Rich Democrats

I'm unsettled by the trends noted in this Bloomberg piece: specifically Democrats are becoming richer.  It's good that we've been giving money through ActBlue to the various campaigns and party organizations, but I became a Democrat back in the day when the party was a coalition of unions, ethnic groupts, and a smallish group of "eggheads", as they were famously known in the 1950's.

Now Democrats are a bit richer than Republicans, at least by some measures.  Apparently the Republicans still have the business class, the car dealers, insurance agents, small business types, but the Democrats are supported by the eggheads' grandchildren, college-educated and many with graduate degrees, plus minority groups.  A couple of my concerns: 

• there can be a disconnect in interests between the two.  For example, the rich Dems in the Northeast want to remove the limit on deductibility of state and local taxes which was part of Trump's tax cut law. 
• And all too often there's a lot of NIMBYism among the rich, when additional development would increase the supply of affordable housing.

Two Reasons Why Bigger Farms Survive Better

 Two recent pieces showed the advantages of bigger farms:

1. the development of new and better equipment.  Buying, maintaining, and operating new equipment is expensive, whether it's the change from horses to tractors as my father and more experienced, or today's change from manual labor to fancy robotics, as in the robotic milking machines or the robotic harvesting machines. See this piece.  
2. changing operations to respond to risks in the environment, whether by diversification as my father and mother added poultry to their small diary farm; paying for insurance against weather disasters or acts of God or against sicknesses and accidents (farming is a risky occupation); adding irrigation, or whatever. In the case of modern dairy farming, it seems being big enough to have an accountant, or at least someone specialized in strategy, at least according to this piece.

Risk management

MacArthur Foundation Discovers Heir Property

 Via Ann Althouse, the MacArthur Foundation awarded a fellowship to a law prof working on heirs property issues.

One of the things which always bugged me about the Pigford litigation was the failure by the USDA, the DOJ, and the plaintiffs to consider the effects of factors other than discrimination.  Unfortunately the original suit was filed before Google because there was some scattered recognition by scholars that dying intestate with heirs property was a significant factor, but it never was considered in the suit. Since the Pigford suits have been settled there's been a lot more recognition and research, along with provisions in the farm bill. 

What Gets a Member of Congress Reelected?

 It's certainly not ensuring that the IRS has enough funding and authority to do a good job of collecting taxes.  

See this report.  It's issued by  the House Budget Committee and these are its members.

[Updated: Annie Lowrey at the Atlantic has a relevant article.]

Immigrant Remittances

 The Post has an article on reverse emigration; the pandemic forcing migrants who lost their jobs to return home. What I found interesting was the diagrams showing the volume and direction of remittance flows. Mexico and India were big recipients and the US and UAE big sources. 

I remember in the late 50's and 60's the left was very concerned about the volume of foreign aid Western governments needed to provide to the new governments of the Third World managing their new independence from the old colonialist powers. That was a big big issue in those days.   Decolonialism is about as forgotten these days as the Cold War.  For a long while it seemed that the effort was doomed to failure.

Without much notice, perhaps dating back to the immigration reform in the US in 1965 and OPEC oil embargo in the 1970's, emigration grew and so did the remittances back home. Remittance flows reached over $500 billion in 2018, according to the World Bank. In  comparison foreign aid was $140 billion.

I may be getting somewhat conservative as I get older, but I take this as pointing to the power of individual decisions, market driven even, more power than progressive's belief in the ability of rational government to direct the course of human affairs.  It's a reminder, not conclusive.

Violence in Politics

 A survey has shown that more Americans believe violence in politics is sometimes permissible.

I think the survey is flawed, as surveys often are. In this case there's no definition of what violence is--are we talking about a demonstration resulting in broken windows, or broken bones, or a revolution.

In the broad sense if we believe in classic American history, in which the American Revolution became a light to the world, wehave to concede a place for violence.

A Letter from the President

 USDA and the administration are catching flak because of this:

The Agriculture Department last week began mandating that millions of boxes of surplus food for needy families include a letter from President Donald Trump claiming credit for the program.

 I'm trying but failing to remember somewhat of a parallel. Secretary Bergland signed a letter which we sent out to farmers, perhaps to all active producers associated with a farm.  This was, I think, in 1980, an election year.  The subject was something related to crop insurance.  I don't remember whether it was base on legislation or a policy decision, perhaps an expansion of the insurance program..  I do remember ASCS had been running a test of selling crop insurance, because Roy Cozart, who became DASCO when the Reagan administration came in, was working on putting FCIC directives into the ASCS system. That test was a failure.

IIRC we career bureaucrats, and possibly Roy, who was career but with political pull, raised an eyebrow on it. The differences between then and now: Jimmy Carter didn't sign the letter and I remember the content as being more informative and less propagandistic than the current letter.

No Federal Money for Tobacco, Except in Pandemic

 In 2004 when Congress provided for the ending of the tobacco program, they included a blanket provision that no CCC money could go to tobacco growers.

That was fine, except when things change.  It's 2020, an election year, and North Carolina is a battleground state, and tobacco is still important to the state, and the pandemic hit.  So USDA will provide up to $100 million to tobacco growers from the second pandemic law (CARES Act), but they'll do it bypassing CCC.   All this from here.

USDA ended most of its tobacco reporting shortly after the program was ended, but I did find it in the crop report--NC grows about half the US acreage--150,000 acres in 2018.  (Got there from a hit on a CDC publication. ) That's about a third of what we grew in 2000 and about a tenth of what China grows now.

I Feel Good

Didn't watch the debate last night, so didn't waste 90 minutes of my remaining lifespan. 

Our Schizoid History-I

 Someday I may write more on this, but here's a placeholder: Throughout our history white America has had a schizoid attitude towards slavery, possibly an attitude also found in England and elsewhere.

• on the one hand slavery is bad, the worst thing possible.  It's what Americans feared, or at least said they feared from British rule.  You can see it in the pamphlets leading up to the Revolution, and you can see it in our national anthem.  (Britain's "Rule Britannia" also claims "Britons will never be slaves" in its second line.)
• on the other hand, of course, slavery is legal in some places until 1865.