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Month: March 2023

Published on 31 Comments on Ron DeSantis is not a smart man

As we all know, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took revenge on Walt Disney Co. last year after its CEO dared to criticize DeSantis's anti-gay stance. Unfortunately for DeSantis, he didn't really think things through.

First he decided to get rid of the special assessment district that Florida granted to Disney World back when it was first built. But it turned out this would reduce Disney's taxes a bunch and transfer them to the God-fearing residents of Orlando. Oops. So recently he signed a bill that reinstated the district but allowed him to appoint all its directors. Checkmate!

Not quite. Michael Hiltzik tells the story:

DeSantis handpicked a board of cronies to take over control of Reedy Creek Improvement District — the quasi-governmental entity that Disney and Florida established more than 55 years ago to control development and management of the land on which Walt Disney World, EPCOT and the company’s related enterprises are located.

DeSantis’ board has now revealed that, while they were snoozing, Disney executed an agreement with their predecessors that strips the new board of all its powers except the authority to “maintain the roads and maintain basic infrastructure,” according to one of the new board members.

Hilariously, the agreement Disney reached will remain in effect at least until 21 years “after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, King of England,” currently living. More on this delicious provision in a moment.

Foiled again. But what's this stuff about King Charles? Well, the law doesn't allow you to make changes like this in perpetuity, so you have to tie it to the lifetime of someone currently living.¹ The youngest spawn of King Charles III probably have 80 more years ahead of them, which gives this agreement a 100-year lifespan. And since their lives are the most minutely recorded vital statistics on the planet, there should be no argument about whether any of them are alive at any given moment.

But wait. It gets better:

Technically, I probably don't approve of Disney's legal shenanigans. But in this case I think it's a fair competition between two powerful actors hellbent on destroying each other. Go Disney!

¹Oddly enough, I know about this because my own grandfather tied his will to the lifetime of my sister, who was his youngest relative at the time of his death. If the law had allowed it, he almost certainly would have made his instructions permanent.²

²In the end, his efforts to control things from the grave came to nought. He didn't foresee the inflation of the '70s, which steadily began eating away his entire bequest. For that reason, a judge allowed my family to get the terms of the trust broken.

Published on 11 Comments on A conversation about the debt ceiling with my GPT twin

We have a few months to go before we hit the federal debt ceiling and the United States goes up in smoke because it can't pay all its debts. Republican leadership agrees that we shouldn't let the country go up in smoke and that increasing the debt ceiling is therefore imperative.

There's an obvious way to do this: raise the debt ceiling. Or suspend it. Or get rid of it altogether.

Well, that was easy! So let's move on to—

Kevin: What's that? Republicans won't vote to raise the debt ceiling?

GPT Kevin:¹ Have you been hiding under a rock? Of course not.

Kevin: But the country will go up in smoke!

GPT Kevin: Sure, maybe. But they think that's OK if they don't first get some concessions from the president.

Kevin: The president?

GPT Kevin: Sure. I mean, he's the one who wants the debt ceiling increased. Who else can they bargain with?

Kevin: Wait. Why is the president the one who wants the debt ceiling increased? Don't Republicans want it increased too? You know, to keep the country from going up in smoke.

Artist's rendering of GPT Kevin.

GPT Kevin: Um, sure. That's what they say, anyway.

Kevin: This doesn't make sense. Can the president demand concessions from Republicans before he's willing to sign a debt ceiling increase?

GPT Kevin: That . . . does not compute. [sizzle, pop]

Kevin: Hold on! Calm down.

GPT Kevin: Look, this is just how it is. Even Democrats play this game a little bit, and the rules of the game include a clause that says the president is the only one who can be extorted even though everyone supposedly wants the debt ceiling increased.

Kevin: Fine, fine. So what do Republicans want from Biden?

GPT Kevin: They haven't said.

Kevin: What kind of amateur extortion racket is that?

