New Kaiser tracking poll results are out today, and Obamacare favorability took yet another jump upward. Overall, Obamacare is continuing its steady march toward widespread acceptance:
Since Obamacare kicked off in 2014, favorability ratings have steadily increased among Democrats (+25 points), independents (+23 points) and even among Republicans (+10 points). Among the entire country, favorability has increased from 34 percent to 54 percent. More than half of that gain has come since mid-2016, when acceptance of Obamacare inflected upward and just kept on going. At the same time, unfavorable opinions have dropped. The net approval rating of Obamacare since 2014 has increased from -16 percent to +12 percent.
Donald Trump may yet succeed in wrecking Obamacare, but if he does it will become more powerful than he can possibly imagine. Increasingly, America is just not interested in going back to the barbaric system we lived with for so long.
I’ve been trying with notably mixed success to avoid writing about Donald Trump’s daily ragetweets, which is why I didn’t write about this one yesterday:
I have decided that sections of the Wall that California wants built NOW will not be built until the whole Wall is approved. Big victory yesterday with ruling from the courts that allows us to proceed. OUR COUNTRY MUST HAVE BORDER SECURITY!
His threat confused just about everyone involved in the fight over border protection. If the goal was to gain leverage in his fight for the wall, the warning shot seemed oddly aimed: California officials have fought vigorously against Trump’s project, his top priority as a presidential candidate, even going to court to try to block it….Administration officials could not point to any change in policy — either proposals or executive actions — to accompany Trump’s tweet. Nor were officials sure what “sections of the wall” Trump was referring to as elements that “California wants.”
….Elected officials also didn’t offer much of a hint that Trump’s words had moved them. Even the current border upgrades are “not a priority in our view,” said Drew Hammill, a spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco). Rep. Scott Peters (D-San Diego) said a full wall on the border isn’t needed. “If he wants to waste that money in some other part of the country, that’s fine with me,” he added.
I suppose if I looked into it, it would turn out that Fox & Friends had a segment that sent Trump into a froth yesterday morning and this tweet was the result. It’s just another warning to me and everyone else that we should ignore everything he says on Twitter.
The planned announcement had been kept secret from many senior White House officials in an effort to prevent a huge backlash that could sway Trump at the last second.
This is all about trade policy. Apparently a small cabal within the White House was pushing Trump to announce new tariffs on steel and aluminum today, but kept it a secret from everyone else. When everyone else found out, the shit hit the fan and the announcement died a quick death.
What a way to run a White House. It’s like watching all the amateur schemers on Survivor. I thought John Kelly was supposed to clean up this kind of thing, but as near as I can tell he’s just decided to join one cabal or another for each of these little spats.
UPDATE: After telling the press that today’s announcement would be only about “general trade issues,” Trump decided to announce the new tariffs after all. I guess after getting his ear at the last second, someone else got his ear just a few milliseconds later. So tariffs it shall be.
A few weeks ago, President Trump held a televised roundtable where he freewheeled about immigration, going way off the conservative script at several points and eventually promising to sign anything Congress sent him that had bipartisan support. Within a few days Trump had done a full U-turn: he issued a specific set of hard-right demands and insisted that he’d only sign a bill that included all of them.
Today, President Trump held a televised roundtable where he freewheeled about gun control, going way off the conservative script at several points and eventually promising that serious progress could be made if Congress just worked in a bipartisan way to send him a bill:
In a remarkable meeting, the president veered wildly from the N.R.A. playbook in front of giddy Democrats and stone-faced Republicans. He called for comprehensive gun control legislation that would expand background checks to weapons purchased at gun shows and on the internet, keep guns from mentally ill people, secure schools and restrict gun sales for some young adults. He even suggested a conversation on an assault weapons ban.
At one point, Mr. Trump suggested that law enforcement authorities should have the power to seize guns from mentally ill people or others who could present a danger without first going to court. “I like taking the guns early,” he said, adding, “Take the guns first, go through due process second.”
The declarations prompted a frantic series of calls from N.R.A. lobbyists to their allies on Capitol Hill and a statement from the group calling the ideas that Mr. Trump expressed “bad policy.” Republican lawmakers suggested to reporters that they remained opposed to gun control measures.
Guess what? The NRA was right: the president really does want to take away your guns. But it’s President Trump, not President Obama, who wants to do it.
And he wants to do it without bothering about due process. In a single sentence, he’s managed to alienate both conservatives and liberals. There’s literally no one who supports this idea. As for the rest, it’s dead on arrival. Republicans have no interest in any of it, and neither Paul Ryan nor Mitch McConnell is likely to allow anything like Trump’s proposal to come anywhere near a floor vote. Even his base isn’t going to support him on this.
This is the craziest shit we’ve seen from Trump since—oh, a few days ago, I suppose. The problem—aside from Trump being Trump—is that he has no one to consult about what kind of proposal might have a chance to gain Republican support if he pushes hard enough. That’s because there’s probably no one in the White House who supports even the tiniest shred of gun safety legislation. So Trump is on his own, causing chaos for his own party and guaranteeing that nothing will get done.
