Kevin Drum 🕸

I made this chart for an odd reason and didn't end up using it for anything. But as long as I made it, I might as well share it. Isn't that the kind of stochastic¹ mind dump that blogging is famous for? ¹Fancy word for "random."

Just kill me now: House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan sent a letter Monday to IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen seeking an explanation for why journalist Matt Taibbi received an unannounced home visit from an IRS agent. ....The bigger question is when did the IRS start to dispatch agents for surprise house ...continue reading "Joe Biden orders IRS to jerk Matt Taibbi’s chain. Maybe. Just asking questions here, folks."

Michael Barr, the Fed’s vice chair for supervision, testified before Congress this morning about the failure of Silicon Valley Bank: SVB was flagged in a presentation to the Federal Reserve Board on the risks created by rising interest rates weeks before its stunning March 10 collapse....“Staff relayed that they were actively engaged with SVB but, ...continue reading "Why did the tech community panic over Silicon Valley Bank?"

From the LA Times this morning: Three inmates died in Los Angeles County jails in just over a week Three Los Angeles County inmates died in an nine-day period this month, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, a grim milestone. ....To people paying close attention to the county’s lockups, the cluster of deaths ...continue reading "Jail deaths have dropped by a third in Los Angeles"

A few years ago the good people of Kentucky elected a Democrat governor. That's bad enough, but with Mitch McConnell in the hospital Republicans are now in a positive tizzy. They're afraid that McConnell might die or have to retire, leaving the governor free to appoint a Democrat to fill out his term. Naturally this ...continue reading "Calvinball needs to stop"

Today the Washington Post asks, "Why Americans are so pessimistic about their finances?" After presenting three stories of families at different income levels, their conclusion is that the price of eggs is up. Unfortunately, their data doesn't really back this up, since household income has increased more than spending. So they take a different tack, ...continue reading "Financial anxiety got you down? It’s probably more to do with savings than inflation."

I went out to the desert on Friday to do some astronomy, but in order to avoid traffic I left the house early and took the scenic route. In Banning I turned off the interstate and took Highway 243 up to Idyllwild and then back down to Indio. By the time I got to the ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Here is the suicide rate among teen girls age 15-19 going back to 1940. Values before 1968 are estimated from the age 15-24 suicide rate. The suicide rate: Declined for 17 years after the Great Depression. Reached a low point in 1957. Rose for 31 years. Peaked in 1988. Declined for 14 years. Reached a ...continue reading "Raw data: Suicide rate among teen girls"

The Center for American Progress says that our recent big deficits are due to Republican tax cuts. Their explanation is a little complicated, but it's all pretty obvious if you just look at federal spending: In 2019—the last year before the pandemic—the federal government spent almost exactly as much as it did in 1980. Spending ...continue reading "Yes, of course big deficits are due to tax cuts"

The Wall Street Journal reports that internal competition is brutal at Chinese social media companies: Former ByteDance engineers say ByteDance is one of the most aggressive in executing a strategy known within the industry as “horse racing,” where multiple teams are assigned to build the same product or feature with slight variations. Once it becomes ...continue reading "China almost has the key to great social media apps"

Which state has the most employers who allow employees to work from home at least part of the time? California isn't even close to the top: The winner is Washington DC! And this is strictly a survey of private businesses, so this has nothing to do with government workers. DC just has a lot of ...continue reading "Raw data: Top states for working from home"

This is Hilbert roaming around the backyard after the rain finally stopped. He is on our teak bench looking for a place to scratch an itch, and eventually he decided to stick his nose into the camera and give that a try. It didn't work so well for him, but it worked great for me. ...continue reading "Friday Cat Blogging – 24 March 2023"

From the Washington Post: Florida parents upset by Michelangelo’s ‘David’ force out principal This story is all over the place. Why? A tiny charter school in Tallahassee fired its principal over some dumb thing. How does this become widespread national news? For what it's worth, the Post's headline is typical even though the chair of ...continue reading "BREAKING: Unbelievably trivial story somehow becomes national news"

Total factor productivity is productivity growth after you've accounted for labor and capital. Roughly speaking, it's the share of productivity growth due to technological improvements: TFP took a big jump in 2021 but then dropped in 2022. It is now back to its (sort of lousy) recent trendline.

Here's how much banks have borrowed from the Fed this month: During the Great Recession, this number peaked at around $400 billion in October 2008. That's the highest it's been over the past 40 years. We're nowhere near that, but March 2023 is still in a strong second place.

Here are the results of my brain MRI: FINDINGS: Study is limited due to motion artifact. Small punctate T2 high signal changes 5 mm in the deep white matter region right frontal lobe, nonspecific, likely of small vessel ischemic changes. There is no evidence for intraparenchymal hemorrhage, midline shift or mass effect. No evidence for ...continue reading "Contrary to popular opinion, my brain is just fine"

How satisfied are trans people with their transition? Here's part of an answer from a large-scale Washington Post poll of trans people: Unfortunately, the poll doesn't dig down on this question. Of the trans people who are less satisfied, is this because they think they made a bad choice or because they didn't realize how ...continue reading "How satisfied are trans people after their transition?"

I would really like to see Donald Trump indicted over his efforts to overturn the election results in Georgia. The problem is that it would be a tough case since Trump was savvy enough to avoid saying outright, "Hey, just invent the extra votes I need." Still, everyone knows that's exactly what he meant, and ...continue reading "How about if we indict Donald Trump for something serious?"

This is sunset over the Sheephole Mountains, very near to the spot in the desert where I do my astrophotography. It's a Bortle 2 area, which means it's very nearly the darkest possible area for stargazing. That compares to Bortle 8-9 in my backyard. Bortle 1 is the darkest sky possible. Death Valley is Bortle ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

A brief Twitter exchange yesterday got me to thinking about one of the favorite former topics here in the discourse-o-sphere: neocons. If you're over 40 50 you remember them: the cabal of foreign policy intellectuals who were behind the invasion of Iraq and had visions of an American imperium that stretched across the entire Middle ...continue reading "A second look at neocons and the Iraq War"