Loan Forgiveness and Reparations

 Vox has a discussion of the student loan forgiveness program.  It seems to me there's a parallel between this program and proposal for reparations, most notably reparations to black Americans.

In both cases, at least part of the rationale is to redress wrongs which people have suffered in the past, and to recognize and mitigate the damage currently being suffered. (There is a difference--in the case of slavery the people who would receive the benefits would be the descendants of those wronged; in the case of student loans those who took out the loans would receive the forgiveness.  I'm assuming the death of the borrower wipes out the loan obligations, which isn't totally clear.)

In both cases, there's the problem of fixing the problem which caused the damage. In the case of loan forgiveness, it may have been a bad loan from the start, based on fraud or misjudgment by the lender or the borrower. Or it may have turned bad by subsequent events--illness of the borrower, economic hardship, failure of the college, etc. In the case of slavery the damages resulting from slavery have carried forward. 

Biden seems to be trying to correct the problems in student loans, although I get the idea  there's skepticism about the effectiveness.  So there's the fear that students will end up with bad loans in the future, and that colleges will raise tuition anticipating future forgiveness.  In the case of reparations it's not clear to me that the various proposals really address the ongoing problems.  IMO that's the big weakness of reparations.

I Had a Mickey Mantle Card Once

 A Mickey Mantle baseball card in great shape sold for some millions of dollars the other day. 

I remember my baseball card collection, based on buying bubble gum at the corner store. I don't remember whether there were three sheets of gum and one card or vice versa, or some other ratio. Anyhow I had a stack of cards maybe 3 inches high, many of which were Wayne Terwilligers (just because that's the way they did the cards--those for the best players were the rarest).

I did have a Mickey Mantle card. I think it must have either a 1952 or 1953 card because it included the fact that he had been sent down to the Royals, which was 1951.  I think my cards were Topps, which started its baseball cards in 1952. 

I was a Yankees fan (the local baseball team, the Triple Cities Triplets was a Class A farm club); more importantly my sister was a Dodgers fan so I could only be a Giants or Yankees fan.  I liked the card, but there was something different about it.  Perhaps it was a Bowman card rather than Topps.  I don't know.   I definitely didn't get it from a bubble gum package.

The other thing which sticks in memory is condition: if the $12 million card grades 9.5 out 10, mine would have graded .1 out of 10. I believe I was given it by my friend, Van M., perhaps because he had a better version. Mine was crinkled and folded, with ragged edges.  

At some point I outgrew the collection, which faded away like all such things.

Too Many Options for a Geezer

 Both software (i.e., Word) and devices (i.e., smart TV's) have too many options for an old man to understand. 

For example, we donate to WETA, meaning we can access PBS Passport streaming service.  I figured out how to do that on our PCs, though I never can remember how to get to it from the web site--the design sucks.  For 3 years we've had a Samsung smart TV.  But it's taken until today for me to figure out how to link up our weta account with the smart TV so we can see the old PBS shows on the TV.

Lesson:  don't grow old.

Feds Exchanging Data

 Matt Yglesias had a tweet:

A weird fact about the US government is the Department of Education isn’t allowed to just access the IRS data to determine which of its borrowers are eligible for forgiveness and then do the forgiveness.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) August 26, 2022

He got a lot of replies, including one from me. I'll embed it when it pops up in my profile. 

 

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. 

Fraud and Telehealth

 I'm with Doggett on the problem of fraud possibly being enabled by telehealth.

I've been bothered by TV ads I see for various devices which support health--the claim is usually to the effect that the cane or walker or whatever is "free", because Uncle will pay for it.  

Thoughts on Secrecy

 A couple random thoughts.  The former guy and some of his defenders claim he declassified documents even though (presumably) the bureaucratic process to do so was not completed.  For a document to be classified, it has to be marked as "Confidential", "Secret", "Top Secret" or whatever, so to be declassified the marking has to be superseded by another marking: "Declassified" and the date and authority.  (This is my understanding).  So using Trump's theory, you can't prosecute someone for mishandling secrets, such as a Reality Winner without an affidavit from the President asserting he or she has not declassified the document?

