Kevin Drum 🕸

During the Republican debate a couple of weeks ago, I had a question about a peculiar commercial halfway through: what is "Biden's whale EZ pass lane"? Today, Politico finally—finally!—answers me: A new television commercial from a GOP-linked conservative group accuses Biden of raising gasoline prices by creating an “E-ZPass lane for whales in the Gulf.” ...continue reading "Answered! What is an “EZ pass for whales”?"

The Office of Management and Budget issued a new set of guidelines for regulatory analysis a couple of weeks ago, and it's surprisingly important. It's also pretty technical, so hang on. The rules are set out in Circular A-4, one of OMB's 136 circulars, and the first thing it addresses is the discount rate that ...continue reading "Circular A-4 is the most important rule you’ve never heard of"

The Washington Post reports today on the proliferation of junk fees: The fees together may cost Americans at least $64 billion annually, according to a rough White House estimate. This may sound like a lot, but it actually amounts to only 0.34% of all consumer spending. However, that understates things because there are huge swaths ...continue reading "Junk fees probably aren’t going away anytime soon"

Here's a look at online shopping: E-commerce spiked during the pandemic but then subsided until mid-2022. Since then it's been growing again. It looks like the pandemic gave e-commerce a permanent 2% bump relative to its long-term growth rate.

I haven't posted an update on my M-protein level for a while, which I know is the highlight of the month for many of you. The reason is that I don't know what it is. You may recall that in September I got no M-protein number and my doctor told me it was because the ...continue reading "I am undone by coelution"

Last month I showed some data suggesting that, sensational media reports notwithstanding, the rate of shoplifting hadn't changed much recently. Today I came across a new analysis from the Council on Criminal Justice that reports shoplifting rates from 24 big cities across the country. Here it is: There has been a smallish spike in shoplifting ...continue reading "Raw data: Shoplifting in big American cities"

From the New York Times: Today’s A.I. technology cannot destroy humanity. Whew. Although how do they know? Anyway, this is all in the context of CEO Sam Altman's firing from OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company that makes ChatGPT among other things. It's still a mystery why he was suddenly let go on Friday, but the ...continue reading "Quote of the day: We’re safe, for now"

Here's the latest trend story from the New York Times. It's about—God help us—"TikTok economics": "Look at economic data, and you’d think that young voters would be riding high right now..." "Look at TikTok, and you get a very different impression..." "Social media reflects — and is potentially fueling — a deep-seated angst about the ...continue reading "Gen Z is fine and productive and happy"

From the Wall Street Journal: OpenAI is making efforts to bring back Sam Altman, the chief executive it ousted Friday, said a person familiar with the matter. (Updates to follow as news develops) Um, what?

This is a genuine question, not a debating point: Are the people calling for a ceasefire in Gaza asking for a unilateral ceasefire? Or are they equally insistent that both sides stand down? Again, this is an honest question. After all, pretty much everyone would prefer a ceasefire to endless slaughter.¹ But at a minimum ...continue reading "Is a Gaza ceasefire for both sides?"

I'm perplexed by the number of Democrats who continue to urge Joe Biden to drop out of the race. I mean, he's obviously not going to. For better or worse, he's the Democratic candidate. So what's the point of publicly slagging him? Is this just a matter of stubbornness? Or being able to say "I ...continue reading "Why are so many Democrats slagging Joe Biden?"

I have a correction. A couple of days ago I posted a chart of childhood vaccination rates by state plotted against each state's vote for Donald Trump in 2020. Unfortunately, I used the wrong numbers—which by coincidence produced results similar to the correct numbers. Similar, but not the same. Here's the corrected chart: As with ...continue reading "CORRECTION: Childhood vaccination rates"

The Border Patrol released its October numbers this week, and they're down a bit from last month's record high: Border encounters in October were up 4% from last year and down 11% (to 240,000) compared to last month. About 50,000 of these were legal asylum requests while the rest were illegal crossings between ports of ...continue reading "Border encounters decline 11% in October"

Hilbert was in the hallway quietly posing for the camera yesterday when Charlie decided to check in and see what was going on. Before long Charlie was rolling around and photobombing everything in sight while Hilbert sat there scowling at him. It is, after all, Hilbert's week for catblogging.

I want to highlight this tweet from James Fallows: Biden at last night's presser: 1) He looks, sounds, "reads as," and is ... old. 2) He also walked across an absolute minefield of issues and Qs — PRC/Taiwan, detente-but-diff w Xi, Gaza, Ukr, etc—without any missteps. #2 is much harder than it seem. He is ...continue reading "Choose: A real president or a high-octane fake?"

A couple of days ago a Random Guy on Twitter (RGOT) wrote that "Jewish communities" have been pushing "hatred against whites." Nobody would much care about this RGOT except that Elon Musk immediately replied, "You have said the actual truth." Now, Musk has a beef with the ADL, so maybe he was just venting about ...continue reading "Antisemitism is going mainstream on the right"

This is apropos of nothing in particular, but I felt like checking out annual increases in wealth for the top 1%. You can think of this as "extra" income, above and beyond what people spend, or as annual savings. Here it is: The annual wealth increase of the top 1% has increased about 150% since ...continue reading "It’s good to be rich"

This story about Fox Sports sideline reporter Charissa Thompson cracks me up: “I’ve said this before, so I haven’t been fired for saying it, but I’ll say it again. I would make up the report sometimes,” Thompson said in a recent interview.... Thompson, 41, added that she assumed that “no coach is going to get ...continue reading "Too good to check"

Last week, in a fit of pique, Republicans in the House tried to pass a bill reducing the salary of Joe Biden's press secretary to $1. What I didn't know was that this has become a regular occurrence. The latest outburst happened yesterday: It was the 25th time in the three weeks since Speaker Mike ...continue reading "We are now taking revenge on salt mine inspectors"

This is the first bronze cast of Rodin's "The Kiss," now displayed outside the Musee de l'Orangerie in Paris. The crowd in the background is from the Paris 10K run, which was finishing up when I took this picture.