The book is being widely quoted in the media as we grapple with the ending of 20 years of conflict. It's highly rated on Amazon, and no. 2 best seller on Afghanistan war.
One tidbit--in the start of the war, from October 2001 to March 2002, we had 12 military killed. In the last 10 days of the war we had 13.
It's roughly 460 pages of text; I'm 100 pages in. More comments as I progress.
I follow Atul Gawande in the New Yorker and his books, particularly his advocacy for checklists (an indispensable tool for bureaucrats). The new print issue of the New Yorker has an article by him concerning health in Costa Rica.
Costa Rica has longer life spans than the US while spending much less on health care. Gawande credits the way in which they have done public health, a systematic way of having health care professional interact with everyone in their district.
To my mind it's another example of the benefits of government focusing on the "last mile", the connection between government and the citizen. FSA does it well for its clientele and programs but the US pattern is to have government work through states and localities.
The possible release of Sirhan Sirhan has prompted a bit of discussion of Robert F. Kennedy's role in American history, and his prospects.
Early on I was torn between Hubert Humphrey and JFK. Humphrey was the stalwart liberal, the speaker on the floor of the 1948 convention, the Senator leading liberals in the 1950's. JFK had charisma and seemed more popular. Defeating Nixon was important, and difficult; less important and less difficult than defeating what's his face last year, so after West Virginia primary showed JFK could win Protestants I accepted his candidacy.
Robert was the kid brother, feisty. (Interestingly, I find in my memory I had conflated Ted and RFK's college records, to the discredit of RFK.) His reputation among liberals was marred by his work first with Joe McCarthy and then investigating labor corruption with Sen. McClellan. It probably hit a low point when his brother named him attorney general.
Bobby's reputation rose during the 1960's, first with civil rights and then on Vietnam, reaching its peak with me with his speech when MLK was killed.
I'm not sure whether I would have supported RFK or HHH finally. Humphrey didn't fare well as LBJ's Veep. It likely would have come down to the man who ran best against Nixon. We know HHH lost, barely. I think it's likely that RFK wouldn't have been able to unite the party; LBJ would have borne his grudges too long for that.
So, my bottom line is I don't think American history changed because of Sirhan Sirhan. It would have been different, but Nixon would have won, the divisions in the Democratic party would have been there, perhaps even deeper than they were. And Nixon would have continued to be paranoid against whichever Democrat seemed strongest in the lead up to the 1972.
Actually 31, according to a NYTimes article on the redoing of seats for orchestra halls--average US male has gone from 168 in the 60's to 199 now.
As I age, there are things I have lost/am losing. Some are big and obvious; I won't mention those. Less obvious is this: loss of finger function, manual dexterity. Specifically the ability easily to pick up small things or, something I notice every morning, to separate the pages of the newspaper.
One thing I haven't lost is a tendency to hypochondria, but I'll use will power and ignore the possibility that this indicates an underlying problem as described here and just assume it's age.
Prediction: One thing which will happen: regardless of the efficiency of the airlift from Kabul, there will be American citizens left behind, likely mostly they have dual citizenship. Some will remain by choice, some will be forbidden to leave because they are Afghans, in the eyes of the Taliban.
I've blogged before about the "last mile" problem in government: the fact the structure of government in the US means a gap between government and the citizen. Here's another example, as reported by Politico:
The Treasury Department said Wednesday that state and local governments had disbursed just over 10 percent of federal rental assistance funds as of the end of July, indicating that millions could be at risk of losing their homes once eviction protections end.
While farmers.gov today just describes the preliminary injunctions, Politico reports that the administration let the deadline for appealing the (earliest?) injunction run out. Apparently USDA will continue to participate in hearings on whether or not there should be a final injunction.
Without absolutely no knowledge of such proceedings, I'd guess the judge(s) would be unlikely to change his mind.
Apparently the concern was there was a weak case which, if lost on appeal, would set a bad precedent for future court proceedings.
I repeat, no knowledge, but it did seem to me that the rationale for the program was weak--in its essentials it was paying off loans for people based on a history of not giving loans to people. The people with outstanding loans which would be forgiven were able to get past any past discriminatory hurdles in getting loans.
