Kevin Drum 🕸

The Fifth Circuit Court is the most conservative in the country. But sometimes you get lucky when a three-judge panel is randomly chosen to hear your appeal. That happened today in a ruling handed down about Section 241 of Mississippi's state constitution, which disenfranchises anyone convicted of a felony—forever. This case ended up being heard ...continue reading "Appeals court rules it’s unconstitutional to strip felons of the right to vote"

If you ask ten people to define fascism, you will typically get zero real answers. This is because fascism only ever existed once and that was 80 years ago. What's more, most people have no idea what even the original Italian fascists were about, let alone the hazy variety that's been a favorite insult since ...continue reading "“Fascist” needs to be retired. Say what you really mean instead."

The American economy gained a meager 187,000 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 an even more meager 97,000 jobs. The headline unemployment rate ticked down slightly to 3.5%. Overall, this is a weak but not catastrophic jobs ...continue reading "Chart of the day: Net new jobs through July"

For reasons best left unexplored, I got curious about long-term suicide rates last night and ended up going down a rabbit hole. What I discovered is that everyone is doing it wrong. Most of the charts you see are based on reports written decades ago plus CDC figures for the past couple of decades. The ...continue reading "Raw data: US suicide rates since 1900"

A lot of people, either accidentally or deliberately, have misstated a few things about Wednesday's indictment of Donald Trump for colluding with others to overturn the 2020 election results and keep himself in power. Here they are: Free speech. Even mob bosses have free speech rights. But if your local mafia don tells one of ...continue reading "Three important myths about the latest Trump indictment"

This is a panoramic view of Hollywood Boulevard right outside the Hollywood/Highland metro station. If you visit around 11 pm it's not crowded at all.

This is craziness: Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest brewer, said Thursday its U.S. sales, profit and market share had all fallen sharply in the second quarter as consumers abandoned Bud Light following a promotion it did with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. ....The company’s market share has been stable since the last week of April through ...continue reading "Bud Light just keeps on losing customers"

Here's an interesting chart for inflation in goods: With a 4-month lag, the New York Fed's supply chain index predicts inflation in goods pretty accurately. The Kansas City Fed says the prediction is even more accurate if you use core inflation: This is intriguing both for the closeness of fit and because it strongly suggests ...continue reading "Inflation in goods will keep on declining"

Yesterday the LA Times ran a Rorschach-test of a story about Akhilesh Jha, a developer who is buying up single-family homes and replacing them with apartment buildings. Everybody hates him, but he doesn't care: In the face of a crushing housing affordability crisis and shortage of available homes, state lawmakers have approved more than 100 ...continue reading "LA developer is finding ways to build high-density housing that residents hate"

In 2023 so far, immigration courts have approved nearly half of all asylum cases they've heard: There's a remarkable spread in asylum leniency by judge and by city. In Houston, judge Bruce Imbacuan has granted asylum in 0% of the 105 cases he's heard. In San Francisco, judge Gordon Louis has granted asylum in 99% ...continue reading "Raw data: Asylum requests granted"

This is a church in Redlands. It is on a hill. Therefore it is called the Church on the Hill. I like the fact that they didn't overthink this.

American workers—especially fresh graduates—aren't learning the skills they need for today's marketplace. How do I know this? Because the Wall Street Journal tells me so: The New Hires of 2023 Are Unprepared for Work The knock-on effect of years of remote learning during the pandemic is gumming up workplaces around the country....The shortcomings run the ...continue reading "Here’s the latest version of “Kids these days have lousy work skills”"

In honor of Donald Trump's latest indictment, I want to remind everyone of something. Although Vice President Mike Pence declined to accept Trump's fake slates of electors when Congress met to certify the presidential vote on January 6, the same wasn't true of Republicans in general. A total of 59% of House Republicans supported objections ...continue reading "It wasn’t just Trump who wanted a coup"

This is kind of odd. The Census Bureau reports that rental vacancies are up. This should mean lower rents, but Zillow reports that rent is on the rise: Note that vacancy rates are for large cities and rent is for all urban areas. In any case, I don't quite know what to make of this. ...continue reading "Today’s mystery: Rental vacancies and rent are both up in Q2"

I was diddling around, as one does, on the website of the Department of Agriculture and came across a new report called "Characterizing Rugged Terrain in the United States." My first thought was the same as yours: Why does the USDA care about rugged terrain? I mean, the Post Office, sure. The Interior Department, sure. ...continue reading "How rugged is your state?"

There are two types of studies about the association of lead and crime. The first is an ecological study that compares lead levels in a population of children to later crime levels in the same population. The second is an individual study that follows specific children to adulthood and compares each child's lead level to ...continue reading "A new meta-review confirms the link between lead and crime"

I see that Donald Trump has just been indicted for illegally conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. This means we're now up to three Trump indictments, with a fourth from Georgia almost certainly on its way soon. This really is unprecedented, but then again, Trump has engaged in an unprecedented amount of crime. Will we ...continue reading "Trump now up to three indictments with fourth looming"

Over at National Review, Michael Brendan Dougherty notes a Gallup poll showing that public confidence in the military has declined lately: As the perception developed that progressives have taken over the top brass in the military, the most important cohort for military recruiting — existing military families — has been pulling away from the U.S. ...continue reading "Why has trust in the military dropped recently?"

Getting a haircut at the American Barber Shop in Santa Ana

Construction spending continues to be flat over the past few months: The good news is that residential construction isn't falling anymore. The bad news is that nonresidential construction isn't rising anymore. We are just puttering along waiting for either something or nothing to happen later this year.