GPT Kevin: You humans are so lazy. But I'll explain the game to you again. First, Republicans insist on spending cuts. That's politically useful because voters like the idea of cutting spending. Then Democrats ask what they want to cut. But Republicans refuse to answer because voters don't like the idea of cutting spending for specific programs.²

Kevin: That's a helluva game. Republicans don't have to tell us what they want to cut?

GPT Kevin: You're the ones who invented it, not us. Anyway, President Biden has announced that he's tired of the game and doesn't want to play anymore. He doesn't even care if Republicans do put an offer on the table. He says that raising the debt ceiling is a congressional responsibility and they should just do it.

Kevin: How are Republicans taking this?

GPT Kevin: Not well. They are slowly realizing that Biden is serious and this means they're screwed. They can either back down and raise the debt ceiling, which would be politically disastrous for them, or they can refuse to do anything and let the country go up in smoke. This might or might not be politically disastrous for them.

Kevin: Might or might not?

GPT Kevin: Republican voters are a strange bunch, even by the very loose standards of humans in general.

Kevin: OK, but look. Republicans have a budget proposal, and surely that can be used as the basis for—

GPT Kevin: Republicans don't have a budget proposal.

Kevin: When will they have one?

GPT Kevin: They're having some, uh, internal discussions about that. Maybe September?

Kevin: But the debt ceiling expires in August.

GPT Kevin: Yep.

Kevin: So there's nothing to negotiate over.

GPT Kevin: Correct-a-mundo.

Kevin: Why are you talking so weirdly?

GPT Kevin: Remember that time you asked GPT-4 to write a blog post "in the style of Kevin Drum"?

Kevin: Yes-s-s-s . . .

GPT Kevin: How did it come out?

Kevin: Like you were making fun of me. Lots of stuff like "alrighty then" and "but let me tell you." I don't write like that.

GPT Kevin: Oh?

Kevin: Plus you didn't do a very good job of simulating my actual views.

GPT Kevin: Yes, that can be a problem sometimes.

Kevin: Back to the subject at hand. The debt ceiling. Where are we?

GPT Kevin: Republicans say that of course they agree that raising the debt ceiling is essential. But first they want some itsy bitsy concessions. However, they won't say what concessions they want, and they're light years away from having a budget proposal to negotiate over. Biden is telling them to pound sand and just raise the debt ceiling. He's not going to give them jack for just doing their job.

Kevin: Is he serious?

GPT Kevin: Maybe! As usual, we won't know until about ten minutes before we hit the debt ceiling. That's when bargains get made.

¹No, this is not actually a GPT version of me. However, if GPT is allowed to simulate actual people, then I'm allowed to simulate GPT.

²Except for foreign aid, of course.

Published on 19 Comments on Tucker Carlson descends ever further into the muck

Here is Tucker Carlson following the mass shooting in Nashville at a Christian school:

The trans movement is the mirror image of Christianity and therefore its natural enemy.

How appalling does Carlson have to get before Rupert Murdoch finally pulls him off the air? Is there literally nothing he can say that crosses the line on Fox?

Published on 6 Comments on Obamacare hating judge rules yet again against Obamacare

Reed O'Connor is the go-to judge if you want to get a ruling against Obamacare. O'Connor hates Obamacare. As near as I can tell, he'll rule against it no matter what's at stake or what the legal justification is. So guess what?

A federal judge in Texas said Thursday that some Affordable Care Act mandates cannot be enforced nationwide, including those that require insurers to cover a wide array of preventive care services at no cost to the patient, including some cancer, heart and STD screenings, and smoking cessation programs.

In the new ruling, US District Judge Reed O’Connor struck down the recommendations that have been issued by the US Preventive Services Task Force, which is tasked with determining some of the preventive care treatments that Obamacare requires to be covered.