Let’s find out! Schmitt’s tweet links to an excerpt from Rana Foroohar’s book, Makers and Takers. Here’s the original quote:
If you wonder why most businesses still think of shareholders as their main priority or treat skilled labor as a cost rather than an asset—or why 80 percent of CEOs surveyed in one study said they’d pass up making an investment that would fuel a decade’s worth of innovation if it meant they’d miss a quarter of earnings results—it’s because that’s exactly what they are being educated to do.
Schmitt got the quote right, so he’s off the hook. Now let’s take a look at the book. The survey in question turns out to be from an article titled “Value Destruction and Financial Reporting Decisions” in the December 2006 issue of the Financial Analysts Journal. Right away there’s a problem: the authors surveyed CFOs, not CEOs.
So: did 80 percent of CFOs say they’d pass up a great investment if it meant missing a single quarter’s earnings? The article is only 12 pages long and it takes just a few minutes to read. If there’s anything like that in it, I sure couldn’t find it. Here are the statements that come anywhere close:
80 percent of survey participants would decrease discretionary spending (e.g., R&D, advertising, maintenance) to meet an earnings target, “even though many CFOs acknowledge that suboptimal maintenance and other spending can be value destroying.”
About 78 percent of CFOs say they’d sacrifice some amount of value in order to maintain smooth earnings growth. However, less than 30 percent would sacrifice a moderate amount of value and only a tiny handful would sacrifice a large amount of value.
Given a project with a positive but small future return, 59 percent say they’d accept it even if it meant they’d miss consensus EPS by 10 cents. About 52 percent say they’d accept it even if it meant missing EPS by 50 cents.
So what have we learned by clicking the link? First, it’s a survey of CFOs, not CEOs. Second, nothing in the results is anywhere close to “80 percent” saying they’d pass up an investment that would “fuel a decade’s worth of innovation” if it meant they’d miss an earnings estimate. It’s more like 41 percent saying their company would probably pass up a barely profitable project if it meant missing an earnings target.
Many of us thought that Hope Hicks would be the last person standing in the Trump administration, going down with the ship like Ron Ziegler.¹ But no:
Hope Hicks, the White House communications director and one of President Trump’s longest-serving advisers, said Wednesday that she plans to leave the White House in the coming weeks….Her resignation came a day after she testified for eight hours before the House Intelligence Committee, telling the panel that in her job, she had occasionally been required to tell white lies but had never lied about anything connected to the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
Multiple White House aides said that Ms. Hicks’s departure was unrelated to her appearance before the committee. They said that she had told a small group of people in the days before the session that she had planned to leave her job.
I’m sure it’s true that her departure isn’t directly due to the questioning she underwent yesterday. At the same time, the Cyrillic script has been on the wall for a while. I’d be surprised if she didn’t decide some time ago that she should get out while the getting was good and her reputation was still intact. She probably knows as well as anyone that there’s a lot more for Mueller to find.
So: aside from family, are there any senior White House aides from Trump’s first day in office who are still around? Yes! It’s a little tricky deciding who’s really “senior” in Trump’s inner circle, but here’s my slightly idiosyncratic list. The names in bold are still around:
Hope Hicks
Keith Schiller
Steve Bannon
Stephen Miller
Reince Priebus
Katie Walsh
Rob Porter
Sean Spicer
Don McGahn
Kellyanne Conway
Gary Cohn
Dina Powell
Michael Flynn
KT McFarland
Mick Mulvaney
Marc Short
Ten out of 16 have departed. That’s a pretty remarkable attrition rate.
¹Ron Ziegler was Richard Nixon’s press secretary, famous for—oh forget it. It doesn’t matter.
One of the interesting things about riding a double-decker bus is that you get to look into second-story windows. This photo was taken somewhere in Knightsbridge around 8 pm or so. I guess it’s some kind of clothing design or alteration operation. I’m not sure what accounts for the strong bluish tone. My camera’s white balance was set to incandescent lighting, which would normally produce a slight greenish cast under fluorescent light, but that’s all. Maybe something in the glass? That could be, but at the top right you can see a sliver of the room through an open window, and it looks blue too. It’s a mystery.
UPDATE: The consensus in comments is that the studio is using full-spectrum (sunlight) bulbs so they can accurately gauge the color of the cloth they’re using. But sunlight looks blue when a camera’s white balance is set to incandescent. Many years ago I accidentally shot an entire day of pictures in Switzerland using the incandescent setting, and they all looked like this. It should have occurred to me sooner.
The LA Times reports today on an updated analysis of deaths in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria. Here’s the chart:
The news here is not so much that immediate hurricane fatalities were high—almost certainly over 500, which we’ve long suspected—but that they kept going long after Hurricane Maria left. In September, the death toll was probably around 500. But a month later, another 500 people died and a month after that another 200. These are the number of deaths above normal, and it’s evidence of just how feeble the federal government’s response was.
