On Assimilation of Immigrants

Tom Brokaw got himself in trouble this weekend by comments on immigration.

When people talk about assimilation of immigrants, I think of two things:

• examples of immigrants to America who have not "assimilated", at least if defined as speaking English and abandoning their language of origin:  the Pennsylvania "Dutch", aka Amish and some related communities, and some Hasidic Jewish communities, along with Native American tribes, Cajuns (I think), etc.  
• Switzerland.  A long time democracy with at least  3 definite language communities.

So my message is relax:  have faith in American soft power and its ability slowly to permeate the norms of people living here, as well as those living elsewhere.

Rules and Regulations: Ms Rao

The Times had an article on the Trump administration problems with the Administrative Procedure Act.  It seems the courts have dinged the administration a number of times for not following the act, not providing for notice and opportunities for public comment on policy changes and not doing good enough analysis of policy alternatives to support the decision.

I didn't have a great regard for the act during my bureaucratic days--it was a pain.  A pain in particular because mostly there was no one to present an opposing view.  Most "regulatory" agencies have two or more sides interested in their decisions: should the agency be strict or lenient in writing regulations.  But ASCS/FSA was giving out money.  While there were groups like CATO or AEI who disputed the whole basis of many/most of the farm programs, they didn't usually involve themselves in the regulations, just trying to make their case to Congress and the administration.  There were issues: most notably payment limitation and sodbuster/swampbuster/conservation compliance where you'd find significant interest, but even those didn't compare to the hot issues before the regulatory agencies.

One thing the article misses is the role of OMB.  Basically the writer says Trump administration appointees to agencies were either ignorant of the requirements of the APA or rushed their process.  That's true enough, but OMB does review regulations through its OIRA. Who is the head of the office? Neomi Rao  Who is Ms Rao--the Trump nominee to sit on the DC Circuit Court, the court which reviews challenges to agency actions.

McConnell's Gift to KY Farmers: Hemp Price Support Loans to Follow?

Mitch McConnell will face the electorate in 2020.  Kentucky has announced 1000+ farmers have been given licenses to grow hemp. That might help Mitch in his primary in 2020 since he's closely identified with getting the approval for hemp. But the farmers are planning to grow 42,000 acres of hemp, which strikes me as possibly threatening a hemp surplus. (To compare, KY may have about 4,000 tobacco farmers and something under 100,000 acres of tobacco.)

(I don't know, but I don't think anyone else does either.  We don't know how big the demand will be, how well the farmers will do in growing hemp, how good the processing facilities will be. The Rural Blog post I link to mentions CBD oil.  I had the impression that CBD oil came from marijuana, not hemp.  I found this assertion though: ">BD is one of 60 chemicals known as cannabinoids that are specific to cannabis plants. The CBD that we use in our CBD hemp oil tinctures is made from industrial hemp, a non-psychoactive derivative of cannabis that contains insignificant traces of THC. Industrial hemp products are legal nationwide and contain less than 0.3% THC.")

So I wonder how long it will be before hemp farmers find the need for and the political clout to get price support loans incorporated in farm legislation?

20 Years of Amazon

Was just logged into my Amazon account and noticed it says I've been a customer since 1998.  The company was founded in 1994, so I was a relatively early customer, but nothing notable.

I remember reading investment advice from some guru of the time.  Essentially he said one way to choose stocks was to buy those you used.  That would have been good advice.  I could have had a fortune now had I invested in Amazon when my first purchase was satisfactory.

But I didn't, never have invested in it, just paid it a bunch of money over the years.

As you get older you know not to dwell on opportunities you missed.  That's life.

FSA Employees Turn Out To Be Essential?

USDA has decided to recall 9500 FSA employees beginning Jan 24 to provide services.  Chris Clayton reported this on twitter and here's an article.

Apparently all field offices will open (not clear on DC and KCMO) and will handle most, but not all, program activities, including MFP applications, the deadline for which has been extended. 

The Interplay of Tech and Behavior

Peter Moskos has an interesting post at his blog.  In New York City if a policeman answers a 911 call for a person who's waiting for an ambulance she has to  enter the person's data into her phone which results in a check of the database for outstanding warrants.  Moskos argues that's wrong and bad: people will associate EMTs with law enforcement and avoid calling for help.

