Lessons of the Past--F-35

 I read "Skunk Works" recently. For those who don't remember, it was a unit of Lockheed Aircraft which developed innovative planes, particularly the U-2, the stealth fighter, and the RB-71.  By having good people dedicated to the job led by someone who could navigate the bureaucracy and still inspire, it did damn well.

They were not involved in the F-111 program, known to geezers as McNamara's TFX. It seems from the wikipedia article for it that it turned out okay, but back in the day it was heavily criticized for being over-complicates and too expensive as a result of McNamara's pet idea--have one plane which could serve both the Navy and Air Force. 

My initial reaction when reading this Salon piece on the F-35 was to remember the TFX.

More on Pigford

 Been doing a little research re: Pigford suits and came across this listing of relevant legal documents. 

The last ones relate to "cy pres".  It seems to refer to a legal proceeding allowing a judge to apply some judgment when needed.  In the case of Pigford, apparently there was some money left over because approved Pigford II claimants failed to cash their check or follow through--$12 million+ to be exact.

So in 2018 Judge Friedman approved the distribution of the money, splitting it among many different organizations.

Gardening Time

Been in the garden yesterday and today.  The long range forecast is for temps above freezing, the snow is gone, and the soil is in good shape.  

So aching muscles but the satisfaction of doing something physical. 

The Persistence of Folk Wisdom--Memes?

The current effort to vaccinate for Covid-19 has run into resistance, particularly among black Americans.  The conventional wisdom explains this by the past history of science mistreating blacks, in particular the Tuskegee experiment.

The participants in the study are all dead now, the last one dying 15 years ago.  The study itself ended in 1972.

Assuming the conventional wisdom is correct, the extent to which people have become aware of it, and the duration of the time since the ending is striking. I wonder if sociologists have studied the factors which account for this penetration of the public consciousness, particularly in comparison with other memes.

{Here's further discussion of the issue--perhaps the meme lives longer in the minds of the intellectuals than the lay person?]

FSA Administrator Designate

  Zach Ducheneaux is from South Dakota and a Native American, the first for FSA. USDA announcement.

Gloria Montano Greene is nominated to be Deputy Undersecretary for Farm Production and Conservation.  She has been state executive director for Arizona in the Obama administration, while Ducheneaux isn't shown as having any FSA experience.

I wonder--the Trump Administration reorganized USDA--IIRC they moved NRCS and FSA into the same undersecretary's remit, where it had been FAS and FSA together?  Wonder if Vilsack will go back to the old organization or keep the new.  The establishment of the FPAC Business Center to serve admin functions of NRCS and FSA would argue for keeping the new, but I've no idea of how well that is working nor whether there could be any advantage politically to reorganizing.

Global Warming and the Arctic

 Vox has this post which updates a previous post of mine which noted commercial shippers using the Arctic in the summertime to go from Asia to Europe or vice versa.  Now it's possible in winter, at least some years.

Worn-out Knees in Pants

 I now have a hole in the right knee of my LLBean jeans.  Don't know how long I've had them, but they're well faded and well stained, and I'm happy with the wear I've gotten from them.

Back in my youth, when I was harder on my clothes than I am now, and during the period when I didn't grow much, my mother would fix such a hole by cutting a rectangular piece out of the knee.  She'd take an old pair of jeans and cut a matching piece from the back of one of the legs, and then sew the repair patch into the hole.

I don't remember whether I wore those patched jeans to school; I may well have worn them for weekends and kept newer jeans for school, but I won't swear to that.

We don't do that anymore.  Back in my youth jeans were maybe $3 or so, roughly 3 hours worth of work at the minimum wage, or maybe the price of 30 hamburgers. These days I'll spend $25 on LLBean jeans (using sales) and a McDonald's quarter pounder is $3.75. Our 1949 Chevrolet seems to have cost about $1500 (I'd remember it as $1700).

I'm sure people still patch the knees of jeans, but not many. 

Looking Forward to Rosa Brooks

 I really liked Rosa Brooks' last book, so I pre-ordered her new one, Tangled Up in Blue, Policing the American City. Haven't started it yet, as I'm still finishing Midnight in Chernobyl.  She and Peter Moskos, who I follow on Twitter, had an interesting exchange.  Here's a quote from a Georgetown interview:

It’s incredibly hard to be a good cop. This really came home to me once I started patrolling.

By underfunding other social services we’ve created a society in which cops are all-around first responders to everything from shootings, stabbings, domestic assaults and burglaries to mentally ill people walking down the middle of the street talking to themselves. And no one really has the skills to handle all those very different kinds of situations well.

In the interview she uses my favorite phrase: "It's complicated". 

