Is Trump Scared Straight?

Seems to me the president has been relatively quiet and subdued on his twitter account recently. That's just an impression which may be wrong because I don't follow him.  Instead I base my impression on the tweets of his that others retweet and comment on.

Anyway, if it's true, why?

• one answer would, of course, be the prospect of impeachment which is not something an insecure person would  feel good about.
• another possible answer, although it comes too close to a conspiracy theory for my comfort, is the possibility that his recent trip to Johns Hopkins was an indicator of some sort of health problem.  As self-absorbed as he is, he's got to be super conscious of his age and the end of life.  That might chasten even him.

Farmers Abroad Know How to Protest

I remember the times when farmers brought their tractors to the Mall to protest our agricultural policies.  (The description in the wikipedia article may not be the most accurate. I took a chance on "American Agricultural Movement", which was the sponsoring organization.  Wikipedia has a better post on it. 

It seems that both the French farmers and German ones have the same tactic.

Impressive #video: Last night (local time) protesting farmers from the German states of Bavaria and Thuringia gathered in front of #Berlin, where the #farmerprotest will take place at 12 noon today. 5000 tractors are expected at the Brandenburg Gate.https://t.co/jMKI03gTZS

— Jürg Vollmer (@juergvollmer) November 26, 2019

More on Hemp

Two articles on hemp in today's NYTimes:

1. one in Business about the easing of some banking regs.  I'm not clear on the impact--it's apparently not clearing the way totally, because marijuana is still illegal for the Feds.
2. the other on the problems farmers have in protecting their hemp fields from crooks, who might steal thinking they're getting pot, not hemp.

According to one of the pieces there were 300,000 acres of hemp planted this year--not FSA stats but some private firm.  Wonder how that compares with FSA's figures.

Simple J. Malarkey

Joe Biden is taking heat for putting "No Malarkey" on the bus he's using to tour Iowa.

I've fond memories of Walt Kelly's Pogo cartoon strip, which my sister introduced me to back in the day.

His caricature of Sen. McCarthy was named "Simple J. Malarkey" and was introduced this way (the second strip shown).

I don't know why we don't have good cartoon strips anymore.  Dilbert is usually tolerable but it's not Pogo.

The Coming of World Government in Space

Technology Review has a piece on the influx of new space agencies, both in smaller countries (Luxembourg!) and by private enterprises.

Elon Musk is putting up thousands of satellites to provide Internet access.

Seems to me we're going to come to the point where the practicalities of managing space will force governments to agree to cede some control to an international organization.  Back in the day we were sure the UN was a steppingstone to a real world government.  That dream is long gone, but technology and the need to control the commons might revive it.

Produce Waste

The PBS Newshour is showing a piece on food waste, featuring an effort in California. It is part of a weeklong effort.  This particular one is laudable, featuring coordinators and software packages. 

But my contrarian side is present whenever I hear an estimate of "pounds of food wasted".  Looking at the produce shown, the pounds wasted include peach pits, watermelon rinds, etc.  I know measuring the "waste" is hard, and maybe there is a benefit to using fuzzy statistics: they stir up activism.  My instinct, however, is that better stats, more solid stats, are the way you build the base for a social movement, for changing norms. 

Technocrats and Bureaucrats

Interesting post here, arguing that Robert Moses represented the peak of technocratic government. As some of the costs of technocracy became apparent (see Jane Jacobs and Robert Caro) progressives turned against technocracy

Beneath America’s deep frustration with government is something else: a deep-seated aversion to power. Progressives resolved decades ago to prevent the public from being bulldozed by another Robert Moses—and the project to diffuse power to the public has succeeded. But the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. The left’s zeal to hamstring government has helped to burnish the right’s argument that government would mess up a one-car parade. The new protections erected to guard against Moses’ second coming have condemned new generations to live in civic infrastructure that is frozen in time.

The piece traces the history of attempts to reinvent Penn Station and the surrounding area, attempts led by a variety of strong-willed people, each with a piece of power, but none able to get past the veto points erected by post-1960 reforms.

As a former bureaucrat, I'm instinctively sympathetic to technocracy.  But I also recognize that power without restraints, like Moses', can result in misguided dreams and worse misdeeds.

Happy Thanksgiving

See these charts for things to be thankful for.

The Mystery of California Deaths

Articles today in the Post and Times on a new study of trends in US death rates.

