Month: June 2022

Back in the Golden Age of blogging the Texas Republican Party platform was a regular object of ridicule, one that I'd write about every couple of years. It was always a hoot. Take back the Panama Canal! Return to the gold standard! Abolish the federal income tax!

Today the Texas GOP platform is back in the news because they're reminding everyone that Texas retains the right to secede from the Union. They've been doing this for a long time, though, so it's hardly new. Still, just to remind everyone what a bunch of loons these folks are, here's a short, curated list of some of the batfuckery in the 2022 platform:

• Support for constitutional amendments to (a) repeal the federal income tax, (b) have legislatures appoint senators, (c) make English the official language of the US.
• Also: abolish the estate tax, inventory taxes, carbon taxes, business franchise taxes, taxes on phone and internet services, the Affordable Care Act Home Sales Tax, and state property taxes.
• Due to widespread fraud by the Democratic Party, Joe Biden was not legitimately elected president.
• Repeal the minimum wage.
• Fine corporations that publicly support boycotts in protest of legislative action related to abortion, trans rights, CRT, vaccinations, etc.
• Privatize Social Security.
• Make machine guns legal.
• Abolish the Federal Reserve.
• Ban all sex education of any kind. Ditto for all reproductive health services in schools.
• Phonics!
• Guns for teachers!
• There are only two genders, and they are fixed at birth by God. Penalize corporations who object to legislation that protects children from "hormones and puberty blockers designed to fake transition from one gender to another."
• Abolish all federal welfare programs.
• Homosexuality is an "abnormal lifestyle choice." Transgender identities should not be "validated."
• No mask mandates, vaccination mandates, contact tracing, or quarantine.
• Allow patients access to any experimental drugs they want.
• Physicians who perform elective abortions should be liable to prosecution for murder.
• Jurors should be fully informed of their historical right to jury nullification.
• Repeal the Johnson Amendment! This is an oldie but a goody. The Johnson Amendment prohibits nonprofits, including churches, from endorsing or opposing political candidates. It was passed unanimously and without comment in 1954.
• End gay marriage.
• "Rescind unilateral no-fault divorce laws and support covenant marriage."
• Hold a referendum next year to see if Texans want to secede from the union.
• No gun free zones, regardless of whether private entities want them.
• Mail ballots should be available only to people who can't physically show up at a polling place.
• Build the wall!
• China is bad. Iran is bad. North Korea is bad. Israel is good. Taiwan is good.
• We should withdraw from the United Nations. Also, we should remove even a hint of support for Agenda 21 and other leftist UN programs.

There's much more, of course. This is just a taste. And I have to give the Texas GOP credit for moving with the times and finally removing antiquated references to the Panama Canal and the gold standard—though since they want to abolish the Fed, a return to the gold standard might be implied.

Just generally, I would call your attention to the clause allowing doctors to be prosecuted for murder if they perform elective abortions. Like most of the 2022 platform, it's not new. It was also part of the 2020 platform. But it's something that most abortion opponents try to downplay. Not the Texas GOP, though. They're eager to start tossing abortion providers in jail.

The LA Times has a story today about low-income housing—mostly in Northern California—that costs more than $1 million per unit to build. The culprits are the usual ones you'd suspect: state regulations, inflation, supply chain problems, union labor, strict environmental standards, and so forth. I don't doubt that all these things take a toll, but here's a picture the Times ran of one low-income development that's being rehabbed:

Somebody should stop me if I'm wrong, but this looks like some of the most expensive land in the world. It's in the city of San Francisco, right on the waterfront, in between Golden Gate Park and Lake Merced Park. If Zillow can be believed, houses on this strip of land go for nearly $2 million. Go inland two or three blocks and houses are mostly in the low $1 millions.

So why would you build low-income housing here in the first place? Were things different when these units were originally built in the 1970s? This is a matter of genuine curiosity, and I completely understand that housing of any kind in expensive cities is going to be expensive. Still, primo waterfront land seems like an expense that just reduces the number of units you can build and the number of families you can help. Can anyone with real knowledge school me about this?

I forgot to show you the apartment we stayed at in Paris. Here it is:

The top picture shows the street we were on. At the far end among the greenery—about a two-minute walk—is Madeleine, and a short turn to the left leads to the metro station. The bottom picture shows the inner courtyard. The doors to the left lead to our apartment, which was on the second floor.

Within a three-minute walk there was a pharmacy, a small supermarket, a home-goods store, a boulangerie or two, a small park with a playground for kids, an insane amount of high-end shopping, and of course, loads of restaurants.

I didn't take any indoor pictures of the apartment, but it was an Airbnb rental so you can see dozens of indoor pictures if you want to. It was a great place: safe, quiet, nice shower and bathroom, a very usable little kitchen, and enough table space for blogging and sewing and so forth. (We ate in the living room so we could use the table for other stuff.) I'd stay there again in a heartbeat.

