Independence Day

No, I'm not late in celebrating the 4th. Today is the anniversary of the Treaty of Paris, in 1783, by which "the most serene and most potent Prince George the Third, by the grace of God, king of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, defender of the faith, duke of Brunswick and Lunebourg, arch- treasurer and prince elector of the Holy Roman Empire etc." recognized the United States. (Both as a "country" and as "free sovereign and independent states".) Via the National Archives historic document of the day.

It's interesting reading, particularly for a bureaucrat: "his Brittanic Majesty shall with all convenient speed, and without causing any destruction, or carrying away any Negroes or other property of the American inhabitants, withdraw all his armies, garrisons, and fleets from the said United States, and from every post, place, and harbor within the same; leaving in all fortifications, the American artilery that may be therein; and shall also order and cause all archives, records, deeds, and papers [emphasis added] belonging to any of the said states, or their citizens, which in the course of the war may have fallen into the hands of his officers, to be forthwith restored and delivered to the proper states and persons to whom they belong."

I'll pass speedily over the fact that slavery was recognized in our founding document to dwell on the fact that the founders recognized the absolute necessity of paperwork.

Home Schooling and Charter Schools as Nativism Buffer

Reading this from economist David Card on the impact of immigration (via Brad DeLong)

While the monetary value is hard to quantify, existing research suggests that people value neighborhoods and schools with better-educated, higher-income, and non-minority neighbors and schoolmates. Indeed, my reading is that these peer group externalities may be a first-order concern among many urban residents.

An anecdote: the local elementary school has felt the impact of a large population of non-English speaking students. It was one of the first Fairfax schools to be placed on probation. A neighbor, who's raised four kids, didn't like the atmosphere so started home-schooling her younger two. It's possible that the rise of home schooling, and to some extent charter schools, has helped moderate what we used to call "white flight". My neighbor's family stayed in the neighborhood, lending some needed stability. If the choice had been solely the local school or move, they might well have moved. Certainly that's what would have happened in the 1950's-1970's.

You Know You're Old When

MSNBC.com has an article on the worst computer viruses of the last 25 years.

Bias In FICO Scores?

The Post reports that the Federal Reserve has completed a study of possible bias in FICO scores (the most widely used score affecting eligibility for credit):

Critics have questioned the accuracy and fairness of credit-score models, charging that in some cases they are inherently biased against minority groups such as blacks and Hispanics.

After a research effort over several years that focused on three credit-scoring models -- including one created by Federal Reserve staff economists -- the central bank concluded that:

? Credit-score statistical models are not biased against any demographic group and are highly predictive of future payment performance. Lower scores correlate strongly with future delinquencies; higher scores are associated with good payment performance.

? Blacks and Hispanics, on average, "have lower credit scores than non-Hispanic whites and Asians."

? Younger individuals of all demographic groups have lower credit scores on average than older people, in part because credit-scoring models focus on payment histories and length of credit accounts. Younger consumers generally have fewer accounts and shorter payment histories.

? The payment performances of some demographic groups differ from what their numerical scores might suggest. For example, according to the Fed, "blacks, single individuals, individuals residing in lower-income or predominantly minority census tracts show consistently higher incidences of bad performance than would be predicted" by their credit scores. On the other hand, "Asians, married individuals, foreign-born (particularly, recent immigrants), and those residing in higher-income census tracts consistently perform better than predicted" by their credit scores.

Some Medical Bureaucrats Can Help

I run a Google Alert for "bureaucrats". Here's a link to someone with a sense of humor, dealing with medical bureaucracy on a matter of life and death. People are amazing. And so is Quality Management.

Education States

The NY Times had a report on education statistics, including these numbers.

A couple things struck me--in 10 years there will be no majority group in school--whites will be a minority like everyone else. And about 40+ percent of kids qualify under the food lunch program. And 56 percent of college students are women.

