Ethics Training for White House Staff

One little factoid caught my attention which now becomes relevant: on the Sunday after Trump's inauguration the White House staff spent the afternoon getting ethics training (and probably other routine training).  These sorts of required training sessions were, when I was employed, a pain in the rear.  After all, I was honest, didn't discriminate based on race or disability, sex or age, etc. etc.  I confess I sometimes failed to attend them, using some excuse or other.

I'm now wondering whether Kellyanne Conway, the gift who keeps on giving, attended the Sunday session or whether, like me, she thought herself too good for it, thus leading into her apparent violation of ethics standards?

RIP: Hans Rosling

An article discussing him here.

In my younger days world poverty was a big issue:  could Europe and the US ensure the Third World developed fast enough, overtaking the "Population Bomb", the title of a popular book in 1968 and The Limits of Growth by the Club of Rome.  Such books inculcated a mindset which I still haven't overcome (nor, I think, have most other people), as was confirmed for me by a recent quiz on world economic statistics.  Anyhow, Rosling was very effective in publicizing the great improvements in world living conditions.  He will be missed.

Dealing With Congress, Dealing With Constituents

The Congressional Management Foundation is out with advice to Congresspeople on how to deal with the influx of phone calls and emails.  Emily Ellsworth is out with advice on how to call Congress.

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.