While NARA rebutted Trump's claim that Obama had 33 million documents, I'm betting Obama actually has documents/records he shouldn't have, according to some lawyers.  

I go back to Apollo 11, the moon landing, and the other astronauts.  Years after their exploits we learned that astronauts made and kept, or sold, souvenirs of their flights.  Obama is human, so I'm sure he has some personal souvenirs of his time in the office. Perhaps GWB's note to him in the Resolute desk or whatever, something which could qualify as an official document.

87,000 IRS Agents

I've reservations about the Democratic spin on the "87,000 agents" in IRA, as described here, specifically the idea that the new hires are, in part, replacing present employees who will retire over the next 10 years. I haven't seen the IRS report which is the basis for the 87,000 claim, but normally I'd think the baseline for an agency for the next 10 years would include funding for employees at the current level. 

If the IRS has currently 100,000 employes (this Post piece says 80,000) and half will retire over 10 years, that would mean to me that IRS employment would increase by 37,000 because of IRA. 

I've reservations on the CBC's estimates of their added collections as well.  I bet the first thing the Republicans do when they gain the House, Senate, or Presidency is to use that leverage to negotiate a cut in IRS employment.  (Of course, CBC can't be that cynical.)

Asking Questions

 Finished Sec. Esper's book. One point I think worthy of commenting.  Esper, along with Gen. Milley, found the former guy to be very erratic, often reacting to what he saw on Fox or heard from his last contact, and sometimes with highly unrealistic ideas of what could be accomplished (as in withdrawals from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Africa).

According to Esper they often challenged Trump's wild hairs by raising lots of questions, often on the logistics of implementation, sometimes on legal issues involving internatonal law or the law of war.  That reaction accounts for Trumpians concerns over the "deep state" stalling.

Elsewhere I recently ran across a description of how environmentalists and NIMBY types delay and delay proposals for new pipelines (like the one Sen. Manchin got fast tracked as part of the IRA deal) by continually raising questions and legal issues.

So, I like Esper's questions, but am less enthusiastic about NIMBYism. Where do you draw the line, can you, between valid issues and stalling?  Because a new project involves unknowns, questions are inevitable and you can never resolve them all.  

Changing Times--Reversals of Roles

 Live long enough and you might find white becomes black and black white.  That's an oversimplification, but it applies this week.

When I was young (1950's) those who took the Fifth Amendment were frowned upon--then they were often Hollywood radicals, what were called "fellow-travelers" of the Communist Party, possibly spies, and certainly people who deserved to be dismissed from their jobs, blackballed from the entertainment industry, and investigated, tried, and convicted, not necessarily in that order.

Meanwhile, the FBI was led by J.Edgar Hoover, renowned defender of the American Way against subversives, spies, criminals (except organized crime, since there was none), and deviants of all stripes.  

Today of course the former guy has taken the Fifth and some in the Republican party want to defund or blow up the FBI.

Because the right has reversed their field, it tends to force liberals to reverse theirs: to condemn those who take the Fifth, defend the powers of government in investigations, and protect the FBI.

The Role of Women

 Reading Ian Morris Geography Is Destiny. His subject is Britain and geography over 10,000 years.

An interesting point he makes is in the domestication of wild grains in the Middle East--his opinion is that it began with women, since modern hunter-gatherers have women doing most of the gathering while the men do the hunting.

That makes sense to me. But he posits that men were involved in domesticating animals--livestock.  He doesn't give his logic, but the implication is hunting would lead into domestication.  I'm not so sure.  We know, or I think we know, that the maternal instinct lives in both sexes and in many mammals.  We've seen the cute pictures of animals of different species being "friends", grooming each other, sleeping with each other, playing, etc., which I'd ascribe to the maternal instinct at work.

