What Should Historians Make of Venezuela?

 One possible argument for historians goes like this:

• Venezuela is becoming a failed state, with misery abounding, refugees fleeing, and insurgents surging.
• The failure traces to the policies of Presidents Chavez and  Maduro and their Bolivarian Revolution.
• In the light of the failure, and the disastrous results, any history of Venezuela must give priority to the politics, and the forces underlying the politics. 
• That suggests that historical investigations of America should at least acknowledge the overall context.

Flaws in Statistics

Media have reported a significant percentage of people have failed to get their second shot of vaccine.  I'm not sure of the basis, but if it's built on the CDC's automated database there may be some distortion.  In the case of my wife, we reported the first shot timely, but failed to report the second until the issue hit the news. How much such a pattern might have occurred I don't know.

Vaccination History

 We're far enough along in our covid vaccination process to discuss patterns, as my cousin and I did this morning.  It turns out the Northeast, especially New England, is doing the best.  Early leaders like WV or NM have fallen back.  

I'm not sure what accounts for New England's record.  They voted for Biden, so that's a plus. My impression is that they're well-educated and perhaps have a higher regard for science than average.  But what accounts for SD's presence high up the list?

I wonder if anyone has run a correlation between the states which do well with the annual flu vaccinations and the current effort?  

Here's a graph of all the states for the 2019-20 flu vaccine. Eyeballing there seems a correlation, though Maine is an exception.  When the dust settles we'll see whether there's a pattern of general resistance/acceptance of all vaccines, or whether the unique factors of covid-19 played a role in acceptance.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/fluvaxview/coverage-1920estimates.htm

Iowa Farmers Are Old--So It's Always Been

 A quote from  Chris Jones, an Iowa environmental engineer (doing a demographic analysis of Iowa farmers,

Of these white folks, 80% are male and the average age is almost as old as I am: 58.9 years

He's fighting Iowa CAFO's polluting water, with facts and complaints. A good cause, but I picked out this factoid to comment on. 

I remember in Infoshare Sherman County, Kansas was one of the trial counties for providing on-line access for farmers to some of the data USDA agencies had for them.  Mike Sherman, then the CED, had some data on the average age of his farmers--somewhere in the 50's IIRC. A problem then, a small part of the problem, was the older farmers generally weren't into computers, so what we were trying to do had no appeal.  

But to my title--I suspect if we had data going back to the Revolution on the age distribution of farmers we'd find they were consistently older than most working Americans.  Why? Because since the Revolution the proportion of US workers engaged in agriculture has been declining, sometimes fast, sometimes slowly. That means some farm children left the farm for the city, while their parents stayed on the farm, thereby skewing the age distribution. 

Was It Push or Pull--Leaving the Farm

 I read a paragraph like this, and it triggers me:

Agroecology is at a crossroads. The farming system—which is primarily practiced in the developing world but is gaining some traction in the U.S.—incorporates a suite of ecological growing practices into a wider philosophy rooted in shifting power from global agribusiness companies to peasant farmers.

The assumption behind it is that the "peasant farmer" way of life is preferable to any other.  The further assumption is that big companies push farmers off their land. But what if the way of life available off the farm is, on the whole, what one prefers?

I retain some affection for farming as it was in the 1940's and 50's. There were good times and good memories.  There were also downsides, and for me, a misfit between me and the possibilities of the style.  Part of that was the advance of "production agriculture", to use a relatively neutral name for market-oriented farming, with increasing investments required to compete.  So I was pushed. 

But in my case, it was mostly pull.  And I think over the course of history there's been more pull than push. To say otherwise is, in part, the romanticism of the liberal/progressive left.

Under Recorded: Luck and Power

 I think there's a gap in both journalism and history; we don't do enough to recognize the role that luck and power (differentials) play in human affairs.

Determining who has the power, and why, is often a better way to analyze things than alternatives such as racism, etc.  And looking at the effects of power differentials on the holders of power and the the subjects of power is as important.  Lord Acton's " Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely" is a favorite.

It's possible to determine the powerful and those who have to cope with the powerful, but much harder to determine the lucky.   Just finished the bio on James Baker.  The authors note the ways he was lucky in his rise to prominence.  I don't know of any rules or analysis of the subject though.