Much information, including this:


Note that while trends are terrible for the upper NE and eastern MW, California and Wyoming are going the other way with OR, NV, and NY not too bad. 

I'd like to know what's going on here, I skimmed quickly through the article and didn't pick up much.  Obesity and smoking are bad, recent immigrants and service industries are good. 

A guess--Asian and Hispanic immigrants might be particularly helpful.  But in the end it's a mystery.

Crime In DC

My title is a bit misleading--this is a report on a poll  asking whether people had, or knew someone who had, been threatened with a gun. 

Notably the results are broken down by DC wards, and as usual east of the Anacostia had the highest exposure/ 

Two things strike me:

1. the difference between the best wards and the worst is not that great--46 percent versus 28 percent..  Yes, that's a big difference, but based on media reports I would have guessed maybe 85 versus 25.
2. there's no difference between west of Rock Creek Park, stereotypically white, and the Northeast wards, more stable middle class black neighbors (my image, which may be outdated).

Bottom line: a reminder that one's picture of the world is likely to be wrong.

The Rich and Donations

Here's a Vox post on the donations to charity by the most wealthy Amercans. As Dylan Matthews notes, there are a number of qualifications and cautions in interpreting the figures.  For my purposes,only three billionaires, Bloomberg, Gates, and Buffett gave more than 1 percent of their wealth in the last year.

I may have discussed this before in connection with Warren's proposed wealth tax.  Anyhow, retirees are told they can withdraw 4 percent of their savings and likely not exhaust them before dying.  I think maybe that's a reasonable target: once a person reaches retirement age, between taxes and charity the total should be about 4 percent of wealth.

Where's the House

MSNBC and others have a story that intelligence officials briefed senators on a Russian effort to blame the Ukraine for 2016 election meddling.

That's all very interesting, but what happened to the House.  I understand that protocol, and institutional rivalry, says what you tell the Senate you have to tell to the House.  Why wasn't that followed in this case?

The Hearings

Random points stemming from the now-ended impeachment hearings:

• I took Fiona Hill as saying Russia interfered with our 2016 as a state project, directed by Putin (I'm intrigued by the possibility that the intelligence community has better sources of information than we know).  The project was hidden and had Russian resources behind it. The project included creating and spreading false information. Conversely, individual Ukrainians mostly openly opposed Trump's election. Their covert actions involved furnishing true information.
• One of the attacks on the bureaucrats who testified was rooted in suspicion of their political views.  I've no information on that, but I do remember being a bureaucrat during President Reagan's tenure.  I called him the "senior idiot" (and my direct boss the "junior idiot".  I am now and was then a strong Democrat.  However, I reserved my epithets for the ears of my wife, and performed my duties to the best of my ability, getting some awards and some cash for my work, representing decisions by the Republicans heading our agency.  Granted my work was not as politically significant as diplomacy is, but I think it's very reasonable to believe that most bureaucrats, even those with strong political views, can keep their work separate.
• I've some sympathy with those who aren't comfortable with impeachment based on the current evidence, because of missing witnesses (Bolton, Mulvaney, et. al.) (Also some questions not asked--like the usual process for authorizing and delivering military aid compared to that used for Ukraine).  But, on the other hand, I'm comfortable with the idea that circumstantial evidence can be enough for a guilty verdict in homicide cases.  And, I think circumstantial evidence is what we have here to fill the holes.

The South and Race Relations

Had an exchange the other day on twitter: the gist was someone was surprised at  a Southern city which was less segregated than common (I forget which city) . I remembered a factoid from long ago suggesting that Northern cities were more rigidly segregated than Southern cities. There was a logic to the pattern which I can't remember.

Anyhow, I ran into this quote today from Rajiv Sethi:

"Fifth, and this came as a surprise to us, many states in the South, including the secessionist states of the former confederacy, have smaller racial disparities in exposure to lethal force than states elsewhere. Many of these Southern states have approximate parity between rates of lethal force faced by black and white civilians in the Guardian data. This is true of Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, and Tennessee for example"

There's some caveats to the data, which is from Gunnar Myrdal's effort which produced American Dilemma in 194x. Interesting changes in patterns of homicide and police violence.

The Guilty Fleeth

Daniel Drezner on twitter pointed out the significance of a question by Rep. Demings--Sondland asked President Trump: what do you want; Trump replied: "I don't want a quid pro quo".