Humor and Politics

 Ann Althouse at her blog has over the years considered Trump as being funny, humorous, tongue-in-cheek.  I could never see it.  In the wake of Rush Limbaugh's death some of the remembrances on the left have noted his comedy.  Never listened to him, didn't like what was reported about what he said (i.e., AIDs, McNabb, etc.).

I've always thought humor was one of the virtues, but I dislike Trump and Limbaugh's politics, so how do I reconcile the two?  

I'll assume for the sake of argument that both men were quite funny. Typically the humor I appreciate is directed at the establishment, from the position of an outsider. The other category is self-mocking; a liberal mocking liberals, etc.  (Wife and I enjoy "The Good Fight" TV series which does both. ) What I don't enjoy is jokes aimed at outsiders.  

That seems a fairly defensible position.  But then there's the category of blue jokes. Those can be defended as mocking the human body, so again self-mocking. 

Perhaps what I'm struggling with is a matter of power.  As a liberal I see Trump and Limbaugh as using humor from a position of power, to attack and denigrate those weaker than they are.  A conservative who perhaps firmly believes she's living in a world dominated by liberals who have all the power can find them funny because they're compatriots in the great rebellion against liberal hegemony?

Bureaucracy Extremes

Started reading "Midnight at Chernobyl" today.  It's been around the house for a while since we saw the TV series based on it,  but hadn't gotten to it until today.

Then I just got off the Facebook group for current and retired FSA employees (mostly field employees but some DC and retirees). I like to keep up with what's happening there. 

There's a big contrast between the rigid bureaucracy of the Soviet Union and the more free floating discussion of issues and techniques in the Facebook group. I wonder how much of that is American versus Russian and how much is technology enabling exchange of ideas. 

I think it was true in the old days of ASCS that there was pretty good sharing of ideas within a state, and perhaps some across state lines based on personal connections.  Back in the 90's we tried to develop the sharing by having "train the trainer" courses with county people mixed in with the state people.  Having the internet and Facebook now facilitates the exchange even more.  

The Price of Your Daily Bread (Vertical Farm)

 ". As a result, 91 m2 of artificially produced wheat is necessary for each person, with a total cost of 125,680 euros per year."

That's from a critical analysis of vertical farms at Low Tech Magazine.

The Role of Government Regulation

 Over the last year or so the role of government regulation has been in the headlines:

• Boeing's 737-Max suffered two fatal crashes. The conventional wisdom now is that FAA failed to exert enough oversight of the process of redoing the 737 into the Max.
• The development of vaccines for Covid-19 has been controversial.  Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen  at Marginal Revolution in particular have pushed for faster approval and looser regulation of the various vaccines. The FDA's process has been contrasted against the process in other countries.  Alex, I think, has come out for reciprocal approval--approval by the regulatory authority in any (big, developed) country should be enough for FDA.
• The Trump administration pulled back on various regulations.  Today's Post  says the changes in inspection of pork processing plants have lead to more contamination in the ultimate products.

I always remember the thalidomide problem when the Republicans start pushing looser regulations.

Having said that, I wonder whether in the process of redoing the regulations which were undone in the last 4 years the Biden administration will find some things which should be changed.  I think anything a group does is going to have some flaws. In the usual course of events it's often easier to work around the flaws than to change them. But since the Biden people will have to go through the regulation process anyway, there's no added cost to fix problems.

IMO there's often a fine line between not enough regulation and too much, so a feasible solution can be an alternation between the two.

Ice on the Mississippi

 Am I remembering things.  Just caught a snippet of news about ice on the Mississippi, near Natchez I think, along with a statement it was interfering with shipping and was rare.

Seems to me I remember that the Mississippi used to shut down in the winter, at least upper reaches, because it was ice covered.  

Though I might be conflating the Mississippi with the Great Lakes.

Covid-19 Statistics--North Dakota

 I check the Bloomberg site for tracking vaccinations.  Today I note that North Dakota has given out 102 percent of the vaccine doses delivered.  It seems to be the only state with this anomaly.   

Pan-African Identity

 Henry L. Gates on PBS points out there were 50 ethnic groups in the enslaved people brought to US.

From other reading I know Africa has more ethnic diversity than the other continents; I believe much more than the other continents put together.  That means if history had worked out differently we might now be discussing 10 races, 8 of which were African and 2 of which covered the rest of the world. 

I think ethnic diversity maps to some genetic diversity, although not on a one to one basis. But the key for most discussions is what I'd call "social diversity", meaning the way one's culture/society identifies ethnic/identity groups.  For example, in the US we lump Hispanics/Latinos together, sometimes differentiating white as a separate group, but lumping in groups which are relatively unchanged since before Columbus.

