Cleaning Files and Voter Suppression

Jennifer Rubin in the Post cites a Brennan Center report on voter list purges. The report emphasizes that counties which are no longer required to pre-clear changes in their electoral operations under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act have increased their purge rates (roughly from 8 percent to 10 percent a year).

Rubin is concerned. 

I'm not, likely because I had some experience with the problems of maintaining lists in the past.  The bottom line: it's difficult to keep a list of name and addresses up to date because there's really no cost, no push to identify errors.  An example: one of my past employees resigned from ASCS relatively quickly--IIRC her husband in another agency decided to take an early out and they decided to move to Florida.  So her exit process was rather hurried and incomplete.  After I retired I would occasionally search the online USDA employee directory, just to see who still worked there.  For about 10 years, I'd still find Jane's name in the phone directory.

The way FSA counties were supposed to update their name and address list was to do an address check (not the right terminology) requested with USPS once a year..  I'm sure some didn't do it, and it wouldn't have been fool proof.  I gather that some purging of voter lists done differently, bouncing a voter file against another  database.  The problem there is using names to match. One of my employees noted her home county had a lot of people named "Johnson".

Although the color coding of the report is poor, some of the higher ranking states in purge rates are Maine, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin.  In some states (Virginia, Indiana, Oklahoma, Wisconsin) the rates among counties are very similar; in other states (Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi) the rates vary widely among counties.

Without knowing the process being used to purge the files and the history of past purges at the county level, I think it's dangerous to draw general conclusions.  As a good liberal I am, of course, a bit suspicious of the actions of those counties which used to be covered by Section 5.  But I don't think the Brennan Center proved any wrongdoing. 

A final consideration: purging voter rolls isn't very important IMHO--having a dead or moved voter on list offends my bureaucratic sensibility and it wastes computer storage, but is very unlikely to open the door for any voting fraud

The End of City Newspapers?

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution has a post showing the decline in circulation of big city newspapers over the last 17 years.  Some papers have fallen from 500,000+ to 50,000- !!

I knew the newspaper industry had been hit by craigslist and online news, but hadn't realized how deeply newspaper staffs had been cut.  It's bad because papers had been a countervailing force against local problems.  Some innovations may be replacing that function in part, but not totally.

My Political Preferences for President

I've written on this blog that I support Amy Klobuchar for 2020. [Note: I started writing this before the Tuesday debate.]

I remember 1972, when George McGovern was the Democratic candidate.  He had good positions, with which I agreed. But he was tagged as supporting "amnesty, abortion, and acid", in other words supporting the far left. His "demogrant" of $1,000 per citizen was also far out, though I think Sen Booker has a similar proposal.  Though I voted for him, I would have preferred a more moderate candidate, like Muskie or Humphrey, as more likely to give Nixon a fight.

In general I don't have principled objections to many of the proposals on the left.  Put them into legislative form, design good bureaucratic structures to implement them, and see if you can get enough support from the center and right to pass the legislation.  Implicit in that sentence is the idea that the plans of Warren and other candidates can't be enacted or implemented.

I'm pleased that Buttigieg last night pointed out the problems of getting proposals through the Senate.  Even if we get the four seats we need for majority control, our margin will depend on Sens. Manchin, Sinema, Jones, King, Warner, et. al., none of whom are very liberal.  So here's my preferences:

1. someone reasonably sure of beating Trump
2. someone who will have positive coattails in AZ, CO, AL, KY, KS, NC, etc.
3. someone who won't hurt Senate candidates.

It's way too early to know who will meet my preferences.

How Food Waste Happens

Watching DC's channel Four News.  (4 pm, 7/12/2020)Just had a consumer segment reporting on a test of having a supermarket deliver produce.  Bottom line, not good.  Berries mush, apples bruised, avocado not organic.

Agreement by the anchors that picking produce was personal, so such problems were big issues.

The program had no discussion of food waste, but it revealed why food waste happens--we pick the best out of the bin, and leave the worst, meaning the worst get tossed.

Fraud in the Farm

Farmers are no better or worse than other humans--that's my position and I'm sticking to it.

What's important, I believe, is structuring institutions so there's "countervailing power"--give anyone some power, you need to find another person whose interest is countering that power.

In the case of agencies, that's typically the inspector general, including the auditors, the fraud hot lines, and the whistleblowers.  I'm not sure those checks and balances are sufficient, but they can work, as in this instance of a tobacco farmer in Kentucky defrauding crop insurance.