Changing Our First Responders

Just saw an interview on Ananpour with Danielle Allen talking about policing, etc. Wasn't paying that much attention, but caught her mentioning changing our first responders.  That seems to be a popular liberal interpretation of "defund the police"--where currently police are our first responders for 911 calls (at least that's our perception, the EMTs and fire might disagree), a "generalist" model, instead we should separate different types of problems and have "specialists" for each.  For example, social workers, social psychologists, traffic wardens, etc.  

The logic is that police, being armed, resort too often to violence where a softer, gentler approach would avoid the tragedies.

I like the idea, but my contrarian streak also offers a caution"

America is a heavily-armed society. If a jurisdiction is able to set up such a system, the likelihood is sometime they will have one of their "specialists" will be killed by someone with a gun (or knife). When that happens, there will be a popular uproar and demands to arm the specialists, or shift responsibility back towards the police.

There's always tradeoffs.  TANSTAAFL 

Policing--a Modest Suggestion

 Saw a piece on police training in the US today, somewhere.  Apparently there are several problems: with 18,000 organizations there's no uniformity (and no national database to record bad cops); training in the US is a lot shorter than in Europe; the training they get doesn't cover some of the key issues.  Another problem is lack of money--the emphasis is getting bodies on the street.

All this leads me to this suggestion:

• provide federal money to local police force
• make the money available only to expand the training and cover some of the missing areas
• record those who receive federally funded training in a database, and track their careers--do they do better than their peers/predecessors, etc. Publicize the results, presumably good, to pressure the organizations which don't take advantage of the money.

Rural Broadband--in Vermont per Walt Jeffries

 Walt Jeffries at Sugar Mountain Farm has been a very quiet blogger for a good while, and it's been even longer since I blogged about him.  (I'm sure I did, but too lazy to check.) He and his family have pigs, plus other livestock, on a farm in Vermont. 

He ceased right after he had gotten the necessary inspections to butcher their hogs on the farm and sell the meat across state lines, as well as within Vermont.  Building the butcher shop had been a multi-year endeavor, chronicled in the blog. After that he may have had less material to use in the blog.  Don't know.  I also thought maybe his children might have had problems with his blogging as they grew to adulthood, which would explain his silence.

Anyhow, he's recently returned to blogging, at least a little. His latest post reports the approach of fiber optic cable to his farm. He might go with that way, as opposed to Musk's Starlink system.  He credits the USDA broadband effort.  That's interesting because he's basically a libertarian type, reluctantly dealing with the regulations needed to get his butcher shop and retail sales operation running.

On Chauvin--Changing the Parameters

 Mr. Chauvin was convicted yesterday.  I've not tried to follow the ins and outs, but based on what I've heard/read I've no problem with it.  Scott Johnson at Powerline says the prosecution case was stronger than his initial expectations, which is significant.

If I could, I'd like to gather people on both sides of the verdict and ask this question: if the parameters of the case could be changed, what change(s) would convince you to change your mind? By parameters I mean such things as the length of time Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck, Floyd's actions, the prosecution witnesses, Floyd's health condition (Bob Somerby has a hypothetical there.)

While the exercise would be interesting, I don't know if it would be educational at all.  I don't think people make decisions that way, by considering parameters one at a time.  It's like buying a house; the final choice is more a gut feel than reasoned.

Things Changing Faster Than You Notice

 Calculated Risk reports: 

Currently, almost 61 million people in the U.S. labor force have a Bachelor's degree or higher. This is almost 44% of the labor force, up from 26.2% in 1992.

When my father graduated from U of Minnesota in 1912 he was one of about 2 percent of the people in the US with a bachelor's degree. 

Tax Reform

 Reading "The Man Who Ran Washington, the Life and Times of James A. Baker III"

On page 250 Baker, who's just moved from chief of staff to Reagan to be Secretary of Treasury is about to work on tax reform.  The authors describe the current situation in terms which sound familiar today: many big corporations not paying any taxes, effective tax rate low, multitude of loopholes etc. 

As they describe the eventual 1986 tax reform act, it almost sounds as if it's something Biden could buy.  Top rate 33 percent (using a surtax) with 35 percent on corporations.  Eventually passed comfortably with bipartisan support. 