The conversation came after the whistle blower report had come out, so Trump knew things were coming apart.  So it seems that Trump was fleeing before being accused.  My take.

Legalize Pot?

One of my most vivid memories from high school is my science teacher becoming very vehement and emphatic in warning us never to smoke pot.  I believe the basis was the "gateway drug" theory.

Some 20 years or so later, in the 1970's I was living in DC and got selected for jury duty.  At that time we reported to the judicial building every work day for a month and sat around waiting to be called.  One of the trials I was called for related to marijuana, don't remember whether it was for possession or sales.  I asked to be excused from serving on the jury, basing my request on an objection to our marijuana laws.  The request was granted.

I don't remember my views on marijuana laws.  I think I gradually came to support the downgrading of the penalties for possession to a simple ticket, like a traffic violation.  But I think I've always been reluctant to support legalization.  My puritan ethic cautions against it. 

Today it seems the nation supports legalization.  Certainly the Democratic candidates support it. 

Personally I'd feel more comfortable if we held off on national legislation, allowing the various states to do their thing, testing various approaches to legalization and control over the market, taation, etc.

Corporate Profits Up 66 Percent?

I think it was Kevin Drum who noted a big rise in US corporate profits--maybe 66 percent as a percentage of GDP.. If I remember right it was from 6 percent to 10 percent of GDP.  Don't find it now but here's  a chart from the St. Louis Fed showing after tax profits in non-adjusted dollars.

Stefanik and Partisanship

I had a knee-jerk reaction to Rep. Stefanik's actions in the Intelligence Committee hearings on Friday--I immediately followed her 2018 (and 2020) Democratic opponent.

I say it was knee-jerk, because Stefanik is the sort of Republican congressperson I'd like to see elected; that is, the sort I'd like to see the minority composed of.  Over the course of Friday her opponent picked up thousands of Twitter followers and hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions.

I don't know if we can continue to have a significant centrist representation.  Having said that, the reelection of Gov. Edwards in LA is welcome.  Even though his positions are not mine, he's  the most liberal that the Louisiana voters  will accept

Laws on the Books Wouldn't Have Stopped It

Kevin Drum blogs against this meme as it relates to guns.  I'd expand the point
.
By definition, anything that happens wasn't stopped by the laws on the books.  The stock market setting a new record wasn't stopped by laws.  The 16-year old in Santa Clara wasn't stopped by the laws.  Trump wasn't stopped by the laws.

Do we conclude there's problems with our laws?  No, of course not. Most things the laws aren't intended to stop.  In many cases the laws can stop 90 percent of cases but not the last 10.  Needless to say, we never notice the 90 percent.

(There are also laws poorly written so they don't stop some cases and laws poorly enforced or implemented. )

For any specific case, you need to figure out  into which category it falls.

Who Knew: Marine Heat Waves?

Jstor has a short piece on a paper discussing marine heat waves. 

It's disappointing for the layperson because there's no basic explanation--I never thought of such a thing until 2:30pm Nov. 15, 2019.

Turns out NOAA does research into them and there's a whole organization dedicated to them.  From that site:

WHAT IS A MARINE HEATWAVE?
We know that heatwaves occur in the atmosphere. We are all familiar with these extended periods of excessively hot weather. However, heatwaves can also occur in the ocean and these are known as marine heatwaves, or MHWs. These marine heatwaves, when ocean temperatures are extremely warm for an extended period of time can have significant impacts on marine ecosystems and industries.​ Marine heatwaves can occur in summer or winter - they are defined based on differences with expected temperatures for the location and time of year.

It seems that El Nino is a related phenomenon.  And I assume that since the air and the water are both fluids, you could have some of the same sort of variations in temperature occurring in each.

Bring Technology to Baseball

Reports that the Houston Astros have been stealing catcher's signs; normally okay but not using binoculars.  The Post today had a piece on the methods the Nationals used to counter any sign-stealing. Very elaborate, five different sets of signals, methods to specify which signal of a set was the real one, and methods to switch the set being used at any times.  Sort of reminds me of the code-breaking eploits in WWII.

Someone on twitter today asked about favorite football players to watch.  I'm old enough that Jim Brown, Johnny Unitas and Bart Starr would have been three of my top choices.  The two quarterbacks called their own plays; no mikes in the helmet for them.  Athletically I'm willing to concede that today's players are much more advanced and make more breath-taking plays, but seeing a veteran quarterback pick a defense apart is great.

