Kevin Drum 🕸

Good news: Obamacare enrollments are up, much of it thanks to the work of independent agents. Bad news: those agents aren't always doing a great job. Andrew Sprung runs down the numbers for Obamacare applications submitted by agents: 16% lacked a Social Security number. 26% had data matching problems (income, immigration status, etc.). 17% of ...continue reading "Too many poor people get the wrong kind of Obamacare"

This is a fennec fox at the Los Angeles Zoo peering suspiciously at me from safely behind some logs. Perhaps he would have viewed me with more favor if I'd had a tasty morsel of rodent to offer.

Europe measures inflation using something called HICP—the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices. This is measured a bit differently than CPI in the United States, but luckily the BLS calculates an unofficial HICP index for the US every month. This allows an apples-to-apples comparison of inflation in the US and Europe. Here it is: It should ...continue reading "Raw data: Inflation in the US vs. Europe"

The Southern Baptist Convention voted overwhelmingly yesterday to disapprove of in-vitro fertilization. The reason is that IVF procedures usually produce lots of fertilized eggs, only one or two of which are ever used. The rest are eventually destroyed. What makes this maybe a little bit surprising is that among the rank and file, IVF is ...continue reading "Do evangelicals really oppose IVF?"

The good guys prevailed in the Supreme Court today, which ruled unanimously that the abortion drug mifepristone should stay fully available: Writing for the court, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said the antiabortion doctors who brought the case do not prescribe or use mifepristone, and the FDA’s relaxed regulation of the medication does not require those ...continue reading "Mifepristone survives to fight another day"

Would you like to see a weird inflation mystery? Here it is: Our recent inflation surge peaked at 16% in June 2022 and then crashed to zero in one month. Since then it's stayed pretty steadily around an average of 3%. This is almost entirely due to energy.¹ The price of oil peaked in June ...continue reading "Did you know . . . we defeated inflation in a single month?"

I learned something new today from Marcy Wheeler. The conventional wisdom about the Hunter Biden case is that his plea deal fell apart because of a disagreement over the scope of Hunter's immunity from further prosecution. The government thought immunity was narrowly tailored to the specific charges at hand: guns, drugs, and taxes. Hunter's team ...continue reading "It wasn’t Hunter Biden who pulled out of his plea bargain"

According to the International Energy Agency, we are soon to be awash in oil. Supply will grow every year for the rest of the decade—led by the US—while demand will slow and finally turn down in 2030. Their 2024 report is the damnedest thing I've ever seen, with starting points and ending points and hints ...continue reading "IEA says an oil glut is coming soon"

The floating pier we built to get humanitarian aid into Gaza has had its problems. The Wall Street Journal provides some details: The hastily constructed pier was never designed to handle the Mediterranean Sea’s rough waters.... The floating structure broke apart late last month after 10 days of operation, something defense officials privately described as ...continue reading "Why do we need a floating pier in Gaza?"

This is a perfect yellow rose blooming in the Volksgarten in Vienna. The whole park is covered in roses this time of year. Lucky us.

Michael Hiltzik decided to ruin my day by pointing to yet another COVID vaccine conspiracy theory I hadn't heard of before. This time it comes from the British Medical Journal, which published an article stating that excess deaths remained high in Western countries in 2021 and 2022 even after the COVID vaccine was introduced. There's ...continue reading "Yet another COVID vaccine conspiracy theory?"

This is a bit of a hyperlocal story, but the LA Times today writes about the horror of flying in and out of LAX: Alexa Woodward arrived in California for the first time and was immediately lost. Outside Los Angeles International Airport, she and a friend tried unsuccessfully to order an Uber. The hum of ...continue reading "Come on, LAX isn’t all that bad"

Inflation all but disappeared in May according to the latest figures from the BLS: Headline inflation dropped to 0.07%—zero for all practical purposes—and core inflation dropped to 2.0%. Inflation in services also dropped, coming in at a very respectable 2.4%. That's good news since services inflation has been stubbornly high. On a conventional year-over-year basis, ...continue reading "Inflation rate drops to nearly zero in May"

If somebody steals your credit card and runs up a huge bill, you can only be held responsible for $50 in damages. Your bank has to eat the rest. The reason for this is that Congress passed the Fair Credit Billing Act in 1974. That's where the $50 maximum comes from. Can you imagine such ...continue reading "Congress then and now"

Here's a remarkable image: In 1987 we signed the Montreal Protocol to ban CFCs, which were producing a hole in the ozone layer. In 1992 the ban was extended to HCFCs. Both of these are powerful greenhouse gases that trap sunlight and contribute to global warming. The amount of warming they cause is called "radiative ...continue reading "After 30 years, chlorofluorocarbon ban finally starts working"

This is Schönbrunn, my favorite European palace thanks to its famous yellow exterior. However, this was not its original color. It went from light orange initially to golden ochre under Maria Theresa and finally to "Schönbrunn Gelb" in the mid-1800s. Our guide claimed that this color was chosen because money was tight at the time ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

The Census Bureau released its quarterly figures for industry sales and profits yesterday. For no particular reason, here are the biggest winners and losers since 2000. Note that specialty retail refers to retail other than food, clothing, and general merchandise. Retail overall is up 74.1% since 2000.

I just got back from my first Lupron injection. As you'll recall, prostate cancer feeds on testosterone, and the Lupron is designed to suppress testosterone and starve the cancer to death. I was curious how long it takes for it to work, so I checked in with Abbvie: As a former professional marketing executive and ...continue reading "It’s begun"

The FBI released crime figures yesterday for Q1, and as expected, crime was down considerably everywhere: Overall, violent crime was down 15.2%. Murder was down 26.4%. Overall property crime was down 15.1%.  Crime was down by double digits or more in every single category and in every region of the country. I don't want to ...continue reading "Crime is way down everywhere"

From the Washington Post: In edited videos, Republican officials and allies of former president Donald Trump repeatedly tried to turn Biden’s Normandy visit into a highlight reel of senior moments and missteps, aimed at showing the president as infirm, addled or out of his depth. Trump, who turns 78 on Friday, has also repeatedly attacked ...continue reading "Republicans rely on fake videos these days"