We're now in the process of redefining "Orientals" as "Asians".  (Meanwhile, in Britain "Pakistanis" seem to be a separate ethnic group.)  

In the colonies and early national period enslavers knew different African ethnicities, and thought there were cultural differences (perhaps physical as well). Some were valued more than others.  We--the US--created "African-Americans", partly by the process of intermarriage among African ethnicities and mostly because that's the way we deal with diversity--we can't handle a multitude so we stereotype until we get down to a manageable number.

Aggravations of Aging

 Some gripes, now I'm officially a geezer. (I wrote "old geezer" at first, but then discovered "old" redundant.)

• Losing the ability to grasp small or tricky objects, like some sealed plastic bags where there's about 1/8" which you can grab. Or prescription pills which fall on the floor and have to be picked up.
• Losing muscle memory at the keyboard.  In the good old days I could rest my hands on the laptop keyboard, or in front of the desktop keyboard, and my fingers would find the home row and the home keys--I could start typing and have it make sense on the screen, or if not making sense, at least form English words.  These days I'm not able to do that.
• Loss of hearing.  I do wear hearing aids in the evening.  I've this odd mixture of disability--can hear some sounds with my left ear and others with my right.  Hearing has slowly declined over the years, slowly, for which I'm grateful.  My uncle was quite deaf when he was still in his 60's, but I'm far from that bad.

The "Original Sin" of the U.S.

 CNN has an opinion piece by James Goodman "It's time to stop calling slavery America's 'original sin.'"

It turns out his problem is with "original sin" as a metaphor.  As I read his analysis I realized it really doesn't have that much to do with the religious doctrine. Instead it's a way of saying something really bad was done in the past, while the doctrine says humans are fated to do bad now.  

Goodman makes a point towards the end, with which I do agree: the first "sin" in the creation of America was the dispossession of Native Americans. 

The Party of Reagan or Trump?

I saw a poll the other day showing that lots of Republicans now believe that Trump was a better president than Reagan.  

I didn't like either president, but Reagan had an emollient quality which was the opposite of Trump's abrasive mode.  It's the difference between the man whose Eleventh Commandment was: speak no ill of any Republican and the man who accused his vice president of lacking courage on Jan. 6.

Why Didn't Trump Go to the Capitol?

 Sometimes what doesn't happen is more informative than what does.

Take Jan. 6.  Trump promised his people at the rally that he would walk with them down to the Capitol.

He didn't?  Why? Why lie to his devoted followers who'd come from all over the country to hear his words and support his cause?  Why take the risk they'd turn on him for lying to them?

If the gathering at the Capitol was going to "peacefully and patriotically make their voices heard" there wouldn't seem to be much reason for Trump to cop out, to be a p***y as he calls his critics.

Just maybe he suspected that it wouldn't be peaceful? Just maybe he thought there might be some danger there? Just maybe he knew there could be violence and he was fine with that?  Or just maybe he's a coward? 

Second Shot

 Just got my second shot of Pfizer vaccine. 

End of Trump?

 I may have said I would have preferred no impeachment trial.  Instead I would have preferred a censure plus passage of a bill(s) to tighten the laws which Trump violated or found very elastic.  Hopefully we'll still going to get some tightening, if nothing else.

Maybe we can now allow Trump to fade into the dustbin of history?

Provisions of the House Bill

As described by Sen. Warnock's website the  Emergency Relief for Farmers of Color Act:

 "The Emergency Relief for Farmers of Color Act would provide $5 billion to America’s Black, indigenous, Hispanic, and farmers of color who, in addition to being hard-hit by the current public health and economic emergencies, have long struggled to keep their farms and ownership of their land in rural communities due to discrimination by USDA and other government agencies. 

• The legislation provides $4 billion in direct relief payments to help farmers of color pay-off outstanding USDA farm loan debts and related taxes, and help them respond to the economic impacts of the pandemic.
•  The legislation provides another $1 billion fund to support activities at USDA that will root out systemic racism, provide technical and legal assistance to agricultural communities of color, and fund underresourced programs that will shape the future for farmers and communities of color. Specifically, this $1 billion fund will include:
• Pror education that historically serve communities of color; 
• o Scholarships at 1890’s land grant universities and for indigenous students attending land grant institutions; 
• o Outreach, mediation, financial training, capacity building training, cooperative development training and support, and other technical assistance; and
•  o Assistance to farmers, ranchers, or forest landowners of color that are former farm loan borrowers and suffered related adverse actions, or past discrimination or bias.