I'd assume domestication proceeded by human adoption/seduction of young mammals, young girls perhaps saving a young animal from being eaten. 

The Search Warrant

 My current bottom line is nobody knows nothing. So why waste bits writing about it? 

Inflation Reduction Act and Agriculture

 As is usual to get big bills passed, there's everything in the IRA except the kitchen sink.  The logic is classic log-rolling, everyone gets a piece of the action to boast about. Manchin and Sinema may get the headlines for their actions, and they may take credit back in WV and AZ for bringing home the bacon, and receive credit from interest groups in the form of donations, but I guarantee there's something in the bill for every Democrat. 

Chris Clayton has the most detailed summary I've seen here.

Updated to add this excerpt: 

"LOAN AID FOR DISTRESSED FARMERS

The bill also included just over $1 billion to FSA to replace the loan reimbursement for socially disadvantaged farmers, which ended in several lawsuits by white farmers after the provisions in the American Rescue Plan was passed in 2021.

The new provisions help borrowers "who are at risk" -- as determined by USDA -- as a "limited resource farmer or rancher" to pay 100% of their loans, up to $150,000. The loan repayment would be offset by any funds those farmers received under the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) and reducing any payments under the Market Facilitation Program (MFP). For economically distressed borrowers are those who would be considered at least 90 days delinquent as of April 30, 2021, or 90 days delinquent as of the end of 2020. A farmer could also qualify if they farm in an area with at leas a 20% poverty rate, or in land held in trust by a Tribe or Native America.

Other farmers that would qualify for debt reduction include farmers in bankruptcy as of July 31, 2021, or receive a disaster set aside after Jan. 1, 2020, or has debt restructured after Jan. 1, 2020.

The bill also includes $750 million to provide farmers who experienced discrimination from USDA before Jan. 1, 2021. The bill would pay up to $500,000 to farmers who have proven to be discriminated against in USDA loan programs."

Chris corrects himself, because the language above was an old draft.  See this

Three Bucks

 I may have mentioned the growing presence of deer around our townhouse.  Over the years it's changed from a single deer occasionally, to a single deer more often, to the occasional pair or a doe with fawns, to once a group of five.

But the other day was the first day I can remember for sure of seeing a buck, actually three bucks.  All three had good sets of antlers.  Couldn't count the points but maybe 10+ on one and close to that on the other two. I guess it's not mating season yet, so they seemed content in each other's company. 

Cherry Shaking

 I learned this term, "cherry shaking", along with "pitters" in a news article today.  Michigan sour cherry growers are running into problems.  Their sour cherries are ripening unusually closerly together, meaning they need to be harvested by shaking the tree, and then processed by the pitters, but there's not enough slack in the pitting capacity to handle the surge. 

Data Sharing in USDA

 It's been almost 25 years since I retired. In my absence USDA has made progress in getting data sharing among agencies.  

Consider this release about Emergency Relieft Program payments. 

(I guess I'm losing my grasp on what's happening in USDA--I'm not at all clear on how these payments fit with crop insurance, NAP, or other programs.  My impression, which may well be wrong, is  that the Biden/Vilsack regime is following the precedents of the Trump administration's use of CCC funding.

Another Pigford Defendant Pleads

 According to this report.  Four other defendants in the conspiracy pleaded earlier in July.  There's still one left in the case.

Shirts in the Revolution Were Costly

 Reading Alan Taylor's "American Revolutions".  As usual he's quite readable, though there's not much new for me so far.  One trivia bit jumped out to me though:

In 1780 women in several of the states organized in support of the troops, soliciting donations*, and raised some $340,000, which they sent to Martha Washington to give to her husband to be distributed to the troops.  As Washington George figured, probably likely, the cash would be wasted on drink and frivolity he asked for shirts instead.  So they bought fabric with the money and made shirts, 2,200 of them.

So each shirt cost $154, and that's just for the fabric.