But we've lost that with football and its mikes, so why not allow catchers a mike in the pitcher's cap so they can call the signal safely.  Might also speed up the game, since the messaging would be simpler and faster than using multiple sets of signals.

Learning in Naval Shipbuilding

It turns out there's a learning curve for shipbuilding, particularly as seen in going from building the first aircraft carrier with a new design to the second, as well as going from an experienced non-computer literate workforce to a younger, inexperienced but computer-literate workforce. 

The New Face of Farming

Farming is open to anyone with the ability to sustain 7 digit losses  year after year. It's called "lifestyle farming" in this Bloomberg article.

(I remember when IBM had its PC printer operation in Lexington KY (later sold to Lexmark), and farms were being subdivided into 5-acre farmettes, raising questions about handling of tobacco quotas.  Or consider the new money in the UK in the 19th century who bought country estates because of the prestige attached to the land. )

Time to Put Teeth in Records Acts?

A serious query: does deleting tweets violate the Presidential Records Act? https://t.co/z3NqVVYUlv

— Andrew Rudalevige (@rudalev) November 12, 2019

The responses say "yes" but there's no enforcement mechanism.   As it turns out, the Presidential REcords Act refers to amendments to the Federal Records Act, most recently  in 2014 to include electronic records on non-official accounts. Specifically: "The last provision forbids officers and employees of the executive branch from using personal email accounts for government business, unless the employee copies all emails to either the originating officer or employee's government email, or to an official government record system to be recorded and archived"

I'd love to see the Archivist of the US given police authority.  (My ex-bureaucratic persona speaking.)

It's Okay to Call Me "Boomer"

I'm at the age where it's nice to be considered as younger than I am.  So go ahead, say: "ok boomer".

Wake Up, Professional Transcription Service.

There's no excuse for continuing to use pica or elite type fonts in the 21st century.

The impeachment inquiry transcripts.

Parable of the Forms

As an ex-bureaucrat I'm always interested in forms.  Here's the link to an academic paper entitled "The Parable of the Forms". The author is trying, I think, to address some issues of legal procedure by translating them into the language of a university bureaucracy.  I was struck by some parallels in USDA history.

Very briefly, when the New Deal created the farm programs in the 1930's it seems each field crop had its own program and, sometimes, its own bureaucracy.  In addition, there were siloed initiatives for conservation, housing, rural regeneration etc.

Over the years there were a number of reorganizations of these basic elements.  Also, over the years and underway when I came on board was a drive to generalize the crop programs.  When I started we had wheat and feed grains, upland cotton, ELS cotton, producer rice, and farm rice. Over time the programs were changed so by the time I retired we just had "program crops" and "ELS cotton", but then we'd added oilseeds, and a number of other categories.

The paper's author argues there's an ebb and flow to the forms issue, and to his legal issue: sometimes focused on the differences in situations and sometimes on the commonalities.  Perhaps there's a similar dynamic with programs.  Or perhaps I'm full of it.

You Know You're Getting Old When...

your fingers don't automatically find the correct keys on the home row of the keyboard.

Voting Today: One of the Fears of Some Trump Supporters

My wife and I just got back from voting in VA. Polls seemed busy, although it was a longer ballot than our June primary election so that might have skewed my impression.

Some photos taken from by the exit of the elementary school room (cafeteria) .

[Updated: who knew that Google photos can make a panorama for you without your asking:

The original photos below]

:

I could have made a pan around the room but that's not something I've learned yet.  I didn't notice the flags around the room at first.  Counted over 30, perhaps more hidden from me in the third picture.  I assume they represent the countries of origin of the students, which explains my reference in tthe title to the fears of Trump supporters.

I suppose in some sense many of the kids have a "dual loyalty".  My ancestors have been in country for 134-300 years or so.  Because I know where they immigrated from I've a bit more interest in Ireland/Ulster/Scotland and Germany than in other countries.  I've also a bit more interest in Vietnam where I served and in China where my aunt and uncle were in the YMCA than in other countries. That interest no doubt can affect my position on issues relating to the countries, as will the much closer ties of the students in this school to their countries.  But the bottomline is they're in the process of assimilating, of absorbing American culture even as the school recognies origins.

BTW, the ballot today had instructions in four languages: English, Spanish, Vietnames, and I think Chinese ideograms.

Farm Progreams: Insurance or Social Program?