Decline Is Everywhere

I almost linked to an article in the Herkimer NY paper about a meeting on the closing of the Herkimer office. But I'm tired of the stories, as important as they are for the people affected. Other things arouse emotion as well--including the timing of the 200th anniversary of the founding of the place, as described in this NYTimes article today. (They picked a date that happens to be Yom Kippur.)

But decline is also found among other organizations than FSA--this piece from the Jewish Forward describes the decline in Buffalo:

In the recent decades since advances in technology and competition from abroad sounded the death knell for the industries that provided employment for the Rust Belt states of the Northeast and the Midwest, states that have lost major parts of their population to the Sun Belt, once-thriving Jewish communities in those regions have seen thousands of members head south and west. The Northeast and Midwest, where 80 percent of American Jewry lived as recently as 1960, now is home to barely half of American Jews, according to the latest National Jewish Population Survey.

For JCCs, synagogues and other communal institutions, this drop in members and in income has meant drastic, often painful, belt-tightening measures: mergers, downsizings and property sales and closures.

“The local Jewish community,” a front-page article in The Buffalo News states, “is adjusting to dramatically reduced numbers.” That means less money for Jewish federation fundraising campaigns, fewer volunteers for synagogues and other organizations, and smaller enrollments in religious schools.

And just recently there was an article on the "Odd Fellows" a fraternal and charitable organization that's composed of old fogeys like me. It's the nature of society to have this ebb--not that it's any consolation to those being washed out by the tide.

Decline of Wonder Bread

LA Times has an article on Wonder Bread--it's closing its local plant. Californians prefer upscale, perhaps more healthy brands. Is there a convergence between French and Americans re: bread?

[The other question inquiring minds want to know: why the hell am I suddenly so interested in food?]

Pigford Perspectives II

Apparently the theory of the original lawsuit is the disproportionate decline in black farmers must be the result of racism. From the EWG's 2004 report:

"In part due to lack of equal access to USDA loans, the number of farms operated by African Americans has declined dramatically over the past 20 years, plummeting from 54,367 in 1982 to just 29,090 in 2002."[My emphasis added.]

I'm not aware of, and can't google up, any reports on the reasons for the decline so there's no way to know whether racism is 99 percent of the cause or some lesser proportion. [Side note: The academic and government researchers I ran across in my casual googling seem usually to ignore race in their analysis. That may be a real bias--seldom asking the question of whether there is a real difference based on race. Or it may just be my incompetence at searching. ]


Let's say the drop in farms is caused as follows:

50 percent due to lack of equal access to USDA credit. A followup question is what caused the lack of access. I'll leave that for other posts.

50 percent due to other causes, such as:

• general trend of declining farm numbers
• smaller farms (i.e., blacks may have had smaller farms to begin with, and smaller farms may have failed more often than large farms)
• less capital (a variant of the "smaller farms" argument)
• poorer land (i.e., when black farmers were acquiring land from 1865 to 1920, they may have been less able to buy the good land)
• less and poorer education (I'm assuming fewer black farmers went to college and perhaps those that did got a poorer education than their white counterparts--would you rather go to Texas A&M or Delta State?)
• bias among the bankers (of course, Farmers Home/FSA was supposed to be the lender of the last resort)
  
• bias among suppliers--the general agribusiness community (might particularly include co-ops, which have been important in farming. When did many white southern co-ops open their doors to blacks?)
  
• poorer location (a variant of the poorer land, but this would consider things like access to railroads and roads to get crops to market, attractiveness to labor, etc.)

After listing all the causes, I'm not willing to rate the USDA/FSA problems as 50 percent of the cause. Are you?

On Reading RightWing Blogs

I do occasionally read right wing blogs. Take this excerpt:

"The central element ... is land ownership. There's nothing more primordially American, more conducive to the spirit of self-reliance and pride that fuels this country's origin myths, than cultivating one's own piece of land. Today more than ever."

A sentiment to warm the cockles of the heart of every libertarian (that's if libertarians actually had a heart).

Unfortunately, the omitted words are "in making urban ag sustainable, according to the Food Project," and the piece is from the green/lefty GRistmill.