Kevin Drum 🕸

The New York Times reports today on tax season: Decades of Neglect Leave I.R.S. in Tax Season ‘Chaos’ "Neglect" is the opposite of what's happened, as the body of the story makes clear: Tax-averse Republicans, who have spent years cutting the agency’s budget, have seized on the I.R.S.’s problems as proof it should not be ...continue reading "The IRS has not been “neglected” for decades. Quite the contrary."

The American economy gained a stellar 678,000 jobs last month. We need 90,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth, which means that net job growth clocked in at 588,000 jobs. The headline unemployment rate fell yet again to 3.8%. There's no bad news in this report. Employment increased by more than 500,000 ...continue reading "Chart of the day: Net new jobs in February"

There is something peculiar about the photojournalism of the Ukraine war. I've seen pictures of missiles arcing through the sky. I've seen pictures of blasted out buildings. I've seen pictures of refugees piling into trains. I've seen pictures of Russian soldiers walking through the empty streets of Kherson. I've seen satellite pictures of Russian convoys. ...continue reading "Where are the pictures of the Ukraine war?"

The price of vegetable oil has shot up by an average of two-thirds since the start of the pandemic. Here's the trend over the past two years: Ukraine is a fairly big exporter of both raw grain and seed oils, and a long, grinding war might well have a big effect on supplies of both. ...continue reading "Raw data: The price of (vegetable) oil"

A couple of weeks ago we were at the San Antonio Regional Hospital in Upland, where Marian was taking care of some administrative business for a relative. I stayed in the car and randomly shot pictures, including a series of high-shutter-speed photos of the fountain out front. This is one of them.

I suppose it was inevitable: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is scrutinizing creators of nonfungible tokens and the crypto exchanges where they trade to determine whether some of the assets run afoul of the agency’s rules, according to people familiar with the matter. ....As part of its review, the SEC is seeking information on ...continue reading "The era of crypto-CDOs is coming fast"

Vladimir Putin dialed up the president of France earlier today to let him know about Russia's plans for Ukraine: Vladimir Putin has told Emmanuel Macron that Kyiv’s “refusal to accept Russia’s conditions” means “the worst is still to come” in Ukraine, saying Moscow was aiming to take “full control” by diplomatic or military means, according ...continue reading "Putin wants “full control” of Ukraine"

In a court filing seeking access to emails between President Trump and attorney John Eastman about the 2020 election, the January 6 Committee tipped its hand: The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said on Wednesday that there was enough evidence to conclude that former President Donald J. Trump and some ...continue reading "January 6 committee says Trump “might” have committed fraud and obstruction of justice"

Here's an exceptionally nice photo of our local squirrel. He spends all his time chittering madly at both people and cats even though I keep telling him that nobody is even interested in his stupid pine cones. But he doesn't believe us. He probably never will.

Eurostat has issued a flash estimate of the euro area inflation rate for February: it will reach 5.8%, up from 5.1% in January. Here's how that compares to the US: There are a couple of takeaways from this. First, US and European inflation rates follow each other, so don't be surprised if the February number ...continue reading "European inflation spikes up in February"

The New York Times is getting dragged all over lefty Twitter for this fact check: We fact-checked President Biden's claim during the #SOTU about strong U.S. job growth. Follow our live analysis: https://t.co/wmEgwIYSOi pic.twitter.com/HwXEcia7IL — The New York Times (@nytimes) March 2, 2022 The Times deserves whatever they get for this. Given the lower US ...continue reading "Fact checking the president"

For the first time in a long while I watched the State of the Union Address like a normal person: only barely paying attention. Overall, I thought it was fine. President Joe was very much on his bipartisan schtick, starting off with lots of crowd-pleasing Ukraine stuff and then emphasizing things he thought everyone could ...continue reading "Biden’s SOTU wasn’t great, but it was pretty good"

Sen. Rick Scott got himself into the soup a few days ago by releasing a plan for the Republican Party that included, among other things, a tax proposal: All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount. Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax. ...continue reading "Rick Scott wants to raise taxes by thousands of dollars on poor families"

This is the Cathedra Petri in St. Peter's Basilica, directly behind Bernini's baldachin. It was built to house St. Peter's wooden throne, which Bernini enclosed in a typically massive bronze sculpture. The photo is (surprise!) a panorama stitched together to provide a good view of both the floor and ceiling.

Even though our sanctions regime against Russia specifically excludes oil and gas, energy traders are worried that Russia's crude oil shipments might suffer anyway. This has caused the price of Brent crude futures to soar, but not Russian oil futures: In a sign that demand for Russian oil has evaporated, prices for the country’s flagship ...continue reading "The price of oil is up. Or is it?"

I don't know a lot about sanctions, but I've learned two things over the past couple of decades: In general, unilateral sanctions don't work. They only work if they're backed by lots of countries. They take a while to work. Sanctions are sort of like a grinding medieval siege, something that's effective only if you ...continue reading "Our sanctions against Russia are tough but still probably won’t work"

What have Republicans done recently? They tried to extort Ukraine in return for military aid. They precipitated anti-mask/vaccine fervor, resulting in tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. They defend the 1/6 insurrection as just an ordinary protest¹ and continue to support Trump's big lie about Democrats stealing the vote. They support efforts to allow red ...continue reading "Let us review the Republican record"

Nikki Haley has some advice for us: We need to become energy independent and we need to do it now. — Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) February 28, 2022 As it happens, we're already energy independent: We continue to import about a fifth of our energy for reasons of convenience and geopolitics, but we don't have to. ...continue reading "Let’s make Europe energy independent"

So it looks like Joe Biden will be giving his State of the Union address just as Russian troops are finally entering Kyiv. And make no mistake: despite Russian military clumsiness so far, they're going to take Kyiv and there's not much we can do about it. This puts Biden in a tough position. Will ...continue reading "This is a tough night for Biden to be giving a big speech"

Well, good news for me, anyway. As many of you know, there's been an explosion in recent years of what are called CAR-T treatments for blood cancers in general and for multiple myeloma in particular. Unlike ordinary chemo treatments, CAR-T involves taking T cells from a patient (e.g., me) and shipping them off to a ...continue reading "Good news today!"