Times have changed.

The Return of Plain English Regulations

 Not sure what this tells me, except I'm old, as if the mirror doesn't remind me daily.

Back in my ASCS Directives Management days, my branch was responsible for processing ASCS and CCC regulations to the Office of Federal Regulations.  We had to ensure proper format, conformed (carbon) copies, official signatures, the correct set of documents (i.e., the regulation itself, the transmittal memo, and others). The regulation package would circulate among the offices in a special folder, with the routing sheet stapled to the front, ending up with the Administrator, ASCS or Executive VP, CCC as applicable.

Among the many goals of President Carter  were several aiming to improve the federal government (notably Senior Executive Service and the sunset law). Theoretically of similar importance was the "plain English" initiative.  Regulation writers got some classes in how to write, and agencies got instructions for their heads to certify that regulations were written in "plain English".  In reality, all that meant after the first few months was the addition of another document with multiple copies to be included in the regulation folder.  The document just read something like": "I certify the enclosed regulation is written in plain English".

I think the Reagan administration may have continued the requirement, at least for a whole, but it didn't last much longer than that.

But it's back!! Govtrack.us has an article with a title which tells us all: 

Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act would require 100-word plain English summaries of each new federal rule or regulation

 It's been introduced in both House and Senate, but no co-sponsors as yet.  Cynically I want to note that where Carter wanted the whole regulation to be in plain English, so far this effort is just to have a short summary in plain English, leaving the actual regulation to be inscrutable, or not, depending on the ability of the regulation writer and the environment in which she is working.

The Vaccination Race

 We used to follow the race among companies and nations to get the first covid-19 vaccine.  We've lost interest in that one as the world has gotten several vaccines of varying efficacy.

Then in the US we had the race among states to vaccinate their citizens. 

Remember when West Virginia jumped out to an early lead.  It seemed so unlikely, but turned out they had relied on their pharmacies and a reasonably centralized model.  But WV has faded.

Four days ago Politico noted that New Mexico was leading. Again they were using a centralized registry system.  Both WV and NM were working against some unfavorable demographics: older people in both, Hispanics in NM, etc.

For a while the Dakotas were right up there near the top, but I don't remember a news piece on that.

Today the Northeast seems on the verge of taking the lead, at least according to this. You can click on the column headings to sort.  Maine, New Hampshire, and Connecticut lead NM, with Vermont, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island filling out the top 7 states.

I know my cousin, a MA resident, has had problems with the way they've handled registration and vaccination.  Extrapolating that to the rest of New England with any additional facts to support my theories, I'm guessing that New England's general  advantages have enabled their recent gains, overcoming some early problems in organization. 

I'll be waiting to see how the states have done after the dust settles, and how their accomplishments compare to their work on other vaccines.

Washington's Mall in Wartime

 Doing some research for my cousin who lived outside DC during part of WWII.  

I remember the temporary WWI buildings along Constitution, now the site of Constitution gardens, but I didn't realize how fully the Mall, at least west of the Washington monument was built. (There's problems with accessing the website, but here's the url: http://www.columbia.edu/~fdc/family/dcmall.html )  I didn't realize part of the buildings were dormitories for workers.

[Updated for official photo.]

I'm Not Surprised: Trump Disorganized with Transcripts

 There was a memoir written by a stenographer who worked recording and transcribing events in the Obama White House. It was pretty good.  One thing I remember from it was the work needed so that everything was recorded. It was impressive.

When I read that Trump made a practice of tearing up the papers documenting his meetings I knew he wasn't good news for historians, even though he was worth a lot to journalists.  That's now confirmed by this report of the missing transcripts of 8 percent or more of Trump's speeches.  It's not a loss to the history of oratory and given his incessant repetition of his best hits probably not a big loss to history of his presidency, but it's a loss.

Damnit--presidents are supposed to follow the law.  And Republican presidents are supposed to be organized. 

The Decline of Mainline Religion--How McDonalds Killed God

 Rural Blog has a piece by a minister on the many reasons for the decline of religion in the U.S.  Ross Douthat has a piece on the same subject in the Times, focusing mostly on how the intelligentsia are divorced from religion.

