According to the TV News Archive, the Green New Deal has been mentioned 3,403 times on cable news this year. Here’s a breakdown of the major cable news outlets:

That’s 1,384 for Fox and Fox Business vs. 582 for MSNBC and CNN. The Fox empire has talked about the GND more than twice as much as the other two outlets combined. This is why 71 percent of Republicans say they’ve heard a lot about the GND while only 37 percent of Democrats say the same. David Roberts tells us what this means:

We know what Republicans have been told about the GND — “It bans cows!” — so it’s no surprise to find that differential level of exposure reflected in the support numbers: 80 percent of Republicans strongly oppose the GND, while just 46 percent of Dems strongly support it….For Fox viewers, the GND is a disaster (“ridiculous!” “stupid!” “destroy!” “costly!”) that gets rid of some things and bans other things….There is no parallel left-wing media machine to swing around in support of the person or policy.

In fairness, it’s a lot easier to mobilize public opinion against something than for it, especially when it’s frankly unclear what being “for” the Green New Deal even means. This is one of the downsides of making the GND a set of aspirational goals with all the meat left to be filled in later. Supporters aren’t sure exactly what they’re being asked to support, which naturally causes them to hold back a little. The haters, by contrast, only need to hear one or two things they hate, and that’s enough.

Of course, it also helps if you don’t care about telling the truth and are more concerned with raking in a few dollars now than you are with planetary suicide in a few decades. But we already knew that.

The Washington Post writes today about the latest phenom on Jeopardy!:

James Holzhauer, the frighteningly talented “Jeopardy!” player who has dominated the past 13 games and racked up $942,738, second only to Ken Jennings. In its 35th season, the dinnertime show is suddenly appointment television as Holzhauer has shattered the idea of a typical “Jeopardy!” strategy. He has broken his record for single-game winnings three times; his highest total is $131,137, which he won last week. Holzhauer plays, as Slate put it, “like a cyborg constructed for the express purpose of winning at this ever-popular game.”

As a longtime Jeopardy! fan, my problem with Holzhauer is that I feel like I’m watching a different species play the game. Even with a guy like Ken Jennings, I could sort of fool myself into thinking that I could beat him if I just got a little lucky. But Holzhauer? Forget it. He’d crush me like an ant. His buzzer timing and his board skills are off the charts, which merely masks the fact that he’s also wildly knowledgeable on a wide range of topics. I don’t think there’s been a category yet where he’s shown any serious weakness.

So that’s that. The Jeopardy! folks should probably be thinking about a special two-entity showdown between Holzhauer and IBM’s Watson, since I’m not sure any other human has a chance of beating him. That showdown might not happen, but I’ll bet they’re already salivating over Holzhauer giving them an excuse to bring back Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter yet again, this time in a three-way contest where the third person isn’t just cannon fodder.

CNN held a town hall for Democratic presidential candidates tonight, and Jamison Foser has a question:

what if — now, hear me out — CNN took a question from a 20 year-old-who *isn’t in college at all*?

— Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser) April 23, 2019

This is rapidly becoming a pet peeve of mine. Reporters are endlessly obsessed with Gen Z or the “youth vote,” which almost always turns out to be code for “college students.” But what about the other half? College students are notoriously activist, but this doesn’t mean that young people more generally are all Bernie bros or Warren Warriors. We should be hearing from the high school grads too, and learning what they care about, even if they aren’t as media savvy as the college kids.

I got my latest M-protein test results back, and the numbers are up:

This is not great. I was hoping my M-protein level would stay low even without the dex, but it keeps rising.

However, this isn’t terrible either. I’m hoping it will flatten out at around 0.5, and it still has a chance to do that. If it doesn’t, it means I either have to start up the dex again¹ or else try something else. My oncologist has a couple of ideas about that, but I plan to wait at least a couple of months to see how the Darzalex does on its own.

¹That would be a drag. It’s taken me three months, but I’m finally over the effects of the dex and off the sleep meds. I’d really hate to start it up again.

The Social Security Trustees announced today that they expect the Social Security trust fund to reach exhaustion in 2035, a year better than they predicted last year. Here are their predictions for every year since the program was overhauled in 1984:

As you can see, everyone was pretty optimistic after the 1984 reform, but reality set in quickly and then a recession in 1991 made things even worse. By the mid-90s, the trustees were predicting trust fund exhaustion by 2030.