 The Emergency Relief for Farmers of Color Act is supported by Rural Coalition, National Black Farmers Association (NBFA), Black Belt Justice Center, Black Farmers’ Appeal: Cancel Pigford Debt Campaign"

CCC Powers

 "While CCC operates according to a large number of statutory authorities, its broad powers allow it to carry out almost any operation required to meet the objectives of supporting U.S. agriculture"

That's from this CRS report on CCC.

I note from the report that in previous posts on CCC I missed an important element.  In response to 2009 actions by the Obama administration Congress put limits on CCC authority in FY2012-2017,  but failed to renew the restrictions in 2018 on. 

Artificial Insemination

 That should be a click bait blog title, shouldn't it?

I think we switched from having a bull to artificial insemination around 1945 or so. I do remember when the basement of the barn, where the bull had been kept, was floored with concrete in preparation for having hens there.  

I remember when I was banned from the barn when the inseminator came, because the process of insemination was not fit for my young eyes. I remember dad discussing the virtues of different sires in choosing the semen to be used.  

It's been a long long time since then.  I was struck by this piece on the dam of the bull of the century, RORA Elevation. 9 million descendants of one bull--amazing.

Outlook for 2020 Elections

 I'm pessimistic about Democratic chances in 2022 to maintain the House majority.  The Senate may be easier. 

Here's a map for the Senate, showing Pennsylvania as a tossup and Georgia as leaning Democratic.  I'm not sure about Georgia; the Republicans are working on changing the rules for voting.  On the other hand, Sen. Warnock did do better than Ossoff. 

In the House give the Republicans a pickup of 8-10 seats from redistricting and add in the historical loss by the majority party in mid-year elections and things look grim.

It's possible that Biden and the Democrats do a great job on covid and the economy, foreign affairs don't erupt into anything major, and the Republicans experience a lot of intra-party conflict resulting in weak candidates.  It's possible, but I'm not hopeful.

Setting a Precedent

 Perhaps the strongest argument in Trump's impeachment trial is the fear of setting a bad precedent.  It should be taken seriously. When I studied American government, the idea that a president could ever be impeached was not a serious issue.  When Watergate occurred there was a quick surge of research, trying to figure out the pros and cons, the procedure for impeachment.

We went ahead with the process to impeach the president. I haven't researched, but I'd guess that some serious people then said it was unlikely there would be another impeachment in the 20th century.  But there was.

We went through the Clinton impeachment--that experience plus some changes in social mores may have set another precedent--we don't want another impeachment over private behavior, and hopefully future presidents have learned to handle scandals better.

So now we've impeached Trump twice. I hope the precedent we've set is never to elect a person like him again.  

On Prohibition, a Reconsideration

 Politico has a long piece on Black Prohibitionism by a political science prof, Mark Lawrence Schrad.

My mother was death on alcohol.  I never quite understood it.  As I've gotten older I wonder whether someone in the family was a drunk.  I don't know of any likely candidate, but her vehemence makes me wonder.  

Anyhow, the piece puts prohibition back into the context of Progressive Era ideas to improve human life.  Some of those ideas are still considered good (secret ballot), some are now considered bad (eugenics), some have seen their reputation vary over the years (referendums, city managers, experts). 

I'm not sure on prohibition.  We're in the process of legalizing marijuana, partially on the grounds it's less dangerous than alcohol. I've still enough puritan in me to believe that life is hard and one should not try to round off the corners.  Some of the critics of prohibition see it as reflecting WASP prejudice against recent immigrants who frequented saloons.  But then I read Samantha Powers memoir which deals with the alcoholism of her father (very interesting).

My current bottom line is it's good to have people on both sides of the issue--not good for one side to have it all their own way.

On Improving Statistical Infrastructure

The Covid Tracking project announces its end. 

But the work itself—compiling, cleaning, standardizing, and making sense of COVID-19 data from 56 individual states and territories—is properly the work of federal public health agencies. Not only because these efforts are a governmental responsibility—which they are—but because federal teams have access to far more comprehensive data than we do, and can mandate compliance with at least some standards and requirements.

I wholeheartedly agree with this, and hope the Biden/Harris administration devotes money and attention to improving our statistical infrastructure, given the deficiencies revealed by pandemic.  

Inflation Worries and the 1970s

 The debate over the proper size of the Covid bill often gets into inflation--will a bigger federal debt cause greater inflation.  I've commented somewhere that while any inflation will take a while to show up, based on our experience in the 1970s it takes a long time for policymakers to react and fight it.  

