Kevin Drum 🕸

In preparation for my leukopheresis in a couple of weeks, I had to go in on Monday and get about 30 blood tests done. It turns out I don't have syphilis! Or Hep C! Hooray! More seriously, one of the 30 was the good old M-protein test. I've been off chemo for a month now, ...continue reading "Health update"

After focusing on K-12 schools for a while, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis decided yesterday to train his guns on universities: DeSantis, a Republican, took his most aggressive swing yet at the education establishment, announcing a proposed overhaul of the state’s higher education system that would eliminate what he called “ideological conformity.” If enacted, courses in ...continue reading "DeSantis announces program to indoctrinate college students"

This is what December and January have looked like here in Southern California: either stormy and threatening to rain, or else just raining. This picture was taken halfway up Mt. Baldy Road looking south toward Upland. It wasn't raining when I took it, but about half an hour later it started coming down.

The Washington Post reports today that Florida's K-12 teachers have been removing books from their classrooms while they await guidance from the state about what's allowed and what's not: House Bill 1467, which took effect as law in July, mandates that schools’ books be age-appropriate, free from pornography and “suited to student needs.” Books must ...continue reading "Florida teachers are finally getting some guidance about forbidden books"

JOLTS¹ data for December was released today. Here it is for the full year 2022: Hires have been declining, but recovered a bit in December, rising 2.2% compared to November. Ditto for job openings (up 5.5% in December). That's the good news. Then there's the bad news. Layoffs have been on an upward trend all ...continue reading "JOLTS report: The economy is doing OK, but not great"

Two people in two days have told me that NextDoor is aflame with outrage about the price of natural gas. And that's hardly surprising: here in California gas bills for December ranged from double to triple the normal rate. People who normally have gas bills of $100 or so are reporting bills of $200-$500 depending ...continue reading "Here’s why natural gas prices are so high in California"

Paul Krugman asks today: Stagflation or Soft Landing? It Depends Who You Ask. Hang on a second, pardner. There's also a third option: a plain, old-fashioned recession that lasts a year or so. This is my best guess right now because the Fed's interest rate hikes will start to affect things in a few months ...continue reading "A recession is coming our way"

According to my bird buddy, this is a lazuli bunting female Mountain Bluebird. I found her hopping around the trail markers at Quail Hill park, one of the open-space preserves in this neck of Orange County. The top photo is a good overall picture of our little bluebird. The middle picture shows that it's not ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Here are all of the standard economic indicators that affect people in their daily lives. They look pretty solid! Growth rates are all annualized. NOTE: Will everything stay this sunny? I'm a recession hawk myself, so I doubt it. We'll know in about six months.

Are wages skyrocketing so strongly that the Fed needs to continue crushing the economy until workers understand who's the real boss? Let's look at today's latest data: The Employment Cost Index measures the total cost of employing someone: wages, taxes, office space, health care, etc. In the last quarter it went up at an annualized ...continue reading "The cost of employment rose less than 1% last quarter"

I was piddling around with something related to the Tyre Nichols killing—I don't quite remember what—and decided to look at police killings by both race and age. We all know that Black people are killed at much higher rates relative to population than white people, but it turns out that the difference depends a lot ...continue reading "Police shootings by race and age are . . . a little weird"

Here's what the latest NBC poll has to say about what Congress should be doing this year: Normally polls like this are kind of worthless because the crosstabs invariably tell us that 100% of Democrats think one thing and 100% of Republicans think the opposite. Not exactly news. But when you get to the edges, ...continue reading "The American people want immigration reform. They don’t want abortion restrictions."

I am amused by this chart on international obesity rates: Every country in the top 15 uses weights based on measured data. But what happens when you ask people to self-report their weights (red asterisks in the chart)? Their countries all end up in the bottom 20. This is why anything based on self-reporting should ...continue reading "Raw (?) data: International obesity rates"

This is what poor old Notre Dame looks like these days. Maybe if we come back to Paris for the Olympics they'll have it all fixed up for us.

John Herrman says that Amazon still works pretty well for most people: But, at the core of that experience, something has become unignorably worse. Late last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon’s customer satisfaction had fallen sharply in a range of recent surveys, which cited COVID-related delivery interruptions but also poor search results ...continue reading "Amazon has a junk problem. And a search problem."

The Wall Street Journal reports today that "The U.S. Consumer Is Starting to Freak Out." Let's take a look! Spending on durable goods, like cars and washing machines, soared during the pandemic and has since flattened out. But it's still way above its pre-pandemic level. Spending on nondurable goods, like clothes and food, also declined ...continue reading "Consumers aren’t freaking out. But maybe they should be."

"Defund the police" may be a rallying cry for some, but what's happened in real life? Just the opposite: The data for 2021-22 represents my best estimate put together from a variety of sources. The number of police officers does seem to have been cut back in 2021, but not because of George Floyd. It ...continue reading "Defund the police? Hardly."

The Wall Street Journal has a rather remarkable story this weekend about CGT, the French union that represents workers in the power industry. Apparently they've taken to cutting off electricity to specific individuals as a protest against proposals to pare back the French pension system. The most curious thing about this is that everyone seems ...continue reading "France’s retirement system is unfair. So is everyone else’s."

Dana Milbank summarizes the state of Republican budget negotiations: House Republicans are saying they’re willing to risk default — an economic disaster — unless Biden agrees to cuts. But they won’t specify which cuts they want; Biden will just have to guess. “I want to look the president in the eye and tell me there’s ...continue reading "Republicans want to cut assistance to poor people. Any other questions?"

The Washington Examiner does a little examining today: The salary for Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has nearly doubled during her six-year tenure on the job. McDaniel, who was elected as chairwoman in 2017, was paid $122,582 in her first year but made $358,431 from January 2022 through November 2022, according to Federal Election ...continue reading "Ronna McDaniel wins fourth term as RNC chair. Will she also get another raise?"