I've likely written something on this before, but I'm too lazy to look it up.

There are multiple ways, "frameworks", for looking at farm programs:

• as a social program. In this view payments should go to farmers based on their need, what they have to have to continue farming.
• as a reform program.  In this view payments should reward farmers for doing "good" things, like sustainable practices, etc.
• as an insurance program.  In this view payments should be like insurance, where the size of the payment is proportional to the size of the enterprise.  That is, when you buy homeowners insurance, the amount of coverage is tied to the value of the house.  The same when you buy collision/comprehensive coverage for a car.

It's usual, particularly among liberals, to use the first two frameworks. 

Eizenstat on Reparations

Interesting take on reparation from Stu Eizenstat based on his experience with reparations to Jews.

Soaking the Rich--What's Triviial, What's Possible

I had an early response to Megan McArdle this morning--without doing a lot of work to reconstruct: she wrote that soaking billionaires as Sen. Warren now proposes as part of her financing of Medicare for All would contribute a "trivial" amount; I responded her definition of "trivial" must be different than mine.  Apparently (because I still don't understand Twitter fully) that became part of a bigger discussion.  Coming back to the exchange this afternoon, the points seem to be that billionaires may have between $2 and $3 trillion in wealth, and taxing them as Warren proposes would produce around 4 percent of the total cost. 

Meanwhile Kevin Drum has done a preliminary analysis of the proposal here.  It's a convenient summary but very preliminary.  Anyhow, over 10 years he shows total costs as $52 trillion, the contribution of a 6 percent tax on billionaires as $1 trillion.  That means a contribution of 2 percent of total, which would, I agree, qualify as "trivial".  (IMO 4 percent is a tad above "trivial".)

I should make it clear I'm as ambivalent about soaking the rich as I am about many things.  I've seen the reservations of many on the right, particularly about the difficulties in collection (bureaucratic efficiency is always a big consideration with me.)  But disregarding those issues, here's how I think of it today:

• I'm told I can withdraw 4 percent of my savings (TSP, IRA) each year and likely maintain my capital.  Anything over 4 percent is likely to cause to me to exhaust my savings.
• Based on that, it seems reasonable to hit billionaires with a 4 percent yearly tax--their fortunes wouldn't diminish, on average, and any especially productive or lucky entrepreneurs could increase them.
• Going over 4 percent is killing the goose--you can be decreasing inequality, which is good IMO, but you need to plan to get an alternative revenue source (or finding savings) for the long run.

My opinions are subject to change, particularly as Drum updates his analysis.

Thank You Nationals

It was a great year.  Thanks, especially for the spirit of fun you displayed

Is the Navy Going Sailor-less?

Is a sailor a sailor if she doesn't sail the seas?

"The Navy in its 2020 budget request asked Congress for the first installment on a $4-billion acquisition of 10 large unmanned surface vessels and nine unmanned submarines. Boeing is developing the robotic submarines, using its 51-feet-long Orca submersible as a starting point."

From this article, via Lawyers, Guns & money.

Interesting that Boeing is involved--an example of how new technology can disrupt established patterns?

The Bad Old Days--My Dead Cousins

I was the youngest of 8 first cousins, 2 children in my family, my paternal uncle had 2 children, one maternal aunt had one child, the other had 3 

Those figures are what I was aware of.  But in fact there were 3 first cousins who died young, 2 as babies and 1 at age 7.

My point: if I rely only on my personal experience life in the US looked good and safe, but that's misleading because I don't see my whole cohort, just the survivors.

Second-Generation Migrants Do Well

NYTimes reports on a study comparing the economic status of second-generation immigrants--the children of immigrants--to the child of comparable native Americans. Almost without exception the second generation from whatever country does better than the natives.

The study suggests that the difference relates to where the sons lived--living in urban and growing areas was an advantage over living in rural and stagnant areas.  That makes some sense, although as I comment, there's a big range in the results; I'd suspect a range too great to be explained only by location.

What's not emphasized in the article is the fact that immigrants are able to advance, better than natives.

The Unpopulated United States

When we go up to Rhinebeck, NY for the Sheep and Wool Festival, we usually take US15 to Harrisburg and either I-78 or I-81/84 to I-87.  Either way, but particularly the latter, leads through sparsely populated areas, but even the more populated areas don't seem particularly densely settled.  

According to this site some of the counties have less than 100 people per square mile.  Reminds me of James Carville's crack about Pennsylvania being Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between. 

