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Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 4h

Contrast Roberts' chest-thumping in the opinion with Kagan's dissent: "Some interpretive issues arising in the regulatory context involve scientific or technical subject matter. Agencies have expertise in those areas; courts do not."

Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 4h

Reading Justice Roberts' opinion in last year's Loper Bright case. I'm having trouble remembering a time when a passage in a Court decision stopped me as completely in my tracks as did "agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do."

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Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 7h

RE a soundtrack for the shutdown, I keep coming back to this old Sesame Street tune in which a goat sings "I get maaaad." Arguably too light for the moment, but I think you gotta keep the light on. I am finding it weirdly helpful. www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-3j...

Vintage Sesame Street I Get Mad goat

YouTube video by guehla

www.youtube.com

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Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 17h

Also, Rapinoe is still the only one who's ever achieved this in the Olympics-- except now she's done it TWICE.

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Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 17h

Who among us hasn't wondered: if scoring directly from a corner kick is called an "olimpico," and the first olimpico was scored (and given that name) in 1924, how come an olimpico wasn't scored in the actual Olympics until Megan Rapinoe did it in 2012?
Answer here: www.espn.com/soccer/story...

Celebrating the Olimpico, one of soccer's most audacious goals

Oct. 2 is an auspicious date in soccer history: in 1924, the first goal direct from a corner was scored. Known forever as an Olimpico, here are some of the very best.

www.espn.com

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Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 18h

*OK so it's been drawn to my attention that there's a whole question of whether the Second Amendment really DOES properly have three commas. And, I guess, another question of whether that number of commas should meaningfully affect the interpretation of the thing.

Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 18h

But interest rates are ramping up again, which is why we find ourselves inadvertently expressing our (apparent) collective belief that we value spending our tax dollars servicing the debt more than on, well, just about any other spending area you can name. It's not illegal. It's just a dumb choice.

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Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 18h

It hasn't been cool to be mad about deficits for a couple decades here, in part because of a nice streak of low interest rates but also b/c both parties have decided deficits are OK if we use them to buy nice things (where "nice things" means infrastructure for Dems and high-end tax cuts for GOP).

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Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 18h

The US constitution is entertainingly less precise about just about everything, which is why we're all still arguing about why the Second Amendment has three commas. This is also why Congress can add $1.8 trillion to the deficit next year if they want, just like they did this year. And last year.

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Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 18h

Example: my home state of North Carolina has this in its constitution: "The total expenditures of the State for the fiscal period covered by the budget shall not exceed the total of receipts during that fiscal period and the surplus remaining in the State Treasury at the beginning of the period."

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Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 18h

I deal mainly with state budgets. Unlike the feds, states put their big boy pants on and balance their budgets every year, in part because most of them have provisions in their state constitutions requiring it. These provisions require administrative rules but they generally have teeth.

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Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 18h

$1 trillion is an arbitrary number, and borderline incomprehensible to boot. So maybe a better way to think of it is: what we spent on interest last year was more than we spent on Defense Dep't. Or Medicare. Or (gasp) "other".
@richardrubindc.bsky.social has more here:
www.wsj.com/economy/fede...

Tariffs Are Way Up. Interest on Debt Tops $1 Trillion. And DOGE Didn’t Do Much.

The books have closed on the U.S. government’s fiscal 2025. Here’s what has changed about the federal budget—and what hasn’t.

www.wsj.com

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Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 18h

CBO's new end-of-year report on the fed govt's finances got a little attention for its finding that corporate taxes went down 15% relative to FY24. Less prominent was discussion of the jump in interest paid on the national debt, which hit $1 trillion for the first time.
www.cbo.gov/system/files...

www.cbo.gov

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Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 1d

On the bright side, the Lowell observatory still exists today and, once free of its founder's instructions to document non-existent Martian water infrastructure, took up an important role in giving the public a window into the heavens.
lowell.edu

Visit - Lowell Observatory

lowell.edu

Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 1d

Lowell's lifetime goal of proving the existence of Martian canals-- and a civilization that created them-- appears to have been catalyzed by an erroneous English translation of the work of an Italian astronomer who saw what he believe to be "canali" or water channels on the surface of Mars.

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Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 1d

He actually convinced the @nytimes.com to run an article entitled (their caps, not mine) "THERE IS LIFE ON THE PLANET MARS." Available on the wondrous "Times Machine" site.
timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine...

The New York Times: Sunday December 9, 1906

The complete edition of the New York Times published on Sunday December 9, 1906.

timesmachine.nytimes.com

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Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 1d

Percival Lowell became a well-respected astronomer & a professor at MIT despite espousing utterly unsupported theories about the sources of "canals" on Mars, because he was a Lowell who came from a long line of Lowells. If only the HHS department had existed then, he could have run that too.

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Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 1d

Fascinating story of a guy who just *knew* there was life on Mars, & was able to parlay his family wealth into an observatory dedicated to finding it. Maybe I should be embarrassed to admit I didn't know there was (and still is?) a "Lowell family of Boston" of repute.
www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Mars Is Heaven! | Nathaniel Rich

Percival Lowell was convinced that he had found proof of life on Mars, but his real achievement was to make Americans dream of a future there.

www.nybooks.com

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Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 4d

OneOK's casual disclosure raised no eyebrows among @itep.org staff, since we calculated previously that in the first four years of the Trump corporate tax regime, when corporations faced a (theoretical) tax rate of 21%, OneOK's average federal tax rate was... zero percent.
itep.org/corporate-ta...

Corporate Taxes Before and After the Trump Tax Law

The Trump tax law slashed taxes for America’s largest, consistently profitable corporations. These companies saw their effective tax rates fall from an average of 22.0 percent to an average of 12.8 pe...

itep.org

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Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 4d

The CFO of another petroleum company, OneOK, informally disclosed at a conference last week that its $1.5 billion tax savings from the new law will put the company in a “no tax rate type of environment through [20]28.”
seekingalpha.com/article/4827...

seekingalpha.com

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Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 4d

Two historically low-tax oil companies, Devon Energy & Targa Resources, report that they are paying the Biden administration’s Alternative Minimum Tax(CAMT) now (yay) and won’t have to do so going forward (boo).
No surprise here: the OBBBA deliberately shelters intangible drilling costs from CAMT.

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Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 4d

The disclosures tabulated here are scattershot, far from a complete economy-wide picture of how the new corporate tax cut will play out. We will hopefully get a more complete picture when corporate year-end financial reports come out in February. We know these things now only b/c somebody asked.

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Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 4d

The project is a little more salient in the context of yesterday’s CBO report summarizing the (preliminary) year-end federal budget deficit and its causes. A $77 billion year-over-year decline in corporate income taxes looms large.

www.cbo.gov/system/files...

www.cbo.gov

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Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 4d

Ongoing fun project: following quarterly earnings calls where corporate execs are asked to quantify the effect of OBBBA on their cash taxes. This generally only comes up when a industry analysts ask. The candor is, in turns, refreshing and horrifying. (1/x)

itep.org/trump-tax-la...

Well, That Was Fast: Trump Tax Law’s New Corporate Breaks are Already Worsening the Deficit

Corporate income taxes for the fiscal year that ended in September are $77 billion lower than in the previous year, a 15 percent drop.

itep.org

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Matthew Gardner @mindthegaap.bsky.social · 8d

This was only the second-prettiest Spirit goal scored in this game. Great afternoon at Audi.

NWSL @nwslsoccer.com · 9d

ABSOLUTE CINEMA.

A moment for THAT Rosemonde Kouassi game-winner 🎥