Note the date--1780.  By then Continental paper money wasn't worth a continental.

The Paperless Office

 I remember when Felix Foss came around to talk about the "paperless office" which implementing the System/36 would enable.

The other day I got on the Facebook group for current and retired FSA employees.  146 messages on the subject of what office equipment should be purchased for the coming year.  It seems that most of the messages concern equipment for handling paper and folders.https://www.facebook.com/groups/54686876198

Anglo-Saxon England and Slavery

 Just finished Marc Morris book on Anglo-Saxon England, an interest partially spurred by the TV series "The Last Kingdom".  I liked it, given the scarcity of sources with which he was dealing.

One thing I learned--10 percent of English residents were slaves at the time of the Norman conquest.

I vaguely knew that the word "slaves" comes from "Slav"--from the internet:

What's the etymology of slave?

Etymology. From Middle English sclave, from Old French sclave, from Medieval Latin sclāvus (“slave”), from Late Latin Sclāvus (“Slav”), because Slavs were a common source of slaves, during the Middle Ages, for Europe, the Byzantine Empire, and Arabs.

And I know "slaves" are described in the Bible, etc., but the dominant image in my mind is the rise of African slavery in the mid 15th century, through to the mid 19th century. 

It's so easy to make the accessible information seem like the exclusive and essential information.

False Colors

 Since the Webb telescope has started delivering pictures, I've seen references to their "false colors" or "fake colors".  NASA has used the term:

This false-color mosaic is made of 72 exposures over a 32-hour test. Note: 6-pointed diffraction spikes unique to Webb around the bright stars & a background full of galaxies. Webb will #UnfoldTheUniverse with its first full-color images in just 1 week! https://t.co/LaJjK8v3Bd

— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) July 6, 2022

I don't like it.

As I understand it, the Webb captures a much wider portion of the spectrum than do our human eyes. So if the images reflected the spectrum we could see, i.e., were in "real colors", we wouldn't see a lot of the interesting phenomena. So NASA uses what I'd call a translator program to convert all the data the telescope has captured into colors humans can perceive.  The program is true to our perceptions--we see longer light waves as blue, with "ultraviolet" designating the waves which are too long for us to see; we see shorter light waves as red, with "infrared" designating the waves which are too short for us to see. So the results of the translation have the infrared waves showing as red, the ultraviolet as blue.

Whenever we convert phenomena into colors on the printed page, we're dealing in "false colors", not reality.  That's true whether we're dealing with red states and blue states, or starlight.

Just as translators of the Iliad try to be faithful to the original Greek in their presentation of the text in modern American English, so the NASA scientist try to be faithful to the data their telescope has captured in presenting it to us.  In neither case do we get the full richness of the reality, but the best effort of the translators.

Small Farms, Big Farms, Haiti and Dominican Republic

 Here's a long discussion of why Haiti and the Dominican Republic have diverged so drastically, GDP per capita is 5 times greater in the DR, although they share the same island.

Several topics are discussed, but he leads off with the small farm/large farm contrast. There are several reasons Haiti now has small farms, compared to other Caribbean/Spanish American countries. The revolution, the prohibition on foreigners owning land, etc.  

One thing struck me--in the context of the US, we've lost millions of small farms over the years not only because of the economic advantages of consolidation, which is the usual explanation, but because of the opportunities in the cities for better jobs in industry, commerce and finance.  The "Great Migration" of African Americans from the rural South to jobs in cities all over the country is the prime example, but the reality is that there was a bigger migration of whites from Southern farms and of whites from farms in the rest of the country.  

Civil War? Stuff and Nonsense

 Stephens and Collins have a weekly conversation at the NYTimes.

When he noted a fairly widespread fear of civil war, she had a response with which I agree--a sentence:

It’s very possible things look worse than they are because we’re experiencing a revolution in communication more dramatic than anything since the invention of a national postal service.