Towards the end he notes a separate issue--in Baltimore every time the police stopped someone, they ran a check for outstanding warrants.  In NYC, they don't.  Moskos traces the difference to a difference in technology: apparently in NYC multiple precincts share a radio band; in Baltimore each precinct has its own band.  So, as an economist would predict, there's rationing of a scarce resource in NYC but not in Baltimore.

Interpreting Human Facial Expressions

I may have written about this before.

Humans are very good at reading other people.  At least scientists say we are, and we're eager to believe it.

For years I was sure that when I grinned, it was rather like Hugh Grant's smile: bashful and attractive, expressing good feelings.

Then I went to therapy.  Early on my therapist blew away my illusions: my smile came across as unpleasantly supercilious.  I came to realize that underlying my smile was nervous tension about how the social interaction.  At least some of the therapy group were unable identify the insecurity beneath the expression.

Bottom line: I don't know how common it is to have such a disjunction between what a person is feeling and what people perceive.

Watergate Reporting and Now

Josh Marshall at TPM has, I believe, noted that reporting on Watergate had its problems.  There were news reports which were correct, there were news reports which were wrong, reports which were incredible at the time and subsequently borne out, and all sorts of variations in between.  Mostly the administration denied the reports, launching ad hominem attacks on both the reporters and the sources.  Some of the denials turned out to be well-founded, but most of the denials and the deniers lost credibility as time went back.

History can teach many lessons; one of which is events move at their own pace and sometimes patience is required to know the outcome.

LBJ's Biggest Mistake: Vietnam or Fortas?

Was in a discussion this morning on Supreme Court confirmations, which caused me to remember one of LBJ's biggest mistakes. Briefly, without checking my facts, Earl Warren decided to retire in 1968 as Chief Justice. 

LBJ decided on a cute doubleplay--promote his attorney and longtime friend, Abe Fortas, from Associate Justice to Chief, and put Texan Homer Thornberry in to replace Fortas.  In my memory, LBJ could likely have gotten a different person confirmed as chief but Fortas was a bridge too far.  Not only was he a liberal justice, but he had always been an adviser to LBJ, something he continued as a Justice.  (Still not publicly known, he had a yearly retainer from Louis Wolfson, a wheeler-dealer of dubious reputation who had been convicted in 1967.) 

In 1968 LBJ had lost most of the clout he used to have, and people (senators) were tired of him.  So Fortas was not confirmed, meaning no vacancy for Thornberry to fill.  The next year Fortas was forced to resign over the Wolfson retainer, meaning Nixon could nominate and get confirmed the Minnesota Twins: Burger (as Chief) and Blackmun.

The bottom line: had LBJ paid more attention to ethics, he never would have appointed Fortas and continued using him as an adviser. And with better judgment he would have replaced Warren with a moderately liberal justice. Although Blackmun evolved into a liberal justice likely comparable to anyone LBJ would have nominated, a more liberal Chief Justice would have changed the composition of the Supreme Court for decades. 

As I think about it, our defeat in Vietnam seems to have been less consequential than we thought it would be in the 60's and 70's, while the changes in SCOTUS seem to be more consequential.  Hence my title.

More on FSA and Shutdown

Politico has a piece more focused on farm loans than farm payments.

FSA Goes Back to Work?

Only in part.  Here's the Politico piece on Perdue's telling 2,500 employees to return on Jan 17, 18, and 22.

And here's the USDA press release.

And here's the list of offices which will open.  (My impression is that a smaller share of offices in the Northeast are being reopened than in the rest of the country.  They may have given preference to locations with heavy MFP activity?)

I wonder how they determined the employees to call back?  All CED's of offices they're reopening?  Might not be the best employees to have. 

I wonder what happens after Monday?

Will be interesting to see how this works out.

And here's a NASCOE explainer from yesterday.  (Thumbs up to NASCOE for the post.)

It's All Downhill from Here

This month I got my first hearing aid.  Today I was told I need my first  dental crown.