This is Hilbert rolling around on the backyard patio, only to be momentarily distracted by a dog walking by. Hilbert is oddly fascinated by dogs. Not afraid, precisely, and not sociable either, but always intrigued. What are these furry things that are almost like us? A strange breed of cat? Something else? What what what?

What did Republicans learn from Watergate? I'm here to explain:

• Bipartisan investigations are very bad things. Following Iran-Contra, it became obvious that they were very, very bad things.
• Partisan investigations are great! They are highly effective at damaging the opposition and should become a routine tool of Republican administrations.

On the 50th anniversary of Watergate it's good not to be naive about what it ultimately meant. It was responsible for royalty-gate; Whitewater and all its offspring; Benghazi; Hillary's phone; Hunter Biden; and so much more. Thanks a lot, Dick.

I'm not an economist with a sophisticated macro model or anything like that, but even before this week I thought that a recession was almost inevitable. Here are the basic reasons why:

• The economy has been propped up by COVID-19 spending for a while, which is a good thing. But the last stimulus bill passed 15 months ago and is now fading out.
• Skyrocketing mortgage rates are going to squelch the housing market. This has a big effect on consumer spending (via the wealth effect) and on the residential construction industry—and it's happening at the same time that average earnings have been falling.
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• Consumer spending has slowed down in 2022 and is now nearly flat.
• Companies that expanded recklessly during the pandemic are now finding that they have to cut back. Amazon is Exhibit A here.
• In 2021 we had a huge spike in the price of oil. This is usually enough, all on its own, to produce a recession within a year or so.
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• Personal saving has dropped below its normal pre-pandemic level and consumer debt has risen above its normal level. Neither one offers any kind of buffer anymore.
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All this was enough to push us into a downturn already, but then the Fed decided on some "shock therapy" that will almost certainly be enough to finish the job. Both the stock and bond markets have delivered their verdicts on this, and it's hard to see what can stop an oncoming recession now.

I'm not sure if I'm the last holdout on this or not, but I continue to think that inflation would have subsided on its own as the economy slowed, oil prices dropped back to normal, and supply chains eased. The Fed just needed to stay the course. Instead they panicked and decided a recession was the only way to attack high prices. And all because the May print of an inflation index they don't care about was 0.04% higher than March and therefore a "record."

The only good news here is that, to my eyes anyway, the economy is still in decent shape and we can probably count on a mild recession. Assuming, that is, that we don't panic even further.

Courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, here's a map showing which states have increased employment the most over the past year:

The biggest states have been the slowest to increase employment, but they're now catching up with very large gains over the past few months. The biggest annual gainer in percentage terms is Nevada, which is up 7.1%. The biggest gainer in absolute terms is California, which added 869,000 jobs over the past twelve months.

I understand that inflation is the issue of the day, which means that employment numbers will probably get no media coverage at all today. But they're still important! High inflation is damaging, but not nearly as damaging as high unemployment. After all, would you rather have a job along with higher prices, or be unemployed with stable prices? The question answers itself.

John Eastman, the lawyer who insisted that Mike Pence had the power to unilaterally reject the Electoral College results before they were certified, suggested days after the Capitol riot that he should be on the list for a presidential pardon. https://t.co/bcXI68HxGP pic.twitter.com/AEjVkRjgBx

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 16, 2022

I've explained in passing the difference between the annual inflation rate and the annualized monthly rate, but based on some feedback it sounds like it might be a good idea to do it a little more clearly. It won't take long.

It all starts with an index of price levels, calculated by whichever agency is measuring inflation. For example, here is the PCE core index over the past year:

It's easy to calculate the change in price level over the past year or the past month:

• Annual (year-over-year) = 121.804 ÷ 116.100 = 1.049 = 4.9%
• Monthly (month-over-month) = 121.804 ÷ 121.386 = 1.0034 = 0.34%
• Annualized month-over-month = 1.0034¹² = 1.042 = 4.2%

The annual inflation rate, which is the one you commonly see in headlines, is just the rise in the price level between this month and the same month last year. It's generally the best measure, but it has one drawback: it doesn't show you what's happening right now. If the price level jumps in a single month, the annual rate is going to stay high until that month finally drops out of the data—even if the price level has been stable ever since.

The monthly inflation rate is just the opposite. It shows you precisely how much prices rose over the past 30 days, but the downside is that this is pretty volatile. Generally speaking, a single month's change isn't something you should pay much attention to. However, the trend over time of the monthly rate can be useful.

Finally, the annualized monthly rate is just a bit of arithmetic. It shows what the annual inflation rate would be if prices rose at this month's rate for twelve months straight. It's a handy transformation because we're all used to thinking in annual terms.

With that said, here is this morning's chart again:

As you can see, the monthly rate does jump up and down a fair bit, so no single month provides reliable data. However, the fact that the trendline is generally down means that inflationary pressure appears to be easing.

In Southern California right now it's the season of mustard, a horrible invasive species that overruns our hillsides seemingly earlier every year. This year there were only a few weeks of early spring greenery before everything started turning yellow.

Still, like nearly any plant, it can be made to look pretty.