Big changes in technology usually require a period of adjustment by society.  You can see that in the novels of Dickens, in the writings of Thoreau and his fellow Romantices, in the literature of the 1920's, etc.

The advent of the internet, particularly the cellphone/internet connection, is such a change.   Father Time will dissolve some of the partisanship we're experiencing now.  As we grow more used to the technology and develop norms to deal with the problems it brings we'll settle down into patterns which will become familiar and comfortable to us.

Appearances and Reality--When Are We Back to Normal?

 I think part of the gloom about the country must be perception--we don't see the country as having rebounded back to normal.  One indicator:  rush-hour traffic.  I don't know what it's like elsewhere in the country, but in Reston the parkway used to often have some backups aroun 9:15, when I was crossing on my way to the garden or out for my walk.  Even when there weren't backups the traffic was pretty heavy, especially for someone who remembers the time when it was a two-lane road, not a four-land divided highway.

But not these days.  During the height of the pandemic there was little traffic. Now the traffic is heavier, but I've not seen any backups since April 2020.  My ingrained definition of "normal" is heavy traffic and backups; by that definition we aren't back to normal yet. 

Precision Agriculture

 Wired has a long piece on precision agriculture. Divisions between automating current operations, like John Deere's version of their 14 ton tractor, and new paradigms, like small weed-pulling robots, between field crops and fruits and vegetables, and dairy.  

Did you know legal marijuana is the fifth most valuable crop grown in the US?

If You've Lost Fox?

 Kevin Drum blames Fox for much of the partisanship of the last 20-30 years.  

Jack Shafer at Politico believes the former guy is being abandoned by the network.

Liberals and Change

 

I mean...

What IS the response to this from good-faith liberals, btw? https://t.co/AvRtjYv7xb

— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) July 22, 2022

Within this thread is the "gentrification"/"white flight" cartoon attacking liberals--that is, if the neighborhood changes by increasing the proportion of whites--it's bad because "gentrification"; if it changes by decreasing the proportion of whites--it's bad because "white flight".

I think it's a fair point.  As a liberal I'm stuck, welcoming change from the "creative destruction" of capitalism/market economy, and opposing change by providing a "safety net". 

The key, I think, is modulated change: change must occur but change that's too fast, too massive needs to be cushioned.  That's my analysis and defense of farm programs--only a rigorous supply management system such as those we had for tobacco and peanuts has been halfway successful in maintaining successful farms. If we aren't willing to go that far, then the best farm programs can do is to cushion the changes. 

Things Get Better?

As someone who lived through the 1960's, I sometimes get impatient with today's discussions of race  and its problems.  I remember how it used to be, at least as best a young white NY liberal could who viewed from afar, did not jump into the struggle.

I was struck by the data in the twitter thread below, covering the life expectancies by race and sex between 1960 and 2017.  While there's still a gap in expected life span, the gap has indeed narrowed since 1960, narrowed signficantly and particularly in recent years. 

here's how it looks to me: pic.twitter.com/bd6NHH0cP7

— blighter (@blightersort) July 21, 2022

Cynical Take on Federal Records Act

 Commentary on the missing Secret Service cellphone records has invoked the spector of the Federal Records Act, violation of which can lead to jail time.

We don't know what happened in the case, but I start with some cynicism.  I don't think most bureaucrats in most agencies know much or care much about the FRA. The leader of all Federal bureaucrats for 4 years, the former guy, showed exactly what he thought of it when he tore up documents he'd read.

The Act lacks an enforcement mechanism; NARA has no real power.  

I suspect, and predict, that the Secret Service has never taken the FRA seriously.  This might mean they simply ignored the preservation of records in past years, and continued that mind set in dealing with Jan. 6 and the upgrading of their cellphones.

We may find out if I'm right. 

Modern Sculpture--Oldenburg

 Claes Oldenburg recently died. He was, I guess, a modern sculptor.

