Most Surprising Factoid of the Day--Africans

"African immigrants in the United States have a higher level of education than all other groups, including white and Asian Americans, staying in school an average of 14.5 years. They have a median household income that is higher than that of black Americans, West Indians and Hispanics."

That's from a piece on their support for Obama in today's Post.

[Update: I suppose there are a number of possible explanations for this: Opportunities in the African countries sending emigrants could be particularly limited for the most educated. The cost of emigrating might be such as to screen out the less educated. Relatively speaking, the US is more attractive to the most highly educated Africans than are other countries which attract immigrants--i.e., Canada for example might attract more than its share of Asians and less than its share of Africans.

We don't know whether they come here into more highly paid slots or, once here, rise more quickly so it's not clear what the data might say about the opportunities to prosper here.

We don't have a feel for the proportions of Africans migrating, do more or less migrate compared to Southeast Asians, for example.

Bottom line: facts are tricky.]

Only Animal Farmers Are Real Farmers

That's a bold claim, sure to tick off all the grain and fiber producers, but read this post from the Life of a Farm blog and you may understand. As he says: " Thing is the chickens don’t take days off."

(He's under contract to raise layers and finding it more work and more tedious than he anticipated. He also complains about the lack of help, neighbors who cheat SSI, and the possible need for immigrant labor.)

As I say, a dairy or poultry farmer is the only real farmer, because animals will drive you to drink. You may work 18 hours a day planting or harvesting grain, but it's not every day. You can get away. Caring for dairy cows or poultry is a job 365 days in a year, with no breaks, no vacation, always chained to the schedule of feeding and watering, milking and collecting eggs. If any farmer writes about traveling or camping, be assured they're either not a real farmer by my lights or they have some gullible relatives.

Two Southern Products I Couldn't Stomach

Grits and Jesse Helms. I ran into both of them at the same. When my boss sent me to NC in 1969 to learn how the agency really worked, I ate breakfast (and probably supper) at a diner near the motel. Of course I got grits with my eggs, without asking, and the Raleigh TV station had Mr. Helms spouting off about dangers to the American way of life from the radicals in Washington and those who would change the southern way of life. Needless to say, I rejected both: tasteless pap for those with no brains. (Although, to be fair, grits and the "Cream of Wheat" I sometimes had as hot cereal growing up weren't that much different. )

Thoughts on the Fourth

I read somewhere the difference between conservatives and liberals is:

• conservatives believe the U.S. was perfect when created, and the job is to preserve it. That, as Powerline posts today, in the words of Calvin Coolidge, the principles of the Declaration of Independence are perfect and final. Period, end discussion.
• liberals believe the U.S. was imperfect and the job is to perfect it. "All men are created equal" may be a noble principle, but it meant "white men" in 1776.
  

I'm on the liberal side. So was Lincoln, whom Powerline also quotes, though he made his point through clever lawyering. "Government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish..." did liberal work in conservative clothing. In the midst of a war redefining "men" as men of any color Lincoln made it seem as if war was preserving the meaning of the Declaration.

The Best Line I Read Today

"“It seems like age and experience do have a role,” Mr. Nagel said in an interview.

From Floyd Norris in the NYTimes reporting a study of whether experienced fund managers did better or worse during the tech bubble.

Big Farming--The Way It Starts

Josh Ruxin writes an op-ed in the Post about Africa's Food Crisis Opportunity--the idea that the food crisis in Africa still presents opportunities for change:

"But subsistence-level farmers who are not reliant on expensive fertilizer or oil-fueled machinery can sell their excess produce at higher prices, which are still less than prices for food that might be trucked or flown in. The resulting boomlet benefits sub-Saharan Africa's small farmers, who cultivate, on average, less than 2 1/2 acres and who can, with appropriate assistance, expand their production to meet increasing demand....

A colleague from Nigeria wrote to me this spring saying that while the cost of fertilizer had increased by 50 percent, the selling price of corn was up by 100 percent. In other words, those productive small farmers who had had access to the increased capital required to obtain fertilizer had doubled their income in a year. "

And this is, in my opinion, how it starts. Someone doubles their income and invests wisely, maybe more land, more fertilizer, better seeds, better equipment. Doesn't go deeply into debt so when prices slump, as they always do, he or she can ride out the storm, pick up some land and be ready to profit by the next rise in prices. Slowly the operation gets bigger, until the farmer makes a mistake, has bad luck, or grows older and less ambitious. As it gets bigger, it tends to specialize. Gradually the farmers get on the "treadmill", as Professor Cochrane called it, the feedback loop of more productivity leading to lower commodity prices and higher land prices, leading to more specialization and more investment, meaning more productivity.