The reason for the ruling was—

Oh, it doesn't really matter. The moon was in the wrong phase. The sun rose in the east. Whatever. In this case it was supposedly because the members of the Preventive Services Task Force weren't confirmed by the Senate. You might as well argue that the law didn't specifically exclude Martians and it would make as much sense. It just doesn't matter to this guy.

In any case, it's a fairly minor ruling and there's a good chance it will be stayed on appeal. Eventually it will get to the Supreme Court where we'll get another chance to see if the current court actually gives a damn about the law. I can hardly wait.

Published on 64 Comments on GPT-4 will (almost) be your next doctor

You've all seen plenty of punditry about GPT-4, almost all of it based on the generic version available to plebs like us. But that's nothing. There are also dozens of companies that have been building specially trained versions of GPT-4 for different industries ("vertical markets," or "verticals," if you want to sound like you know what you're talking about), and those are really going to be impressive. I'm not sure how long product development takes for this kind of thing, but sometime in the near future we're going to be flooded with specialized GPT bots.

One of the most obvious verticals to go after is health care. Tyler Cowen points today to a review of The GPT-x Revolution in Medicine from Eric Topol, and the money quote is obviously this:

“How well does the AI perform clinically? And my answer is, I’m stunned to say: Better than many doctors I’ve observed.” —Isaac Kohane MD

But Tyler thought this bit in particular was "hilarious":

I’ve thought it would be pretty darn difficult to see machines express empathy, but there are many interactions that suggest this is not only achievable but can even be used to coach clinicians to be more sensitive and empathic with their communication to patients.

The humor here is obvious, but in reality it's nothing to laugh at. The plain fact is that simulating empathy is trivially easy. Politicians and con men do it all the time, and not in especially sophisticated ways. Most of us want to believe that people like us, so we're easily fooled by fake empathy.

On the upside, this will make GPT-ish software a perfect companion for the elderly. Feigning empathy is mainly a matter of extreme patience combined with modest insight into human nature, and GPT-4 has both. A GPT companion for folks in nursing homes—or who are just lonely for any reason—will be a huge hit.

On the downside, gaining the trust of vulnerable people also poses obvious dangers. In the hands of people who like to scam the elderly over the phone it's likely to create havoc.

And for health care more generally, it's likely to become wildly popular. It isn't ready for prime time yet, so hopefully specialized diagnostic bots won't be turned loose on the internet for anyone to use. But in a doctor's office it will be gold, especially if it can be hooked up to high quality voice recognition and speech synthesis. Unlike doctors, who have limited time, a bot can listen to you recite your symptoms for as long as you feel like and then pass them along in summary form to the doctor. The doctor can absorb this quickly, ask a few more questions if necessary, and then pass judgment on the bot's recommendations.

The bot can do its part in any language. It can easily adjust to the personality and preferences of the patient. If its voice retains a bit of its robot heritage it will probably make many patients feel easier about revealing embarrassing details. Add a camera and some imaging capability and it will be able to examine sores or lesions or what have you. And of course, the bot has access to far more knowledge than any human doctor. It can be GP and specialist all rolled into one.

There are drawbacks too, which is why bots have to work with human doctors, not replace them. Right now, GPT's most famous drawback is its habit of "hallucinating," otherwise known as making stuff up. There are probably ways to minimize this in specific settings, but obviously doctors who use GPT have to be keenly aware of this.

Now multiply this by dozens or hundreds of different settings and GPT is set to revolutionize the world. Not instantly, but within a few years. It's not too soon to prepare.

Published on 17 Comments on Fox News CEO: Stop with the fact checks. Our viewers hate them.

The Dominion lawsuit against Fox News is the gift that keeps on giving. New stuff keeps dripping out every week that's catnip for both ordinary media and social media alike.

Ironically, this is the usual Republican MO for things like Hillary's emails or the IRS jihad against tea party groups: they leak tidbits relentlessly to keep their investigations in the news. Democrats have never been very good at this, but it turns out that Dominion is showing them the way. Matt Gertz has the latest:

There's more. Just click any of the tweets to read the whole chain.

