Kevin Drum 🕸

The big Supreme Court news today is that Sam Alito once accepted a fishing vacation in Alaska that was arranged and paid for by a guy named Robin Arkley II. Other guests on the trip included Leonard Leo, head of the Federalist Society, and Paul Singer, a hedge fund zillionaire. ProPublica, which broke the story, ...continue reading "The Alito private jet story is pretty weak tea"

Today is the summer solstice—that is, it was the summer solstice 4½ hours ago at 7:58 am Pacific time. But why get fussy about things? It's the longest day of the year, which is why I've always hated it. I don't want the days to get shorter from here on out. But here's a picture ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

The NAEP has released brand new results for its long-term reading and math tests. The long-term test is a special version of the NAEP that strives to stay the same from year to year so it produces scores that can be compared over time. Here's the main takeaway: Despite the pandemic, reading scores didn't go ...continue reading "Latest NAEP long-term test shows disastrous results during the pandemic"

I promise I'm not stalking Matt Yglesis these days, but he just happens to have written on some interesting topics lately. On Tuesday he ran an interview with Jennifer Doleac, an expert in how to reduce crime. The fascinating thing about this is that from 100,000 feet it seems like an intractable problem. Nothing works. ...continue reading "We already (sorta) know how to have less crime"

Jane Rosenzweig writes in the LA Times today about the perils of AI: Soon after ChatGPT was released, an artificial intelligence researcher from one of the big tech companies told me that I shouldn’t worry about how the technology would affect how students learn to write. In two years, she assured me, only aspiring professional ...continue reading "Writing is over! (Someday)"

Like all of you, I've been hearing endless reports that border encounters are way down since President Biden eliminated Title 42 enforcement last month. Today the Border Patrol released the official monthly count for May, and I was surprised to see . . . nothing: Total encounters were down by only 6,500 people from April, ...continue reading "Raw data: Southwest border encounters through May"

Is social media bad for teens? So far, the evidence suggests only a single serious negative impact: Depressed girls who start using social media 5-6 hours a day are likely to become even more depressed. As a single bit of survey evidence, there's also the internal Instagram study showing that Instagram had a positive effect ...continue reading "A very short review of the question, “Is social media bad for teens?”"

This is a barnyard goose, probably an African goose if my perusal of "goose breeds" on Google is anything to go by. The last time I looked we had four of them, all hanging around near our little artificial lake.

Well, he's guilty of two misdemeanor charges of paying his taxes late. He did pay the taxes, he just didn't pay them on time. Biden Jr. also avoided prosecution on a sketchy gun charge.¹ He was instead admitted to a diversion program, which is pretty common for first-time offenders. Together, this apparently ends the Biden ...continue reading "Hunter Biden is guilty!!!"

New business formation was up 0.4% in May compared to April. It was up a respectable 3.5% since last year. But that's not super interesting. A longer term look is: Note that this is not net business formation. It doesn't account for businesses that were shut down during the pandemic. Nonetheless, new businesses were obviously ...continue reading "Businesses are still shutting down at pandemic rates [UPDATE: OR ARE THEY?]"

New housing starts skyrocketed in May by nearly 300,000 units from April. That's surprisingly good, but it comes on the back of a steady decline over the past year. I sometimes struggle to pick out the best way to show chart data in the most informative possible way, and this was one of those times. ...continue reading "Raw data: Housing starts boomed in May"

Don't worry, everything is fine. If you've noticed that blogging has been a little sparse for the past few days, and dropped to nearly nothing today, it's not just because the news has been a little dull. It's because I feel crummy. A week ago I got an upset stomach. The next day I developed ...continue reading "Health update"

Bruce Bartlett has something to say about the public's frustration and resentment toward government bureaucrats: Corporate bureaucrats are probably worse than government bureaucrats, and we deal with the corporate-types far more frequently. Try calling customer service for any big company. The irony is that only government bureaucrats can control the corporate bureaucrats. — Bruce Bartlett ...continue reading "Corporate bureaucracy is the worst bureaucracy"

This is quite the cobweb, non? I took the picture at the Javel metro stop, right along the Seine, on our first night in Paris last year.

Ruby Cramer has a long profile of Florida first lady Casey DeSantis in the Washington Post today, and the main takeaway is that "Ron and Casey" are a unit—a very private, very intimidating unit. It's worth a read. But I was amused by this bit of gratuitous shade thrown on Ron: In 2011, [Casey] was ...continue reading "Ha ha. Obama’s book was better than DeSantis’s."

Here are some new poll results from Gallup: Even Democrats are down. What explains this? Is it just the effect of unending propaganda from the MAGAnauts spilling over to everyone? Or is it yet more evidence that Americans have suddenly shifted right on cultural issues?

This chart comes from a report released a couple of days ago by Policy Impact, a think tank dedicated to standardized analysis of public policy. It shows how much it costs to perform an IRS audit: Up through the middle class, the cost of an audit is the same as the amount brought in. Net ...continue reading "Raw data: The cost of an IRS audit"

Over at Politico, Rich Lowry has joined the throng of Republicans saying that President Biden should pardon Donald Trump. It has a chance of "sapping some of the poison out of the system," he says. That poison, Lowry says, is largely due to conservative anger over unpunished Democratic wrongdoing in the cases of Hillary Clinton ...continue reading "Let’s not forget the history behind the Mueller investigation"

Everyone wants to be let in! Of course, five minutes later they'll be demanding to be let out. This is annoying enough that I usually just leave the door open, but lately they've been dragging lizards into the house. So now I keep the door closed, which lets me check them out before they come ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 16 June 2023"

The BLS released its estimate of total worker compensation for Q1 today. This includes both wages and benefits. Here's where pay is highest and lowest: The nationwide average for private industry workers is $41 per hour. It's significantly higher for public workers ($58), union workers ($54), and big companies ($59). Adjusted for inflation, total compensation ...continue reading "Total worker comp in Q1 is highest in San Francisco, lowest in Miami"