Farmland Preservation

 Modern Farmer has an upbeat review of an early farmland preservation initiative on Long Island, dating to 1974.  Farmers sell off the development rights to their land, getting lower assessment and lower taxes.

It sounds good, but I wonder about the economics.  There's reference to a 23 acre farm. It may have been growing potatoes in the 1970's; Long Island's glacial soil was great for potatoes. But with changing farming economics and inflation, I'm guessing today's farmer needs to switch to vegetables and specialty crops to make things work.  Perhaps tomorrow the land will grow greenhouse or vertical farming.  How long can the deal last?

Ethnicity/Racial Data

 ASCS/FSA has had a history of trying to identify its producers as to their race and/or ethnicity.  It seems to me the problem is you can't require citizens to say what they are or consider themselves to be; you can't except for the Census Bureau.

According to this FEMA may be required to collect such data, if the new law passes. As there's more and more written about the disparate impacts of various programs agencies face that problem more.  IMO simply asking, whether orally or by form, is offputting--most Americans I suspect would react: what the hell business is it of yours? So you end up with correct information grudgingly given and an annoyed citizen, or incorrect information, or blank, which puts you into the position of eyeballing.

Packing Eggs in Modern Ireland

In the last century we packed eggs by hand. Now it's different. (Also, tractors have power steering.)

 

Check out Noel and Kate operating our newish packing machine. After 16 years of packing by hand we invested in a more efficient way to pack leaving more time to concentrate on bird welfare and farm managementper. ⁦@butlersorganics⁩ #LEAN #farmlife #eggs #organic #shopready pic.twitter.com/m5HN3bprMn

— IrelandsFarmers (@IrelandsFarmers) May 7, 2022

The Complexities of Cotton

 Virginia Postrel has a substack article, touching on changes in cotton production from 1920s (her grandfather was in the trade) to now. 

I commented on a couple aspects. 

Originalism and Lived Experience

 Just a gripe here. If I understand "originalism" as a way to interpret the Constitution, it says that the Founding Fathers agreed on a document which had one meaning. (No doubt that exaggerates and distorts but it's close enough for my purposes.)

Now I've been in a lot of meetings over the years, some of which involve a group of people coming to an agreement, others involving people trying to understand the meaning of one or more speakers.  I think it's fair to say that in most cases the people who were trying to agree or who were being talked to came away from the event with somewhat different understandings.  In most cases the context was such that the differences made no long-term differences, but the principle is the same.  No group of 39 to 55 people would agree on how to apply the document resulting from their meeting. 

Original intent is a myth, an "ideal type" as some  used to say, which doesn't exist in real life.

Tradition, Tradition...

 Says Justice Alito (who apparently loves Fiddler on the Roof) 

I write that after reading this New Yorker interview with Neal Katyal, who describes Alito's draft decision as rooting our rights in tradition.

A separate point--lots of speculation about who leaked the opinion and why.  It seems to me everyone is making up a story to fit their preconceptions--like Ginni Thomas being the leaker, because she's the woman we liberals love to hate.

Mission Creep in Ukraine

I blogged before about the difficulty of finding a way to a ceasefire in Ukraine.  Since then I think I see signs of mission creep.  

Ukraine seems to be doing much better in resisting Russia than we anticipated.  Ukraine is the underdog being bullied. We're seeing unusual unanimity in Europe about the war.  All these factors can feed into a certain euphoria/animal enthusiasm about the war.  

But I still don't see an obvious middle ground.  Ukraine and its supporters obviously want to repel Russia troops and oust them from their 2022 conquests; ideally they'd like to reverse the Russian gains of 2014. Ukraine also wants compensation for the damage Russia has been inflicting on civilians, housing, infrastructure as well as justice for the war crimes they allege.  Finally they want to remove Russia's ability to invade in the future. 

IMHO the chance Putin would agree to that agenda is nil. So for Ukraine to achieve its war aims they need a palace revolution in Russia.  Unlikely.  Think of Germany at the end of WWI and the "stab in the back". 

Put the Dog Out of Its Misery

 I'm not usually this harsh, but I've never ever been impressed by USA.gov.

As the spokesman in this FCW article says: 

""Right now, one of the things that happens is that people go to USA.gov and then we refer people, but it would be ideal, I think … for people to just be able to get stuff done, right there on USA.gov,"

I've always found Google to be a better search engine.  I don't see the point of spending money to improve the site.  It will be a long time before we have one access point for government that works well.  I've only to look at farmers.gov, which tries to be an access point for USDA agencies serving the farmer.  The problem is that it reproduces the silos of USDA.

Changing Views of Left and Right--Possible Images

 What sort of image do we have of our society and the left and right?  Often I think it's as if society is there, a platform or a landscape, while left and right act over time, moving one way or another. 

But is that a good image. After all society is people, as are left and right, so society can move as well. 

What's an alternative image: perhaps a crowd, some wearing red, some wearing blue, the majority, the less politically involved, wearing gray.  So you take a snapshot in 1960 of the crowd and you see the reds and blues scattered through the crowd. Take another snapshot today and you see the reds clustered together, the blues clustered-they've both become more cohesive. 

But that image doesn't reflect  a society's movement. Maybe an image is Hawaii, where the continental plate moves over a volcanic hot spot, which creates the various island.  In this image "society" would be all the people, the economy, laws, etc. So society could change because of innovations in technology, in the rest of the world etc.  Meanwhile there would be two "hot spots"; each representing a temperament which seems to be common in people at large: one conservative, one liberal.

That covers the fact there always seems to be a left and a right, a conservative and a liberal faction. And it allows for the fact that conservatives in the 1950's could be strong supporters of segregation, while conservatives today are opposed to racial segregation.

Don't know, maybe I need to think more.

Changing Views of Right and Left--Personal

Twitter activity on how left and right have changed, as here:

The thing about @NateSilver538’s argument here is that a Musk-owned Twitter would subsequently attract conservatives who have leaned way way WAY to the right, thereby refuting Musk’s original inductive generalization. pic.twitter.com/nhuJMnDF41

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) April 28, 2022

I don't know about the national picture.  I do know I've always considered myself on the moderate left and my views have changed sometimes:

• In the 1950's liberals were still supporting public power, the path marked out by the New Deal in the TVA and Bonneville power. That's no longer the case.
• In the 1950's/60's liberals thought that ending legal  segregation and establishing things like civilian review boards would be sufficient.  No longer the case.
• In the 1970s I was called for a month's jury duty in DC.  For one case I was successful in getting off on the basis I couldn't be impartial in a marijuana possession case.  Despite that, I've never been high on legalizing pot, though by now I'm a reluctant supporter.
• Liberals used to have no opinions on legalized gambling; now I guess they support it but it's not a top issue and I still dislike it. 
• Back in the 1950's/60's liberals supported decolonization and were hot for foreign aid. 
• In the 1990's many liberals supported the "Washington consensus" on global free trade.  I still do, but that seems to put me in the minority.

To be continued, maybe.