Job openings dropped yet again in April, this time by a whopping 300,000. The long-term trend continues to be perplexing:
Just before the pandemic the total employment level was 48.1%. Today it's 48.0%. In other words, exactly the same. But in the interval job openings skyrocketed and are still considerably higher than in January 2020. By contrast, actual hires are close to the same.
The story this seems to tell is that the economy did well after the pandemic and hiring increased by a normal amount for a good economy. In other words, the blue line is the real story of the economy. But for some reason, businesses began advertising for far more jobs than they really needed. It was never a case of businesses not being able to find enough workers to fill their real requirements.
So what happened? Was it just panic? Some artifact of the hiring process? It's a mystery.
President Biden plans to sign an executive order that would effectively close the border to asylum seekers. Atrios isn't impressed:
This will solve an undefinable problem and satisfy all the people who have good faith concerns!
I don't get this. Even if you oppose Biden's plan, it's pretty obvious what problem he's trying to solve:
We're down from the huge peak of last December, but there are still nearly 200,000 illegal immigrants—many of them trying to claim asylum—crossing the border every month. That's a lot.
The real problem with Biden's plan is that it's likely illegal and a court will strike it down in short order. Also, according to the Washington Post, migrants who "state a fear of persecution" will remain eligible for protection. But don't they all do that?
Today is a huge relief: My doctor called to tell me that my PET scan results were, in his words, "clean." Here's the report:
The first sentence means the scan found strong evidence of prostate cancer in my prostate. The second sentence means it didn't find it anywhere else. It hasn't metastasized. There's no cancer in my bones or my lymph nodes.
This is the best possible news. Well, second best: the best news would have been not to have prostate cancer in the first place. But as long as it's localized just to the prostate, it's extremely treatable and unlikely to have any permanent effects.
On Wednesday I have a consult with the oncologists to discuss treatment options. I'm a wee bit tired of cancer, so my preference at the moment is "all of the above." Surgically remove it, hit it with some radiation, and then pump some hormones into my body just to make sure it's gone. Maybe toss in some chemo for good measure. Most likely, though, it will only be one of the three.
This poor tree has been the target of so many woodpeckers that it's practically falling apart. This is something of a metaphor for human beings and nearly everything we touch, but at least we're not the only ones. Just the only ones who should know better.
April 14, 2024 — Laguna Coast Wilderness Park, Orange County, California
A week ago I mentioned there was now a huge discrepancy between UN and Israeli figures for aid getting into Gaza. The UN acknowledged that it wasn't counting commercial shipments, but that hardly seemed like enough to account for the difference.
In May, the Israeli military lifted a ban on the sale of food to Gaza from Israel and the occupied West Bank, Reuters reported last week. Traders got the green light to resume buying fresh fruit and vegetables, dairy and other goods.
Hmmm. Here's what the Israelis say:
Ami Shaked, the manager of the crossing complex where shipments are checked by Israeli security, confirmed that truck deliveries for business were outpacing aid, but said it was driven by the commercial interests of logistics firms.
....“Because if I have a contract with UNWRA [the UN agency for Palestinian refugees], they will pay, for example, 2,000 shekels for each truck. The market now (for) pure business is between 7,000 and 10,000 for each truck, so they prefer to take the goods of the businessmen.”
As usual, there are major disputes between Israel and the UN about what's really going on. Also as usual, there's simply no way for me to know which side is closer to the truth. At this point, I'm not entirely sure I trust either one of them.
But.......I have a delicate question. Every month since January we've been told that Gaza is on the verge of mass famine. And every month, there's no famine. So what's really happening? There are still some journalists in Gaza, aren't there? Just by virtue of roaming around, they should be able to tell us what things are like.
Is my memory shot? The Washington Post has a piece today about social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic and whether it was really necessary. This is apparently going to be a key point in tomorrow's congressional hearings featuring Anthony Fauci.
It takes ten paragraphs before the Post provides a straightforward answer: "Experts agree that social distancing saved lives." The question, it turns out, is only about whether six feet was really the right social distance. WHO said that three feet was enough, and Fauci and others have already testified that they don't really know where six feet came from. Apparently it was partly based on our old friend, droplet vs. aerosol emission. Six feet is a safer distance for droplet transmission, so the CDC initially adopted it because they thought COVID was spread via droplets. As we all know by now, that was wrong. COVID is spread mostly by airborne aerosols, and for that six feet doesn't do any more good than three feet.
Fine. I gather that everyone agrees about this now, but members of Congress want to showboat about it some more anyway. Whatever.
But here's where my memory comes into play. You might wonder why anyone cares that much about 3 feet vs. 6 feet, and the answer is that lots of schools were shut down because they didn't have enough space to keep kids separated by six feet.
But is that true? My recollection is that schools were mostly shut down over fear that teachers were in danger of being infected. On the other side of the argument, there was concern that keeping kids at home would expose them to elderly relatives and prevent parents who were caregivers from going to work. Beyond all this, the most common reason provided at the time was, basically, "It's a pandemic! Of course we have to shut the schools."
For example, here's a contemporary list of arguments for and against school closures. There's no mention of six feet. I asked GPT-4 and it produced many reasons, none related to six feet. Announcements at the time mostly just said schools were being shut for safety reasons that were assumed to be obvious. And lots of schools in other countries were shut down even if they were following WHO's three-foot guideline.