My health has been generally good up to now--no hospital stays, no broken bones, etc.  But it's all downhill from here.

Small Dairy? Test Farm

The Times today had an article on a supposed small farm; actually a billionaire's test farm (i.e. playtoy given my cynical mood today) trying out various systems intended for small farms.

It's call Rivendale (it doesn't tweet much).

The article is frustrating--apparently  one person is mostly responsible for the 175 milking Jerseys, using an automated feeding system and $200,000 robotic milking systems.  The cows determine when they are milked (4 times a day) and produce 15 percent more.  But it's not clear whether it's their breeding or the milking system which is responsible for the gain.

What I'd like to know, among other things:

• what's the expected life of these robotic systems? 3 year, 5 year, 8  years, 10 years? 
• how much maintenance and downtime do they require?  my guess is 4 systems means that 3 systems can handle the 175 with the fourth providing for some backup and fudge factor.
• what happens when Murphy's law strikes and the systems go down?  With the systems I grew up with, as long as you had electricity you could milk cows.  Without electricity, it was hand milking.
• can the farmhand handle the technology or does it require a tech?
• how does the feeding system handle the "non-processed feed" they claim to be using?
• what's the overall picture--are the cows on pasture or is it a CAFO?

John Boyd on BBC

Since I mentioned Boyd's appearance in a Post article, I should give equal time to the BBC, where a sound bite from Boyd was included in their piece on the impact of the partial shutdown of the government.

In fairness to Boyd, I suspect he has a reputation for giving good quotes to the media--he's articulate.  In the last century I was  bit dubious of him, thinking he was more a paper farmer than a real one.  But apparently he's (re?)married with kids now and still going with soybeans, getting older along with all the rest of us.

John Boyd and the Shutdown of FSA

When the Post wanted a farmer to talk about the hardships caused by the shutdown of FSA one of the ones they found was John Boyd.  See yesterday's article.

Forgive me for finding it ironic that Boyd still depends in part on the agency which he sued.  Just another proof that life is complicated, as are people.

Fences and Landowning in the Post

Marc Fisher had an article in the Post about walls, which touched on fences, which included a quote from an expert which I found to be wrong!!  I commented there, which I'll copy here:

"From the nation’s earliest days, when only white male landowners could vote, many built fences on their land to show their neighbors they were eligible voters, Dreicer [the expert] said."

This is irrelevant to the theme of the article.  Irrelevant because a fence to mark boundaries of ownership isn't like a wall.  Think of our northern boundary: it's marked, but neither fenced nor walled.  We have the symbol of ownership (US sovereignty ends and Canadian begins) without needing a physical barrier.

But I call BS--I'm sure Dreicer never built a fence. A fence requires work, both to build it the first time (particularly stone wall fences but even split rail fences) and work to maintain.  You don't build a fence to declare ownership; you build a fence to keep animals in or out.  That's why we used to have fence viewers.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fence_Viewer.  BTW there are interesting regional and historical differences whether a landowner was required to fence his/her animals in, or to fence to keep free-ranging animals out.

Land ownership in the 13 colonies was marked by the metes and bounds system

Our Decentralized Systems

John Phipps twitted about this piece, specifically this:

This industry, and in particular the few groups who control the narrative, need to actually just agree and make one darn file type used to transfer and create data.I know this has and is being tried and there are a plethora of ways to go about it. Also, there are legacy systems and what not. We are not going to progress much more unless this finally gets solved though. Let us “you know what” or get off the pot.

I commented, comparing this problem with the problem of incompatible data sets in the healthcare industry.  I think this is a general feature of American society and economy: with a federal system, the size of the country and its population, the market economy, and our history we don't have centralized systems comparable to those in France or in Estonia

First American Cotton Mill and Eli Whitney

On Dec. 20 there was mention of the anniversary of the first American cotton mill. What struck me at the time, though I'm just getting around to commenting, is the date: 1790. 

Why is the date significant?  Well, we all know there was no cotton industry before Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, which was in 1794. So what was Samuel Slater's factory spinning in 1790 and after, if no cotton was available?

