National Records Act and Trump

 Jill Lepore has an article in the New Yorker on the Trump administration and official records. It's  pretty good.  For a while I was responsible for records management in ASCS.  This was pre-PC.  In those days "records management" was a component of "paperwork management", which also included "directives" and "forms".

Back then paperwork management had become rather formal, partially perhaps because of the Billie Sol Estes case.  But since then technology seems to have disrupted everything; at least it was well on the way to doing so when I retired.

Justice for Black Farmers Act--First Take

 Successful Farming has a piece discussing this bill, introduced by Sens. Booker, Warren, and Gillibrand. Warren's statement of support is here. The legislative language is here . (I'm not sure the bill has actually been introduced--the draft language doesn't have a number and I can't find it at Congress.gov.) Mother Jones has an article on it.

It includes several reforms and programs, most of which are focused on black farmers (defined as American-born).

The biggest ask is a program to give qualified applicants of up to 160 acres of farmland, representing from $400,000 to $800,000 in value (using Farm Bureau's average farmland value of $4,100) at no cost.

Other provisions seem to oust OGC from civil rights matters, to put additional layer(s) of authority and/or review over the existing civil rights structure and the FSA county committees, and call for an extensive research and statistical work by ERS and NASS. In addition to the provisions on black farmers there are changes relating to packers and stockyards, conservation, and local markets.

There's an "Oversight Board" focused on current and future USDA/FSA operations and an "Equity Commission" focused on historical and structural issues to do a report within 2 years, and a Civil Rights Ombudsman.

I'm still trying to understand everything in this.  Some things which struck me:

• while I don't see anything about the composition of the Oversight Board, the Equity Commission is specified in detail--black farmers, NGO members, and HBCU faculty.
• there's a discrepancy--the title is for "Black Farmers" but some of the language is "socially disadvantaged".
• Alcorn State's Policy Center is written into the bill.  It's headed by Eloris Spight, who seems to have moved from the HR side at NRC to policy before moving to the education world in 2014.

For now, that's what I have. 

The Right and Geography

 In this month someone on the right has:

•  mistaken the country of Georgia for the state of Georgia (tweeting that Georgia only had 3 million people so the number of votes reported for the state showed fraud
• mistaken the state of Washington and the city of Washington, DC (similar tweet to the first)
• mistaken Minnesota ("MN") for Michigan ("MI") as part of a lawsuit submission.
• at Fox, labeled Michigan's Upper Peninsula as Canada.

One might conclude there's a lack of education in geography and/or that speed makes for sloppy work. 

Drones and the Military

 The Armenia-Azerbaijan hostilities have involved extensive and effective use of drones by the Azerbaijanis which caused the Post to see the future of warfare. in this article.

I doubt that DOD will move quickly to adapt weapons and tactics for scenarios where the adversary is using drones against us--it's not a situation we've run into much up to now, so the military bureaucracy is unlikely to have focused on the threat.

I'm reminded of some discussions of the evolution of the submarine and torpedo, where you had "torpedo boats", then "torpedo boat destroyers" which evolve into the WWI-WWII hierarchy of weapons. 

The Problems With Executive Action

 Dylan Mathews has a post at Vox: "10 enormously consequential things Biden can do without the Senate".

He writes: "Pushing the limits of executive authority is sure to provoke legal challenges that the Biden administration could lose, especially with a 6-3 Republican Supreme Court. But even if only half of the options below are implemented and affirmed by the courts, the practical effects would still be hugely significant."

I guess my conservative side is showing.  I know the frustrations of facing a deadlocked Congress, a body which cannot decide what laws to pass. But there are problems in going down this road. 

• successful executive actions can be reversed when a new Republican president comes into office.  We can't assume that Democrats will always control the executive, or that the Republicans will come to accede to Dem actions.   Reversals can mean a frustrated and ineffective bureaucracy: one which will know their work is temporary and built on shifting sands.
• using the executive actions increases the power of SCOTUS, meaning it will become more political and fights over filling vacancies even more heated.

I prefer the longer range option of building support in the country which results in electing majorities in Congress which can pass permanent legislation.  That strategy is the one which Dems used for Obamacare.  In the end, it's better to piecemeal our way to permanent reforms than to become wedded to visions of perfect solutions for which the clock will strike midnight.

