No sooner had I written yesterday's post on CCC's past Politico issued this piece on the corporation's possible future--Vilsack might have his lawyers come up with a theory to justify using CCC funds for climate change work, specifically a carbon bank.
😉
Three academics at U of Illinois examine some issues of the Market Facilitation Program. As they say at one point, the questionable legality of the program is academic, because Congress didn't challenge it when they gave the Commodity Credit Corporation more money.
A history of CCC would be interesting. It was created under the New Deal, following examples from WWI and the Hoover administration of using government corporations to gain administrative flexibility, particularly IMO to evade the requirement for yearly appropriation bills passed by Congress.
USDA bureaucrats during my time used it creatively. The administrative people used CCC authorities to go around the Government Printing Office rules to get fast printing of forms and directives when we were implementing new legislation and disaster programs.
In 1983 IIRC the Reagan administration used it for a disaster program for Texas counties which was part of a deal to get conservative Texas Democrats (which used to exist) in the House to vote for legislation.
Also in 1983 there was the Payment-in-Kind program, which used creative lawyering to transform CCC loan collateral into payments for farmers to divert acreage from production.
As computers came along, the procurement and IT people used CCC financing for computer equipment, setting off a 10-15 year battle with the Congress which ended with Congress tightening the restrictions on ASCS/FSA buying of computers.
After I retired there were further special programs authorized--I think by both the Bush and Obama administrations, but I don't remember the specifics.
This Post article on AppHarvest illustrates the difference between the two:
Back in the day I remember catching flak from state specialists when the various agricultural media outlets--magazines and radio--came out with program announcements and details before our procedures from DC had hit them.
I suspect the problem has become even more complex. An example:
My twitter feed is announcing a freeze of CFAP:
Biden just froze CFAP aid to farmers program. https://t.co/dOx5Lf6B62
— NYFarmer (@NYFarmer) January 28, 2021
The farmers.gov site has the notice:
I'm sure the FSA directives system will take a while to catch up.
I posted about registering for an appointment for the vaccine shot through the Fairfax county site. Then Sunday I got a shot from Kaiser Permanente. Today I got an Invitation to Schedule Appointment from Fairfax county. Unlike the Kaiser site, I can't find a way to update Fairfax's data to show I've been vaccinated. I've emailed them with the problem. If it's not solved, the vaccination data for Fairfax county residents will be inaccurate.
[Update: got a nice response from Brian at the Fairfax site suggesting using my appointment ticket to cancel. Responded that I tried, but couldn't see a way to do so. Amanda at the Fairfax site replied she'd tell the IT people to do it.
I guess the stats could be handled by taking the population of Fairfax and comparing it to the sum of those vaccinated by various providers in the county. That would assume that every provider identifies the residence of the people they jab.]
Dan Drezner writes a column in the online Washington Post. Here's his penultimate paragraph is yesterday's piece:
This is mostly nonsense. How a thrice-married, twice-impeached, single-term ex-president accused of serial adultery, casual bigotry, rank misogyny, sexual assault, tax fraud, campaign finance violations, acceptance of foreign emoluments, obstruction of justice, abuse of power, incessant lying, attempted electoral fraud and the incitement of violence advances a coherent and conservative set of values is beyond my meager comprehension, unless “American Restoration” means restoring the values of the Colonial era, when slavery was totally legal and a corrupt monarchy controlled America.
Got my covid-19 vaccine shot on Sunday through Kaiser Permanente. I have to salute their efficiency:
The Livingston County News picks up a CQ piece on the appointment of Jewel Bronaugh as deputy secretary for USDA. It notes the criticism of Biden's nomination of Vilsack to return as secretary due to the Sherrod firing. Includes an endorsement from the VA Farm Bureau, and hopes from John Boyd.
FSA employees may be pleased that she was previously FSA state director in Virginia under the Obama administration.
[Updated: DTN piece on the same.]
It's popular now to say he's one of the worst, but I've lived too long.
