Kevin Drum 🕸

This happened two weeks ago, but for some reason Bloomberg wrote about it today: The Federal Communications Commission has ordered phone companies to stop carrying traffic related to robocalls about scam auto warranties. US voice service providers must now “take all necessary steps to avoid carrying this robocall traffic,” or provide a report outlining how ...continue reading "Bye bye to auto warranty scam calls"

The Washington Post takes on one of my favorite questions today: Why don't we use more heat pumps here in the United States? There are two kinds of heat pumps, and I love them both. The first type should really be called "a cheap air conditioner," because that's what it is: an air conditioner that ...continue reading "More Americans should have a heat pump"

Paul Krugman writes today that he was wrong about inflation. Fair enough. But suppose, just for the sake of conversation, that inflation goes like this over the next year or so: This is not a projection or even a guess. Just a possibility. But if the core PCE index—the Fed's favorite!—follows the dashed line or ...continue reading "Is high inflation here to stay? Let’s hear from everybody."

The Russians must think they're doing pretty well in their war for the Donbas region in Ukraine: In recent months, Russian forces have concentrated their assault on eastern Ukraine, which by all indications Russia appears determined to annex as it did Crimea in 2014. But on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov told the Russian ...continue reading "Russia wants a free path to Crimea"

Secret Servicegate is slowly coming into sharper focus. Here's what we seem to know: On January 16, 2021, Congress sent a "broad" preservation and production request to the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service. Another was sent on January 25. Both requests were aimed at preserving records related to the 1/6 insurrection. ...continue reading "I think we all know what the Secret Service did last year"

In honor of my new astrophotography hobby, here are a couple of pictures of the Vermont/Sunset station on the LA Metro's red line. This is the station closest to the Griffith Observatory, so it's decked out with a faux star chart. At least, I think it's faux. Do those look like real constellations to anyone? ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Why isn't Attorney General Merrick Garland pressing charges against Donald Trump? Surely the 1/6 insurrection hearings in the House have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt just how deeply Trump was involved with the mob attack on the Capitol and the effort to stop Mike Pence from certifying the election results? In the LA ...continue reading "Why is Merrick Garland holding back on Donald Trump?"

This is a familiar story by now, but the BLS released the latest figures for full-time weekly earnings yesterday so we might as well take a look at them. Here they are: Men's wages are down 3.7% since the start of the pandemic and women's wages are down 1.5%. Since their peaks in summer 2020, ...continue reading "Raw data: Weekly wages in Q2 of 2022"

The LA Times reports on an announcement that Obamacare premiums will rise an average of 6% next year: Individual health insurance premiums are set to rise by an average of 6% on the state marketplace next year amid rebounding demand for medical care and uncertainty surrounding federal financial assistance, Covered California said Tuesday....Each year from ...continue reading "Obamacare premiums set to fall 2.3% in California"

Ballgirls exchange a look behind Madison Keys and Taylor Townsend during a changeover in the second round of women's doubles at the French Open. Keys and Townsend won the match but then lost in the semifinals to Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula.

Last night was dex night, so I spent some time hanging around Twitter. At one point I ended up writing something that I've hinted around at here but have never quite come out and said outright. So let's take care of that. I've been watching the climate change fight for 20 years now, waiting and ...continue reading "Geoengineering is (probably) in our future"

Marian and I flew to France in mid-May and came home in early June. Everything went smoothly: the flights were on-time, everything was hassle free, and lines were short. Were we just lucky? Or did we pick the right time to go to Europe? Whatever it was, the Wall Street Journal reports that things sure ...continue reading "Airline CEOs should probably all be fired"

The LA Times reports on CoreLogic's latest report on Southern California housing prices: The region’s six-county median sale price was $750,000, down from $760,000 in May....Although median prices tend to peak in the summer, the average increase from May to June was 1.78% over the last decade....The last time prices fell from May to June ...continue reading "Housing prices drop in Southern California for the first time in a decade"

Are Hispanic voters abandoning the Democratic Party? Fox News and the Wall Street Journal want you to think so, but Gallup disagrees: Gallup's best mechanism for tracking political inclinations over time is political party identification, a measure included in all Gallup surveys for decades....The results show that Americans' party identification swung dramatically toward the Republican ...continue reading "Raw data: Hispanic support for the Democratic Party"

Another week, another 17¢ decline in the price of gasoline. We are now down 60¢ from the June peak, a yearly savings of about $300 per driving-age adult: Kudos for President Biden, right? After all, he was allegedly responsible for the big increase, so he must be responsible for the big decrease too.

Question #1: Do you know what the following acronyms stand for? MRA FDA EMA GMP For the record, they are: Mutual Recognition Agreement, Food & Drug Administration, European Medicines Agency, and Good Manufacturing Practices. Question #2: If you didn't recognize all four of these acronyms, did you nonetheless have a strong opinion about whether the ...continue reading "Why doesn’t the FDA have an MRA with the EMA for GMP on pharmaceuticals?"

I spent so much time mucking around with this chart that I'm no longer quite sure what I was looking for in the first place: What it shows is that since 2012 the number of housing units per adult has declined by about 1% and the number of rental units per adult has increased by ...continue reading "Raw data: Housing in the US"

When we were in Paris the opera house became a bit of a joke. It was something both of us wanted to see, and it was only about ten minutes from our apartment, but for some reason we kept missing it. Finally, a couple of days before we left, we made it over on a ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Bloomberg reports that supply chain problems are visibly easing: Supply strains, while still afflicting many consumers and businesses, are becoming more mundane than menacing like they were six months ago, especially in the U.S. Snarls have eased since their pandemic peaks and some are already adding less inflationary pressure. ....But the gradual end of the ...continue reading "The economy is set to improve this year — if we want it to"

I got bored, so I made a chart: I was curious about how core inflation was doing here vs. other big countries in Europe. Unfortunately, the Europeans don't seem to produce seasonally adjusted figures, which means the raw monthly numbers are so volatile that you can't make any sense of them. It's just a bunch ...continue reading "Raw data: Core inflation in the US and Europe"