Compost and Manure

You can have one or the other, but not both, not in abundance. That seems to be the lesson I learned in the past, of which I've been reminded by a couple of the organic/gardening blogs I visit. We had a "slop" pail, into which went the vegetable scraps, beet tops, sour milk, etc. After lunch we'd top the pail up with some water and use it to wet down the chicken mash still left in the feeders. The hens would be attracted, both by the wet mash and by the slop, eat a bit more and presumably lay a few more eggs. And also excrete more manure, which dad and I would have to shovel from the house into the manure spreader to spread on the field. (Hen manure is much hotter than cow manure, so it had to be spread much thinner.)

My mother maintained a compost pile outside, under the lilac bush or in her garden, but with the competition from the hens it didn't really accumulate much. (Enough for her to brag about it though--compost in 1950 was just a tad rare in upstate NY.)

As I mentioned, a couple of the sites I visited mentioned the same sort of competition--you can feed vegetable scraps to the pigs, which are omnivores like us, or you can compost, but not both in full measure. (You also need a balance of materials for the compost, which is hard to achieve in ideal measure over the course of the year.) These are some of the little complications of organic gardening.

Transparency

Government Executive reports on a growing movement for transparency in government, particularly in the field of government expenditures. As I commented there, I like it, mostly. EWG has done it to farmers for 12 years and they've mostly survived the experience.

Have I mentioned David Brin's Transparent Society recently? I like it.

I'd extend the idea to many areas. For example, Down to Earth has a post about McNuggets--how McDonald's has some housewives looking at their processes. Why shouldn't McDonalds stick video cameras hooked to the Internet in the places they want us to see, and the places we want to see (as mentioned in the post). Granted, very few people would ever want to watch 50,000 birds eating and sleeping, but PETA might check now and again.

If people can use cameras to watch pregnant cows and babysitters and somewhat senile oldsters, we can use them elsewhere.

Bottled Water; or Michael Pollan Might Be Right

I typically respond negatively to those, like Michael Pollan, who say that food manufacturers have stuffed Americans with high sugar drinks. Don't they realize Americans are independent thinkers not to be led around by the nose?

But then I read a story on bottled water, like the one by Shenkar Vedantam in Monday's Post, "What's Colorless and Tasteless And Smells Like . . . Money?" and I think, maybe they have a point; maybe cola companies do have the power to stuff us with sugar water and make us pay for it.

Giving Hypocrisy a Bad Name

John Tierney at the Times has a post on hypocrisy, taking off from McCain and Obama's reversals of positions to discuss psychologists' studies of hypocrisy. He describes an interesting tidbit--given a situation in which people are hypocrites (although acknowledging option B is fair and A is unfair, they take option A), if you keep their brain busy with another task like remembering numbers, the same people suddenly take the fair option. It's fascinating, but...

I like to think well of people, at least until I run into some road-hogging whippersnapper in a Hummer, so I'd quibble with Tierney's premise. He dings McCain for switching positions on Bush's tax cuts over a period of 7 years or so, and Obama for switching on public financing. But note both politicians are being hypocrites, if they are, over time. And we're all hypocrites over time. Is there a parent with soul so dead, who never to his kid has said, don't ever do X, when buried in his memory is all the X ever done? Forgive the poor try at poetry, but my serious point is that time changes our viewpoint. And our politicians, unlike the subjects of the psychologists studies, are making decisions in time.

• McCain can reasonably say: I opposed the tax cut in the situation in 2001 based on the information I had, in 2008 the situation is different, the future looks different, and my judgment differs.
• And Obama can reasonably say (perhaps with a tad more difficulty but remember I'm a Dem): no one, not even me or my wife, thought I'd be in the situation I'm in today; no one thought I'd have this fundraising base. I made my pledge as a means to an end, reforming our politics. My campaign has been a model for how our politics can change (no lobbyists, no 527's) and this decision is the right one to ensure my success in achieving office.

I think it's fair to accuse politicians of being windbags, of over-certitude, of selling a penny's worth of ointment as a dollar's worth of cure. And they're hypocrites, just as the rest of us are, even Mr. Tierney.