Reading "Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight" which is good, better for anyone who didn't live through the Johnson administration and read her memoir.
Just reached June 4, 1968, when RFK was assassinated, following the killing of MLK in Memphis. The author quotes an excerpt from a speech by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the next day (who had campaigned for RFK) in which he said: "America is a land of violent people, with a violent history..." Seems to fit today.
I tweeted this today: "Is it strange that the NRA's good man with a gun guarding a school or church never requires an AR-15, but John Doe defending his home has an absolute right to an AR-15?"
Not sure that expresses my intent--in other words: shouldn't the good guys have weapons at least as good as possible assailants? It's obvious to me that an AR-15 or similar weapon is not for self-defense.
The "big sort" is the label applied to the increasing polarization between Democrats and Republicans, where the differences within the party have diminished over the last 50 years and the differences between the parties have increased.
I've read theories about the sort, most of which I've forgotten by now. I've likely posted before on it before. A couple speculations:
I'm not addicted to porn, not sexual porn. I'm trying to avoid being addicted to what I call "war porn", which I consider some of the reporting from war fronts to be. In some ways it's similar to sportscasters/writers who are "homers". It's seductive to go all in on supporting one party in a conflict, but too often when you look back on them they turn out to be mistakes.
Stumbled on a factoid in the footnotes to a book I'm reading: "The Weirdest People in the World"--about which more later. The footnote ties to a mention of what economists call "credence goods". Thoreau originated a famous quote, now used by lawyers: "a trout in the milk" which the piece at the link explains.
The context is that buffalo milk in markets in an Indian city was tested and found to be adulterated by the addition of varying amounts of water, from 3 percent to more than 40 percent. But consumers couldn't distinguish the adulteration by taste (hence a credence good).
In the US milk, at least cows milk, is tested for quality, such as fat content. Thoreau's observation--that finding a trout in the milk would be sure proof the milk had been watered--shows this wasn't always the case in the U.S.
As far as I can tell, based on an extensive 10 minutes of research, there are no standards for plant-based milk--all the attention seems to be devoted to the issue of whether calling it "milk" is misleading.
I'd guess that milk testing evolved well before the idea of requiring nutritional labels on food, and as long as plant-based milks have such labels it removes any impetus for a testing regime comparable to that for milk.
I've used this term before, writing about government. A slightly different focus this time: local government, schools, libraries, etc.
In theory these days there's lots more data available, in that data is mostly digital and most digital data can be accessed. In the case of Ipswich, MA the 21st century has seen a gap develop: in the 20th century the town published a "Town Report", a big volume containing a series of annual reports by each individual unit of town government, and there were a lot of them. In the 20th century there were local newspapers which would run stories on important local issues, interviews with candidates for local office, etc.
Now in the 21st century the Town Report is no more; there's a website. The newspapers are now online and much slimmed down. The town has a website and a Facebook page. Someone curious and adept can search out a lot of information, sometimes by links to reports by Massachusetts agencies, or from what seems to be a outfit providing business services. But for the average citizen it's all confusing: just a lot of web pages and reports.
In other words there's no human intermediary, no institution which has developed over the ages to interpret the work of government for the average citizen. Why is that:
Reading a biography of Lady Bird Johnson. LBJ had gall bladder surgery, meaning an "enormous scar" which he showed off to the media and almost 2 weeks in the hospital.
My wife had surgery maybe 15 years ago, laparoscopic, and three days in the hospital (one pre-op because it wasn't scheduled), and today apparently it can be out-patient.
I saw a reference to this issue last week in connection with moving military supplies into Ukraine. IIRC there might have been a military rationale for having different track gauges (distance between rails) between countries--making it impossible for an armored train or supply trains to cross borders as part of an invasion.
Here's a quote from a Politico piece on the nominee for NATO command:
He has also thrown himself into more intricate issues such as launching studies of railroad gauges and transportation infrastructure in Eastern Europe, which often still use Warsaw Pact standards, in an effort to smooth the movement of NATO troops and materiel.
Different gauges were a big problem in the early days of railroading, including during the Civil War.
Saw a tweet suggesting that people who are scared by the shortages in formula are stocking up whenever they can. That repeats an old pattern we saw in the 70's during the oil embargos where you'd try to fill your tank when it got down to half full; also the pattern during the early days of the pandemic where people stocked up on toilet paper. Such behavior in panics is selfish, and all too human. I challenge anyone to do differently.
Politico has a piece on USDA's challenges with rural development. Some excerpts:
“We were in the community earlier today of 130 people,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in an interview last month as he toured the Delta region of Mississippi. “The mayor had zero full-time employees. There is no way that community could ever qualify or ever know how to qualify. Those are the communities we need to help.”
The Agriculture Department oversees the largest set of programs focused on rural communities — roughly 40 — but there are more than 400 programs operating across the federal government
The wide swath of programs and the influx of money from Congress is intensifying long-standing concerns about how well federal money to help rural communities is getting to its intended recipients. In response, the White House has tasked the Agriculture Department with coordinating a pilot program, the Rural Partners Network, to help ensure the funding reaches the poorest and most underserved communities in the country. It is launching in five states and with three Native American tribes this spring to start, with plans to expand to another five, as well as Native Alaskan communities, in August.
Rural Development staffing, specifically, has decreased by a third over the last decade, while their portfolio of responsibilities has increased by 80 percent, according to Justin Maxson, deputy undersecretary for rural development. In addition, 47 percent of Rural Development staff are eligible to retire.
This is Not Invented Here run rampant. Why do we have so many rural development programs--because everyone, in Congress and think tanks, everyone, thinks they have a better idea than what exists. So instead of modifying and improving an existing program, the incentive is to add a brand spanking new program you can boast to your constituents about, hopefully get reelected.
Ignore the fact that it will taken the bureaucracy time to get up to speed on the program, even with the dubious assumption that what you've written into law makes some sort of sense. So over decades of Congress doing their NIH thing, the poor bureaucrat has to try to understand 40 programs, most of which, like ships, have attracted barnacles of interpretation. And remember, the more time spent in trying to understand 40 programs means less time getting out and explaining them to the part-time unpaid mayor of a town with no stoplight, and helping her complete the forms and follow the process, much less implement a successful grant in the way Congress envisioned, long ago and far away.
So after years of this, and multiple attempts to reform and restructure the bureaucracy we come up with a new idea. We need a new bureaucracy--the old one is too old, tired, disillusioned, and waiting to retire. So instead of fixing those problems we'll create a new structure, where we can start from scratch and do it right. We'll call it a pilot program--if it works we can expand it. Will we, the sponsors be around years later to assess its results and kill it, fix it, or expand it?
ROTFLMAO