[Update--to give the rationale for the program, see this piece.]
[Second update--USDA's argument in court]
Over at the Atlantic, an interview by Conor Friedersdorf with a Nigerian writer. From it I learned learned about the Nigerian caliphate, and its involvement in slavery. If you can trust wikipedia, it may have been the second largest slave society (after US) at any time, though I don't believe it. Brazil likely is similar in size and the Roman empire may well have had more slaves than the US. Other empires likely also had numbers in the millions. The problem though is we're likely comparing apples and oranges, since the rules about slavery were different in different societies.
Nevertheless, an interesting take.
NY Times Mag has an article on "superweeds", weeds resistant to herbicides, specifically Palmer amaranth.
It's a reminder that as we change our environment, our environment changes as well. Natural selection rules. The same process is going on with bacteria, as we get resistance to antibiotics.
I don't know, and haven't noticed discussion, whether the use of Crispr and the sort of science which led to the fast development of covid vaccines has any implications for our fights against resistance.
Dana Milbank IIRC summarized the Mueller Report as saying the former guy's campaign was too incompetent to execute collusion with the Russian government; they wanted to but couldn't.
That's funny, and sad.
I'll summarize the FBI's investigation of 1/6 by saying the former guy's team was too incompetent to put together a conspiracy.
Modern Farming runs a piece on organic farming. I find it illogical:
One issue is price. On average, organic food costs 20 percent more than conventionally produced food. Even hardcore organic shoppers like me sometimes bypass it due to cost.
That's one paragraph. The author goes on to talk about the need for more and more organic farmers, and a larger acreage, ending in a push to dedicate a percentage of USDA farm programs to organic farms.
I think this is ignoring market signals. The market is saying that organic food is more costly. Is organic making inroads despite its higher cost? Certainly it's increased since the 1990 farm bill which directed USDA to establish standards for "organic". But that's 30 years ago. I don't think the market is saying the advantages and virtues of organic are sufficient to drive a massive surge in organic production. (IMO what will drive expansion is a continuing rise in American living standards and incomes--"organic" is a status symbol, a signifier of virtue, a feeder into one's ego and self-image.)
Conceivably added subsidies for organic farming could boost the share of the market, but I think they would be expensive.
Reading David Hackett Fischers "Champlain's Dream"--
Some surprises:
Remember the "butterfly ballot"? The covid vaccination form joins it as an example of inept forms design, or at least of limited imagination on the part of its designers. See this GovExec piece.
Pro Publica reports on the existence of organized fraud rings which submitted false claims for unemployment benefits/pandemic aid in multiple states. (https://www.propublica.org/article/how-unemployment-insurance-fraud-exploded-during-the-pandemic)
It's part of the price we pay for our individualism, freedom, and privacy, I guess.
Memory is fallible. Blog posts are reliable, at least recording the moment.
IIRC when GWB sent our forces into Afghanistan I was dubious, remembering the British and the Soviet failures. Had I been blogging then I might have recorded that opinion, which I could now point proudly to as proof of my prescience.
Of course, had I been blogging a few months later I might have posted my opinion that our easy success in Afghanistan showed we might have learned our lessons from the past and our new technology with precision bombs would enable us to oust Saddam. I think that's my memory, though I also think I was still queasy about invading Iraq.
We'll never know.
I've dipped my toe into reading about the current controversy on critical race theory, but haven't gotten into it in any depth.
One thing which did strike was a statement to the effect that "policy produced the 'hood'". To me that's a sequence like "Person A decided on policy B, policy B created C" with the implication that C was the intent of the person, the decider.
Compare that to a statement that "policy resulted in the 'hood'". To me that's a sequence like "Person A decided on policy B, a result of policy B was C" with the implication that C may or may not have been the intent of the decider.
As someone who likes Murphy's law the second version is more to my liking. I think there are a lot of cases where the decider focuses on the immediate situation and adopts a policy which she thinks will solve the problem, not realizing there are ramifications and unknown unknows also at play which will create unintended results.