It’s one thing to lose a lot of lives directly to a natural disaster, but it’s quite another to lose that many again due to lack of food, water, and medicine. Hurricane Harvey, for example, killed about 60 people in the Houston area and then another 26 due to “unsafe or unhealthy conditions” related to the loss or disruption of services such as utilities, transportation and medical care. Nobody was still dying a month later.
In a response to questioning by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Rogers said “I believe that President Putin has clearly come to the conclusion that there’s little price to pay here…and that therefore I can continue this activity.”…Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) asked Rogers whether he had received orders to go after the Russian meddling operation where it originated: “Have you been directed to do so given the strategic threat that faces the United States and the significant consequences you recognize already?”
“No I have not,” Rogers responded.
Here is Rogers’ boss today:
Why is A.G. Jeff Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate potentially massive FISA abuse. Will take forever, has no prosecutorial power and already late with reports on Comey etc. Isn’t the I.G. an Obama guy? Why not use Justice Department lawyers? DISGRACEFUL!
Is Trump concerned about the Russian hacks? No he is not. He’s concerned that the FBI is trying too hard to investigate the Russian hacks. He’s concerned that the FBI is interested in a guy who was explicitly recruited by the Russians a few years ago. He’s concerned with “potentially massive FISA abuse” by the FBI when they requested a wiretap on this guy.
There was, of course, no FISA abuse. It’s an entirely invented conspiracy theory. But Trump still wants that fake scandal investigated, and not just by some powerless inspector general. He wants it investigated using DOJ lawyers with the power to prosecute. And he’s once again pissed off at his own attorney general for not being enough of a lackey.
So it’s not surprising that Rogers has gotten no orders to do anything about the Russians. After all, who knows just what skullduggery that might accidentally uncover? It’s the last thing in the world that Trump wants.
UPDATE: Apparently Sessions is fed up. This time he’s fighting back:
I’ve mentioned this before, but regardless of what you think about his politics, Sessions views himself as a person of honor and integrity. He’s not the bootlicker that so many of Trump’s other appointments are.
A couple of days ago I posted a chart showing that the black unemployment rate was dropping faster than the white unemployment rate. I got into an email conversation with a reader about this, who suggested looking at the labor force participation rate as a different, possibly better metric of black employment. Here’s the basic chart showing the difference between black and white participation rates:
Participation rates vary with the economic cycle, but for more than three decades the difference between whites and blacks has been around 2-3 percentage points. Until 2011, that is. Starting then, the difference narrowed and kept on narrowing. Today it’s close to zero. Here’s a closeup of the past few years:
Black women have always worked more than white women, and over the past five years they’ve increased that gap by about 1.5 percentage points. Conversely, black men have always worked less than white men, but over the past five years they’ve narrowed that gap by about 1.5 percentage points. Together, that’s almost completely closed the overall racial gap.
I’m not really sure what lessons, if any, to take from this. Generally speaking, blacks close the job gap during economic expansions, which suggests that a lot of companies are reluctant to hire them until the economy gets good enough that they just can’t find white workers anymore. It also suggests that white women can afford to drop out of the labor force more easily than black women when times are good.
I don’t know if those are the right conclusions to draw from the data, and the differences are fairly small to begin with. Blacks may be paid considerably less than whites, but they’re employed at close to the same rate. In any case, I figured I’d post these charts as a point of interest, even if I’m not entirely sure what to make of them. Comments welcome.
UPDATE: I’m getting some flak for my choice of statistics. Here’s the deal: LFPR measures everyone who works or wants to work. The employment-population ratio measures only those who actually have jobs. LFPR is a better measure of general labor market engagement since it includes anyone who hasn’t given up completely, which is why I like it. However, EPOP specifically measures who has jobs, which makes it a better measure of…who has jobs.
You can make a case for either one, but for our present purposes it doesn’t matter much because they both tell similar stories. Here’s the same chart as above using EPOP instead of LFPR:
Since 2014, black men have narrowed the empop gap with white men by 3-4 points. Black women have expanded their lead over white women by 2-3 points. The overall black-white gap now stands at about two percentage points. It’s a big swing.
However, I’ve changed the headline since the gap is zero only by one measure and not the other. Both have gone down substantially, so “plummeted” is a safe description for either one.
And we respect that! But maybe you’re of a mind to support our work directly instead? We have until December 31 to raise the last $400,000 we need to keep our nonprofit newsroom running at full strength into 2026. Will you make a gift today?
We noticed you have an ad blocker on. Can you pitch in a few bucks to help fund Mother Jones' investigative journalism?
Billionaires own the media,
but they don’t own us.
At Mother Jones we know these aren’t conventional times, and they require unconventional coverage. That’s what deliver every day: fierce, independent journalism you can’t find elsewhere. Perhaps never in the history of our country has that been more necessary than now. But we can’t do it without reader support—your support. Please chip in today.
Billionaires own the media,
but they don’t own us.
At Mother Jones we know these aren’t conventional times, and they require unconventional coverage. That’s what deliver every day: fierce, independent journalism you can’t find elsewhere. Perhaps never in the history of our country has that been more necessary than now. But we can’t do it without reader support—your support. Please chip in today.
