This week in the NBERs, surprising evidence that youth suicides actually rose when schools reopened post-pandemic, mirroring a longstanding trend (which I hate is even common enough to track) of suicides rising when kids go back to school in the fall: nber.org/system/files/w… (I guess I say surprising because of reporting by @AlecMacGillis and others about the pandemic's impact on teens' mental health: propublica.org/article/the-lo… )

Great paper in the NBERs today from @davidautor et al. finding that the PPP was:

- Expensive: $170-257K/job-year retained
- Regressive: 3/4 of funds went to top 5th of households
- Badly targeted: 25-34% went to workers who would've otherwise lost jobs
nber.org/system/files/w… This generally squares with my reporting, which showed a lot of takeup among companies that ended up laying off huge numbers of workers anyway:
propublica.org/article/this-c…
and that probably had ample access to other capital: propublica.org/article/the-go…

New from me: Remember spending last year trying to get a PCR test and then waiting days for results? Well, it’s not because rapid antigen tests didn’t exist. They were just muddling their way through a regulatory process designed for something else. 1/ propublica.org/article/this-s… In March 2020, a small company that spun out of an MIT lab in 2018 to make rapid antigen tests for tropical diseases quickly adapted their technology to target Covid-19. Preliminary lab data showed that the prototype lateral flow test would at least catch superspreaders. 2/

I keep thinking about this story as the bill is debated, because it is the purest distillation of what @jayrosen_nyu has called the "savvy style" of political journalism: Avoiding responsibility for having any moral values by reducing policy to a partisan catfight.

https://twitter.com/jonathanweisman/status/1460940339649421320

After reading the bill myself (

https://twitter.com/lydiadepillis/status/1456734385235972101

), what struck me is that it's a collection of responses to specific problems that journalists have illuminated over the years: Maternal mortality, Turbotax fuckery, Indian Health Service neglect, rural doctor shortage, etc.

It's past 5pm on a Friday, so I've cracked a beer and started reading the reconciliation bill. It starts with the U.S. Forest Service, and I already like this thing rules.house.gov/sites/democrat… Substantial civil penalties for unfair labor practices! That would be a game changer.

NEW from me and @ericuman: In which we try to figure out why it’s way harder and more expensive than it should be to get a rapid Covid test.

The answer comes down to having both too much government, and not enough.

propublica.org/article/heres-… 1/ The FDA has been making a ton of headlines lately as it authorizes vaccines for kids and boosters for adults. But do you ever hear about the FDA greenlighting Covid tests? Probably not, and that’s part of the problem. 2/

Just biked from Eastern Market to Adams Morgan and it is a nightmare out there for anyone not in a car (and drivers too). Even earlier this evening, total single-occupancy-vehicle pandemonium at the Wharf and the Yards. I dread waking up to learn that pedestrians/bikers died. 1/ I don't remember it being this bad pre-pandemic. Something about delivery traffic plus a movement away from public transit has created a dangerous conflagration of drunken nightlife (which is fine!) and cars that think they can drive as fast as they want and park wherever. 2/

New from me: The $800 billion Paycheck Protection Program was supposed to keep workers employed. But its power to do so was limited, and gradually got watered down. 1/ 2/ Case in point: A railcar manufacturer that took $10 million, and then shut down its last factory in the U.S.
propublica.org/article/this-c…

I realized something listening to @janecoaston's podcast the other day that I just can’t shake: How the Population Bomb and the early family planning movement's ugly turn towards eugenics has screwed up environmental discourse ever since. 1/ nytimes.com/2021/06/23/opi… The world didn’t starve -- thanks, science! -- and the fight for global reproductive freedom turned into sterilization for brown people. Thus, overpopulation became the third rail of the climate movement, breezily waved away as either alarmist or inevitably racist or both. 2/

New new new: Online lenders that helped PPP loans reach millions of micro businesses also became huge targets for fraud -- including, as @derekwillis and I learned while sifting through heaps of data, approving loans for hundreds of fake “farms.” 1/ One particular lender, Kabbage, approved 378 companies categorized in agricultural industries that don’t show up in state business records. Their names are too similar to be coincidental: “Tomato Cramber,” “Ibarria Big Chickens,” “Strawberry Joseph Schrempp,” etc. 2/

Senator: If confirmed, will you commit to doing this extremely specific thing that's important to my state?