The difference between intent and result.
I ran across this quotation from George Washington's first (state of the union) address to Congress. Apparently sometimes Second Amendment advocates have modified it to make it clearly support an individual right to bear arms.
"A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies."
I think I've done enough reading in the period to know what he was talking about. When he took command of the military forces besieging the British in Boston there was a desperate shortage of gunpowder and arms. The Continental Congress was desperately searching for supplies, within the colonies, elsewhere in the British empire, in the Americas and in Europe.
Throughout the Revolution Washington was forced to use colonial militia forces, called up for short periods of time, often poorly armed by the local governments and poorly trained during their periodic muster days. He did not like the militia.
So what he's calling for in this sentence is a well-armed and organized military force, equipped with American made weapons and supplied with American made gunpowder, clothing and other gear. In other words, the full meaning of the Second Amendment.
Interesting--in WWII the RAF bomber crews were self-selected with no divisions of rank or class--they stuck the men who had finished training as pilots, navigators, gunners, etc. in a big room and let them choose each other to form a bomber crew. Lots of diversity, at least by country (different parts of the British Empire, plus Poles, Free French, Americans, etc.)
In contrast America was very authoritarian, as the military tends to be, and strikingly was class-based. College men who were officers were the pilots and navigators; the rest of the crew were enlisted men. A new crew was formed by order from Washington; preferences had nothing to do with it.
Liberals seem often to express sympathy for those adversely affected by gentrification. Over the years I've seen articles in the Post covering protests by black inner-city residents of DC over the progress of gentrification.
I've tended to have ambivalent reactions. On the one hand, having lived in DC during some of its worst days, namely the 1970s, I want to applaud any signs of "progress", a growing population rather than shrinking, people with good incomes. On the other hand, you can't help but sympathize with the people who've lived in an area for all their life, who are in middle age or older, and who don't have jobs and income which would give them choice and power over where they live.
On the third hand, I remember the patterns of life in rural NY when I grew up, and I know those patterns were changing then and have changed even more in the 60 years since I left. The fact I left aggravates my ambivalence.
To be honest, I don't know that anyone has tried to use vertical farms to grow marijuana. They use similar technology though, and as it turns out a hell of a lot more electricity to grow green pot than to grow green lettuce. See this Politico piece.
The bottom line of the piece is: legalize marijuana at the federal level so it can be grown where it is most efficient to grow it.
"The Big Sort" is the idea that Americans are sorting themselves into two separate camps--based on politics, education, etc. factors., which can be seen geographically--the red and blue areas on the map.
Supposedly this is a new phenomenon. If so, I wonder why it started? It's easy enough to see why the sorting might continue, if people make decisions on where to live, where to buy, depending on economics and the importance of schools, etc. But why would it start?
It struck me yesterday that I should look at myself--why did I buy in Reston, in an area where today about 90 percent of my neighbors vote Democratic (per a NYTimes interactive feature)? The answer is relatively simple. When I decided to buy in the suburbs in late 1975 I focused on Reston. Why? Because Robert Simon, who initiated the project, sold it as an equal opportunity town back in 1964-5. That was when I first became aware of it, as I was stationed at Ft. Belvoir. I even visited during an early open house on a weekend.
Simon was in advance of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, LBJ/s final achievement, which mandated equal opportunity. I can't believe EEO was a big factor in decisions by many, but it might have been just enough for some to start the snowball rolling down the hill.
During much of my time at ASCS/FSA the agriculture policy community was pushing the idea of moving from disaster payment programs to crop insurance, an effort which culminated in the 1996 farm bill, along with Sen. Pat Roberts' "Freedom to Farm".
Back on July 28 House Ag passed another bill deviating from that path. As quoted by Illinois extension, Chris Clayton summarized:
"“The bill, passed unanimously by voice vote, will expand coverage of losses under USDA’s Wildfire Hurricane Indemnity Program-Plus (WHIP-Plus) and cover losses including those from wildfires last year in California as well as the derecho that hit Midwestern producers last summer. The aid will also cover producer losses this year from the polar vortex as well as farmers whose crops are in D-2 ‘severe’ drought conditions for at least eight consecutive weeks.”