You can guess that all those sparsely settled counties vote Republican, then and now. 

The End of the Clerk-Typist?

OPM is proposing to end job classifications where there are fewer than 25 occupants across the Federal government.  One of the occupations is "clerk-typist"!!

Once clerk-typist was a very common job--when I joined ASCS there were 2 or 3 in the Directives Branch.  Typically people would move to a secretarial position or a more specific position after they'd acquired some experience in the office.  Clerk-typist was an entry position, basically requiring you to pass a typing test.  IIRC 40 words per minute with minimal errors.

Duuring the early 70's there was a Work-Study program. Much is fuzzy here; I don't remember what the program objective was--"diversity" as we'd say today, perhaps, or maybe just opening a new way to recruit clerical employees.  And I'm not sure of the details at this remove--I think high school students, perhaps seniors, spent time on the job during the school year and particularly during the summer.  As I recall we had two students from DC, who happened to be dating, I think.  Both were good and we were short-handed so we wanted to make them both permanent, but to do so they needed to pass the typing test for the clerk-typist position.  Not to be sexist but of course the woman qualified easily, while the man had problems.  With the help mainly of the management technician in the office he took and retook the typing test until he finally passed, to the pleasure of his new co-workers.

They married a couple years later.  Over the years they advanced within ASCS, ending as professionals.

A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves

That's the title of Jaon DEParle's new book.  It's an interesting read--DeParle moves between the saga of an extended Filopino family's travels and travails in working in the Middle East, in America, and on crruise ships, all the time sending remittances home to support and boost the living standards of those left behind, and a more abstract description of patterns of emigrant workers and migration since the 1965 changes in US immigration laws. 

Points stood out to me, as new and unexpected:

1. the importance of the family network, emigrants providing money to those left behind, who in turn provide care for the children of those emigrant workers, possibly becoming closer to the child than their natural parent
2. the significance of cellphone technology in vanquishing distance and maintaining family ties., 
3. The variety of experiences, working all hours, getting involved in scams and means of making money on the side, or illegally, getting exploited by middle men and losing money through ill-advised expenditures (country rubes fleeced city slickers(.

Proud To Be "Human Scum"

My cousin identifies as a Republican, though she's recently voted mostly Democratic.  But she appreciates President Trump's calling his Republican critics "human scum". She's planning a t-shirt with that motto to fluaunt that honor to the world.

I don't qualify for it--rather like Americans can't really be knighted by the Queen, I'm left standing by the side, envious.

Updating Voter Lists

This article described the open process being used in Ohio.  They proposed to purge 235,000 inactive voters, but found that 20 percent should not have been purged.

They used an open process-generating a list, then making it public so interested groups could find errors.

Although liberals tend to be suspicious of these exercises, I had enough experience with maintaining name and address lists to be open to it.  These days bytes are cheap, and computers fast, so there's less need to keep the list clean and purged of old data.  But a clean list is still good:

1. although the process of checking voter id against the list may be automated, as it is in Fairfax county, there will be times when a human has to get involved. When that happens the cleaner the better, so there's less likelihood of confusion and mistakes.
2. although fraud--impersonating a voter--is vanishingly rare it can happen, and having dead people on the voter list is one vulnerability.

In my ideal bureaucrat's world, there would be a master register for all residents, so checking could be automated.  But that's never going to happen in the U.S., so this open process seems to me to be the nezt best thing.

It's All in the Spin: We Want Pence

One of the attacks the Republicans are using against the impeachment inquiries in the House is that it's an attempted coup, overthrowing an election.

Sounds good, so we Democrats need a counter:

Bottom line: we aren't trying to oust President Trump.  We have the highest regard for his abilities as an entertainer and businessman and would like to see him devote his great energy and supreme intellect to those pursuits.  It's a win-win, because a President Pence would continue to nominate conservative judges and make a great looking president, while Donald Trump could organize and create an entertainment/news network to take the flag which Fox News is in the process of dropping.

People who forecast the outcomes of elections say the Republicans should be favored to win in 2020 based on peace and prosperity, so there's no downside for Republicans in impeaching the President.

Contract Farming Versus Supply Management

Part of the logic of contract farming, as I understand it, is providing more stability to the industry.

That might be questioned, given a 30 percent drop in egg prices.