MFP II

Farm Policy blog has a post on the announcement of signup for MFP II

If I'm correct, CCC may be getting close to exhausting its borrowing authority by the end of MFP II, requiring Congress to replenish it.

The Down and Dirty Dairy People

My mother always celebrated the goodness of farmers, particularly dairy and poultry farmers. Se would be disappointed at the shenanigans described in this thread.

Alright, today’s the open show and all these cows are ready to compete. Figured now’s as good a time as any to do the sequel to my last thread. This time: A Study in Dairy Infighting. pic.twitter.com/DIzwtNm42o

— 😇💖😈 (@songlin221) July 27, 2019

Electric Airplanes and Electric Motorcycles

This article discusses the developments in electric aircraft.  I had no idea they were being worked on.

Noertker and his team at the Los Angeles-based startup Ampaire are developing first-generation electric aircraft — and they’re far from the only ones. Something on the order of 170 companies have joined what Noertker calls an electric aircraft “arms race.” Several made a splash at the Paris Air Show a couple weeks back. 

I wonder though. Yesterday while I was in the garden a motorcycle roared down Reston Avenue.  I'd assume that doing an electric motorcycle would be very easy compared to an electric airplance.  However, my cynical take is that the roar of the cycle is 90 percent of the value of the vehicle.

So, a modest prediction: development and sales of electric airplanes will advance faster than electric motorcycles.

Will Autonomous Cars Save Parking Spaces in the City?

It's assumed the answer to my question is "yes"--some recent articles arguing for changing zoning requirements in the city to reduce the number of parking spaces required.

I'm not so sure.  As long as people commute from the suburbs to the city for their jobs, it seems to me parking is going to be a problem.  Yes, in some cases I can imagine a Reston commuter to DC getting a car at 7 for a 30 minute drive to DC, the car then returning to Reston to pick up another commuter at 8 for another 30 minute drive.  But then it's going to need to be parked until the evening.  So if the two individuals were each driving solo into the city and parking now, that would reduce the number of parking spots needed.  But that's a special pattern

Granted, you can imagine with autonomous cars and a drive sharing app, we could have much more flexible drive sharing so the number of people in the car rises from 1 to 2 or more on average.  And there likely will be realignment of jobs and homes based on the availability of autonomous cars.

My bottom line: the change requires people to change their habits, meaning it's going to take a while before the impact on parking spaces is felt. 

A Circuitous Route to Farm Survival--Cather, Stephens, and Somerby

Among the books in our house when I was growing up were three or four by Willa Cather, including My Antonia..  I've read it several times, but unlike some people I know, my wife for one, I don't have a great memory for the contents of what I've read.

Bob Somerby has his blog, The Daily Howler, which I follow.  He's often repetitive and usually idiosyncratic, predictably criticizing journalism and liberal pieties, although from a liberal background.  (He was a roommate of Al Gore and Tommy Lee Jones at Harvard who has never forgiven some journalists for their criticism of Gore.  Also taught school in Baltimore for years, leading to sharp criticism of educational panaceas and the misuse of statistics.)

Yesterday he wrote a piece picking up on a Brett Stephens op-ed in the Times, in which Stephens uses My Antonia to discuss immigration.  The book is based on Cather's childhood, spent in Nebraska among immigrant families, mostly Czech, with the central character the "Antonia" of the title. It's a rich picture of immigrant and farm life on the Nebraska plains which I recommend. I also recommend both the Stephens piece and the Somerby piece.

Somerby has a quote from the book, which reads in part:

"There was a curious social situation in Black Hawk [the local market town] All the young men felt the attraction of the fine, well-set-up country girls who had come to town to earn a living, and, in nearly every case, to help the father struggle out of debt, or to make it possible for the younger children of the family to go to school..

What I'd point out is it's the 1880's, not now, and farmers are being supported by off-farm income! Most people don't realize that most American farmers do rely on off-farm income today.   Usually, when that's discussed, it's treated as a revelation and an indicator of how bad the farm economy is. But maybe it's time to reconsider.  (BTW, back in the day most FSA clerks (program assistants) were the daughters and/or wives of farmers, or former farmers.)  I think what's going on is the same logic as my father used when he notoriously came home and told my mother she was going to have a flock of chickens (mom held that grudge until she died).  The logic--diversification reduces risk.  That's true whether you're talking investments in stocks and bonds, or agriculture. Hens and dairy have different economic cycles. But an even better diversification is a nice steady income in town, whether it's 1880 or 2019.