Kevin Drum 🕸

The LA Times has a story today about the miracle of East Palo Alto: In 1992, East Palo Alto was dubbed the “murder capital” of the U.S., with 42 murders in its 2.5 square miles — a per capita rate higher than that of any other city of any size. In 2023, according to East ...continue reading "Here’s a closer look at the miracle of East Palo Alto"

File this in the "dumb laws" folder: Erica Ingber has something of a dark past when it comes to handwriting: The future elementary school principal got a C-minus in cursive in the fourth grade. But she’s ready to follow the curvy ups and downs of a new California law that requires the teaching of cursive ...continue reading "New California law mandates cursive in school"

Dan Drezner has a great piece in Reason this month called "The Post-Neoliberalism Moment." It's an unfortunate title that hides its real argument: globalization didn't hurt us during the pandemic and we abandon it at our peril. We heard constantly during the pandemic that supply lines broke because they were so complex and global. But ...continue reading "Don’t blame neoliberalism for broken supply lines during the pandemic"

Over at National Review, Michael Strain notes that confidence in higher education has declined considerably over the past few years. But he says it's not just because of Republicans: Universities are bleeding support among Americans who identify as Democrats and independents as well. In 2023, universities had the confidence of only 59 percent of Democrats ...continue reading "Confidence in universities hasn’t plummeted in any unusual way"

Here is the quarterly change in population of the United States: Every year, like clockwork, population increases a lot in summer and then increases at a significantly lower rate in winter. Why? Here are births and deaths: Every year, births peak in summer and hit a low point in winter. Deaths peak in winter and ...continue reading "Raw data: Births and deaths in the US"

wtf? Congressional leaders reached a $1.66 trillion agreement Sunday to finance the federal government in 2024, preserving funding for key domestic and social safety net programs in the face of GOP demands to cut the government’s budget. After months and months of demanding cuts beyond the numbers agreed to in the debt ceiling agreement, they've ...continue reading "After 8 months, Republicans agree to budget from 8 months ago"

From Donald Trump on January 6, 2021, after being told VP Mike Pence was in danger: Who cares? Longtime Trump aide Dan Scavino was in the Oval Office that day: When Scavino and other White House officials learned that rioters had violently stormed the Capitol, they rushed into the dining room to urge Trump to ...continue reading "Quote of the day: Who cares?"

Back in 2006 business interests in Florida successfully amended the state constitution to require a 60% vote to pass future amendments. Ironically, the amendment wouldn't have won if it had already been in place, since it received less than 60% of the vote. Nevertheless, it passed and it's the law. But now even that isn't ...continue reading "Abortion will be on the ballot in Florida in November"

In a paper published last summer, a pair of researchers looked at how well ChatGPT improves writing. They rounded up several hundred knowledge workers with average salaries around $70,000 and paid them to write short, typical business memo type things. After the first writing task, half the group was told to sign up for ChatGPT ...continue reading "AI can turn mediocre writers into pretty good writers."

COVID-19 is on the rise: Test positivity is at about half the level of the big Omicron surge in January 2022. The good news is that thanks to the high rate of vaccinations and previous infections, the death rate from COVID remains pretty low: Keep in mind that "low" is relative. COVID-19 continues to kill ...continue reading "COVID-19 is on the rise again"

H-1B visas are issued to skilled workers. The vast majority go to people with bachelor's or master's degrees, with a heavy tilt toward tech fields. Only 85,000 are admitted each year, but anyone can apply who wants to—and lately there are lots of people want to: The number of applications to work in the US ...continue reading "Raw data: Everyone wants to come to America"

This is hardly the craziest thing Donald Trump said today in Iowa, but it struck me because I happen to live in California: [Joe Biden] never sticks up for Washington. You know, they've taken the name George Washington off many schools. Can you believe it, the name George Washington is coming down from many schools, ...continue reading "Fact check: Is California ditching George Washington?"

Here's the address on democracy that Joe Biden delivered today. It's about half an hour long. Go ahead and watch the whole thing and then tell me if Biden seems cognitively limited. There are a few minor stutters here and there, but cognitively he's fine. Skip ahead to 5:30 if you want to get directly ...continue reading "Joe Biden takes on Donald Trump"

Let's check in on what Republicans are saying these days: Donald Trump, about 40 times over the course of a single hour: "Except for a Fraudulent Case against me, I had no idea who E. Jean Carroll was. She called her African American Husband an ‘ape,’ and named her Cat ‘Vagina.’ Look at her Tweets, ...continue reading "Listening in on Republicans"

Charlie is still restricted to the house, but Hilbert gets let out occasionally just to confirm that he's the senior cat around here. He looks like a cat on a mission in this picture, and his mission was: find Marian and tell her to stop gardening and instead pay attention to Hilbert.

The Justice Department is nearing the end of its long pondering about whether to sue Apple over antitrust issues: Specifically, investigators have examined how the Apple Watch works better with the iPhone than with other brands, as well as how Apple locks competitors out of its iMessage service. They have also scrutinized Apple’s payments system ...continue reading "DOJ getting ready to sue Apple over antitrust"

It's finally time to check in on the prediction of weak holiday hiring by the National Retail Federation. With December numbers finally in, how did we do? In one sense, the NRF was wrong. They projected 345-445,000 retail workers would be hired, a 40% decrease from 2021. In reality, hiring was nowhere near that bad. ...continue reading "Holiday hiring was pretty weak in 2023"

A few miscellaneous thoughts on former Harvard president Claudine Gay: An awful lot of conservatives have attacked Gay as unqualified for the Harvard presidency because she isn't an academic star. This is crazy. Presidents of R1 universities aren't hired for their academics. They're hired to raise money and run the place. Big university presidents aren't ...continue reading "Some thoughts about Claudine Gay"

Today's jobs report also included wage data for blue-collar workers. Adjusted for inflation, weekly wages were up 0.9% from last year and down -0.5% from last month (at an annualized rate): As usual, this can be interpreted as good news. If wages are under control it should reassure the Fed that inflation is moderate and ...continue reading "Blue-collar wages were down slightly in December"

The American economy gained 216,000 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 a moderate 116,000 jobs. The headline unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.7%. This is a perfectly reasonable report, but the bad news is that December saw ...continue reading "Chart of the day: Net new jobs in December"