What am I missing? I'm well aware of the arguments that we should have opened schools more quickly after the initial panic subsided. Some states did and some didn't, even though classrooms are about the same size everywhere. Was the six-foot guideline really in play here?
Huh. I didn't realize that Pepsi had plummeted so badly. I wonder why?
The other thing this chart reminds me of is my longtime puzzlement that consumption of diet sodas is so far behind their sugary cousins. I know they don't taste the same, but they've never seemed that bad to me. Certainly not bad enough to be worth all the extra calories, and that would be even more true if I were a soda addict.¹
Then again, if the "set point" theory of calories is true—namely that we all have a particular number of calories we crave one way or another—then maybe it doesn't matter. If you drink sugary sodas, you're just going to consume less of something else. Maybe I should test that by switching to regular soda and seeing if I gain any weight.
¹In my case, I generally have one soda with lunch and that's it. Aside from that I drink nothing but water.
I see that we're back to playing an old favorite game:
Trump on Fox & Friends vows to entirely cut the department of education, cut the department of interior, and also do big cuts to "environment agencies," which he says are "so bad for us." pic.twitter.com/mu8klKJo6z
Wait. The Department of the Interior? Where did that come from? Republicans are always talking about cutting the EPA and Education, but until now Interior has been famous only as the third agency that Rick Perry wanted to cut but couldn't remember.
So what's Trump's beef with the Department of the Interior? Well, part of the department is the Bureau of Land Management, and back in the day it was dedicated to making sure oil companies could drill on federal land. Another part is the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which was dedicated to screwing Native Americans.
But times have changed, and now the BLM is often an obstacle to drilling and spends a lot of time on preservation and environmental concerns. They were also mean to the Bundy family, who only wanted to illegally let their cows graze on federal land. Meanwhile, the BIA is trying to make up for its past bad behavior by treating Native Americans more decently. President Biden even appointed a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe to head the entire Interior Department!
This is bad. We're spending about $5 billion per year on Indians—who vote for Democrats—and another $5 billion on bureaucrats meddling with environmental nonsense and making life difficult for hardworking ranchers—who vote for Republicans. The rest of the budget is for parks and wildlife, another big liberal wonkathon. The whole department is a liberal sinkhole. Best to get rid of the entire thing.
So there you have it. We can privatize the national parks, let timber and oil companies do whatever they want on federal land, and tell the natives to stand on their own two feet. Problem solved.
And here's the best part. If we really and truly gut the entire department we'll save $17 billion per year. That's one quarter of one percent of the federal budget. Gone! Just like that! And Cliven Bundy will be avenged.
I've seen a lot of commentary about the Trump trial vaguely suggesting that it popped up out of nowhere from a partisan DA with an axe to grind and a dubious legal theory he invented just for the occasion. This is not true.
It is true that the legal theory behind Trump's prosecution was novel, but that's because no one had ever before done what Trump did. Nor was it invented especially by Alvin Bragg. The prospect of prosecuting Trump for falsifying business records to conceal criminal conduct has been repeatedly discussed since shortly after the day federal prosecutors first revealed that Trump's hush money payments were fraudulently booked as legal expenses. That was nearly five years ago.
Since then, the hush money case has been under continual investigation by US Attorneys, the Federal Election Commission, the New York State attorney general, and the Manhattan district attorney. It was slowed down by federal prosecutors, Trump appeals, and a changing of the guard in the Manhattan DA's office. But it never went away.
To refresh your memory about how long and continuously this case has been in the news, here's a brief timeline.
November 2016: The Wall Street Journal reports that the National Enquirer paid Karen McDougal, a Playboy model, $150,000 to buy her silence about an affair with Donald Trump.
January 2018: The Journal reports that Trump fixer Michael Cohen paid hush money directly to porn star Stormy Daniels for the same reason. Trump denies everything.
July 2018: CNN releases audiotape of Trump discussing hush money payments with Cohen.
August 2018: Federal prosecutors reveal that Cohen's reimbursements were booked as legal expenses by The Trump Organization.
August 2018: The Manhattan DA, Cyrus Vance, considers opening an investigation into the hush money case. Federal prosecutors will later ask him to pause his investigation until theirs is finished.
November 2018: The Journal confirms that Trump was personally involved with both hush money payments.
December 2018: Federal prosecutors make public a non-prosecution agreement signed with AMI, the parent company of the National Enquirer. It states that the hush money payments were intended to prevent damage to Trump's 2016 campaign.
July 2019: Federal prosecutors conclude their hush money investigation without charges. Federal rules prevent prosecution of a sitting president.
August 2019: With the federal investigation over, Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance re-opens his investigation and subpoenas Trump for hush money documents.
May 2021: After an investigation, the Federal Election Commission concludes that AMI violated campaign finance laws by secretly paying McDougal.
November 2021: Vance convenes grand jury to hear evidence against Trump.
January 2022: Alvin Bragg takes office as new Manhattan DA.
February 2022: Two prosecutors leave DA's office over disappointment that Bragg didn't immediately bring charges against Trump.
December 2022: Bragg hires a former DOJ attorney who worked the federal investigation of Trump.
April 2023: Bragg indicts Trump for falsifying business records in order to conceal damaging information during the 2016 election.
Just before the pandemic the total employment level was 48.1%. Today it's 48.0%. In other words, exactly the same. But in the interval job openings skyrocketed and are still considerably higher than in January 2020. By contrast, actual hires are close to the same.
