Kevin Drum 🕸

Maybe you know this, maybe you don't. For most of the economic expansion following the Great Recession, wages grew about the same for everyone. In 2019 that changed. Over the past five years, incomes of the poor have increased 10% while incomes of the rich have stagnated: There's no need to feel sorry for the ...continue reading "Raw data: Wage growth at top and bottom"

Yesterday morning, a fellow named Justin McGowan asked his local country station to play a song from Beyoncé's new album. The New York Times tells us what happened next: The station manager, Roger Harris, emailed Mr. McGowan back with a concise rejection: “We do not play Beyoncé at KYKC as we are a country music ...continue reading "Not everything is racist"

A pair of dolphins swimming alongside our boat during my whale watching cruise last month.

Has anyone ever explained this? It just keeps going on and on. New business applications have been running more than 100,000 above trend ever since the start of the pandemic. By now it amounts to about 5 million excess applications. Why would the pandemic have this effect? And why would it still be going strong ...continue reading "Why is business formation so strong?"

Victory! U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has drafted plans to release thousands of immigrants and slash its capacity to hold detainees after the failure of a Senate border bill that would have erased a $700 million budget shortfall, according to four officials at ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. ....Some of the proposed cost ...continue reading "ICE considers mass release of illegal immigrants, just what Trump wants"

Republicans were smart to take a second crack at impeaching Alejandro Mayorkas today. Rep. Steve Scalise is back to give them one more vote and break last week's tie, but Tom Suozzi, a Democrat who won George Santos's old seat tonight, hasn't been sworn in yet. He could be by the end of the week, ...continue reading "Republicans thread a needle to impeach Mayorkas"

A Wall Street Journal story today got me pulled down a rabbit hole. The point of the article was that, except for gasoline, the cost of owning a car has been going up, up, up recently. This got me curious, so I took a look at auto-related costs over the past couple of years: It ...continue reading "Here’s why your auto insurance has skyrocketed recently"

CBP released border numbers today and they're way down from December: Total encounters came to 176,000, of which 45,000 were migrants who made appointments for asylum through CBP's mobile app. The number apprehended crossing illegally was 131,000. In other immigration news, Republicans chose the day of this good news to impeach DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. ...continue reading "Illegal immigration plummets in January"

The New York Times reports today on bigoted remarks from Republicans: The racist discourse by Republican members of Congress, both in casual comments and in official statements, has become so commonplace that it now often slips by without any real condemnation from the G.O.P. Democrats frequently call for apologies but no longer expect any response, ...continue reading "Republicans and racism"

I missed the Super Bowl on Sunday because I was driving out to the desert for my latest astronomy session. It was a dog's breakfast. I set everything up normally, but for some reason neither the mount nor the focuser would work. After hours of investigation I discovered that, for some reason, the computer's virtual ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

The Senate passed an aid bill today for Ukraine and Israel (and Taiwan). Mitch McConnell hopes that Speaker Mike Johnson will allow the House to vote on it: Mitch McConnell in an interview Tuesday urged Speaker Mike Johnson to allow a vote on Ukraine aid, though the Senate minority leader said he would not be ...continue reading "Senate passes Ukraine aid bill"

LZ Granderson writes about housing in the LA Times today: There is another migrant crisis brewing. Unlike the one at the southern border, this one will be all over the country. A recent Harvard study found that half of the country’s renters are spending a third or more of their income on housing.... Combine the ...continue reading "Evictions don’t appear to have risen over the past year"

The BLS reported CPI inflation of 3.7% in January. Core CPI was higher at 4.8%: Inflation has been ticking upward for the past three months, though it remains relatively restrained. On a year-over-year basis, CPI clocked in at 3.1% and core CPI came in at 3.9%.

Vox joins the disturbing trend of news outlets that insist on finding disturbing trends everywhere: Car crashes are killing too many young Africans like Kelvin Kiptum.... His death reflects a broader epidemic of preventable car crash deaths in the Global South — a pattern that has intensified in recent years.... Last year, the World Health ...continue reading "Traffic deaths in Africa are down"

Bob Somerby objects to my headline saying that Donald Trump "is losing it": We're sorry, but no. Donald Trump isn't "losing it" at the present time. He plainly lost it long ago, but our politically hapless blue tribe doesn't seem to know how to convince enough voters of that fact, and so we've decided to ...continue reading "Voters need to be more scared of Donald Trump"

Ten years ago California banned lightweight single-use plastic bags in supermarkets. Since then, the gross tonnage of plastic bag waste has increased 47%. Huh? Long story short, supermarkets switched to heavyweight plastic bags that are theoretically reusable but not really. These bags are about three times heavier than old school thin plastic bags, so even ...continue reading "California has more plastic waste than ever"

You may have heard about the atmospheric river that recently passed over Southern California and flooded the whole place. It also dumped lots of snow on our mountains, and Saturday was a beautiful, clear day to capture them. This picture was taken a few minutes walk from my house.

Here was Donald Trump a couple of weeks ago when an American base was attacked by an Iranian proxy drone: This brazen attack on the United States is yet another horrific and tragic consequence of Joe Biden’s weakness and surrender…. This attack would NEVER have happened if I was President.... This terrible day is yet ...continue reading "Donald Trump plays a tough guy on TV"

In the past few days and weeks, Donald Trump has: Pointed at Matt Gaetz and repeatedly called him Rick Gates. Confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi. Claimed that Obama was still president. Said that Russia should feel free to attack NATO if they "don't pay." Posted an endless stream of unhinged rants on Truth Social. ...continue reading "The real Donald Trump is losing it"

The overall death rate for drug overdoses in the US is about 0.3%, but the death rate among regular drug users is naturally much higher. Here's an estimate for different drugs: Among ordinary drugs like heroin, cocaine, and meth, regular users run about a 1-2% chance of overdosing in a given year. Among regular fentanyl ...continue reading "Raw data: Death rates in the US from drug overdoses"