My local Safeway is selling more and more produce in packages. Corn is no longer on the cob, so you don't have the job of husking it. Salad is shredded and mixed, just open the package into the bowl and put dressing on it.
What the Safeway buyer wants is convenience, saving time by having someone back in the chain do the work. It's all part of work shifting by the upper middle class--we have money but, unless retired, not the time so we pay others to do stuff.
This trend, which has been going on for decades (think TV dinners in the 1950's), poses a big problem for the advocates of organic farming, CSA's, and similar ideas. You can't ask the farmer to do the packaging, but your market share will be limited if you don't.
Finished Woodward's book, The Last Men of the President, which is mostly Alexander Butterfield's story.
A side note--Woodward reminds that Sen. Howard Baker, the ranking Republican on the Erwin committee was initially working with the White House to protect Nixon. What was new to me, was a tidbit which Woodward interprets that Baker was still providing information to the White House, but not in person, through an aide.
So politics isn't beanbag and there wasn't a golden age of bipartisanship now lost?
Just got on 19fortyfive.com--a national security site recommended by Prof. Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money.
They have a piece on the progress in the Navy towards electric power. Mostly it's over my head, but my impression is much of the innovation is more like the early Prius than a Tesla, but I didn't realize there was any change in propulsion since Adm. Rickover and nuclear power.
Many people find the easiest course of action is just to do what they did yesterday. Doing something different has downsides:
Been 25 years or more since FSA started pushing direct deposit (it was just starting back in the mid 90's before I retired) According to the notice about 82 percent are now direct deposit/ Since I retired they've come up with a waiver provision, presumably for hardship, but only 5 percent of the paper check people have a current waiver on file.
It seems that it's still the producer's option--she "invokes" the waiver for one of the three permissible reasons, there's no burden on the FSA to determine the validity. I'm curious whether compliance with the requirement is greater among the other agencies which issue payments to the public. Somehow I expect farmers to be more resistant to the change.
Might have helped to sell the idea to note that having direct deposit makes it easier and more foolproof to get benefits issued by IRS, as has happened now several times this century.
Of course the answer is for everyone to get a basic bank account with fees paid by the government, but that would be against the American individualistic ethic, so a nonstarter.
Modern Farmer has a post on the new loan program intended to help in establishing title to heir property. It has some problems, and I feel nitpicky today so I've bolded the errors I find:
"For instance, if a land owner died without a will, that land would be divided up among the owner’s heirs. Once they passed on, the land would be further divided among their heirs. While property might be in a single family’s control for generations, they don’t have legal title or claim to the land. That means they cannot easily sell the land or consolidate fractured acreages...." [My comment: usually it's the father dying intestate, with the children inheriting the land in common, not divided. When a child dies, her ownership share is inherited by her children, and so on. One of the owners can appeal to the court to force a sale of the land and divide the proceeds among the heirs. That is a way whites have used to buy land cheaply: forced sales. Even when there's no forced sale, the person farming on the land doesn't have clear title, a prerequisite to mortgaging the land.]
"After the Civil War, the federal Homestead Act gave Black families land, mainly across the South, and many of them became land holders for the first time.... [The Homestead Act and the Southern Homestead Act weren't effective in getting black farmers land. "Gave" is wrong--the charge was $50 for 40 acres, which was a significant sum in 1866 (perhaps $700 to 12,000 in todays money). I know of no statistics or study showing the relative importance of the different ways in which blacks accumulated land, but my impression is that hard work, scrimping, and good relations with selected white owners were key.]
"That became a bigger problem after President John F. Kennedy’s 1961 Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Services came into effect. At the time, the USDA established a loan program to help farmers..." [ASCS had nothing to do with the loan program, which had originated in the New Deal, and was by 1961 administered by the Farmers Home Administration. The current day Farm Service Agency is the successor to ASCS and to the farmer loan programs of FmHA.]
I don't trust the rest of the writer's facts, based on her errors in these portions.