But then we had the dotcom boom followed by the housing boom and predictions got rosier. But then we had the Great Recession and predictions once again got gloomier. Finally, we split the difference during the long, modest expansion of the Obama years. That brings us to the present, and at this point it looks like the trust fund really will run out of money around 2033-35

So what happens then? One of two things. If Congress does nothing, everyone’s Social Security check suddenly gets cut by 25 percent. But if Congress decides to fix things—which seems likely given the political suicide of impoverishing millions of seniors—then taxes go up and Social Security payments stay about the same as scheduled. If we do this now, the tax increase could be done slowly over time. If we wait until 2035, it will probably have to happen pretty quickly. Realistically, those are our only choices.

Hey look, I found one more picture from our trip to Ireland a couple of years ago. They don’t call it the Emerald Isle for nothing!

Oh wait. This isn’t Ireland. It’s just Irvine. This is what it looks like around here when we get plenty of rain, but before the mustard plants take over. It doesn’t look like this everywhere, but in places it’s really quite lovely.

Elizabeth Warren has announced a plan to forgive existing student debt and make public colleges free for future students. It’s an aggressive proposal because, as she says, “the time for half measures is over.” I continue to be ambivalent about this for several reasons:

• College graduates are our highest earners. Is it fair to tax everyone to subsidize them?
• Universities are mostly private or state-run. A federal plan to support state universities is just begging for states to invent ways to game the system.
• It’s an expensive proposal. Even if it’s a good idea, is it the best use of a trillion dollars we can think of?

One of the arguments in favor of Warren’s plan is that the high cost of college deters a lot of students from even enrolling. But that doesn’t seem to be true:

Another argument is that college loans have massively indebted young people. But on average, that doesn’t seem especially true either:

Nor is this decline in debt levels solely because young families are no longer buying houses. Among those under 35, the homeownership rate went up in the aughts and then down during the Great Recession—just as it did for every age group. However, in the end this has all washed out. The homeownership rate today is practically identical to the rate a quarter century ago: about 36 percent, down only slightly from 37 percent in 1994.

Obviously college loans deter some high school grads from pursuing higher education, and just as obviously they’re a huge burden on some graduates. They also prevent some young families from buying a house. But overall, is student debt a “crisis”? It’s a little hard to see it in the numbers.

This doesn’t mean I’m opposed to Warren’s plan. There are obvious benefits to society to motivate as many people as possible to get as much education as they can. I’m just not sure that free public college for everyone and debt cancellation for almost everyone¹ is the most sensible way of getting there.

My attitude is also partly driven by my twin obsessions with universal health care and climate change. If we’re going to spend large sums of money, I want to spend it there first. After we’ve done that it will be time to see how much appetite we collectively have for additional big-dollar programs.

¹Warren’s plan for debt cancellation is modestly means tested, so the affluent get only partial benefits. She says her plan will cancel all student debt for 75 percent of debtors and will cancel some debt for 95 percent of debtors.

I was just reading Atrios’s latest barb against Elon Musk’s “self-driving” Tesla—a subject we agree on—and got to wondering how Waymo is doing these days. I consider them the real bellwether for self-driving technology, but it’s been a few months since I checked in on them.

Long story short, Waymo announced last month that they’re building a second technical center in Chandler, Arizona, which will allow them to expand their commercial fleet. However, they’re still in pilot mode, with a safety driver behind the wheel at all times.

That’s about it. Steady but slow progress, and no one has died.

In an admirable example of why local reporting is so important, the LA Times has counted up all the expletives thrown at the LA County Board of Supervisors since 2016. Up through 2017, board meetings were fairly clean and decorous, but in 2018 things started spiraling out of hand:

According to reporter Matt Stiles, “It’s a common problem in government proceedings across the nation, including for the Los Angeles City Council and even the Los Angeles Police Commission. At those weekly meetings, profanity-laced tirades and middle fingers regularly outnumber the officers assigned to keep watch.”

Hooray for the First Amendment?

I don’t have a picture of a bunny or a cross or an egg or anything else appropriate to the holiday, so instead here’s a picture of a wildflower that seems sort of vaguely Easterish. I believe it’s a chick lupine, though I could be wrong about that.