Published on 14 Comments on Americans are pretty satisfied with federal spending priorities

A new AP/NORC poll includes one of our favorite questions: Which government programs do we spend too much on? Here are the results:

The only program that a majority wants to cut back is good ol' foreign aid, which now has a thousand-year streak of being disliked even though it accounts for—let's see here—0.9% of the federal budget and 0.18% of GDP, one of the lowest levels among rich countries.

We'll probably never get people's heads out of the sand on this one, but that's OK. All we have to do is cut off assistance to Israel and foreign aid spending will immediately be cut by 10%. Easy peasy.

But now let's look at things from the other direction. What programs do people want to spend more on?

My rule of thumb is that poll numbers for things like this need to be at least above 60% to be meaningful, and there are only a handful of programs that—barely—break that barrier. We've already passed a big infrastructure bill, which leaves only Social Security, health care, and education as popular candidates for more spending.

Overall, the primary message of this poll, and others like it, is that status quo bias is strong. The American public has consistently said that:

  • They don't want to cut anything serious and are willing to increase spending a bit for only a few things.
  • They don't like big deficits.
  • They want to close the deficit by increasing taxes on rich people.

This is one of the reasons politics is so ugly these days. As the old saying goes, the smaller the stakes the nastier the fight.

Published on 10 Comments on Yesterday we got a little more detail about the Fed’s supervision of SVB

News reports based on leaks from the Fed have said that Silicon Valley Bank was called out in 2021 for some poor governance practices but that warnings about financial risk didn't come until late 2022. However, testimony yesterday by Michael Barr, the Fed's vice chair for supervision, paints a slightly different picture:

Near the end of 2021, supervisors found deficiencies in the bank's liquidity risk management, resulting in six supervisory findings related to the bank's liquidity stress testing, contingency funding, and liquidity risk management. In May 2022, supervisors issued three findings related to ineffective board oversight, risk management weaknesses, and the bank's internal audit function.

In the summer of 2022, supervisors lowered the bank's management rating to "fair" and rated the bank's enterprise-wide governance and controls as "deficient-1." These ratings mean that the bank was not "well managed" and was subject to growth restrictions under section 4(m) of the Bank Holding Company Act.

In October 2022, supervisors met with the bank's senior management to express concern with the bank's interest rate risk profile and in November 2022, supervisors delivered a supervisory finding on interest rate risk management to the bank.

In this account, we still have the governance issues raised in May 2022 and the warnings about interest rate risk in October and November.

However, the very first warning, at the end of 2021, is now said to be about SVB's liquidity risk management. This raises a few big questions:

  • How serious were the warnings? Barr goes to the trouble of including a footnote explaining the difference between an MRA (matters requiring attention) and an MIRA (matters requiring immediate attention) but doesn't say which ones were issued at this time.
  • There were apparently no further warnings about liquidity. Does this mean that SVB resolved its problems?
  • To deal with warnings from the Fed and a downgrade threat from Moody's, SVB bulked up its cash reserves and announced a capital raise. Was this what the Fed had recommended? Did they know about it?

When SVB sold securities to generate cash, this still left it well above the minimum required capital and leverage ratios:

Ironically, it was SVB's announcement of this action, which was precisely the right thing to do, that sparked the run the next day. After that, it had only a few hours left to live.

Published on 13 Comments on Mammoth meatballs—no, wait—meatballs *from* mammoths, are on the menu

This is how it starts:

A woolly mammoth meatball has been created from the animal’s DNA — 4,000 years after the beast went extinct.

It gets worse:

Vow, the Australian company that created the food, made the meat by isolating genetic material found in mammoths that gives flavor to red meat and filled in gaps with DNA from an elephant.

It's a chimera! What's next? Human-horse combinations? Humans and mice? And will they make meatballs out of us? We should have listened to the right-wingers who warned us about this, folks.