Contract farming means the farmer in the hen house doesn't determine how many hens to raise.  She forgoes the possibility of good egg prices and hefty profits for hopefully a more certain profit (assuming disease can be avoided etc.).  The company doing the contracting makes the decision to increase or decrease production. Because the company only has to track what the other companies are doing, a much easier job than reading the minds of thousands of small growers, the company can make better decisions.

What happened to the theory?  Cage-free eggs seems to be the answer.  As producers increase production of cage-free eggs, both because of state regulations and the premium prices for such eggs, they misjudged the effect on demand for eggs from caged hens, and didn't decrease production enough.  The article doesn't say, but I'd guess the contracts the companies had with their growers limited their ability to cut production quickly.  After all the farmers have a capital investment in their hen houses and their cages which they planned to amortize over the lifetime of the buildings and equipment.

I don't know how possible it would be for a cage grower to convert to cage-free operation.  If the change is simply providing more cage space per hen, the conversion might be doable, although the grower would need to add building(s) to maintain the same level of production. Going to entirely cage free would be harder.  And free-range would be even harder.

Canada has a supply management program for poultry and dairy.  I assume that Canadians are as intrested in cage-free egss as Americans, so it will be interesting to see if their plan will work better in handling the changes than our markets do.

On Columbus and Italians

Josh Marshall has thoughts on Columbus/

I'm old enough to remember when WASP's looked dubiously on Catholics (specifically and especially my mother)--they were subject to the rule of the pope, so weren't fully loyal to the US (somewhat as some even today see Jews and Israel), they were relatively recent immigrants and not fully Americanized. 

One Italian-American in my school for a while--don't remember whether Joe was set back or grade or whether  he was a grade ahead.--he didn't graduate with us I know that.  Pretty good athlete and ran with the jocks. Got teased about being a "wop".  At least in memory it was mostly teasing, as we had nicknames for others: "crotch", "piggy", and "spook" were others I remember.  The last one wasn't racial--he was very pale. 

Italian-Americans were climbing the ladder--Senator John Pastore was prominent as the first senator.

In memory at least JFK's election ended most that that prejudice--the Italians were honorary Irish by virtue of being Catholic, so when he won all the recent immigrant groups won.  ("Recent" referring to 30 years before).

Also on immigration--two of the three economics Nobelists announced today are immigrants, which isn't unusual--see this from 2017.

Top 25 Vertical Farms?

Here's a listing of the top 25 vertical farms, although it appears some are equipment providers for aeroponic or hydroponic setups.  There's some mention of LED's, particularly for marijuana. (Indoor farming of marijuana seems to make sense based on what's desirable for the plants, not just because it's easier to hide the plants from law enforcement.)  Mostly these farms are growing greens and herbs.

When I first blogged on vertical farms it was to mock the idea of sun-based vertical farms. That idea seems to have died a natural death; artificial lights are used, changing the economics.  The linked article talks of the possibility of a multi-billion dollar industry by 2022 or so.  Personally I expect there's a fair amount of froth and hype in its current state--at some point the market will sort out which designs and sets of technology can make money in which cities.

Contract Farming for Strawberries?

Contract farming made an early appearance with hens, putting the small farms like my mother's out of business.  It's spread to more and more areas of agriculture, but I wasn't aware that strawberries are now included.   See this Civil Eats story.

Trump's MFP Leads to WTO Violation?

That's the Congressional Research Service's tentative conclusion--US may be billions over its "amber box" limit in 2019.. Its conclusion:

According to the scenarios developed in this analysis, including a projected set of market conditions, the United States may potentially exceed its cumulative amber box spending limit of $19.1 billion in 2019. Excessive amber box payments in 2019 could result from the addition of large MFP payments to the traditional decoupled revenue support programs ARC and PLC.
However, this analysis found that U.S. compliance with WTO amber box spending limits was very sensitive to a change in market conditions and market valuations. Noncompliance hinges on many key market factors that are currently unknown but would have to occur in such a manner as to broadly depress commodity prices through the 2019 marketing year (which extends through August 31, 2020, for corn and soybeans). Another crucial uncertainty is how the U.S.-China trade dispute—with its deleterious effects on U.S. agricultural markets—will evolve.51 Resolution of the U.S.-China trade dispute and an improved demand outlook could lead to higher commodity prices and output values while lowering payments under countercyclical farm programs such as MAL, PLC, and ARC. Such a turn of events could help facilitate U.S. compliance with its WTO spending limits.