Kevin Drum 🕸

Just sayin':

This might be Ron DeSantis's most embarrassing pander yet: We’ve kneecapped ESG in Florida. So I’m calling for an investigation into AB InBev’s actions regarding their Bud Light marketing campaign and falling stock prices. All options are on the table and woke corporations that put ideology ahead of returns should be on notice. pic.twitter.com/B3frLY4f30 — ...continue reading "Anheuser Busch is doing fine, Ron"

Here is Charlie blissing out as Hilbert licks his head. Usually this presages an attack from Hilbert, but not this time. He just felt like licking someone.

It's funny that SNAP (food stamps) and WIC (Women Infants and Children) grow and shrink differently over time. SNAP responds to the economy, growing during recessions when it's needed most and then falling when the economy improves and it's needed less. It declined during the expansion of the aughts but then increased by nearly 20% ...continue reading "The growth and decline of SNAP and WIC"

Threads may have signed up 100 million users in its first week, but that doesn't mean 100 million people are actually using it: Generally speaking, everyone seems to agree that lack of features is the main reason for the drop in engagement. It's certainly the reason I haven't signed up in the first place. Threads ...continue reading "Raw data: Threads use is plummeting"

The town of Burney in northern California has suffered a recent bout of vomiting and stomach illness due to an outbreak of e. coli in the water supply. The LA Times fills us in: Everyone is struggling to get through their days without potable water as the local water district works to treat the source ...continue reading "California’s water systems are virtually disease free"

This is downtown Los Angeles at night viewed from Angeles Crest Highway. City Hall is off to the left. There's a thin marine layer settling in south of downtown, with the lights of Long Beach behind it and then yet another marine layer over the ocean.

Last night I posted a chart showing the relationship between interest rate hikes and subsequent changes in the unemployment rate. I got some pushback because the data was so noisy it seemed like the relationship was made up. To clarify things, here's a smoothed version of the chart that uses rolling 6-month averages: Apologies for ...continue reading "Another look at interest rates and recession"

Temecula, California, is not MAGA country. It's wine country, sort of rural but not very, and is generally moderately Republican. Donald Trump won 53% of the vote in 2020. And yet, Temecula is currently ground zero for a furious backlash against a fifth-grade history textbook because it includes optional supplementary material that mentions gay activist ...continue reading "Temecula school board goes insane over Harvey Milk"

I didn't realize this until I saw it this morning, but if you exclude California homelessness has been steadily declining in the US since 2007. It's down by a quarter over the past 15 years: You'd never know it from media and activist reports, but homelessness has been a big policy success in 49 states. ...continue reading "Raw data: Homelessness is down everywhere except California"

Today I learned, via the Washington Post, that several blue states have made it legally possible to ship abortion pills to women in states where they've been outlawed: A new procedure...allows U.S. medical professionals in certain Democrat-led states that have passed abortion “shield” laws to prescribe and mail pills directly to patients in antiabortion states....The ...continue reading "Shield laws allow blue states to ship abortion pills to red states"

I'm feeling a little bored so I'm going to do something foolish: make a prediction. In particular, I'm going to make a prediction about the economy. As most of you know, my view of the economy has always been resolutely boring and conventional: In response to inflation, the Fed raises interest rates. A while later ...continue reading "I wouldn’t count on a soft landing, folks"

This is a doctor making his way from Medical Office Building 1 to Medical Office Building 2 at my local Kaiser Permanente hospital. I've spent many an hour whiling away the time in MOB 2.

Dan Wang writes this week about Xi Jinping's increasing obsession with controlling every aspect of Chinese society and the impact this has on the already parlous state of China's technology sector: The general political environment poses perhaps the greatest threat to technological momentum....I grow less certain that a third-Xi term China will sustain an innovative ...continue reading "China is not quite the technology powerhouse it seems to be"

In the Washington Post, David Byler shows us how often people decide to change their self-identified race: About 14% of Hispanics switch to white, as do 26% of multiracial folks. The multiracial category is fairly small, so the switchers don't affect the overall racial picture much. But that's not the case for Hispanics, who make ...continue reading "Race switchers could tip the 2024 election"

Here is Donald Trump's support in the Republican primary since the beginning of 2022: Trump's level of support is bafflingly steady. He routinely blurts out absurdities and nothing happens. He gets indicted twice and nothing happens. Ron DeSantis enters the race and nothing happens. His mental acuity shows obvious signs of decline and nothing happens. ...continue reading "Why do Republicans support Trump?"

CBP released border encounter numbers for June today, and they're down a lot from last month: The June decline is fairly typical for the start of summer, so there's no telling yet if it's temporary or not. Of the 145,000 border encounters in June, about 45,000 were asylum requests and 100,000 were attempts to cross ...continue reading "Raw data: Illegal immigration is down in June"

Earlier today I posted a chart showing that in-person classes were canceled at higher rates for poor kids compared to richer kids during the early days of the COVID pandemic. The same was true for Black vs. white students and for students with high-school educated parents. My assumption, naturally, was that this all happened for ...continue reading "Black parents preferred school closures during the pandemic. White parents didn’t."

Bottles of Benriach at La Maison de Whisky in Paris. The shop is in the Madeleine district and we passed it whenever we walked out toward the Place de la Concorde.

Donald Trump wants Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis tossed off the investigation of Trump's attempt to change the presidential vote in Georgia. He also wants to quash the grand jury report into his actions. He has precisely no good argument to make in either case, but he nevertheless went straight to the state Supreme ...continue reading "Georgia court tells Trump to fuck off"