Historical Ironies: War on Poverty and the South

As I remember the War on Poverty, it started with people (like Robert Kennedy and LBJ) paying attention to West Virginia and Mississippi,  finding examples of extreme hunger among the rural poor and the elderly.  Then there was a famous book on the subject, was it called Poverty in America--no, it was "The Other America" by Michael Harrington.

So LBJ picked up the War on Poverty as part of his Great Society.  Medicaid and Medicare were part of it, probably the most enduring part, but food stamps, which had been revived as a pilot program under Kennedy also got expanded.

LBJ famously said that the Civil Rights Aid had delivered the South to the Republicans. (A quote which may be too good to be true* but certainly represents reasonable fears at the time.)

What I want to note is that the results of the War on Poverty, plus other factors, like spending money on defense and space, the expansion of air conditioning, etc. have been good for the South.  This map shows that the biggest share of improvements in poverty since 1960 has been in the South.  Perhaps most important for the South has been the reduction of the civil rights issue: race relations are no longer a Southern problem, they're a national problem.

Sequestration Will Hit Farm Program Payments

According to UofIll extension, sequestration may reduce payments by around 7 percent.

Frankly I'm surprised sequestration has lasted this long.  Gramm-Rudman-Hollings in the 1980's lasted for about 3 years, but only really bit one year--like 4.6 percent reductions.  

RIP: Wheat in Saudi Arabia

According to this Vox piece, Saudi Arabia has gone from the sixth largest exporter of wheat to zero bushels, period, in 30 years or so.

Funny Paragraph for Bears

Joel Achenbach on Yosemite and advice given on handling bears [i.e, walk in groups of three]

Except this is all absurd. For starters, three is not a natural human grouping. Two is a natural human grouping. Maybe you could persuade a child to be the third in your party, but I’m not sure how that makes sense in Grizzly Country. Unless the child was a kind of designated offering to the monster.

As a student of John McPhee, Joel writes well and can be funny, though this also proves that liberals love the country.

German Countryside Versus US

From a Vox/Grist piece on high speed rail:

"On Amtrak’s Northeast corridor route, you can spend seven hours traveling from Boston to Washington, DC, without ever passing a farm. Each city’s suburbs bleed into the next. When leaving Berlin, on the other hand, in less than half an hour you’re whisked from the capital’s center to cornfields..."

Farmers Don't Get No Respect

Brad DeLong has a list of six things people in the year 3000 will remember about the last 300 years and the next 300 year:

"Universal literacy.

1. Artificial birth control.
2. The coming of the Replicator--or close enough--for foodstuffs and for things made out of metal, wood, plastic, and sound.
3. The coming of information technology in whatever its flowering will be.
4. The death of global distance.
5. Plus whatever disasters lurk at the bottom of not the Pandoran but the Promethean Box of 1700-2300.

His list is in response to another economist with a different list.

Neither list credits the importance of the various agricultural revolutions, both as enabling the explosion of population and the expansion of non-subsistence labor, the ability to spend time on things other than feeding and clothing oneself..  Agriculture these days is such a small part of the economy it doesn't get much attention in public discussions.

Cops and the 80/20 Rule

Looks like the 80/20 rule operates with respect to the police.  In other words, most cops do their jobs without major conflict with the citizens, some don't.  That's based on Moskos "Cop in the Hood" blog post on NYC statistics.

Government Web Sites

Finally there's some metrics on government web sites.  The analytics site shows the number of visitors to the top government web sites.  I'm surprised to see the main USDA site among the most popular (after weather, SSA, immigration, IRS, etc.) It's a small step forward.

TR Was Six, How Old Is DT?

It was said of Theodore Roosevelt that one must remember he was about six.

From McCullough on PBS:

One of his friends, the English diplomat Cecil Spring Rice, once said, "The thing you have to remember about the President is he's about six." Woodrow Wilson called him a "great big boy". He went off later in life, after leaving the White House, on a very dangerous, very risky adventure in South America, and when they asked him why he was doing it at his age, he said, "It's my last chance to be a boy again."

From Kevin Drum, towards the end of a post on Donald Trump's unfavorable comments about Ms Fiorina's looks:

You wouldn't be surprised to hear a first-grader get all giggly over childish insults about his teacher, would you? That's what first graders do. At age 69, that's still what Donald Trump does too.

EU Agriculture Subsidies Inadequate?

The EU has more subsidies for agriculture than the US, but the Ulster dairy farmers believe they're not enough. Ulster exports its milk and the strong pound/weak euro relationship hurts, as does the EU embargo on Russia over Ukraine.  It's a complicated world out there.