The answer, of course, was cotton, and the point I'm trying to make is our mental picture of history is wrong.  In fact cotton was grown and de-seeded for centuries, in all continents except Antarctica.  The thing about cotton, as you can see if your aspirin bottle has a wad of cotton to suppress rattles, is it's light so a little goes a long way.  Try weighing the cotton clothes you're wearing now--they're light.  So if the elementary ginning tools in use before Whitney's invention could process a pound of cotton a day that would be sufficient for a lot of yarn and then weaving a fair amount of cloth.

Taxation Policy and Staffing

I commented on a Noah Smith tweet a couple days ago, a thread discussing tax policy. AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez)  has gotten notoriety by proposing a tax bracket of $10 million and above with a rate of 70 percent.

I've not followed the debate enough to know what, if anything, she or others have proposed for the current brackets and rates.  Personally I'd add more brackets (because "simplicity" isn't important when you use software packages to file your taxes, with increasing rates.  And I'd have no problem with the 70 percent proposal.

What I do have problems with is IRS staffing.  IMHO the first priority for Democrats is to try to get bipartisan agreement on improving IRS staffing and administration, by which I mean something like doubling the auditors of richer people.  One of my early blog posts was to complain about a then-celebrity evading taxes. As an ex-bureaucrat, I want people to follow the rules, damn it.

Kentucky Dairy Farms Fading

The Rural Blog had a post on the plight of Kentucky dairy farms recently.  A lowlight:

In Kentucky, more than 10 percent of dairy farms shuttered in 2018, lowering the count to 513, down from 1,400 in 2005, Bill Estep reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader. 

I don't know what the reduction in cow numbers was--Estep wrote: ""Farm Aid pointed to Walmart’s new Indiana processing plant as a example of large players taking over more of the milk-supply chain. Large companies with processing plants typically would rather deal with a few large farms than many smaller ones," 

Police Shootings by State

Moskos has two new pieces here and here on the subject:

First piece on  police shooting people

The national annual average (of police shootings) since 2015 is a rate of 0.31 (per 100,000). And yet New Mexico is 0.98 and New York is 0.09. This is a large difference. 
Western states worst, NE states best, highest black states better than average.

Second piece is mostly on people shooting police

Quotes from the second piece:

Lack of density -- more space -- is correlated with being more likely to be killed by cops. Think of what this means. Common sense tells you it's not a view of "big sky country" that makes cops shoot someone. Whatever really matters, is correlated to density (or lack thereof). Maybe it's single person patrol. Or the time for backup to arrive. Or meth labs. Or gun culture.

The greater the percentage of blacks in a state, the less likely cops are to shoot and kill people.

1) Whites don't really care about who police shoot; period; end of story. And without the pressure over bad (or even good) police-involved shootings, cops never learn how to shoot less. Other things being equal, cops simply shoot more people if there isn't any push-back from (to over-generalize) blacks and liberals and media and anti-police protesters. Call it the Al Sharpton Effect, if you will. Basically, in many places, police organization and culture do need to be pressured into changing for the better.

2) Police can be recruited, trained, and taught to less often use legally justifiable but not-needed lethal force less. The state variations in police use of lethal force are huge. Some states (and particularly jurisdictions within states) do it better than others. Instead of saying "police are the problem" we could look at the states and cities and department that are doing it better and learn. 

Inbred Economist Professors?

A day after I noted the possible inbreeding of law professors, Tyler Cowen posted this, excerpts from an interview:

He [Cowen] said that he agreed with the idea that influence of economics comes from a relatively small number of institutions, and he thinks the number is shrinking. “What used to be something like a ‘top six’ has over time become the ‘top two,’ namely Harvard and MIT.”

I've not checked to see how many of the Harvard/MIT economics professors graduated from those universities--I suspect a lower proportion than with women law professors at Harvard, but it looks as if they're on the same path.  It's a logical extension of trends: education is important, so the best education is very important, so it's best to hire only those with the best education.

What City Folks Don't Know

This post doesn't cover everything city folks (as my mother would call them) don't know, but just one thing.

Got a new biography of Benjamin Rush from the library the other day. (Rush was the prominent doctor in PA and a founding father and abolitionist.)  Just read a few pages, since I'm behind my reading of other books.  It looks good, well-written.

