Big Boom Versus Slow and Stealthy

 I think there's a spectrum of political change/reform, perhaps along more than one dimension, but at least one--scope.

For example, Biden's forgiveness of student loans is big in scope.  I'd guess it's one of the biggest changes in the student loan program in recent years.  (IIRC the Obama administration did some significant changes, moving more to a government-administered program.)

LBJ's Medicare/Medicaid program was very big in scope.  In the years since there have been smaller changes: the biggest I recall now is GWB's addition of Medicare option D--the drug coverage. Previously there was GHWB's catastrophic insurance, which got repealed rather quickly.

But it seems most changes in programs occur with smaller scope and less attention--the slow and steathy path. 

Forgiving Student Loans

 When I see the President's announcement, my Calvinism kicks in, and I'm reminded of a quote, possibly apocryphal, from Calvin Coolidge during a controversy about the repayment of our loans to the Allies in WWI which in turn was dependent on Germany's ability and willingess to pay war reparations: "they hired the money, didn't they"? 

The financing of my own college education was in a world long ago and far away, so it's irrelevant to today's issues. (Though it turns out the student loan program started in 1958 as part of our response to Sputnik.)

When I met my wife she was still burdened by her college loans, which she finally paid off.

As I tweeted, I'm in agreement with Kevin Drum's point of yesterday--what about the future: has the loan program been changed/reformed/revamped so that the moral basis for forgiving current loans won't apply in the future? As I said, my inner Calvinism is at play--we need to treat current students and future students equitably, or at least with our eyes wide open that we're being inequitable.

(The last point reminds of the lasting complaint which resulted from the mid-80's changes to Social Security--I forget the details but a small category felt they were treated unfairly.

On IRS and Taxes

 Matt Yglesias has a discussion here.  I like it.

A note on a related issue: as I understand the Inflation Reduction Act it raises much of its revenue by taking really big corporations on their profits as shown by their public accounting, what they show to their stockholders.  I've always resisted the idea that people could have two different sets of accounts, one for stockholders, one for the tax collector. I understand--whenever we mess with the tax code to allow special deductions in order to push something we like (such as investing in low-income areas of a city, etc), we deviate from my ideal.

Arms Dealings

 Got the book "Thundersticks" from the library. It's a history of the arms trade with Native Americans from the initial contact through the nineteenth century.

I've only read the first couple chapters--it seems a bit too scholarly for my current ability to focus.  But a couple things struck me:

• the pattern of arms dealing in the seventeenth century is similar to the pattern in modern times: countries/companies with advanced technology sell weapons to those who don't have the capability to produce their own.  (Natives weren't able to produce their own weapons or gunpowder, while they could make their own bullets if they could obtain the lead.) And the sales are used to influence international/intertribal politics, just as the Soviet Union/Russia sold weapons to India and the US sells to Israel and Saudi Arabia.
• what was surprising was how the natives financed their purchases.  Furs--beaver skins and deer skins, I knew.  But capturing slaves from other tribes for resale to colonists, possibly for export to the Caribbean--that was new. 

Predicting 2024 Politics and Death

 Lots of speculation already about politics in 2024, particularly the presidential race and control of Congress.

I'll venture a prediction of my own.  The Grim Reaper will have a say. We have an old President, an old fomer guy, and a bunch of old people in Congress.  Between now and November 2024 one or more of these geezers is going to kick the can which will significantly change the odds of an important outcome.

Earl Butz Was Wrong (on Cover)

 When my first boss in ASCS sent me to NC for a month to get a taste what state and county offices did, and farmer fieldmen (as district directors were called then), I spent a week in Halifax county IIRC.  The CED was sharp. It was fall so operations were slower. One day he took me out into the field, perhaps doing a spot check, don't remember.  But we stopped at a sawmill.  It had a machine, a lathe perhaps, for shaving a thin layer of wood from a rotating log. Fascinating, as I'd never seen it before.  I think the wood shavings were cut into strips which were then woven into wooden baskets.

We weren't there to look at the operation, but to get one of the workers to sign up for cost-sharing under the then Agricultural Conservation Program.  What was the practice?  A cover crop.   (Cover crops were, I think, particularly popular in the South, where there had been a lot of erosion of worn-out cotton land.)

ACP was established in the New Deal, but by 1969 it was under attack.  Republicans, led by Secretary of Agriculture Butz, argued that some, or perhaps all of the practices, increased the productivity of farms, and, therefore the farmers could and should find the practices worthwhile enough to finance and install on their own, without the carrot of a government cost-share. They also argued that items such as liming were the result of lobbying by the industry. 

There was a lot of back and forth over the fate of ACP between the Nixon administration and Congress, where the House was controlled by Democrats throughout. In the end the program was cut back, both by reducing appropriations and by inflation, and the cover crop practice and liming were eliminated. 

IMO the Butz expectation that rational self-interest would be sufficient to perpetuate widespread cover crops was disproved by the results. 

IRS Doing Your Tax Return?

 I like this part of the IRA, but I'm dubious that H&RBlock and Intuit will ever be beaten, at least not without a drastic change in American politics.

Inflation Reduction Act and Farm Debt (Ignored)

 The Times has a table describing what's in the Inflation Reduction Act.  Somehow though they miss the two provisions for farmers on farm debt relief. 

Secretary Vilsack has a press release praising the act.  He too ignores the farm debt provisions.

Ancestry Confirms the Obvious

 Ancestry.com analyzes saliva samples from their customers to provide information back to them.  In my case they've been reasonably accurate on ancestry (German and Scots-Irish, mostly) with no particular results of interest on potential health concerns. Today they added an assessment of risk-taking.  I'm shocked, shocked to learn than I'm more risk-adverse than 60 percent of the population.  

Personally, I'd rate myself as more adverse than 90 percent.

Kellyanne Conway

 Much to the disgust of my wife I'm reading Kellyanne Conway's book, Here's the Deal.  It's quite readable.  It would be one hundred pages shorter if all the people's names were excised.  She's obviously a people person, a networker.

Two points of interest so far (just at 2016 now):

• she and her husband bought a condo in Trump Tower after they married. So far she's mentioned twice that it was on the 80th floor. That didn't sound right to me, so a little google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_World_Tower. The article says it is 72 floors, but the elevator panels list 90.  Incidentally, it was designed with "virtuosity and grandeur", according to its website.
• her father and both grandfathers all left their wives and had children with their mistresses, which the lay psyschologist will immediately use to explain her tolerance for the former guy.