Month: December 2022

Will House Democrats release Donald Trump's tax returns to the public?

A House committee is expected to vote Tuesday afternoon on whether to make public tax returns belonging to former President Donald J. Trump....A rarely used federal law allows the committee to obtain any U.S. taxpayer’s returns. While the statute generally requires lawmakers to keep such information confidential, it also empowers them to make it public by voting to report the material to the full House.

I hope they don't do this. The law allows Congress to demand tax returns for legislative purposes, so that's what they did (citing oversight of the presidential audit program). I think we all understand this was a thin pretext for getting Trump's returns and examining them for fraud, but nonetheless that's the pretext in play. Releasing everything to the public isn't, and there's no legitimate reason to do it.

I'm not naive. If Jim Jordan got hold of something similar he'd leak it in a minute. Hell, he'd make sure to leak just a few out-of-context excerpts that would make his victim look even worse than they are.

But Jim Jordan is an asshole. We don't have to be. Trump has the legal right to keep his tax returns private if he wants to, and we should make it clear that we believe in upholding legitimate legal rights. Vote no, Democrats.

Here is the rate of "border encounters" over the past decade or so:

Border crossings spiked at the end of Donald Trump's presidency and since then have remained at about 5x the normal rate. Is this a crisis?

I think borders should be enforced but it's never been one of my hot buttons. Partly this is because I have a hard time seeing the harm from high rates of either illegal immigration or opportunistic asylum seeking.

Take a look at the past two years. The number of border crossers has been 3-4 million more than it is during normal times, which ought to be something of a destruction test of the impact of illegal immigration and sketchy asylum seeking. But what happened in real life? Unemployment is low, crime in border cities is low, and the total population of illegal immigrants has been flat.

If that's what happens even during a massive outbreak of border crossings, it's hard to get too worried about normal rates of illegal immigration and asylum seeking. If Republicans ever get serious about sensible immigration reform, I'll be with them. Until then, it's going to remain pretty low on my list of national problems.

Here's a chart from the CDC showing the biggest sources of drug overdoses:

Here's what I don't understand. The first (known) case of a China White overdose happened here in Orange County in the late 1970s. Since then, various analogs of fentanyl have been available on the street now and again, but it was never all that popular. Then, suddenly, after more than 30 years, it took off like a rocket.

It's no surprise that this happened. Fentanyl is cheap, fairly easy to make, and a smuggler's dream since you don't need very much of it. So the question is not why it became popular, but why it took so long to become popular.

Does anyone know? I've been unable to come up with an answer on my own.

UPDATE: Answer here!

This is a fragment of the famous theme restaurant at LAX. At least, it's a fragment of what used to be the famous theme restaurant at LAX until a few years ago when it closed for lack of business. However, the observation deck got rebuilt a while ago and you can still visit it one weekend per month. Or maybe not. Has anyone been there in past couple of months?

Noted without comment:

The White House trading desk did well this year:

Emergency releases from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve are slated to end this month, concluding an unusual attempt to lower gas prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent oil prices soaring. Over the release period, Washington sold 180 million barrels of crude at an average of $96.25 apiece, well above the recent market price of $74.29—meaning the U.S., for now, is almost $4 billion ahead.

Excellent work, team! I hope your boss gets a healthy bonus this year for bucking the conventional wisdom and going short on oil.

According to CryptoCompare, the value of assets under management for all crypto investments fell 14.5% in November. Here's a chart showing crypto AUM for the past year:

Notice that the y-axis is denominated in $Billions, with a B. Total crypto AUM is down two-thirds over the past year and currently amounts to about $20 billion.

Give or take a bit, AUM for normal assets (i.e., money) comes to about $110 trillion, with a T. This means that crypto accounts for ~0.002% of all assets under management worldwide.

If you're wondering why nobody on Wall Street seems to care much about the collapse of FTX, this is the reason. To them, $20 billion is a rounding error, not a catastrophe.