But, and there's a but.  Rush was born when his parents had a farm outside Philadelphia, though they moved to the city where his father soon died, leaving his mother to support the family.  Anyhow, the author writes about the work of "cutting and baling hay".  That's wrong--they would have cut the grass with a scythe, but they would not have "baled" it--that's a 19th century innovation--they would have likely stacked the hay, possibly stored it in a barn.

Inbred Law Professors?

I engaged in comment threads on Powerline--commenting on a Mirengoff post about Sen. Warren and the DNA test--asserting she had a false story.  As one might expect from my earlier post on the subject, I defended the test and, as you'd expect from the leanings of the website, got a lot of pushback from its devotees.

One point made was that Warren graduated from Rutgers Law.  I did a quick check of the (most of) women professors in Harvard Law and was a bit surprised by the results.  Some professors didn't include their education in their backgrounds, but most did.  Almost all of those I checked graduated from Harvard or Yale.  There was one graduate from Chicago and one from Texas in addition to Warren.

The predominance of Harvard/Yale bothers me--looks as if the system is rather inbred, at least at the law school level, less so at the undergrad level.  Also relevant is this: I noted in passing several cases where the professor had background in other fields, like history or math.

Loss Aversion Equals Fear of Change?

Economists have the theory of "loss aversion"--people fear losing what they have more than they want to gain more. From wikipedia:

In cognitive psychology and decision theory, loss aversion refers to people's tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains: it is better to not lose $5 than to find $5. The principle is very prominent in the domain of economics. What distinguishes loss aversion from risk aversion is that the utility of a monetary payoff depends on what was previously experienced or was expected to happen. Some studies have suggested that losses are twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains.^[1] Loss aversion was first identified by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman.^[2]

Also see wikipedia on the  status quo effect, which includes this:  " Loss aversion, therefore, cannot wholly explain the status quo bias,^[4] with other potential causes including regret avoidance,^[4] transaction costs^[5] and psychological commitment.^[2]"

I wonder whether part of the effect is the narrative difference between what you have and what you might get.  The latter is naked, so to speak.  It has no history, no web of memories, no particular narrative.  What you have, whether it's a coffee cup or whatever, is clothed with a past, with a skein of memories, a place in a narrative.

Evidence of Ascension--USA Climbing

Since I blogged yesterday about declension, I should balance the scales by recognizing ways in which the US/world is better than in my youth:

• no famines, like we had in India and China during my lifetime
• progress in development--see Hans Rosling's presentations and books.  Back in the 50's and 6's the issue was how the Third World would do.  As it's turned out, it has done a lot better than we thought at points during the last 50 years, doing so in different ways than the conventional wisdom believed.
• technology has opened the flow of information
• in the US, LBJ's civil rights and Great Society legislation, aided by steps taken by later presidents, has changed the social landscape.  For all the continuing problems we have made great progress.
• peace--despite our participation in wars in the 21st century, the Cold War is dead and buried.
• health and safety--we've lengthened our life span and made life better even for those living longer.

I could go on, but my bottom line is I prefer living today to the past.

Evidence of Declension--US Going to the Dogs

Don't know why but today I want to write about what can be seen as evidence of decline in the U.S. over my lifetime:

• holidays have changed.  When I was young blue laws meant many stores were closed on many holidays (except George Washington's birthday) and holidays were celebrated with more attention to their significance.  The rise of shopping every day of the week and every evening has enabled women to participate in the market economy, getting money for their work.
• the culture has gotten "coarser".  Expletives abound, porn is available, available not only for "normal" sex but all sorts of "deviations".  There's a possible relationship to the greater openness about many subjects ("cancer" was discussed in whispers when I was young).
• the economy seems to have gotten more concentrated--we've lost a lot of chains of department stores, a lot of family farms, a lot of local stores, a lot of newspapers. On the other hand, we used to have just 3 TV networks, and there were concentrations in steel, autos, and coal--the sectors which used to be the pride of the country and the arena in which we competed with the Soviet Union.

FSA Offices Closed; NRCS Offices Open

That's the word.  For NRCS here.