Expanding on that--we do have the experience of the 70's to guide us, and we know that very high interest rates a la Paul Volcker will stifle inflation albeit at the cost of a recession.  Another factor I'd consider--in the 70's unions had more power than now.  The industrial sector was much more important in the economy, and unions had considerable power in that sector.  I think it's also true that union contracts had been written in a way to cope with inflation, at the cost of adding to inflationary pressures. Globalization has come a long way since the 70s, so presumably it's harder for an economy to go its own way and inflate.  Finally, a big part of the inflation then was the effect of OPEC finding its power, resulting in much higher prices for oil.  Today we don't have any cartel with similar power over a critical factor in the economy, and oil specifically and energy generally are less important economically.

Should Democrats Go Hard and Fast?

 Part of Ezra Klein's argument in this New Yorker interview is Democrats should push harder than they did in the Obama administration to fulfill their promises.

I've just completed Obama's  "A Promised Land".  Part of the criticism is that the stimulus package should have been bigger and more obvious--issue checks rather than changing deductions for example. Part of the argument is don't let the filibuster stop you.

I'm not sure I buy that. Go too far too fast and you don't get Joe Manchin and Jon Tester reelected, you don't get Doug Jones elected, etc.

But it seems each administration is trying to avoid the mistakes of the last administration (of the same party). For example:

• Clinton administration designed a healthcare package without consulting Congress and it failed.  Obama administration spent (wasted?) a lot of time and energy dealing with Congress on ACA
• Biden administration is aiming to improve healthcare fixing Obamacare's problems.
• Bush administration had an aggressive foreign policy trying to restructure Iraq and Afghanistan.  The Obama administration backed away from that.  

Of course today's progressive wing of the Democratic party reminds me of the McGovern wing of the party 1968-76, which led us to defeat and long years out of power in the White House.

And my attitudes towards the $1.9 trillion Covid bill are swayed by memory of the the inflation of the 1970's.

We will see.

Ebbs and Flows

One thing which seems to occur and recur is a pattern of ebbs and flows.  In this case I'm thinking about race. In the 1950's the emphasis was on integration, the idea that our American problems would be cured by ensuring that all legal barriers to full participation.  Hence, the emphasis on civil rights.  This was building on the program of the NAACP.  The Black Muslims, the Nation of Islam, was separatist.

In the 1960s and 70's with Stokely Carmichael  and other leaders the Black Power movement emerged, with Malcolm X contesting with Martin Luther King.  As I remember it the issue was partly at least whether whites could be trusted, or wehther blacks would do better by strengthening the black community.  It may have been a reaction to what happened to black teachers and other professionals during integration.

While these lines of division seem to an outsider like me to have blurred over the 50 years since, I think we can still see those impulses working today. And this post at Boston 1775 shows them working then--black Congregationalists establishing their own church.

Voting With Their Feet in 1758

Prof. Somin at Volokh Conspiracy has a book and a bunch of blog posts on the theme of people voting with their feet--moving from one state to another or one country to another.  As a libertarian he's all for it. 

It's not new, as I discovered when reading the Anderson "Crucible of War" on the Seven Years War.  Interesting bit in it--the Massachusetts legislature wrote to the British regarding the demands for more troops for 1759 campaign, recruiting for which would require paying enlistment bonuses.  They complained that taxes were already so high that people were leaving Massachusetts for better places.

Of course 270 years later Massachusetts is still wealthy and still a high tax state.

Health Providers and Vaccine

 Had my dental appointment today.  It's a pain, but at my age I need to be careful with my teeth, something I wasn't during most of my life.

I am puzzled--my dental hygienist was commenting on the provision of vaccines to pharmacies.  I wasn't quick on the draw--about 2 hours later I think to wonder--has she not received her vaccine shot?  I thought that category would be close to the top.

Telephones with TV = Zoom Meetings

 I wrote earlier on my memories of various trials of adding pictures/TV to the telephone--all of which failed.  

GovExec has a piece which may summarize the change from the pandemic:

"“The most important outcome of the pandemic wasn’t that it taught you how to use Zoom, but rather that it forced everybody else to use Zoom,” Autor told me. "We all leapfrogged over the coordination problem at the exact same time.” Meetings, business lunches, work trips—all these things will still happen in the after world."

It's an important point--just knowing that people with whom you need to communicate use the new method is great.  It's rather like 20 years ago when you knew someone might have an email address, but maybe they only remembered to check it once in a blue moon, so you'd use the telephone instead of email.  

Snow Days?

 Reston got maybe 3 inches of snow, more to the north and east of us.  The TV news is running their usual scroll of schools which are closed  I'm not clear whether these are all schools doing in-person teaching, or whether the snow is impacting remote learning.  I know there's been speculation the experience the pandemic has given us with remote learning means no more snow days, but has that become a fact?