This paper looks important!!

www.nber.org/papers/w3407...

#Econsky #FinSky

More incredible work by this team, plus the ability to explore these data on credit scores (Look at those geographic patterns! Perhaps not surprising but still striking) and more here: www.opportunityatlas.org

Aha, I learned the perfect new word to practice using for day 2 of potty training the kiddo

Contributor: L.A.'s 'mansion tax' needs a remodel. Here's how to fix it New research shows just how serious the unintended consequences of Measure ULA have been for Los Angeles.

L.A. imposed a so-called mansion tax on real estate transactions > $5 million. Surprise! It covers, and has helped to depress, multifamily residential -- i.e., apartment construction -- along with commercial and industrial. Revenues are less than half expected. [@uclalewiscenter.bsky.social]

3O Rock 'Kouchtown' commercials with Stacy Keach 4-19-2012 YouTube video by jerry5040

For weeks, I have thought about this at least 3 times daily: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGXE...

From the DeptHHS community on Reddit Explore this post and more from the DeptHHS community

Today, it’s hard for me to look anywhere else besides what’s happening to our health agencies. US capacity for public health, regulation, research & development, research, etc. is being gutted in real time.

www.reddit.com/r/DeptHHS/s/...

The funding for these long COVID research grants was given back bc disability activists urged us to contact our reps persistently, in high volume, and we did. Remember that these tactics work the next time someone tries to get you to passively react instead of taking an active part in organizing!

Whitewashing American history The Trump Presidency as a project of erasure

New, from me:

Trump is whitewashing American history, removing not just people, but also the stories, images, and values to anyone who does not conform to his impoverished vision of America.

Here is a partial inventory. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/whitewashi...

you’re fired. wait you’re rehired. email us a list of things you’ve done today wait forget it you’re fired again. come back your job was important. you’re fired. or hired. come in to the office. wait the office has no computers go home. we are the department of government efficiency.

I had a front row seat to watch 18F get started a dozen years ago by some of the smartest and most dedicated public servants I’ve ever met. Their work saved countless lives, and yes, hundreds of millions, probably billions, of dollars. But just as significantly: it made government more responsive.

Declining Trust in Facts and Institutions Imposes Costs on Society “Truth Decay” is the diminishing reliance on facts and analysis in American public life. It has many damaging consequences: the erosion of civil discourse, political paralysis, alienation and disengag...

Been teaching @rand.org's useful Truth Decay framework for many yrs now in my Public Policy Ethics courses in a unit on policy discourse. If ever the consequences of diminished reliance on facts & analysis in public life for undermining govt institutions and decision-making were evident, it's now...

Well that's my cue. ✨NEW WP✨

What happens when SSA downsizes field office staff, even if the offices stay open? Fewer people end up enrolled for benefits.

🧵

Maybe I was naive, but the levels of “anticipatory censoring” and overcompliance I’ve seen over the past month have infuriated and devastated me. I hope shining light and pushing back on it can force change (or a hard conversation)

Grassroots college leader group resists anti-DEI legislation Education for All, a grassroots network of mostly community college leaders, is spreading strategies for how to resist anti-DEI bills and rhetoric.

An inspiring article on courageous community college leaders who are *publicly* organizing and standing up against DEI attacks.. www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

Good points. I’m not sure whether or what messaging might cut through, but the relative lack of outrage among policymakers about the potential dismantling of our country’s scientific infrastructure means we should clarify the potential consequences on all fronts.

I had a very insightful conversation with one of my colleagues about the nature of indirects on NIH grants.

He pointed out that indirects are like a two-part tariff, helping defray fixed costs in a non-distortive way.

1/

Don't let Donald Trump and Elon Musk talk us out of democracy Trump and Musk are testing the limits, trying to sell America on being an authoritarian state — but they can’t do it unless we allow them to do so.

This excellent piece by @chrisgeidner.bsky.social picks apart the precise extent to which the rule of law is holding.

It is realistic about the stakes, but argues that the Rubicon has not been crossed -- and we need to fight to keep it that way.

The Forced Fork and the Choice to Stay Hearing from federal government employees as they make sense of their future

New from me:
The deferred resignation offer expires on Monday.

An open letter from a federal employee as they decide their future, plus thoughts and insights about the damage being done from other public servants.

Please read, and share.
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-forced...

Informative and frightening discussion of the recent NIH directive to cap overhead at 15%. Although I admittedly still don’t fully understand my org’s own indirects, this gets me way closer to understanding the big picture.

Coincidentally, I just finished the show two nights ago and would also highly recommend (despite the anxiety and stress every episode provoked)!

From the fednews community on Reddit Explore this post and more from the fednews community

This comments section is the first time I've felt even a shred of hope in eight days.

Everything you know about wrinkly fingers is probably wrong. Particularly, it is not a physical act of water on the body, it is a neurological effect of the body on itself. People who have fingers with severed nerves do not prune on those fingers.

Smoothed seasonally adjusted weekly firearm homicides compared to a historical baseline, December 30, 2017, to December 25, 2022. Smoothed using the best fitting model (a tricube kernel with an 18-week bandwidth) and includes model estimates for 95% confidence intervals. The baseline (horizontal dashed line) was defined as the average seasonally adjusted weekly homicide count between July 2018 and December 2019 (272 firearm homicides). Key event dates are represented by dashed vertical lines: red for the declaration of COVID-19 as a national emergency and widespread shutdowns (March 13, 2020), orange for George Floyd’s death (May 25, 2020), and yellow for National Election Day (November 3, 2020).

More than 60% of the increase in firearm homicides had occurred by the time George Floyd was killed

Interesting to read this piece alongside our recently published study trying to detail the timing of precisely when (firearm) homicides started to deviate from expectation (hint: before 2020!). journals.lww.com/epidem/abstr...

Plus evidence suggesting work from home increases employment supply for people with disabilities: www.nber.org/papers/w32943

Look at how physicians diagnose more children with ADHD on Halloween (the red line in the middle of the figure).

The authors hypothesize that docs are more likely to diagnose kids on this day simply because kids are excited for Halloween.

Fascinating!

www.nber.org/papers/w33232

National Crime Data Has Always Been Flawed None of these problems are new.

For this week I went deep into the archives to create a short history of agencies reporting (and not reporting) crime data to the FBI to show how our national crime estimates have always been flawed (and frequently more flawed than they are now).
jasher.substack.com/p/national-c...

Kaplan Meier Survival Curves for No Arrests Post-Randomization showing clear separation between control and treatment groups, with a 22% chance of first-year rearrest in the control group relative to a 10% chance of first-year rearrest in treatment group.

New! Randomized control trial of New Orleans program finds that sectoral career training in high-demand fields (mfg, health, infotech) significantly reduced likelihood of rearrest.
[S Anwar, M Baird, J Engberg, @rosannasmart.bsky.social @ RAND in J of Human Resources] jhr.uwpress.org/content/earl...