I think part of the answer is going to depend on how things work in the future. If the Trumpites continue their dominance of the Republican party, and if they're able to win in future elections, and/or if some of Trump's actions/policies turn out well, it's possible his reputation will be higher than we think now.
I point to the instances of Grant, Truman, and Nixon, all of whom were disdained when they left office but whose reputations have revived since. Elizabeth Drew had a Post Opinion piece on Nixon's path back. I'd forgotten but she says he'd regained respect by 1980.
Grant used to be thought a terrible president, mostly because of corruption. But these days his handling of the South during Reconstruction has gained him a lot of respect, particularly from historians and the recent biography by Chernow has cemented it.
Truman when he left office was very unpopular, regarded as someone who had diminished the presidency by his demeanor, his fight with MacArthur, his Korean war "police action". IIRC Nixon called it an administration of crime, corruption, and communism. But as the Korean war faded and his civil rights policies came to the fore his reputation has gained.
Trump could experience similar gains, but I hope not during my lifetime.
[Updated--Post has a piece on changes in reputation here.
I have one for tomorrow at Kaiser. I didn't apply, just got notified of the availability and provided a "ticket" to use in making appointment. Kaiser says to notify them if I've already gotten a shot from somewhere else, which is good. Now the question is whether Fairfax county site will allow me to report my vaccination from Kaiser. Will see after I actually receive it.
Al Cross at the Rural Blog notes the Burley co-op is going out of business. From the website:
I've seen several articles comparing the difficulties faced by Biden/Harris in 2021 to the problems facing FDR in 1933 or Lincoln in 1861. The problems Obama/Biden faced in 2009 are usually ignored, or dismissed. I think this reflects our short memories, as well as the success of the administration.
I recognize the economy is worse today than in 2009, but it's worse because of the pandemic. The assumption now is when we fix the pandemic by vaccinated the country the economy will revive. (I think the assumption is wrong--the pandemic will have caused changes in society and the economy which will be revealed as our health gets back to normal.) In 2009 we knew the economy had systemic problems which needed fixing. We also "knew" a big stimulus would lead to inflation, which seems to have been disproved.
Meanwhile Trump boasts of not getting the country into a new war, which is true enough. Obama faced two wars--the dying one in Iraq and the endless one in Afghanistan.
I think our memory of the euphoria of electing a black president clouds a realistic perception--the division in the country which was revealed by the rise of the Tea Party movement (and Occupy Wall Street on the left) was there on January 20, 2009, even if we did not realize it until later.
Powerline blog is the most right of the news/opinion source I follow. Paul Mirengoff is usually, not always, the most sensible of the four writers on the blog.
I'm disappointed by his post today, basically saying the right should presume that the president is always wrong. I had hoped, because he seemed the one most open to the idea that Biden won fairly, he would be a bit more open to Biden's appeal for unity.
I remember Herblock, a Post cartoonist who always drew Richard Nixon with a heavy five o'clock shadow from the 1940's through the 1968 campaign, when Nixon was inaugurated in 1969 drew a Nixon with no shadow, and the caption reading "this barbershop gives one free shave".
It's possible the pandemic has peaked in the US with the graph of new infections flattening, possibly starting a decline, which would then be followed by a similar change in hospitalizations and deaths.
The conjunction of 400,000 deaths, the Biden inauguration, and the peak would be significant.
Two interesting pieces on big dairy--we've come a long way since dad consulted with the artificial inseminator over which bull to use for the one of our 12 cows which was in heat.
George WillBill Kristol
Mitt Romney
Kevin Williamson
You'll note the common thread running through the names.
Here's a skeptical article from Bloomberg on the economics of vertical farming.
The issue is mostly the cost of energy usage--if you have cheap energy and efficient lights (LED) you can grow leaf vegetables and herbs, charge a premium price, and break even. That's state of the art today. What happens tomorrow?
