power to challenge the constitutionality of the nation’s borrowing limit, but that he did not believe such a challenge could succeed in time to avoid a default on federal debt if lawmakers did not ...continue reading "Challenging the debt ceiling"

In its simplest terms, the ongoing debt ceiling fiasco just continues to perplex me. At first, Joe Biden says explicitly that there will be no negotiations over the debt ceiling. The United States pays its bills and that's that. Fine. But the only way to do that is to instruct Treasury to keep paying bills ...continue reading "What’s up with the debt ceiling?"

Really, everything was very positive today. My counts are going steadily up; WBC and RBC are getting close to normal, ditto for platelets, which were all but zero a few days ago. It's hard to stay positive, but that's solely because of the extreme fatigue, which I was warned about and is totally expected. The ...continue reading "Health update"

This picture amuses me. It's Charlie with our lizard, but for some reason he's pretending to ignore it. He only did this for a few seconds before springing back into action, but I wonder what he was thinking? Trying to trick the lizard or something?