Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, December 3, 2025
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27 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
Twitter and/or
BlueSky.
TBH, these cabinet meetings ARE boring AF. “Appears” is doing some heavy lifting here.
This was the same meeting in which the sitting President referred to a member of Congress as “garbage,” due to her country of origin.
@Jen:
I heard that — he kept repeating “garbage,” referring to her and her ‘friends.’ He sounded kinda like old man yelling at kids to stay off the lawn, but maybe more like dementia addled old man yelling at dark kids to not walk by his house after school.
“A sickening moral slum” is how George Will is describing this administration.
I remember when Will lamented empathy as virtue. About the same time that Whelan fellow told his fellow gopers that he didn’t want any “goo-goo conservatives” in the party.
Of course, Elon is trashing empathy now as cuck bait. So, good job, George. You helped set this rancid table.
At long last, FIRST SNOW! About five inches. We were within ten days of having the latest first snow of the season.
@Jen:
Well, dozing off during daytime work meetings is the literal opposite of woke.
Have we discussed Stefanik’s attack on Johnson?
I don’t care about the intrigue part, but I am curious about the provision at issue: requiring the FBI to notify Congress of any counterintelligence investigation into a candidate for federal office.
Anyone looked at the text that was stripped?
All the reporting I have seen is the usual gossipy, reality show bullshit. How about a serious discussion of whether it’s a good idea to require that people under investigation for interactions with foreign governments or their proxies should be alerted to their status?
That seems more worthy of attention than one smarmy colleagues sniping swiping at another.
Setting aside that it is probably an attempt to further the weaponized DOJ narrative, it seems like it may be kind of important from a governance perspective.
Hey all–just a quick note.
The last few months (really since February) have been challenging for me a number of fronts–both professionally and personally. I’m doing ok and keeping my head above water (most of the time).
And doing that has required me to go into lurker mode for a bit. I am around and checking in (and working with James, Steven, Kingdaddy, and Michael Bailey) to keep the wheels on the tech side of the site.
December’s going to be a bit of a recouping month and I’ll hopefully start to contribute a bit more by the end of the year.
Beyond that, continue to be good to each other and keep practicing the disciplines of hope and action in these challenging times.
[Addendum: TY to folks who have reached out by email. I did see the notes, they just came in at a time when I wasn’t in a mindset to reply and by the time I was they were lost in the hellscape that is my current gmail box.
Despite a lack of response, those messages meant a lot.]
@Matt Bernius:
Thanks for checking in. I hope the grade of the hill levels out and the boulder gets a bit smaller.
@Matt Bernius: Thanks for checking in and letting us know (I had noticed you hadn’t been around!), and I hope things get better for you soon.
A new search for the wreckage of Malaysia flight 370 is underway.
I just don’t know. I get the frustration, especially among the families of the victims. On a more practical note, it’s always important to know why and how a plane went down. Because if you don’t know this, there’s no way to prevent it from happening again.
But the plain fact is no one even knows where the plane went down, nor at what time. There were some ADS-B readings long after the flight disappeared from radar. These suggest a search area, but the uncertainties make it a vast one.
So, I don’t hold much hope the plane will be found, and much less we’ll ever learn what actually happened.
I saw a video on Youtube the other day that brought up the Laffer curve.
It didn’t delve into whether it was right or not, but argued that the US, and other countries that reduced tax rates to increase revenue, are in the wrong side of the curve for that. Meaning lowering tax rates lowers revenue.
I’ve no idea whether this is correct or not, but it would explain a hell of a lot if it is.
I also recall a similar curve in a college class long, long ago. I don’t even recall in what subject (I don’t think I ever took an economics class). This one was about sales against price. There was an optimum price that maximized sales (simplistically and with the economics equivalent of spherical chickens in a vacuum).
The difference would be that if you lowered prices to increase sales and found your sales to have decreased, you’d notice it and raise prices to compensate (again, simplistically).
All green card and citizenship applications from 19 countries have been halted. One of those countries? Cuba. I’m wondering what/why, and if Florida Republicans (and, frankly, Marco Rubio) are aware?
