The Reverse of the "Perfect Storm" and Immigration

A year ago I would have predicted immigration would be a major issue in the 2008 elections. Instead, to my surprise, it's not. The Republicans have chosen as their candidate the man most friendly, or least adverse, to immigration (speaking loosely). What we may have this year is something that reaffirms the idea that God looks out for idiots and the United States: first, the housing bubble has popped, meaning construction is down, reducing an attraction for immigrants, legal and illegal. Second, the housing bubble has popped, meaning local governments will be strapped for money and won't want to fund anti-illegal immigrant drives and business people may start to miss the market immigrants provided. Third, it's probably in everyone's interest (Obama, Clinton, McCain) to soft peddle immigration as an issue--none of them can win on it.

Bottom line, we may have a breathing space this year and next during which people of good will may be able to find a compromise.


Or maybe I'm as wrong now as I was a year ago--seeing as Prince William County just raided their reserve fund to set up an anti-illegal immigration program.
theadverse neighborhoods may miss their absence, creating a countervailing influence to the

Farm Bill Status

Still up in the air--these links provide updates: Keith Good at Farm Policy and
Congressional Quarterly here.

The issue is how much more money to spend over "baseline" (i.e, what would be spent assuming extension of current provisions) and, under the pay-as-you-go rules the Dems reinstated, how to find the money for the increase (i.e., what games to play and what taxes to raise).

Immigration and Langley Park

The Post had an interesting article on Latino immigration to Langley Park, MD. (Not Takoma Park, the lefty granola crunching Berkeley east, but Langley. ) It's an interesting contrast to my area of Reston, and to Manassas Park where my mother-in-law lives. Housing prices appear to have followed a similar trajectory, but so far they haven't fallen as far as in VA.

One issue that came up in comments on my letter to the Post--"tipping points". The economist Thomas Schelling won a Nobel, partially for his analysis of how a neighborhood can change from white to black (the issue in 1970) simply because of a small, but wide-spread preference for neighbors similar to yourself. Reading between the lines, rental units will tip much faster and easier than owned units, which makes sense. People like me, who resist change in their personal lives, don't have to be that tolerant or liberal; they just have to be sticks-in-the-mud to slow the tipping process, or even make it stop.

Arthur Schlesinger and Journal

Just completed reading Arthur Schlesinger's Journals, 1952-2000. I'd recommend the book for anyone who lived through the period with an interest in politics, at least liberal politics, or in the American social/political establishment.

As a country boy, I'm amazed by the extent to which social and political circles overlapped, often through the beds of the "pretty girls" for whom Schlesinger had a weakness. Shocking. A handful of reflections sparked by the book:

• some women attack Hillary Clinton for staying with her errant husband. This book reminds one that Happy Rockefeller stayed with Nelson, Lady Bird with Lyndon, Eleanor with FDR, Jackie with JFK, etc.
• speaking of Hillary--Arthur is very impressed with her, intelligence, charm, and humor, finding the humor unexpected. Of course the book ends when she had just won the Senate seat, but she, and Kay Bailey Hutcheson, are the two women politicians he praises.
• while a liberal, civil rights wasn't high on his mind in the 50's. The politician for whom he wrote many speeches, Adlai Stevenson, is quoted as arguing the Negroes should be quiet and not demonstrate.
• he has some self-knowledge, enough to be interesting, but he remained a Kennedy die-hard, without any real reflection on the dynamics of the dynasty.
  
• his reflections on the relationship between history and reality are interesting, but too few. Towards the end he takes a rather cynical tack, saying people use history to justify what they want to do.

Most of all, it's the gossip that's interesting, and often frightening when you remember that these are people of power.

French Aren't Human--Withholding Taxes

Someone, I think Milton Friedman, wrote that his worst mistake was helping the IRS to switch to income tax withholding during WWII. The theory was that humans mind big bites--pay your taxes yearly and you'll resist the growth of government. Take it out of each pay check and the left can cheerily persuade humans to agree to higher and higher taxes.

However, according to this post, apparently the theory doesn't work with the French, who are notoriously highly-taxed (as well as highly-sexed), so either they aren't human or the economics has a flaw.

Security Clearance Process

If I remember correctly, Al Gore was proud of his efforts on security clearances. Of course, the Bushies are even more proud. This Government Executive article describes the results of 14 years of reengineering and improvement.

Though I often have some sympathy for failures in government, I don't have much for this. The point is that, once the process was consolidated (which I think Gore's effort did--in DOD), whoever manages it should have the users by the short hairs. All you need is agreement from the President--by date X only security clearances processed the way I want are effective. So you ought to be able to force all the agencies to use your process. That's a big big hurdle jumped. The other problem is getting a process that works, but if you do something incremental, that can be done.

Payments to Dukes and Princes? Not Us

This story hasn't appeared on the EU farm program blog, but apparently the EU has its own entrenched recipients of farm subsidy payments, including the odd duke and prince (read Mark Twain for a take on dukes and princes--he thought they were odd). They've dropped the plan to cap payments.

Ginseng Marketing Order

Under a marketing order, growers of a crop get together to establish standards and do other good things that ordinarily the laws ensuring competition would prohibit. But who knew that ginseng had a marketing order? See here.

FSA's GIS Replacement

Not sure how I feel about this announcement in FCW (Federal computer week):

"The Agriculture Department is seeking information about methods for delivering, disseminating and integrating large geospatial datasets for its Farm Service Agency and other users. USDA is interested in commercial software and/or online mapping interface services that could replace FSA's current systems."

On the one hand, I hope they do better and faster than the System/36 replacement project(s). It's also interesting it's described as strictly FSA--NRCS is not mentioned.

On the other hand, they're pushing centralization. That's an idea which I approve of as a bureaucrat, but resist as a retiree thinking of the small towns of rural America.

As usual, I'm ambivalent.

If Foodies and USDA Are Right

Then Mexicans are due to get fatter and Americans are due to get slimmer over the next 10 years. From an Agweb summary of the USDA's baseline projections over the next 10 years:

"Duties and quantitative restraints on sugar and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) trade between the United States and Mexico ended on January 1, 2008. This results in increased use of HFCS by Mexico’s beverage industry and, consequently, larger sugar exports from Mexico to the United States. • The production value of U.S. horticultural crops is projected to grow by more than 3 percent annually over the next decade, with consumption of horticultural products continuing to rise. Imports play an important role in domestic supply during the winter and, increasingly, during other times of the year, providing U.S. consumers with a larger variety of horticultural products."