BTW, neither agency has updated its "farm bill" page to reflect the signing of the 2018 farm bill.

Trump, Troops, and Maga Hats

I don't have a problem with Trump signing MAGA hats for troops.  I wouldn't have had a problem with Obama signing his book for troops.

Where I might have a problem is with the provenance of the hats.  Is the Baghdad PX selling them?  That's a no-no.  Did they come in "care" packages from loved ones?  That's fine, if misguided.  Did the Trump advance team provide them?  That's bad and illegal.

The Advantage of Two-Party Rule

This Govexec piece (originally in Propublica) describes an instance of how people can learn to game government rules, in this case the HUD rules for federally-subsidized housing. If it's worthwhile, people are ingenious enough and motivated enough to figure out games, whether it's the "Potemkin Villages" of the Czars or installing walls in a building to hide major defects.

With two-party rule you establish some incentives to find dirt on the other guys.  Even there is no dirt, there's the human incentive to make change, to throw out the bathwater because it was the pet project of the other party.

My Ancestors and Carols

The Atlantic has this survey of the history of carol singing, noting how the Puritans fought it.

My paternal great grandfathers both were associated with Presbyterian churches which had problems with music--organs being the trigger.  I wonder whether that means their congregations still held against Christmas carols?  I don't know--it's worth noting the best I can tell both men were on the pro-organ sides. 

Anyhow, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

The End of Family Dairies?

The Post has an op-ed on dairy farming, beginning:

"After 40 years of dairy farming, I sold my herd of cows this summer. The herd had been in my family since 1904; I know all 45 cows by name. I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to take over our farm — who would? Dairy farming is little more than hard work and possible economic suicide."

The ex-farmer is from Wisconsin, he switched from conventional to organic mid career, and blames "organic milk" from Texas as a cause of his problems. 

Here' a USAToday story which provides some further background. 

One complaint is whether the cows producing the organic milk actually graze in the fields.  (Not that Wisconsin cows graze in the fields 12 months of the year.)

I've sympathy for the plight.  Back in my youth 45 cows was a good-sized farm, about the size of my uncle's farm (formerly my grandfather's).  Giving up a way of life is hard, particularly when you feel passed over by progress. 

A Blast at Moving ERS from DC

The Hill publishes an opinion piece blasting USDA on its proposal to move ERS out of DC.

I don't know who would be the first and second ranked agricultural economics research institution in the world, but it says ERS is number three.

I've some sympathy with one argument for the move: finding a place where living costs are lower and a government salary  goes farther.

I remember talking with Keith Townsend, the program specialist in the state of Washington, about moving to DC and his counter arguments. That was before locality-based salaries came into effect, but I strongly suspect the adjustments probably feel inadequate to many.

How Politics Works--Give With One Hand and Take...

USDA this week announced a proposal to limit states ability to grant waivers of some SNAP provisions.

Some weeks ago HHS announced proposals to expand states ability to grant waivers of some ACA (Obamacare) provisions.
:
The lesson for today:  politics doesn't work the way idealistic theory says--structural provisions, like federalism, are used and manipulated to achieve political ends.

Too Confusing for Seniors?

I saw this picture on twitter.  My immediate reaction was the title.  I've had a little problem with confusion in my leased Prius.  Two things--it's the change between a conventional Corolla to a hybrid Prius and the proliferation of controls.  In a way it reminds me of software applications--for example, the proliferation of options in things like Microsoft Word.

Amy and Worst Boss?

I've supported Amy Klobuchar as my favorite candidate for the 2020 election. Recently she's gotten more publicity in terms of favorable mentions (fivethirtyeight's draft picked her as one of four favorites, along with Harris, O'Rourke, and Biden) and interviews on national TV.

So far the biggest negative about her is this piece in Politico, which says she has the highest rate of turnover of her staff of anyone in Congress.  From this fact they deduce that she's the worst boss.  While I can imagine some other possibilities I'll accept it as a factor to include in weighing her candidacy.  What's a bit more important than the turnover is whether she can attract and choose capable lieutenants, both for her campaign and administration.  (LBJ was a terrible boss by most standards, but he persuaded good people to work with him.)