Interesting--as I write this I realize I've not been an enthusiast about vertical farming, but I have about sources of renewable energy. My theory has been that the learning curve for innovations in solar panels and battery storage will work to drive the cost down below carbon-based fuels. That seems a tad inconsistent with my lack of faith in the same factors in vertical farming.
Maybe I'll be around long enough to see what the results are.
As a UK man living in a mostly gun-less society answer me this America. Why do civilians need guns like this? pic.twitter.com/O2tB65pTB3
— Paul Samuel (@PaulSteveSamuel) January 16, 2021
That tweet, and the associated thread, got me to asking this question: Why do Americans need guns, and pickup trucks, and McMansions, and lawns, and...?
Mostly IMHO it's a matter of signaling to ourselves and to others our status and self-image.
As technology and society grow more complicated, the easy out for managers of an organization is to offload their uncertainties and angst to a consultant. At the very least it kicks the problem down the road. Sometimes more time is all that's needed to gain some clarity, perhaps even to have the problem solve itself. Sometimes more time enables the organization to learn to deal with the new. Sometimes the troublemakers who are raising cain about an issue have grown up, gone out, or gone to the grave, and some other issues are being raised by other troublemakers.
The NYTimes had a graphic on the Representatives and Senators who contracted covid-19 virus. I was interested because at the Powerline blog one or more of the bloggers had expressed skepticism over the efficacy of face masks and social distancing in combating the disease. I think enough time has passed for a fair evaluation. I also think the members of Congress are roughly similar so a comparison by party is valid. The outcome: 44 Republicans and 17 Democrats have contracted the disease.
I don't know whether that's statistically significant, but it impresses me.
The stock exchanges have "circuit breakers"--on a day when there's panic selling and the indices drop through the floor, they can suspend trading to allow nerves to calm down.
Kindergarteners have "time out".
Is it possible we could do something similar with social media? Rather than the drastic remedy of prohibitions, simply slow the twitter storm or whatever. Suppose X has 20 million followers, and he sends out a tweet. Instead of all 20 million receiving it in milliseconds, spread the impact over hours or days.
When I wrote before about getting vaccinated, I assumed that Kaiser would notify me when I was eligible and they had the vaccine. Having revisited their site today I'm not sure that's right. I've not seen any discussion from either Kaiser or Fairfax.
I see Fairfax County Health Department has a vaccine registration app, which I've completed. A fair number of questions on health--allergies, etc. but it was easy enough to complete in a couple minutes. (I'm a vanilla case, answering "no" to most of the questions.) Notably, they didn't ask for my medical provider so they don't have an obvious way to cross check with Kaiser.
Lots of discussion--"this isn't who we are" or "this is exactly who we are".
The idea of "imagined communities" is relevant. People imagine what America is, they develop an image of who we are which is based on stereotypes and narratives from the media, schools, movies and TV, etc. So when a big event happens, it can be inconsistent with the image. That's not necessarily the case however. For example if we looked at the reactions shortly after 9/11 or the Boston marathon bombing I'd guess most people thought the reaction to the events was very "American" or "Boston" ("Boston strong").
Over the long run I suppose the image is sustained if the positive events outweigh the negative events.
I suspect one of the big problems in vaccinating the U.S. is the degree to which it relies on bottom-up action.
What I mean is that presumably you can identify the hospitals, clinics, and long-term care facilities in your state, deliver vaccines to those sites, and rely on their management to get their people vaccinated. But once you go past that, once you start allowing people who are 65 or 75 and older to be vaccinated, you are essentially asking those people to take some initiative.
At best, like me, their health care provider, Kaiser Permanente in my case, will notify them when they have vaccine available. But people who don't have a healthcare provider with resources will have to search out a pharmacy.
As I write I realize the situation is not that different for the flu vaccine. Apparently 60-65 percent have gotten that vaccine in the past.
Seems as if this is a situation where we don't know until we see the history.
Give credit to Grist for publishing this piece on regenerative grazing (a version of organic farming which reduces carbon emissions from beef cattle by capturing carbon in the soil).
