Month: March 2024

The New York City subway is getting a show of force:

Hundreds of National Guard soldiers and State Police officers will patrol the New York City subway platforms and check riders’ bags beginning this week, Gov. Kathy Hochul said on Wednesday.

....Subway safety is a constant concern in New York City, where the system’s recovery is critical to the city’s rebound from the pandemic, and public officials can be as sensitive to the perception that mass transit is dangerous as they are to an actual rise in crime.

I don't live in New York City or use its transit system, but naturally I got curious about this. Is there an actual rise in crime on the subway or only the perception of one?

It turns out that transit crime has been flat over the past two years while ridership has increased about 20%. Here's what that looks like:

The trendline of transit crime is down 13% over the past two years, and the most recent week had nearly the lowest crime rate of the entire period. Two felonies per million rides seems pretty safe to me!

Note that these figures are for all transit, including subways and buses, because that's the way New York City reports things. But it's very likely that crime trends are pretty similar for both.

Two weeks ago the Alabama Supreme Court blew up IVF treatments in the state by ruling that frozen embryos are human life. This made IVF too risky and forced hospitals and clinics to stop providing it. But everybody loves IVF—even Republicans—so the Alabama legislature moved like lightning to pass a bill giving IVF clinics absolute immunity from any criminal or civil action.

Whew. Crisis averted. Or was it? It turns out the pro-life movement is decidedly not on board with this, and on Tuesday they sent an open letter to the governor begging her not to sign the bill. It was signed by some of the biggest anti-abortion groups in the country:

The Live Action coalition points out that the Alabama legislation includes civil and criminal immunity for a doctor who:

• Secretly uses his own sperm to create embryos
• Deliberately implants someone else's child into a different IVF mother's womb
• Intentionally destroys the embryos he creates against the wishes of the parents

I don't know how likely any of this is, but they're quite correct about the bill. It provides blanket immunity for anything as long as you're an IVF provider.

Anyway, I love it when conservatives are feuding among themselves about something that virtually nobody, even conservatives themselves, thinks is wrong or should be illegal:

Anti-abortion politicos have tried desperately for a long time to avoid alarming normies about the logical consequences of their position: frozen embryos as human beings, jailing women who get abortions, banning travel for abortions, etc. But guess what? Now that hardline conservatives have a free hand, it turns out that a lot of them want to do precisely the stuff they've been pretending they would never do.

So may their feuding be long and very, very public. Let's make it clear to everyone what they really think, and then see how many people still support them.

POSTSCRIPT: Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed the IVF legislation on Wednesday. In the end, no one cared about the pro-life groups.

Steve Benen writes today about Sen. Kyrsten Sinema's upcoming retirement:

Sinema’s retirement puts the future of the filibuster in doubt

This reminds me of something I've been meaning to mention: the filibuster is already dead.

This isn't a controversial point. In 2013 Democrats used the "point of order" procedure to end the filibuster for lower court nominations. In 2017 Republicans used it to end the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees.

It may seem as if these are limited examples that apply only to nominations, not legislation. But that's not so. The key point is much broader: both parties now explicitly accept that the majority party can override a filibuster at any time with 51 votes.

The fact that neither party has yet done this for legislation is immaterial. It's clearly legal and can be set in motion at any time. Both sides may still be pretending the filibuster exists, but that's mere habit. For all practical purposes, it's dead.

A few months ago the House took the 12 annual appropriations bills and split them into two packages. The first of those packages finally passed today, after several small disagreements were finally resolved. Here's how they went:

1. Stopping the VA from barring gun purchases to veterans with mental health deterioration: Republicans won.
2. $1 billion increase in WIC nutrition funding for infants and new mothers: Democrats won.
3. Three tiny earmarks for LGBTQ services: Republicans won.
4. Stopping pharmacies from providing abortion pills: Democrats won.

Speaker Mike Johnson also pointed to the following Republican "victories":

Johnson highlighted a 7% reduction of $122 million for the Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives division and a 6% reduction of $654 million for the Federal Bureau of Investigation when compared with the prior fiscal year’s allocated amount. He also touted a 10% reduction to the Environmental Protection Agency, mostly attributable to a $745 million drop in money for its Superfund cleanup sites.

So Republicans got a small reduction in BATF funding because they hate enforcing gun laws; a small reduction in FBI funding because the FBI has been mean to Donald Trump; and a small reduction in superfund cleanup money because.......they hate cleaning up toxic waste dumps?

