Cats, charts, and politics
This kind of wonky analysis seems even more pointless than usual this year, but just for the record here's an estimate from the Penn Wharton Budget Model of how much each candidate's economic proposals will affect the national debt:
Trump's proposals blow up the debt by 5x more than Harris's. Here's how they affect income:
Again, no surprise. The Trump plan is steadily more generous the richer you are. Harris is most generous to the poor and reduces income slightly among the rich.
I've finally had enough of my site's sluggish performance, so today I switched hosting services. In theory, the migration should be pain free, but I guess we'll see. I'm just letting everyone know so that in case something goes wrong you know why. Don't worry: we'll be working to fix it.
Now cross your fingers.
I know this is a Trump talking point, but honestly, Kamala Harris really needs to sit down for some interviews with the press. It's something we should expect from any presidential candidate.
I've cut her some slack because she became a candidate only a few weeks ago. But she's been vice president for more than three years and a top-rank politician for more than a decade before that. She should be able to handle an interview by now. And keep in mind that the longer she waits the riskier things get. As expectations mount so does the feeding frenzy, which means she'll be judged harshly on even the tiniest gaffes because that's all anyone has. To manage that, she needs to get going now and she needs to do multiple interviews so that no single one of them defines her.
Over the past few months Donald Trump has done serious sit-down interviews with Time, Businessweek, and the National Association of Black Journalists. That's in addition to friendly conversations with the likes of Elon Musk, Fox News, and whoever was allowed to attend his phony press conference. Harris should (at least) follow suit.
A couple of days ago Mark Zuckerberg sent a letter to Republicans saying that health officials had pressured Meta to remove COVID misinformation while the vaccine was being rolled out. He now regrets this, though he didn't really say why. Then there's this:
The Zuckerberg letter didn’t stop with details of the well-known crackdown on Covid misinformation. It also reminds the public of the time the Biden administration asked social media companies to slow the spread of a New York Post article about Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 election.
That's from Vox, and it echoes Truth Social posts from Donald Trump saying "THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION WAS RIGGED!"
Perhaps you've already noticed the problem with this: in 2020 Trump was president. There was no Biden administration to do any pressuring.
Nor did the Biden campaign do any pressuring. As Zuckerberg has said multiple times, Meta restricted the laptop story solely because they had gotten vague warnings from the FBI (Trump's FBI) that they should be on alert for Russian disinformation. There was never any mention of Hunter Biden.
In fact—as we've all known for years—both social media and the mainstream media reacted skeptically to the laptop story because it seemed like pure ratfuckery and the Trump campaign refused to allow reporters to verify it. Despite this, the Twitter ban lasted only a day and the Meta restriction lasted only a week.
That's all. That's the story.
This is the famous wheel at the Prater amusement park in Vienna. If you've ever seen The Third Man, you'll recognize it.
According to the International Monetary Fund, per capita GDP in the US is currently $85,000. This figure is adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity, so it takes into account differences in living standards throughout the world. Here's how everyone else is doing:
The US is the richest large region in the world and the fastest growing except for China and India—both of whom are still far behind us.
This is remarkable.
This feels like about the millionth time we've seen this recently:
A federal judge in Texas has....
Does it even matter what this judge did? He overturned a Biden program, of course, and in this case it happens to be one that provides a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who are married to US citizens. But it hardly matters. It could have been anything from Biden. Just bring it to the Eastern District of Texas and it's toast.
The new school year has started, and that means it's time for an evergreen story about teachers being burnt out and quitting in record numbers:
Teacher exit rates reached new highs in the past two years, according to data from several states. In Texas, thousands more teachers left the classroom in 2022 and 2023 compared with the years before the pandemic.
....“Across multiple data points, we see that the health and the state of the teaching profession is at or near a 50-year low,” said Matthew Kraft, a Brown University professor.
I can't say for sure if teachers are more burnt out than usual. Every year there are stories saying they are, and they're never backed up with anything more than anecdotal evidence. So who knows?
But it's easy to see if they're leaving the profession in droves. Just look at the number of teachers:
There are more teachers this year than any year in history, despite the fact that student enrollment is down yet again. Whatever teachers say, they're still showing up to teach.
Now, it's true that this doesn't tell us anything about the quality of teachers. And I don't doubt that teacher exits are up, what with baby boomers retiring. One way or another, though, there seem to be plenty of teachers to replace the boomers.
NOTE: This chart is for "local government education," which includes more than just teachers. But it goes up and down in sync with teachers, so it gives a good indication of teacher employment. Also note that for maximum accuracy I'm using numbers just for the month of July each year, not seasonally adjusted. They haven't been modified in any way.
Pew has a new report out today about the values and policy opinions of Trump and Harris voters. As you'd expect, they disagree widely on everything. Except for Social Security:
Nobody—not Democrats, not Republicans, not independents—wants Social Security touched even slightly. It's still the third rail of American politics.
House Republicans are furious about being forced into a last-minute Biden impeachment vote — which they say could hurt their campaigns, top GOP sources tell Axios. Even leadership doesn't want it.
But just one member can force a vote.... With Congress stuck in D.C. next month to hammer out a short-term funding deal, there's plenty of time for an enterprising Republican to force the issue.
A vote on articles of impeachment is privileged and has to be voted on within two days. In the past this didn't matter because even crazy members of Congress didn't toss out impeachment resolutions just for the hell of it. Today they do. Trying to impeach Democrats over nothing has become a favorite pastime of MAGA Republicans.