A new analysis says there is indeed a big reduction in emissions, but the problem is the regenerative system requires more land, 2.5 times more land.
I may have blogged on this before--I think this applies to row crops as well. Doing a rotation among row crops, small grains, and legumes requires more land for the legumes, as well as a market for the hay.
I believe Trump deserves to be impeached, again, but I don't believe there's enough time to do so. I fear setting a bad precedent for future impeachments if we don't devote more time to developing the case, and we don't have the time.
Nor is there enough support in the Senate to convict.
So my bottom line is for Congress to pass a resolution of censure.
Slate notes that Warnock and Ossoff's victories mean the reviving of the Congressional Review Act.
I've posted about it before--it briefly allows Congress to revoke regulations passed within the last 60 business days, and makes it more difficult to reinstate them later. That last bit hasn't been tested yet, while the Republicans made extensive use of it in 2017 to revoke Obama's last regulations.
I suspect lawyers will be interested to see how things play out. I know the papers have cited a number of different issues on which the Trump administration has been moving recently. One of the most recent was limiting the basis for regulatory action to research for which the data is publicly available, an issue of big concern on climate change.
I haven't thought the events at the Capitol today would happen. So I'm very surprised.
But, I happen to be reading American Maelstorm,by Michael Cohen, on the 1968 election. It's a reminder that we've had tough times before. We easily forget how much unrest we've had in our past.
As pointed out here, Joe Manchin won reelection in an incredibly adverse position and time. And his reelection is now key to Democrats winning control of the Senate.
Israel’s vaccine success is made possible by its small size (slighter larger than New Jersey) and the efficiencies of its nationalized health system, in which all 9 million citizens hold identity cards and register their electronic medical files with one of the country’s four national health maintenance organizations (HMOs).
Israel also maintains a national vaccination registry, first designed for childhood vaccinations, that will be used in the coming weeks to monitor immediate and long-term progress of the coronavirus vaccine program.
I suspect one of the arguments in the 1960's against a national identity system was the specter of the Holocaust; people being numbered, tattooed, and subject to totalitarian rule, at the whim of the state.
While I continue to believe that efficiency would have been, and would be, enhanced by a national identity system, I have to concede the disadvantages which are real. One worth mentioning here: the greater security provided by our dispersion of data--the eggs in one basket proverb--especially in light of the election and the Southwinds hackl
There was an aborted effort to establish a national identifier in the 1960's, using the Social Security number. IIRC it was some nerds/bureaucrats suggesting it, but it was quickly killed amidst a concern over privacy, not to mention the sign of the beast.
Over the decades the U.S. has come up with jury-rigged substitutes, Real ID being the latest. In the last century we had a process for passing information on men who were ordered to provide child support between states. But we don't have the sort of process which bureaucrats would like. If we did, it would alleviate problems on updating voter rolls and on tracking coronavirus vaccinations.
We'll continue with our jury-rigging process for the foreseeable future.
In addition to points in my previous post, a couple of other things occurred to me:
There's been a number of pieces relating to black farmers recently. Some are keyed to the new administration and controversy over whether Vilsack is a good appointment. Several quote statements from different black farmer organizations. There seems to be more these days than there were when the original Pigford suit was filed.
I found this Politico piece interesting, especially including this paragraph:
Horne said her data shows there was a 57 percent decline in the number of Black farmers in North Carolina from 1954 to 1969, with the number dropping from 22,625 to 9,687. During the same period, farms operated by white farmers dropped from 201,819 to 106,275 — a 47 percent decline.
It's the first time I've seen a direct comparison of this kind. Maybe somewhere there's an economist who has gone a bit deeper into the statistics. What I'd particularly like to see is a breakdown by farm size. I suspect the distribution of black farms was proportionally weighted towards smaller farmers, and I suspect the farms which survived were proportionally weighted towards the larger farmers. If that was true, what should one conclude?
