Lots of attention being devoted to the state of our democracy and the nation Poor, declining and heading to possible civil war seem to be common analyses.
I'm reading the new Jonathan Alter bio of Jimmy Carter, who cites the opinion of a British visitor in 1971. At that time, with the Vietnam war going and racial problems stark and the boomer generation not trusting anyone over 30, the outlook seemed grim. I remember it well.
NYTimes reports on the Paycheck Protection Program, which it seems black business owners were more likely to get loans from online lenders than local banks. Although there's been publicity and concern about artificial intelligence algorithms being biased, apparently in these cases they may be less biased than the banks. (The bias in algorithms would result from training the AI app using data which was produced by biased non-AI systems, like training an app to assess beauty by using pictures of whites.)
While the report described by the Times is on black businesses, it easily relates to black farmers, including som issues which I may have touched on in the past. Back in the dark ages of the New Deal the precursors of the Farmers Home Administration were authorized to fill a financing gap, to provide loans to farmers who were credit-worthy but had been unable to get loans from local banks. Even before then the Farm Credit system was set up in the Wilson administration for the same purpose.
The Congressional Research Service has an overview of the farm credit situation.
As a liberal and retired bureaucrat I support government programs.
But I need to recognize their downside, which relates to the "last mile". When a government sets up a program, it needs to make a connection with the customer/client/citizen who will benefit or whose conduct will be regulated. I've written before about our problems with making that connection. But I've been writing from a government-centric viewpoint, saying that for example the Treasury has a hard time getting funds to support renters and prevent evictions out.
What about the perspecitve from the "man on the street", as we used to say? There's many problems--off the top of my head some are:
New York City is going to phase out its schools for gifted and talented students. That stimulates discussion on social media, discussion which is largely among the educated classes who might lean Democratic.
It strikes me as an instance where the elite discussion unconsciously disses rural areas. In such areas the schools are smaller and the opportunity to do enhance instruction for gifted and talented students is constrained. So to rural ears the discussion seems tone-deaf and irrelevant.
I gather from this post in the FSA Facebook Group that the issue of complying with the federal vaccine mandate is controversial. I ran across a post somewhere today which indicated the actual process of implementing the mandate was going to take a while.
I wonder whether with the delta surge declining will the administration actually go through with it. It sounds as if even when implemented there would be a drawn-out process for penalizing anyone who didn't get vaccinated, so it may become a dead letter. We'll see. In the meantime there's a lot of angst out there, and it may be creating conflict in small offices where there's strongly held divergent opinions.
We who support the Biden's position need to remember the human costs of how it's implemented.
Volkh Conspiracy has a guest poster writing on the "nondelegation doctrine", the idea that Congress should grant power to the executive only with strict guidelines.
For anyone interested but too lazy to go to the Reason magaizine, here's my comment:
The TV weather this morning showed rain moving into southern California. One of the blogs I follow is Foothill Agrarian, written by parttime sheep rancher and extension service employee. His most recent post was on fall, his favorite season, and the complicated planning he and his partner needed to do to plan for the upcoming year. The main complication was/is the prospect of rain or continued drought which impacts the forage available which impacts the health of ewes which impacts the lamb crop...etc. etc. So the prospect of rain, though I'm not certain exactly where in California he's located, likely cheered him.
Meanwhile, a few weeks ago another farmer I follow on twitter was concerned over the inability to harvest and store rain, given the rains which were dominating the weather in NY. I remember the years on the farm when we faced that problem, meaning we had to buy hay during the winter and/or buy molasses to put on the hay which we got in the barn only after it had been rained on (cows didn't like to eat such hay without the addition of molasses).
Back in the days when ASCS operated a disaster payment program IIRC the yields we used would be determined by averaging past years' yields, but dropping the bad years. That to me reflected farmer optimism--the normal yield was always better than the straight historic average of yields. Now I see it as a reflection of what humans do: use motivated reasoning to support their desired outcome.
A rule of thumb: whenever there's money on the table, or "new frontiers" of opportunity, there's people who will exploit the opportunity.
Recent examples:
Apparently R. Kelly had a big entourage. Other big shots, stars in various endeavors, have their own entourages, including the former guy.
People have been selling fake covid-19 vaccination certificates.
Several reports of people scamming the various pandemic-related stimulus programs.
The former guy pushed the envelope of governmental laws and norms across the board. That included the use of the Commodity Credit Corporation authority in ways which I think were unprecedented. He mostly escaped criticism and legal challenges because there was no one, no group whose interest would be served. Farm groups were receiving dollars. Conservatives were blind to Trump's efforts. Members of Congress responded to the interests of their constituents. Good government groups mostly aren't interested or informed about agriculture and USDA.
It seems the Biden administration is following in Trump's footsteps, judging by their announcement of using CCC for what to me seems like a grab bag of goodies.
“Major policy decisions”? Do we know what that means? There’s a standard of economic impact of $100 million for regulations–but that’s been unchanged since it was first adopted in the 1970s in relation to inflation concerns, not policy.
Arguable the USDA/Trump decision to spend billions from the Commodity Credit Corporation was a major policy decision. But it wasn’t particularly controversial, because it was too esoteric and there were no significant opposing voices to make a fuss. https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/01/21/trump-tariff-aid-to-farmers-cost-more-than-us-nuclear-forces/?sh=4fe7a4966c50
I suspect the operational definition is an issue about which there’s a big fight between the parties and/or interest groups. I think the reality is such issues don’t get resolved in legislation, just kicked down the road to the faceless bureaucrats who can be blamed if they screw up and/or offend people.