Days of Hope

Reading this NYTimes piece from 8 years ago sparks memory of another era.  Briefly, Obama held, or spoke at, dinners honoring John McCain and Colin Powell on January 19, 2009.  (I was prompted to do a search by a tweet comparing photos of Trump's crowd at the Lincoln Memorial and Obama's.)

Loving Hidden Figures?

I've now seen both Loving and Hidden Figures. I enjoyed the latter more, I think more highly of the first.

Why?  Hidden Figures has Hollywood touches.  More significantly, I lived through the space race and a number of things struck me as off, though in fairness I may simply be showing my ignorance.  Loving on the other hand covers the same time period, but I claim less familiarity with the context. It seems realistic, as Manchester by the Sea is realistic, but Hidden Figures less so.

On the other hand, I find Hidden Figures to be more interesting.  In some ways it's the other side of the coin from what seems to be the standard modern criticism of liberal government during the New Deal and later.  When you combine government and new technology, there are chances for change I think are less present in business.  Unfortunately, often the advances aren't sustained.  I suspect the African-American women in NASA who changed from "computers" to "feeding" the IBM 7090 computer were not the tip of a significantly growing programming force.

Trump and Agriculture

Trump's got problems with agriculture.

Not only is he unable to find a Hispanic woman from the upper Midwest who worked for Earl Butz to appoint as Secretary [full disclosure--that was stolen from someone's tweet).

Not only do his announced policies result in a stronger dollar, which is harmful to our export markets, and field crop agriculture depends heavily on exports.

But his promises on immigration threaten to cut into the labor supply for big farms.

Trump's Effectiveness

Steve Kelman at FCW suggests Trump may be effective.  His post boils down to the idea that Trump can bully major players (lobbyists, companies, etc.) to do what he wants or to not oppose him.

It's a good point. As I remember Richard Neustadt's Presidential Power, the key is for the President to be able to persuade political players.  Bullying is effective.  JFK bullied steelmakers; LBJ bullied members of Congress (see the "Johnson treatment" video). Trump is a great bully.

The question is how long it can last.

Trump's Approval Worse Than Obama's Ever Was

I think this statement is true.  The link says Trump's rating is 37 percent, while Obama's lowest was 38 percent.

I'm sure the conservative bloggers (Powerline, I'm thinking of you) who made much of Obama's unpopularity will note Trump's as well. 

Unique Identity: the American Solution

Some countries, like Estonia and Burkina Faso, try to assign a unique identifier to each citizen.

Others, like the U.S., don't.  Instead we have workarounds.  One of the latest which has comet to my attention is the Food and Nutrition Service's "Electronic Disqualified Recipient System (eDRS).  This seems to be a file of people who have been disqualified for food stamps (aka SNAP) because of fraud.  FNS is now notifying the public it will furnish the file to each of the states so they can verify SNAP recipients against the file.

One might consider this to be somewhat similar to the "do not fly" list, where civil liberties people protest the lack of procedures for challenging the contents.  But it seems likely from this bit in the MD manual that there is a process for determining fraud:

Fraud overpayments. Consider cases suspected of fraud to be client error overpayments until the court or an Administrative Disqualification Hearing (ADH) makes a determination of fraud. Consider an overpayment in any month in which a client files a false report timely and this results in an overpayment to be a client error overpayment. This applies even if there is an agency error in the same month, unless the agency caused the client's failure to report.

The Most Powerful Force in Washington

According to former intelligence chief Dennis Blair:

"There is no more powerful force in Washington than, “What if this comes out somehow and I was found not to have done my utmost?”

 That's from a [Vox ]   Atlantic interview, on the Trump dossier. Quite interesting--bottomline, not much government agencies could have done with it, since it relates to an American.  Need enough evidence of a crime to get a warrant.

It reminds me of the old days of the Washington Post Federal page, which used to have a column highlighting Fed screwups.

But maybe the real most powerful force in Washington is the reality described in the last paragraph:

"I would just give you one of Blair’s Laws developed over the years: If there is a choice in explaining a government action between a Machiavellian, clever, ingenious plot to achieve that result and sort of blind, bumbling, well-meant incompetence, choose number two all the time.

[Corrected source]

Complications of Organic Farming

Extension has a piece where they analyzed the phosphorus and potassium added to an organic farm (since 1985) and the adverse effects of excess P and K.

Perhaps I'm too skeptical of the food movement but I suspect some of the adherents believe that "natural" equates to "easy".  After all, if you don't have to hassle with herbicides and pesticides and just rely on Mother Nature how difficult could farming be?  But as shown in the piece, if you want to maximize what you produce you're faced with the problem of analyzing and adjusting your inputs.

What Could Go 1 Million Revolutions Per Minute?

A paper toy/centrifuge.  See Kottke.

Sharing Agricultural Data and the Rewards Thereof

Here's a DTN/Progressive Farmer piece on software packages, "real estate robots" to evaluate farmland, particularly its value.

"The beauty of the services is that they can help you assess a potential rental farm's crop and yield history, protest your land taxes, look for comparable sales, gauge real-time property values, or identify who owns the farm you covet -- all from the comfort of your personal computer.

By logging onto these free sites, you know boundaries on every parcel, what economic rental rates are and which farm is owned by a brother and sister in Florida, Sherrick said.

Meanwhile precision agriculture is building data on fields.  And somehow I think there's still a prohibition on FSA releasing some crop data outside USDA.