Apparently her chief of staff was in Harvard in 2006 in a music appreciation class for which the lab page is still up.  She seems to be the daughter of a Minnesota attorney and may be 32.

We'll see over the next 23 months.

George Washington on Refugees

Washington wrote to a recent immigrant from Ireland in 1783, who was representative of a number of such immigrants:

The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent & respectable Stranger, but the oppressed & persecuted of all Nations & Religions; whom we shall wellcome to a participation of all our rights & previleges, if by decency & propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.

They All Look(ed) the Same

Saw a picture related to a review of a book on Calhoun, Webster, and Clay.  The picture is here.

I've long been aware of sameness in people.  Back in the day,all mainland Chinese wore Mao jackets, and there were no Yao Mings then.  Visiting ballet companies from the Soviet Union didn't present much diversity in size or complexion. Military parades showed soldiers almost uniform in height.  We still see some of this when viewing reports from North Korea, although my impression is that there's more diversity at least in dress there.

I've always related this uniformity to cows and hens--visitors to the farm could not see how we could recognize our cows by sight--to them all cows looked the same.  We of course knew different, but when it came to our hens they really did all look the same.  (Not really--when looking at group of hens I'd recognize differences while I was looking, but it wasn't possible for the differences to make enough of an impression for me to remember individual hens the next day.)

Anyhow, what's interesting to me in this picture is how similar all the Senators, and onlookers, look.  They're all dressed the same, and their faces look the same--typical WASP faces.  Compare the picture above with this showing the new House members:

Free Land in Britain

When I studied American history the influence of the Frederick Jackson Turner Frontier Thesis was waning, but still being considered.  A part of the thesis was the presence of "free land" as a safety valve for workers in urban areas. Then I had a government professor, Theodore Lowi, who divided government functions into regulation, redistribution, and distribution (of goodies). Finally I had a history professor, Paul Gates, who did a lot of work on land issues. 

With that background I've often been interested in such issues; most recently today when I read a review of a biography of Thomas Cromwell in the Times, a review which included the statement that one-third of the land in Britain was taken from the church and redistributed when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in a process overseen by Cromwell. That seems incredibly high to me but I don't know.

I wonder about the long-term economic impacts of the distribution--presumably buying and selling of land by monasteries was less common than when the laiety took title.   Herman DeSoto has a theory on the importance of having land titled as paving the way for mortgaging and selling land.

No Shortage of Presidential Candidates

According to Ballotpedia, a site I recommend:

• More than 430 candidates have already filed with the Federal Election Commission to run for president in 2020, including 128 Democrats, 59 Republicans, 18 Libertarians, and 10 Greens.

"It's" the Deterioration of Age

Among the nits I'm bothered by is the misuse of "it's" as possessive.  "It's" of course is a contraction of "it is" and should never be used otherwise.

All through my life I've adhered to this rule with little problem. 

But now...

Now it seems that my brain and my rules are on different pages.  I routinely type "it's" when it fits as a possessive.  Apparently the age-related impairment my recent MRI found involves undermining that aspect of my typing memory which knew the difference.

The good news is that part of my brain which proofs what I've done--I think it's a general capability not limited to reviewing my writing--still seems capable.  So I type "it's position is..." and then go back and delete the apostrophe.

HR 2--Farm Bill

HR2 has now passed both Houses of Congress.  Here's a summary:

"The bill modifies agriculture and nutrition policies to:

• require farmers to make a new election to obtain either Price Loss Coverage or Agricultural Risk Coverage for the 2019-2023 crop years, which may be changed for the 2021-2023 crop years;
• replace the Dairy Margin Protection Program with Dairy Risk Coverage and modify coverage levels and premiums;
• make Indian tribes and tribal organizations eligible for supplemental agricultural disaster assistance programs;
• reduce the adjusted gross income limitation for receiving benefits under commodity and conservation programs; [the nieces and nephews provision[
• modify funding levels and requirements for several conservation programs,
• consolidate several existing trade and export promotion programs into a new Priority Trade Promotion, Development, and Assistance program;
• legalize industrial hemp and make hemp producers eligible for the federal crop insurance program;
• establish an interstate data system to prevent the simultaneous issuance of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the food stamp program) benefits to an individual by more than one state;
• increase the loan limits for farm ownership and operating loans;
• modify the experience requirement for farm ownership loans;
• authorize a categorical exclusion from requirements for environmental assessments and environmental impact statements for certain forest management projects with the primary purpose of protecting, restoring, or improving habitat for the greater sage-grouse or mule deer; and
• modify the organic certification requirements for imported agricultural products."