Nominee: Senator, thankyou for that important question. I have no opinion on it, but if confirmed I look forward to working with you and your staff on that critical issue (But seriously is someone going to ask Wally Adeyemo how his time at BlackRock influences his views on whether very large asset managers should be regulated as systemically important financial institutions)

NEW from me: Lawmakers have asked the IRS to do a lot this year, after a decade of starving its budget, and as a result it’s been dropping some balls — which almost always turns out badly for the low-income taxpayers who count on refunds and stimulus checks to make ends meet. 1/ The big problem is this number: On January 29, 6.7 million 2019 tax returns were still being processed. That means long-delayed refunds, and stimulus payments that will have to be claimed as tax credits, when they can also be offset by other federal debts. 2/

NEW FROM ME

I know things are nuts rn, but Trump has continued to govern in a way that will have consequences long after he's gone. Case in point: The SEC just weakened its marquee whistleblower program in a way that's already deterring corporate insiders from coming forward. One change has to do with large awards, which come from cases that result in the biggest settlements. Financial firms had long complained about eye-popping payouts, and in 2018 the SEC proposed giving itself the power to knock down bounties that they deemed "unnecessarily large."

Tuning into right wing podcasts for a story. In Rudy's latest rambling show from Jan. 8, in between advertisements for gold, he claims that the rioters were completely separate from the rallyers and Trump's incitement had nothing to do with the violence. "They all seemed to be really nice people," he said, in a pod that's been downloaded more than a million times. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wha…

Some cocktail hour thoughts.

As a human in the world who pays attention, I carry around a lot of anger.

As a journalist trying to remain a trustworthy messenger, I generally keep it under wraps.

The more I learn about what transpired on Wednesday, the harder that becomes. The cynical, self-serving lies of this president and his family and the Hawley-Cruz caucus.

The stubborn unwillingness of law enforcement to prepare for the plain-as-day threat of white violence.

This seems like a no-brainer, given the potential long-term consequences of this kind of trauma.

It's obviously different, but I'm reminded of some research out this week showing that kids who survived school shootings fared worse down the line: nber.org/system/files/w…

https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1347630105657540609

Students at Sandy Hook and Columbine saw lower test scores, increased absenteeism, and even higher mortality rates as a result of the shootings -- quantifying the broader harms beyond the loss of life.

There's a lot we still don't know about why law enforcement allowed something to happen that D.C. went through decades of security theater to prevent. But it's not because they weren't warned.

Quick story with @loganjaffe @iarnsdorf and @davidmcswane: propublica.org/article/capito… @davidmcswane WEEKS of posts on right-wing social media platforms called for escalation -- to "take the hill or die trying," as one put it. For MONTHS, the intelligence establishment had identified white supremacist movements as the nation's most immediate domestic terror threat.

Trump just came out on stage at his rally on the Ellipse. 👀👀c-span.org/video/?507744-… "All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify, and we become President, and you all are the happiest people," Trump says, clearly setting Pence up as the fall guy for when that ... doesn't happen.

NEW from me: The Trump administration has requested to convert dozens of political appointees into career civil service positions this year, allowing them to stay in government after he's gone. We have the documents: propublica.org/article/how-do… This "burrowing" process happens at the end of every presidency, and @USOPM requires that all conversion requests be submitted for its review, so as to make sure the correct hiring protocol was followed. Those lists are then submitted to Congress, but usually not shared publicly.

This morning the Fed announced it was extending a bunch of the emergency market support facilities it set up in March for another 3 months. Notably missing: The ones backstopped by CARES Act funding, which Secretary Mnuchin yanked on Nov. 20. federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pre… In testimony before Senate Banking tomorrow, Jay Powell lays out the facilities that are ending--primarily loans for mid-sized companies and state/local governments. Takeup has been light, but Biden could've expanded them to be more useful. Now it's hard. federalreserve.gov/newsevents/tes…

Lovely joining @marketplace to talk about stimulus checks, which millions of Americans still haven't received. marketplace.org/2020/11/09/irs…
If you didn't get one automatically, you have until Nov. 21 to apply through the IRS' online portal!
sa.www4.irs.gov/irfof-wmsp/log… After the story published, I received a bunch of heartbreaking inquiries from folks who really needed the money and had tried all kinds of things to get it, but kept getting "payment status not available" messages, and couldn't figure out the problem. propublica.org/article/millio…