@Kathy: I’ve seen more than one economist say exactly that. The Laffer curve was nothing new. That there was a rate beyond which revenue fell was conventional wisdom and for the personal income tax, the peak revenue rate was known to be about 75%. That was, not coincidentally, about what JFK lowered it to the one time we had a successful supply side tax cut.
I’m not sure Laffer thought through his implication that maximizing revenue should be the goal.
@gVOR10: Laffer never did any real work to estimate the actual value that maximized tax income, at least not that he talked about in public. For the believers, it is an article of faith that that rate is lower than the current rate, no matter what the current rate is.
@Kathy: Everything that I remember from economics classes at different levels is about maximizing profits rather than sales. Among the things that are derived from that are the evils of monopolies, where maximum profit is often realized by setting a higher price than the one that maximizes sales. It used to be true that the ticket price that maximized stadium profits for a sports team owner was high enough that about a third of the seats would be empty. Cheap computing that enables minute-by-minute ticket price adjustments for every seat has changed that.
@gVOR10:
@Michael Cain:
When I come across something that supports my beliefs, I try to be skeptical of it. Being on the wrong side of the Laffer curve for tax cuts to increase revenues, though, validates how the yearly deficit has been developing over the past 45 years.
I’m also averse to maximizing and minimizing most things. No matter what you do, there’s usually something more than can be done. This often means screwing customers or employees over. Be it offering less value for more money to the customers, or demanding more work with less pay for employees. High executives see this is maximizing profits and minimizing costs, all in the service of maximum share value.
Hi, everyone. It’s CSK, speaking to you from rehab, where I’ve been learning to stand on one leg and manage to transfer myself from the bed to the wheelchair/commode. I have yet to advance to hopping around with a walker, but no doubt that will happen in the fullness of time
.
I read here every day. Best comments on the web. And James’s, Steven’s, Matt’s, and Michael’s pieces ain’t bad, either.
@CSK: This is good news! I’ve been worried about you!
@Jax:
Thank you, Jax.
@Michael Cain:.. It used to be true that the ticket price that maximized stadium profits for a sports team owner was high enough that about a third of the seats would be empty.
I took a class for an Illinois real estate sales agent’s license in 1993.* The instructor was the Broker/Owner of a local, independent real estate agency in town that owned many residential housing units. He told the class that if you owned a multi unit apartment building and all the units were rented that you weren’t charging enough rent. I have met other landlords over the years who disputed that. The only time I was a landlord I had one residential rental unit and never had the opportunity to test the theory.
*At that time a real estate sales agent license was all anyone needed to sell real estate in Illinois as long as you worked for a broker. Today in Illinois anyone who sells real estate must have a brokers license. I don’t know when that became the law.
@CSK:
Great to hear from you.
I’ll post about some odd dog habits in lieu of dog stories probably this weekend.
@Kathy:
Well, I love those stories, too.
@Kathy:
I think the extraordinary aspect is in this paragraph:
Malaysia’s government gave the green light in March for a “no-find, no-fee” contract with Ocean Infinity to resume the seabed search operation at a new 15,000-square-kilometer (5,800-square-mile) site in the ocean. Ocean Infinity will be paid $70 million only if wreckage is discovered. The search was halted in April due to bad weather.
Stunning. Ocean Infinity is a company that either has a lot of spare cash laying around or one run by a reckless gambler.
@Gregory Lawrence Brown:
Are you sure you wouldn’t have made ten times as much if you’d let the unit go empty? 😛
@dazedandconfused:
Or one that needs a huge tax write off.
You know, I distinctly remember hearing about a new search complete with “no find/no fee” terms, several months ago. It might have been in March or April. Or it might have been a similar search years earlier. There have been other searches after the initial ones in 2014.
If they find it, and I hope they do, we’ll hear about it a lot for days. If they don’t find it, we won’t hear a word until the next search, if there’s ever any.
Gathered the bulls today. They came in really nice. It’s always a shitshow trying to bring in 2,000 pound animals with testosterone. We never know how bad they’re gonna fight, and tear down fences.
I can’t believe this is really happening.
@CSK: It’s good to hear from you. Please know that we are all rooting for you! Take care.
@Kathy:..10x…
More recently I have seen signs in front of two rental agencies in town.
One reads “Thank You Students. No Vacancies for 20 Years”. The other sign has a similar message.