Indoor Skydiving--It's a Thing

From Kottke.  (Using a vertical wind tunnel with transparent walls.)  Soon to be in the Olympics, no doubt.

Two for One Regulation EO

I blogged earlier about Trump's Executive Order on regulations.  Politico has a piece  raising some other questions about the order.  One is whether the President has power to govern the number of regulations--a neat question but one I'm sure lawyers can get around.

Why Small Dairies Vanish, or Turn Organic

From Modern Farmer, talking about a USDA survey of dairy farms:

The data will also be used to study the economy of scale in the dairy industry. Kings says that based on data from the 2010 ARMS, dairies with less than 50 cows had production costs twice that of dairies with 1,000 cows or more. “This cost-size relationship means that large dairies account for an increasing share of milk production and small dairies are going out of business, often as small producers reach retirement,” she says.

Why US May Never Be Majority Minority

Lots of projections that in the next 30 years or so, given present trends, the U.S. will have no majority ethnic/racial group, but instead assorted minorities will form a majority.

My title tries to be provocative, but here's the rationale:

Think of U.S. society as a giant amoeba-like monster, operating in a world of other smaller amoebas.  Occasionally it feeds by absorbing an amoeba.  Once it was the Irish, then the Germans, then the Jews, then the Poles, etc. etc.  Viewed from history, it's a process which does these things:

• ensures the "white" majority stays in the majority.
• gives a minority a chance to become (part of) the majority. Adopt cultural patterns and don't insist too hard on drawing boundaries and you're in.  Look at Jared and Ivanka Kushner.
• leaves a segment of the minority to become the minority. ("Jews" today means something different than it did 70 years ago, as do all the ethnic/racial/religious lines we draw.)

My own prediction, and unfortunately I won't be around, is that cultural changes together with extensive intermarriage will mean that many Asian-Americans, Middle-Eastern-Americans, Latinos, and blacks will become "white" for cultural purposes.  For example, Malia and Sasha Obama are already white, just as many African-Americans say their father was and is.

Nattering Nabobs of Negativism

The title is a blast from the past, from the lips of the only Vice President to be forced from office because of criminal conduct. 

Agnew was mostly a mouthpiece for a gifted speechwriter, but he has achieved political immortality of a kind by so being.  I'm thinking Kellyanne Conway is on her way to joining him in that political Valhalla, over which William Safire presides. It's just two weeks into the administration and already she's given us "alternative facts" and "Bowling Green massacre", two terms with a decent chance of being converted by usage into permanent residence in the political hall of fame.

Trade Is NOT Simple: Vietnam Spinning for China

Lyman Stone tweets, but has a day job, which includes this piece on cotton exports to Vietnam, which are part of a complex web of relationships among cotton-producing country, yarn spinning countries, yarn consuming countries (i.e. China) and multilateral trade agreements. 

Some curious facts:

• spinning yarn and weaving cloth don't necessarily occur in the same country--I wonder why--the one is simpler than the other and easier to outsource? 
• US cotton shipped in bales across the wide Pacific is competitive with cotton grown in India. Our growers are currently more efficient than Indian, so able to handle transport costs?
• China used to have reserves of cotton but are now reducing or eliminating them. Wonder why--moving to less government intervention, if so, why?

Stone's summary paragraph: "If duty-free access for yarn is driving increased spinning in Vietnam, then the China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement could be pushing U.S. cotton exports higher.  Yarn spinning being shifted from producer-countries like India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and to some extent China, into duty-preferred importer countries like Vietnam bodes well for U.S. exports.  Because the China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement does not require that raw cotton inputs be sourced within the area, U.S. exporters are able to derive an indirect benefit from China’s duty-free ASEAN access."

Nixon and Bush Lessons for Democrats

Looking over the next four years, I think Democrats can learn from the history of the past, specifically from Nixon and George HWBush.  Two lesson to be specific:

• we need to be united, going into 2018 and 2020 together, rather than divided, as we were by the Vietnam War and the liberalization of the party. We should avoid the sort of split which resulted in the McGovern fiasco.
• we need to focus on dividing the Republicans, splitting the old "Never-Trump" faction off.  Ideally we want Trump to support primary challenges to establishment Republicans in 2018, and to face his own challenger, as Bush did with Buchanan in 1992.

Calm Down II

Don Kettl says to calm down.  

I've commented to Dan Drezner as follows:

"I think you all are too easily dismissing Murphy's Law. We Dems have a good motive to see machiavellian scheming--the more intelligent our adversaries the greater our victory when we triumph, as we surely must. No--simple screwups trying to do too much and please a boss who has a gnat's attention span will explain it all."

 And I said elsewhere that I was reminded of the Clinton administration--their kerfuffles with gays in the military and getting a female Attorney General. Like Clinton, Trump doesn't have a chief of staff cracking the whip.  The question is, how long will it take before Trump brings in a "savior" (like David Gergen was supposed to be for Clinton) and who will it be--Christie?

Two for One Order

The President has issued his order on regulations--do away with two regulations each time you do a new one.  I discussed it previously here and argued against a similar proposal of Senator Warner's back in 2010.  Cass Sunstein back in November argued it might work in limited cases.  He ends:

"In theory, “one in, two out” is silly, and in practice it’s likely to be a bit of a mess. It’s hardly the most sensible approach to regulatory reform. But with a little flexibility, and a lot of determination, executive branch officials might be able to make it work."

The two for one is the headline grabber, but the order also mandates "zero incremental costs" for regulations.  OMB is given this authority:

  The Director shall provide the heads of agencies with guidance on the implementation of this section.  Such guidance shall address, among other things, processes for standardizing the measurement and estimation of regulatory costs; standards for determining what qualifies as new and offsetting regulations; standards for determining the costs of existing regulations that are considered for elimination; processes for accounting for costs in different fiscal years; methods to oversee the issuance of rules with costs offset by savings at different times or different agencies; and emergencies and other circumstances that might justify individual waivers of the requirements of this section.  The Director shall consider phasing in and updating these requirements.

The zero incremental costs creates another dimension to evaluate regulations by, possibly a conflicting one.

My own two cents: by the time OMB gets through writing and rewriting its guidance to the agencies and the agencies get through with their meetings to understand the guidance and train their people, this executive order will have cost the government millions of dollars.

Stepping on a Stick on a Stone

Sometimes you can walk along and step on a stick, or a board, which happens to be in a seesaw position, sitting on a pivot point.  Your foot goes down on the board, and a short time later the other end of the board flies up and hits you in the face.  Our federal legal system sometimes operates that way in history.

Prof Somin says Trump's sanctuary cities EO is unconstitutional.  One of the ironies of history in our federal system is the way decisions spring back to strike people.  In this case a Supreme Court decision on part of Obamacare which liberals disliked may come back to support liberals.  See Somin's post for the details.  This is another example of how federalism works--James Madison would be happy.

Another outcome of federalism is the promotion of hypocrisy--politicians may be on one side of a federalism issue while in power, the other side when not in power.