What's Wrong With Old White Men?

Bernstein comments that Trump's cabinet is old, other observers have said they're white, mostly, and mostly men (particularly if you omit what I'd call the "semi-cabinet--EPA, SBA,UN ambassador). It's notable there's little attention to their religious or ethnic diversity; the days when we paid attention to those parameters is long gone.  And everyone assumes they're all heterosexual.

As an old white heterosexual male I see nothing at all wrong with his selections.  :-)  By the same token, I understand why others might justifiably criticize the narrowness of his universe.

Taxing Sugar--Hypocrisy

The Post (Wonkblog) has a piece arguing the merits of taxing sugar, that is sugar instead of soda.

I'm sure one could find in back issues of the Post an attack on USDA's current sugar program, which sets import quotas for foreign sugar, as costing the American consumer millions of dollars in added costs for their sugar.  I'm also sure you won't find the food movement backing the sugar program as an instance in which government programs make Americans healthier.

(Note: I really have no brief for the sugar program; I just note the world is more complicated than advocates realize.)

Our Blinders

Love to pick on economists:

Here's Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution:

"Animal rights will be the big social revolution of the 21st century. Most people have a vague feeling that factory farms aren’t quite ethical."

 I want to point out the blindness--the "most people".  With my background I don't really buy the argument, or maybe it's better to say the issue is more complex for me than the average brown bear. Anyhow, when I read it, I resisted the concept a bit.  But when you think about it--who are the people who Prof. Tabarrok has in his head?  They're likely people like him, members of the urban elite. I venture to say that most members of American society don't think about the ethics of factory farming at all. And I venture to say that most people in foreign countries have no opinion on the issue.

My point is it's easy to slip into a generalization which isn't true, particularly when it's a binary issue: is factory farming ethical or not? IMHO it's more accurate to talk about gradations and percentages: a majority of the urban elite (especially native white elites) who have an opinion would likely have questions about the ethics of factory farming.

Mapspotting: Ithaca and Native Americans

One of the pleasures of being a know-it-all is noticing things the media/experts don't.  These days the Times, the Post, and websites display a lot of data using maps, often at the county level, enabling me to "mapspot".

For example, it's often easy to pick out Ithaca, NY, or rather Tompkins county.  It sits in the center of the state and with the presence of Cornell U. and Ithaca College it often stands out--it's an example of the "big sort", people separating themselves by money, lifestyle, and opinion.

On a darker note, there are counties in the west of North Dakota/South Dakota and around the Four Corners area of Arizona/New Mexico which stick out. Note the Vox maps on various causes and trends of mortality in this piece.  Why--because there are Indian reservations there--Sioux and Navaho.  Watch Longmire.

Trump and LBJ

I'm getting some echoes of LBJ in our current president-elect.  Like Trump, LBJ paid obsessive attention to TV, going so far as to have 3 TV's, one for each network going in his offices.  Like Trump, LBJ did a lot of feinting and faking, trying to build some drama and keep his adversaries off balance. (I'm thinking of his appointments and occasionally on policy.  He kept Hubert Humphrey in suspense for months before confirming his selection as Vice President.)  Like Trump, LBJ didn't relax, he drove himself and his staff relentlessly.  Like Trump, I don't think LBJ had many close friends. Like Trump, LBJ was unfaithful, though unlike Trump he stayed in his marriage.  Like Trump, LBJ didn't conform to the usual norms of gentility and political custom.  Like Trump, LBJ could be volatile and very thin-skinned.

Unlike Trump, LBJ's domestic policies were admirable.

The China Lobby--Traces of History

In the 50's and 60's we had something called the "China Lobby", a group of politicians and lobbyists who had long supported the Chinese Nationalists, before and after their move to the island of Formosa (Taiwan).  They had influence, ensuring the US did not recognize the existence of Communist China.  They tended to be right wing Republicans, although not completely so, and had alliances with hard-liners opposing the USSR, seeing a monolithic communist conspiracy for world domination.

Then Nixon went to China, and recognized the regime.  The China Lobby was aghast--IIRC George Will and William Safire were outraged.  Over time the outrage has diminished, partially because the members of the lobby have died (Madame Chiang Kai-shek, a fascinating woman), partly the passage of time has dulled passions.  But there's always been a group which supports more arms to China and resists initiatives of opening to China.

With Trump's tweets and phone call with the Taiwan president I'm wondering whether the China Lobby is still exerting its influence.  We'll see.

The Results of Ending Fox Hunts in Britain

That's the door of No. 10 Downing Street, according to this article.  
It only takes a few years for the foxes to take over. 

Reached from Kevin Drum's Friday cat blog post by following the link to the Sun.

Founding Fathers and Conflict of Interest

For those who believe in "originalism", a cautionary tale on the conflicts of interest between our first president.

Loving Trump

Just saw the movie "Loving".  Quite good, will be on some Oscar lists, but not up to last year's Spotlight.  That said, this thought struck me:

Richard Loving would have voted for Trump.

Why?  Because he felt powerless to take care of his wife, a feeling shared by many Trump voters.

One Stop Shopping for Government Services

FCW has Steve Kelman's piece on a one-stop shop in China:

Some 20 different agencies are represented in the center. Lots of the work handled involves services for businesses, such as registration and approvals for establishing a new business, and various approvals related to construction. The center also provides a number of citizen services, such as applications for passports and work permits, and various transactions related to health insurance. Many, though not all, of the forms can be completed online. The in-person services are designed for people -- often the older and less-educated -- with questions or who need in-person assistance actually filling out a form.

Back in the 90's I had this sort of thing in the back of my mind.  InfoShare had that dream, and the Osage County office in Kansas was a step along the way.  I was ambivalent about the projects: moving to PC's and the Internet in county offices could only be justified by cost savings--good, which inevitably meant personnel cuts, but that meant a further decline in rural area jobs--not good.  One faint possibility would be a true consolidation of USDA services, where things like Skype (CU-SeeMe back then) could enable one employee to tap the expertise of others located in distant offices but then adding other services.  Problem was, government doesn't have that heavy of an impact on daily lives, particularly in rural areas.  Suppose the service center could handle social security--how many visits do the 2 or 3,000 residents of a rural county make to a distant social security office in a year?  And given the difficulty in getting USDA agencies working together, any further expansion at that time was a pipe dream.