Given my religious ancestors and my own atheism I'm interested.  I've watched from the outside as my sister was heavily involved with her Presbyterian church.  The other day I came across a newspaper report of a lecture my grandfather gave in 1902, describing his (and his wife) visit to Jerusalem.  The newspaper found this noteworthy, presumably because grandfather was prominent in the West Pittston-Wilkes Barre area, the subject was somewhat exotic, and the lecture drew a good audience. 

How often today, even before the decline of local city newspapers, did the media pay attention to clergy as authoritative figures?  It seems most media stories deal with political/cultural/religious controversies.  Back in 1902 churches/ministers filled a need for entertainment and instruction, a need 20 years later to be filled by radio, 45 years later by television, and today by the internet.  

I grew up before McDonalds had spread to New York, so church suppers were an occasion. But church suppers can't compete with McDonalds, nor can slide shows/travelogues which I remember compete with TV. 

"The Situation" (Good Money-Losing Movie)

 According to IMDB this movie had a $1 million budget and made $48,000 at the box office. That must be close to a record for losing money on a film which actually made it to the theater. 

It's a lot better than that, at least if you can get past the lousy sound job (very uneven but often the music/background obscures the dialog),  It would be redeemable if it had captions, but it doesn't. Having said that, most of the reviews at IMDB are respectful.

Anyway my wife and I stuck it out.  Perhaps our receptivity was enhanced by having been watching the first 23 episodes of Fauda (season1 and part of 2). "Fauda" seems to equate to SNAFU.  It's based on an Israeli special ops unit fighting against Hamas and eventually ISIS with a reasonably balanced view of both the Israeli heroes and the Palestinian villains.  It describes a complex situation in the West Bank, a complexity which is related to the complex situation of the American-Iraqi relationships in "The Situation".

The Situation was written and produced by Wendell Steavenson, a (female) war correspondent based on experiences in the Iraq war.  It was released in 2006, perhaps just as the US was turning against the war, so it should have done well. It really would be worth someone's time and effort to fix the sound.  

That Demon Rum, Updated

 My mother was death on drinking.  She would be pleased by this post.

It's strange how things have changed.  I clearly remember Mr. Youngstrom, our science teacher for one year in HS (unless he was a substitute--the school had problems keeping science teachers) being very emotional when telling the class never to smoke marijuana.  I think the reason was it was a gateway to hard drugs, but it could have been because it was evil in and of itself.

60+ years later Virginia has legalized marijuana, and there's a push for decriminalizing hard drugs.  It seems libertarian philosophy has conquered much of American life. 

Not Enough for the IRS

 That's my reaction to this request from President Biden which was included in his 2022 budget outline:

 Supports a Fair and Equitable Tax System. To ensure that all Americans are treated fairly by the Nation’s tax system, including that the wealthy and corporations comply with existing laws, the discretionary request provides $13.2 billion for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), a $1.2 billion or 10.4-percent increase above the 2021 enacted level. With this funding, the IRS would: increase oversight of high-income and corporate tax returns to ensure compliance; provide new and improved online tools for taxpayers to communicate with the IRS easily and quickly; and improve telephone and in-person taxpayer customer service, including outreach and assistance to underserved communities. In addition to increases for base IRS enforcement funding, the 2022 discretionary request provides an additional increase of $417 million in funding for tax enforcement as part of a multiyear tax initiative that would increase tax compliance and increase revenues. Altogether, the 2022 discretionary request would increase resources for tax enforcement by $0.9 billion

I'd prefer a multi-year plan for 50 percent for more. 

Inflation Ahead?

 I'm seeing media reports of a looming labor shortage--restaurants are reopening but can't find help.

My local supermarket seems to be having staffing problems as well. 

This raises the possibility of inflation coming.  If the labor supply at the low end has been disrupted by the pandemic and possibly the Trump crackdown on immigration, wages will have to rise at the lower end.  Perhaps that will diminish our inequality, or perhaps the better paid among us will try to maintain the wage gap and push for more pay themselves.

We'll see. 