I find I'm no longer current enough with the law to comment.  "Qualified pass-through entities" instead of partnerships and joint ventures?  Don't know what it signifies. 

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/2

The Boy, the Hammer, the Nail, and Trump

The old saying is: give a boy a hammer and he'll see everything as a nail, as something to hit with the hammer.  It's true enough--we get set in our ways so we use the same approaches to every problem. And when we have a tool there are opportunities.

But I realized today you can change the saying, almost reverse it.  Suppose the boy has a nail to pound and no hammer?  Then everything he sees becomes a potential hammer.  It's "necessity is the mother of invention" time.

Silos: Culture Versus Change

I've written before on the problems of combining organizations--typically I've seen the problem through the lens of organizational culture--for example, ASCS and SCS had very different cultures when I was working.

But I saw something today which caused me to think of another consideration.  The story: I was doing my morning walk, coming through the Hunters Mills shopping center, which now is your standard strip mall. In a couple places I saw they'd placed cobblestones and fine stone next to the curb.  The places were at the corner of an intersection and the logic of placing the stones was to handle cases where the turning radius of a long tractor trailer was larger than the radius of the intersection, meaning the rear wheels of the trailer would jump the curb and put ruts into the grass.

I came up with a "just so" story to explain this:  back in the day when Reston's roads were designed, some 30-50 years ago, tractor trailers were shorter than they are now.  So you had one organization working on road design standards and other organizations designing tractor trailers to provide the most cost efficient transportation.  Each organization had its own focus and its own evolutionary history and impulses, their culture.  But what's important is the changes happening within the organization, not any cultural conflict between the two organizations. 

So, coming back to ASCS and SCS--the bigshots in USDA could look at them and see a static picture, meaning changes ordered by management would be the only thing going on (particularly when IT types were ignorant of programs).

The Farm Bill and Payment Limitation

The Post editorial page says that Rep. Conaway got his nieces/nephews provision (see my previous post under this label) included in the farm bill, which will be included in the final appropriations bill, assuming Congress and the President can come to some agreement on it.

This seems to fit a long lasting pattern where public attention is limited in both time and scope.  So when people pay attention to how the farm bill is being put together in House and Senate payment limitation will get attention.  Attention means that the power of the lobbyists and "special interests" is somewhat diminished as the more fringe players have more of a place at the table.

But when public attention moves away from the subject the lobbyists/special interests then have more power.  Typically they exercise their power by adding provisions to appropriations bills or omnibus "must pass" legislation where the voices which oppose the provision, like the Post editorial writers, are drowned in concerns over the bigger picture--as now, whether or not part of the government will be shut down, mostly over a dispute over the President's "Wall".

Update on Vertical Farming

Via @TamarHaspel, here's a piece on Medium assessing the current status of vertical farming.  Bottom line: the vertical farming startups are very close-mouthed about their data, which leads the writer to doubt whether many of them will succeed. 

Given that current farms focus on greens sold at premium prices, there's also skepticism over whether the concept can achieve more than niche status.

Dairy in Japan

Google's official blog has a  post on a big (900 cow) dairy in Japan.

While most/many Asians may be lactose-intolerant, there seems to be enough exceptions to support a dairy industry.

Some googling found this paper by the Japanese Dairy Council which covers the ground from a to z.

A couple highlights--no. of dairy farms has declined from over 400,000 in the 60's to 20,000 in the 2010's, number of cows has been relatively steady at about 1.4 million or so.  Consumption is about half in milk and half in cheese/butter.  For anyone with more stamina than I there's an explanation of how milk is marketed and how the government's subsidy/regulation setup works.