Hypothetically--This Is a Messed Up Program

 I graduated from college long before college loan program came into existence, so I've no first-hand experience with it. However, my impression is that it's been a political football as the parties alternate in power.  The Democrats push loans issued directly by the Education Department while the Republicans believe in loans from banks/financial institutions with a federal guarantee. As the program has gone on,  people have made changes to the provisions, including forgiveness of payments under certain conditions.  So you end up with the sort of mish-mash this person finds herself in.  If you follow the thread of responses to her, itbecomes even more confusing than indicated here. 

If, hypothetically, you took out a heap of Stafford and Perkins loans, and then consolidated them, and then the consolidation loans were sold like 5 times, and you qualify for various federal repayment plans but not for the pandemic relief - are those federal or private loans?

— Melissa Johnson, PhD (@Lady_Historian) November 18, 2020

One fallacy of my education in government, as my school called "political science" is that Congress makes decisions and the executive branch administers them.  In reality for some areas it's an ebb and flow of changes making it very hard for the poor bureaucrat to administer.

Deadlocked Senate?--a Prediction

 I strongly doubt the Democrats will be able to win two Senate seats in Georgia in January, thereby deadlocking the Senate at 50/50.

But that's not my real prediction.  My real prediction is, if the Senate is deadlocked, it won't stay that way for the next 2 years.  In other words I'm predicting one of the oldtimers in the Senate will die.  I think the odds are with me--there are a few over 80:  including Feinstein, Grassley, Shelby, Inhofe--Sanders and McConnell will become 80 in the time period, and we know McConnell has balance problems.

Voter Turnout--Hate Versus Love

 Donald Trump boosted his total votes from 63 million in 2016 to 73 million in 2020. His opponent went from 65.8 to 78.9. (2020 totals are preliminary, still a bunch out esp in NY.)

By my calculations Trump's increase was about 16 percent, his opponent's almost 20 percent.  For fun let us attribute all of the Biden increase to people hating Trump (using "hate" as a blanket term) and all of Trump's increase as people loving him (using "love" as a blanket term).

Verdict: Hate is more motivating than love.

Thoughts on Trump's Appeal

 My first thoughts on Trump: 

I don't think commentators are giving Trump enough credit for attracting about 72 million votes. I'd like to see a spreadsheet comparing percentages of eligible voters won over recent history of presidential elections but I'd guess his support is higher than past losers.  (Trump is a loser--I love the sentence.)

It's also true his qualities are likely mostly responsible for Biden's record vote total.  I think I know most down ballot Republican candidates ran slightly ahead of Trump.  If I'd thought about that before Nov. 3 I think I'd have predicted a greater difference. 

Why does Trump have this appeal?  There's the policy issues, most of which I disagree with, but I think most of the appeal is personal.  First, he's a performer.  Ann Althouse persists in seeing him as a comic, as joking in many of his statements, statements which I regard as repulsive and evil.  I have to admit that many of his supporters enjoy his performance.  Second, he connects with the audience. Is that just another way of saying he's a performer?  Perhaps. But what I'm getting at is his ability to merge his persona and the audience together in a shared "we/us".  He's a demagogue, because much of the merging is based on attacking the "others".

{Added later: Just got an appeal from the Virginia Democratic Party noting that Trump increased the turnout in rural areas, which are critical for maintaining Democratic control of the Virginia legislature.]

Do Away With Plane Geometry?

 That's what Kevin Drum proposed.

I remember plane geometry fondly.  I think it was my best subject in high school.  I enjoyed the process of figuring out the logic, the deduction from axioms through a step-by-step process.  Its appeal stayed with me through my job at FSA; I almost always told people to walk me through the process, whatever software or problem we were discussing, step by step.

My teacher was suffering from diabetes. I think he'd come to the Forks district the year before, teaching us algebra I.  He was very good despite his illness, which started to get worse during the next year, the year of geometry, the year when he gradually went blind, though continuing to teach, the year when I weakly agree to provide answers to another student.  He died, I think, that summer.  I still remember that year with pleasure and with shame.