Blasts from the Past

Two things, unconnected except they both recalled my past:

The Post is running "Classic Doonesbury". In a recent one Alex, the daughter, is giving her father her Christmas list.  She wants a Pentium PC so she can keep up with her classmates, and a 288 modem.   I want to say I remember my first modem, but I don't.  Could it have been 120/240 baud or 1200/2400 baud?  I definitely remember the big advance up the ladder to a 28.8K baud modem.  I suspect these days few people remember a "baud" (1 bit per second, where 8 bits equal one byte, which was one character).   Back then I was going on-line through Compuserve.  So much has changed since then.

Going back even further in time, at some point in the 1940's-50's our poultry flock was hit with Newcastle disease. We had a run of diseases at that time, leading us to change the hatchery supplying our chicks, so I don't remember how bad it was, how many hens it killed, how many eggs weren't laid.  I do remember the death toll one of the diseases took, taking the dead hens out and tossing them off a hill into a swamp (I know, not good, but that was another time).  

The NYTimes had a Science article on virologists being able to use the  Newcastle virus as a means of inserting a vaccine into humans.  (Newcastle doesn't do much to people.)

Am I Destroying Capitalism?

 I was a relatively early investor in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) which Annie Lowery in the Atlantic thinks may be dangerous to capitalism (along with index based mutual funds).

If I understand the concerns: in the good old days of individual stock ownership and actively managed mutual funds people, fund managers and investors, were actively concerned about the performance of companies. They bought and sold stock based on that information, resulting in a an efficient sharing of information related to performance  via financial markets.  But with ETFs and index funds dominating the scene these days, many fewer people are tracking performance and incentives for managers to perform are less.

It sounds okay to me.  Although I would point to Billy Hwang's financial distress to observe that financiers can be pretty stupid; they seem to be chasing returns through ingenuity rather than hard work.

Another aspect is the rise of global financial markets.  Back in the days of actively managed funds we had much less  in the way of global financial flows.  Over time I've diversified our investments away from Spdrs and QQQ (the early ETFs tracking the S&P 500 and the Russell index) to include several with foreign investments. While fewer people may be tracking GM  and Ford against each other, the competition between US car manufacturers and foreign manufacturers is being  tracked.

At any rate, I expect the current setup will outlast me; at least I hope so.

Side Effects of the Filibuster Rule

 One phenomena of recent times is the giant legislative bill.  That's true of the reconciliation bill passed annually, but also of others.  

I think what's going on is the filibuster.  It raises the difficulty of passing laws, so the laws which can and must pass get stuffed with measures. As long as someone, Congressional or lobbyist, has the ear of a person who's involved in the writing of the bill, there's a good chance to get your issue addressed.  That cuts out the back and forth we might expect from committee hearings, which can expose difficulties and at least gives the agency which has to administer the bill some additional background and understanding of what's going on.

Here's a related tweet.

Ezra Klein's Misinformation

 Ezra Klein was interviewed on WETA, the Amanpour program.  Briefly he was discussing California and asserted the state had the worst record in vaccinations.  According to the Bloomberg tracker, it's actually slightly above average. 

Update on Congressional Review Act

 I've posted before on the use of the Congressional Review Act to kill regulations. The last time I posted it seemed as if the administration was hesitant to use it, partly because of uncertainty over its effects down the road. CRA has a provision if Congress votes to kill a reg, the agency cannot do new regulations substantially the same without new legislation.

It now appears that maybe Democrats will try to apply it to six regulations. Because the Trump administration used their control of Congress to kill several regulations from the Obama administration, I also looking to see if any agencies try to revive them and test how much flexibility SCOTUS will allow in interpreting the act.

Herd Immunity and Peak Infections

 This was an interesting twitter thread--the gist is that herd immunity does not mean the apex of the curve of covid infections.  

This is an image from one of the tweets:

Why We're Prejudiced--We Love Our Kids

 That's my take-away from this research at the Post's Monkey Cage.

Parents seem to regard decisions that affect their children as the most important they make and to use "common sense" to decide, rather than rational values.   This, together with the existence of vicious cycles of feedback results in what looks like racism.

Worst April Fools Nightmare

 Saw a tweet about Joe Manchin switching parties--an April Fool joke.  That would be liberals' worst nightmare.