Kevin Drum 🕸

Today brings yet more handiwork from a Texas judge: U.S. District Court Judge Mark T. Pittman ruled that the Minority Business Development Agency’s presumption that businesses owned by Blacks, Latinos and other minorities are inherently disadvantaged violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. He permanently enjoined the agency’s business centers, which have assisted minority-owned businesses ...continue reading "Texas judge kills minority business agency"

There wasn't much change on the hiring front in January: Hires continue to decline and are now at about their 2019 level. And just for laughs, here are the winners and losers in January compared to December:

Is it true that the United States has the lowest inflation rate of any major economy? Not quite, but it's close: China's economy is suffering, and they're starting to experience a bad bout of deflation. Aside from that, the US has the lowest inflation rate of the ten biggest economies in the world.

For no particular reason I got interested today in our long decline of trust in major institutions. Which party has seen the biggest decline in trust, Democrats or Republicans? That depends on the institution. But what if you took the average level of confidence in all institutions? Here it is for the forty years between ...continue reading "Raw data: Confidence in institutions"

This morning I read a piece in the New York Times about the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. I had never heard of it before. In a nutshell, a group of scientists announced in 2007 that they had discovered evidence of a group of meteor impacts dating to about 12,900 years ago. They believed these impacts ...continue reading "Did a bunch of meteors hit earth a few thousand years ago?"

These are the cliffs off the Dana Point headlands. The headlands are home to a nature preserve plus a few very expensive homes. The cliffs themselves aren't normally ruddy red except for a few minutes near sunset, which just happened to be exactly when I was there.

Greg Sargent comments today on a poll saying voters aren't really aware of Donald Trump's most incendiary comments: Large swaths of voters appear to have little awareness of some of Trump’s clearest statements of hostility to democracy and intent to impose authoritarian rule in a second term, from his vow to be “dictator for one ...continue reading "Voters don’t know anything yet"

Is Bitcoin the longest lasting true bubble in history? By "true bubble" I mean one based on something that's essentially valueless. Not homes or dotcom companies. Think tulips or meme stocks. The Bitcoin bubble is now going into its fourth year, outpacing the South Sea bubble, the Mississippi bubble, and the tulip bubble. Its latest ...continue reading "The Bitcoin bubble continues to defy expectations"

A few days ago I wrote about Donald Trump's plan to take his Truth Social network public. But one crucial point was a little buried, so I want to repeat it on its own. To start, you have to understand that even after three years of operation Truth Social is still essentially worthless: It's not ...continue reading "How Trump plans to make billions from his worthless social network"

One of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis's proudest achievements is the Stop WOKE Act. Among other things, it bars employers from holding mandatory DEI training sessions. Four months after the law was signed a district court issued a preliminary injunction against enforcement on First Amendment grounds, and today DeSantis unanimously lost his appeal in the 11th ...continue reading "Circuit court tells Florida it can’t ban woke speech"

A recent article in Pediatrics reports that antidepressant use has increased substantially among young adults. Among men the increase since 2017 is 44%. Among women it's 58%. Trend data suggests that antidepressant use is rising at similar rates among adults of all ages—in fact, perhaps at a higher rate among older adults. So, as a ...continue reading "Why are white women so depressed?"

Here's a chart from Ryan Burge: Between the ages of 20-50, the number of people having frequent sex has declined by 7-10 percentage points. Burge is interested in whether this has anything to do with religion, but I have a different theory. The early comparison period is 1989-1993. This was before the Prozac revolution really ...continue reading "Why are we having less sex? Is it antidepressants?"

I spent yesterday at the Los Angeles Zoo, but before we get to that it's time to finally finish up my photos from the San Diego Zoo three years ago. This is a black-billed magpie, a handsome bird that's common in western North America. And with that, we're done with the San Diego Zoo.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that teacher turnover is up. They base this on data from ten states. Why only ten? National teacher exit data is released only sporadically, and many states don’t produce timely figures. But the Journal obtained information from 10 states, the most comprehensive recent compilation, that shows turnover typically followed ...continue reading "Post-pandemic teacher turnover isn’t especially high"

I remain unmoved by the liberal panic over Joe Biden's weak poll numbers. However, I keep getting asked why, so here it is: Right now the race is basically a tossup. But it's still very early. The vast majority of swing voters aren't paying attention yet—and won't until after the conventions. As voter attention shifts ...continue reading "Here’s why I’m still bullish on Biden"

The Wall Street Journal reports that restaurants continue to struggle thanks to surging wages for workers: The surge in restaurant and bar worker wages since 2021 followed years in which their hourly earnings ticked up by an easier to manage 2% to 4% annually. For independent restaurants that make food from scratch, higher labor costs ...continue reading "Why are so many restaurants struggling?"

I see this morning that the Supreme Court has ruled that Donald Trump can't be tossed off the ballot for participating in insurrection. The ruling was unanimous. The Court ruled, first, that "more or less formal" proceedings are required to decide if someone is guilty of insurrection and therefore ineligible to hold office under Section ...continue reading "Supreme Court rules states can’t throw Trump off the ballot"

Joe Kent is a MAGA Republican running for Congress against Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state. He is opposed to replacing an aging bridge that crosses the Columbia River: Mr. Kent, who denies the legitimacy of the 2020 election and has referred to those jailed for taking part in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack ...continue reading "Bridge to Portland is an “Antifa superhighway”"

Monica Hesse writes in the Washington Post today about a crop of new books on marriage and divorce: All of these treatises about divorce are really, no surprise, about marriage. Who benefits from it? Who carries it? Who gets to be the show pony and who has to be the workhorse? What should we make ...continue reading "Divorce rates have plummeted over the past 20 years"

Here's some good news for millennials. In 2019 they were way below the curve in terms of wealth accumulation. Older millennials were 9% below expectations and younger millennials were a whopping 44% below expectations. But that's all changed: As of 2022, millennials of all ages were nearly 40% above expectations based on the wealth of ...continue reading "Millennials have suddenly become the wealthiest generation"