Here is the lead story in the LA Times this morning:

As it turns out, this is not the product of intensive investigative reporting. It's based on a report written three years ago by the bar itself. And sure enough, as a matter of plain fact the Times' headline is correct:

The biggest disparity here is actually between men and women, but among men the rate of probations handed out by the Bar comes to 3.2% for Black lawyers vs. 0.9% for white lawyers.

But wait! The author of the report is very clear about why this disparity exists: It's because Black lawyers get more client complaints in the first place and tend to have more disciplinary actions on their record:

When you account for this, the racial disparity in probation actions vanishes—but the Times doesn't even mention this until the 33rd paragraph of its story:

Black men [...] are more likely than other lawyers to be accused of wrongdoing in the first place. The bar study found that 46% of Black male attorneys were the subject of at least one complaint. In other demographic groups, the rates range from 44% for Latino men to 17% for Asian females. The rate for white men is 32%. In what the study’s author called “a particularly striking statistic,” 12% of Black male lawyers have received 10 or more complaints.

The study does not explain why Black men receive more complaints. There are various hypotheses in the legal community, including racism on the part of banks that make reports to the bar and a preference for practice areas, such as family law and criminal defense, where there is more direct contact with clients and emotions run high.

I'm not an expert on this stuff, so I don't know where the real answer lies. But surely it was worth mentioning a little higher up in the story, especially since the State Bar has been working on reforms related to racial disparities ever since this report was released? Have any of those reforms been implemented? The most recent bar report to the legislature is here, and it sure looks kind of lame to me (see p. 101).

And how about the probation rate? Has that changed over the past few years? That would be especially interesting since the original report covered the years 1990-2009.

Maybe someday we'll find out. In the meantime, though, what a mushball story.

Federal official are investigating GM's Cruise unit over complaints that their self-driving cars are annoying because they've been designed to be super safe. This is catnip for Atrios:

I think Sam was the first person who really made this crystal clear, that even if autonomous cars sorta "work" they'll be unpleasant and people won't really want to use them and they'll be annoying to passengers and other vehicles. These aren't really "incidents" so much as "baked into how they function." This is how they make them "safe!"

I have my fun arguing with Atrios over this, but seriously, what's the issue here? The first cars traveled ten miles an hour and broke down all the time (and scared the horses). The first computer had to be programmed with switches and could barely calculate a simple ballistic. The first mobile phones were the size of a brick. The Gutenberg Bible took five years to produce and cost the equivalent of about $6,000. The first radios were drenched in static and there was nothing to listen to anyway.

So of course the first self-driving cars are annoying and limited. Everything is annoying and limited at first. But what's the reason for thinking that autonomous driving is the one special thing that will stay that way forever? I continue to stick with my guess that 2025 is a reasonable estimate for when self driving will be truly convenient and useful, but if it takes a few years longer, who cares? There's no reason not to think that, one way or another, the technology will get to human level (or better) within a few years.

If not, why not?

As you probably know, for the past few months Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona has been building his own makeshift border wall out of shipping containers. Here's a picture:

This wall is illegal, ridiculous, expensive, and environmentally hazardous. But put all that aside. Isn't it also God's gift to coyotes and their customers?

Stop me if I'm wrong about anything here. Step 1 is to pick a likely looking spot and then cut a big hole into one of the containers. It doesn't need to be anything fancy since no one on the Mexico side of the border is going to care.

Step 2 is to cut a smallish hole on the other side of the container. But this time keep the metal, attach a couple of hinges, and create a makeshift hatch.

Step 3 is to outfit your new man cave any way you want. Maybe a battery-operated fridge! Some nice chairs. Blankets and pillows. Plenty of water.

Step 4 is to guide a group of aspiring immigrants to your container, where they can rest and hide out for a while. When night falls and the coast looks clear, open your little hatch on the American side and everyone crawls out. Then you're on your way, all rested and refreshed. And the whole operation is pretty safe because the container wall is opaque and the Border Patrol on the American side can't see anything that's happening on the Mexican side.

What am I missing here?