October Is Coming: the 50th Anniversary

 The Watergate book I'm reading starts one chapter with the observation: "October 1973 would prove to be perhaps the most historic month in the history of the American presidency..."

A reminder--the month saw the resignation of the vice president minutes before he was charged with crimes, and agreed to one, the Yom Kippur war which included a confrontation with the Soviet Union, and the Saturday Night Massacre, with the resignation of the Attorney General and deputy AG after Nixon fired the special prosecutor for Watergate.

Watergate

 In the process of reading Garrett Graff's Watergate. It's a reminder of how we simplify our history--many reporters involved other than Woodward and Bernstein.

Why Do LIberal Reforms Hurt the Poor?

 Is this true?

Liberals propose and enact more laws, regulations, and programs than conservatives?  

The poorer the citizen the more difficulty they have in knowing, understanding, complying, and taking advantage of the laws, regulations, and programs.

The richer the citizen the more able they are to manipulate laws and regulations to their advantage and to exploit programs in ways not intended by the authors.

Farm Bill and Debt Limit

 The cynic in me applauds President Biden's tactic of inviting a bipartisan delegation to the White House to discuss the new farm bill.  Why am I cynical?  While negotiations over farm bill provisions got White House attention in the 1960's and 70's, they haven't gotten that much in recent decades.  

But this year the current farm bill is expiring just as the issue of raising the debt limit and cutting spending is at the forefront.  One of the things the House Republicans want to cut is food stamps (SNAP) which is a title in the farm bill.  IIRC if the bill the House passed were actually implemented, USDA would see its spending reduced to 83 percent of current. But farm state Republican senators, which likely includes them all, listen to their farmers so Biden is putting the squeeze on.  In effect he's saying two things: 

1. you need to help resolve the impasse over debt limit so we can move on to the farm bill, and
2. you need to oppose the provisions in the House bill to make cuts, particularly in SNAP, in order to get the Democratic votes you will need to pass the farm bill.

Well played, it seems, at least at this moment.

Apollo 11--Apogee of White America?

 Watched the documentary film Apollo 11 last night. Seeing it 54 years after the original offered a certain perspective, not to mention color and clarity.

Couldn't help noticing the almost 100 percent white male control room and the almost 100 percent white audience at Cape Canaveral viewing in person.  The film didn't make a point of either, though I'm sure it wasn't by chance the camera passed over one woman in the control room and a couple blacks watching. The film was shot in 1969 with the sensibilities of the time, so I'm guessing it didn't miss much. I'm sure there was a sizeable TV audience of blacks, but few would have had the time and money to travel to the Cape.  I can only guess the feelings of the black watchers; possibly discomfort at being one in a thousand, possibly participating in the sort of nationalistic pride most may have felt, or possibly just enjoying the spectacle.

Apollo 11 was a peculiarly white endeavor; IIRC many black leaders questioned spending the money on space rather than domestic needs. The black participants in the effort were hidden. See Hidden Figures.  So it seemed an white American success, perhaps with a little credit to the German scientists who immigrated to Alabama after WWII. 

In 1969 LBJ had been driven from office, so Tricky Dick got to call the astronauts after their recovery. We'd seen the assassinations of MLK and RFK, and the country was sharply divided.  The immigration laws had been reformed in 1965 but it was too early to see their effect.  We were still on the gold standard and inflation was starting to be a concern. 

I don't know how modern historians place the moonshot in the flow of American life.  I suspect many have considered it a sideshow, an assessment which may be changing as we try to get back to the moon and then to Mars. 

Aging: Learning, Forgetting, Mismatching

 Had to wait at the self-service checkout for the clerk to help another old man, who complained that he had so many cards--I guess he hadn't used the right number for his Safeway loyaltt account.  This ties in with something from the weekend. I can imagine a graphic--two dimensional, though it ought to many dimensions.  Stage one--birth: the baby icon is at one edge of a colored circle, the circle representing all the things about the world which the baby can learn and the color representing the status of the information--current, obsolete, new.  At stage one the whole circle is the same color, since with respect to the baby all the information is currrent.

Stage two--the baby icon has grown, representing the information which has been learned.  Meanwhile the circle has increased in size, with the increase representing new information while a little of the circle has changed color as information becomes obsolete.

Successive stages see a continuation of  these developments:  as time passes the amount of information which can be learned increases, the amount of information the person has learned increases, but as time goes by some of the learned information becomes obsolete.

Fast forward to my 80's: 

• my interest in learning new information and my ability to do so has declined, so the modern world is getting away from me (too many cards)
• the information I've learned is increasingly obsolete.  I know so many things which are of no use now. 
• bottomline--there's mismatch between me and the world, which is increasing.

The Ending of Government Mental Institutions

 Some discussion on twitter about the ending of government mental institutions, the deinstitutonalization movement.  Apparently some believe that President Reagan was responsible, only to be corrected that his actions were as CA governor. 

 I remember the State Hospital in Binghamton, NY, not from personal experience but as a reference point in discussions when growing up.  According to the website I linked to it dated to mid-19th century, was noted for its architecture, and treated alcoholism as a disease. 

I also remember my sister had a paperback of The Snake Pit, the novel on which the award winning film was based (1948).  I think I tried reading it when young; likely one of the books I never finished.

Anyhow, for me the reform movement started in the 40's, with the Snake Pit, then One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962 novel)  followed by the documentary Titicut Follies (1967). 

It seems to have been a case where liberal good intentions and fond hopes for drugs in place of institution were misplaced. Will it be 100 years before we get another effort for reform?

Will, Ford, and Pardons

 George Will's newest column is a review of a new biography of Gerald Ford.  I don't know what Will thought of Nixon and Ford in the 1970s, but today he likes Ford and likes his pardon of Nixon.

Comments on the column don't. IIRC when it happened, I understood the logic and was pleased that Ford's approval rating crashed--I wanted the Democrats to resume their rightful place in the presidency, not realizing Carter's one term would be followed by 3 Republican dinosaurs.

I still don't know what to think now.  Would seeing Nixon on trial have been helpful to the nation? Or would it have further entrenched partisanship? I don't know.

I do know that while Ford seemed a good person, by 1974 I still harbored resentment over his role in getting Justice Fortas to resign.

How Soon I Forget--Debt Ceiling

 Discussing the debt ceiling issue this morning I had completely forgotten that prior negotiations had included a "temporary suspension" of the ceiling in order to have more time to negotiate.

Born Round

 Just read Frank Bruni's memoir on food and his other loves. 

One point of his interest--he goes to Italy as the NYTimes correspondent soon after reaching a turning point in his food obsession which he'd lived with and denied since he was small. So he's very sensitive to Italy and their food ways (his grandparents were from southern Italy).  

Based on his memoir, and partially his analysis, at least circa the late 1990s, Italians enjoyed their food, but eating was wrapped in manners and routines, the servings were smaller and the eating slower. In his American milieu, the cooking was competitive (among his grandmother, aunts, and mother) and the amounts signified prosperity and success.