Overall, the appropriations followed the funding guidelines set out last year in the debt ceiling deal. Republicans won almost none of their culture war battles and failed to make any significant cuts. They could have easily done this six months ago.

Here are EV sales through January:

Despite some gloomy headlines, sales of EVs have actually kept up their trend growth lately. This becomes clear when you use a 3-month rolling average to smooth out the monthly volatility.

However, there was a big drop in January, which was down 35% from December. A January decline is normal, but it's usually in the neighborhood of 10% or so. This is probably a blip, but we won't know for sure until summer.

This is the Isle of Wight off the south coast of Great Britain. "It is known for its mild climate, coastal scenery, and verdant landscape of fields, downland, and chines."

Chines?

LA Times columnist Mark Barabak comments on the victory last night of Adam Schiff in the primary race for US Senate in California:

By choosing Schiff, a Burbank congressman who was the most moderate of the major Democratic candidates — and thus most Feinstein-like — [voters] rejected the leftward swerve promised by two more liberal alternatives, Reps. Katie Porter of Irvine and Barbara Lee of Oakland.

I don't think this is quite right. It's true that, objectively speaking, Schiff is more centrist than Porter or Lee. But Schiff made his name by leading the Democratic investigation of Russiagate, sparring with conservatives like Devin Nunes along the way, and soon after as the lead prosecutor in the first Trump impeachment. Then, in a stroke of great timing, he was censured by House Republicans last June in a party-line vote that made him a Democratic hero:

When it was time for Schiff to come to the front of the chamber to be formally censured, immediately after the vote, the normally solemn ceremony turned into more of a celebratory atmosphere. Dozens of Democrats crowded to the front, clapping and cheering for Schiff and patting him on the back. They chanted “No!,” “Shame!” and “Adam! Adam!”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., read the resolution out loud, as is tradition after a censure. But he only read part of the document before leaving the chamber as Democrats heckled and interrupted him. “Censure all of us,” one Democrat yelled.

Schiff's moderate views helped him raise lots of money, but his public persona is much more combative and liberal. Add to that the fact that he and Porter barely disagreed about anything and I'm not so sure that Schiff's moderation was really a big factor. He had better name recognition than Porter; more money than Porter; a cynical campaign to boost the Republican candidate and box out Porter; and a reputation among voters as a fighter. That was probably what did it.

Today brings yet more handiwork from a Texas judge:

U.S. District Court Judge Mark T. Pittman ruled that the Minority Business Development Agency’s presumption that businesses owned by Blacks, Latinos and other minorities are inherently disadvantaged violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. He permanently enjoined the agency’s business centers, which have assisted minority-owned businesses in accessing capital and government contracts, from extending services based on an applicant’s race.

“If courts mean what they say when they ascribe supreme importance to constitutional rights, the federal government may not flagrantly violate such rights with impunity,” Pittman wrote. “The MBDA has done so for years. Time’s up.”

Pittman was so eager to rule in favor of white people that he resolved this case on summary judgment:

While the Agency’s work may help alleviate opportunity gaps faced by minority business enterprises, two wrongs do not make a right. And the MBDA’s racial presumption is a wrong. “Legislation should never be designed to punish anyone.” While the Agency may intend to serve listed groups, not punish unlisted groups, the very design of its presumption punishes those who are not presumptively entitled to MBDA benefits.

This gets to the heart of conservative opposition to any kind of minority benefit: it's designed by liberals to punish white people. Pittman says the federal government has been punishing white people for 55 years via this program, and "time's up."

Pittman, needless to say, was appointed by Donald Trump. He's the district judge who killed Joe Biden's student debt relief, as well as the guy who ruled that Texas couldn't ban teenagers between 18-20 from carrying concealed weapons. As usual, this case will be appealed to the 5th Circuit, which will almost certainly uphold Pittman. Then, presumably, it will go to the Supreme Court, where its fate is probably poor, but perhaps not hopeless.

There wasn't much change on the hiring front in January:

Hires continue to decline and are now at about their 2019 level. And just for laughs, here are the winners and losers in January compared to December:

Is it true that the United States has the lowest inflation rate of any major economy? Not quite, but it's close:

China's economy is suffering, and they're starting to experience a bad bout of deflation. Aside from that, the US has the lowest inflation rate of the ten biggest economies in the world.