I don't have much experience with modern sculpture.  "The Song of the Vowels" which was installed on my college's campus about the same time I arrived didn't do much for me, but apparently it's still considered good.

The National Gallery of Art has a sculpture garden which I've toured, with several of Oldenburg's sculptures.  I do get a kick out of The Typewriter Erasor--Scale X. I remember using the real life erasor before the days of correction fluid.  I'm sure these days few people could identify it. 

Making Decisions--Roberts

 I believe Russ Roberts was an economist before he became head of a college.  Anyway, he's got a piece in the NYTimes on decision making in which he describes the process Darwin went through before marrying. When I read about it in a recent bio I didn't pick up everything he did.

Back when I joined ASCS I was sent to a Kepner-Tregoe training class.  One of the things taught was the same sort of calculus Darwin went through--figuring out pros and cons of a decision, assigning weights to each, and deciding according to the balance.

I tried that approach in choosing the house I was going to buy in Reston.  It was useful, but then, like Roberts, I threw away the calculations and went with my gut feeling--the house I chose didn't come out as the best choice.  The process can only go so far, and whenever there are imponderables and unknowns, as in deciding whether to marry, it's limited. 

Our American Dentistry System

 I've commented before on the advantages of the Kaiser Permanente system, as opposed to the system of independent doctors, specialists, and testing labs found elsewhere.

Currently I'm gaining some (vicarious) experience with dentistry.  While Kaiser includes some dental coverage, it's not in-house but run through a separate organization.  It includes a directory of participating dentists, endodontists, and oral surgeons which are in-network. For a variety of reasons (not rational ones, but human ones), we're getting the work done outside the plan.

One difference between the medical side of our health system and the dental side is technology.  The various dentist/specialists have a lot more technology in their office. Where doctors had to send you out for blood tests, dentists have x-rays in their office, while the endodontists and surgeons have even more equipment. 

One similarity betwen the system is the referrals from dentist to endodontist and surgeons. It seems to an outsider there's likely an informal network in existence; whether the network is more than just mutual trust I don't know.  

From the patient's standpoint there's still the frustration of repetitive forms: health histories and legal documents. Within the Kaiser organization, that's avoided for medical issues.  

For any complex issue, there's a coordination issue.  That's likely true within Kaiser for medical issues, especially when you involve a hospital. 

Younger Generation Losing Skills?

 My title is a bit of a troll--the younger generation is always losing skills and learning new skills.

What triggered this post is my buying Starbucks coffee today.  I pay in cash, usually trying to pay provide $5.55 for a $3.55 coffee, meaning I can put $2 in the tip jar (a habit carried over from pandemic days).  The veteran baristas know my habit and handle it; today a newbie was thrown by it, gave me changes for $5 and my $.55 in change back.

I suppose like using the stick shift and the correction fluid, the art of making change is gradually losing ground as we all switch to digital payments. 

Fixing ECA

Before we fix SCOTUS we should fix the Electoral Count Act. 

Fixing SCOTUS

 I tend to the position that any "fix" to SCOTUS is likely going to be worse than the current situation.  Vox has 10 possibilities discussed here.

I heard of an intriguing suggestion, can't remember where now: each president gets to appoint two justices to the court.  The court is composed of the 9 most recent living appointees. Any others still living who wish can take senior status (as Justice Souter has).  Except for the possibility of the Senate refusing to confirm an appointee, which I've seen handled in another proposal, it seems a reasonable suggestion.  

Clearance Rates on Homicides

 This piece describes six reasons that the clearance rate for homicides has declined. 

None of them mention my guess at a possible reason: a higher proportion of gang/drug-related murders. There were gangs in the 60's; the Mafia was active. But it seems to me there's more conflict among gangs now, fights over territory for selling drugs, etc.  Gangs have and enforce the code of silence, and they have more power to intimidate possible witnesses.  

On the Margins--a Metaphor

 Behind our townhouse there's a strip of lawn at the foot of a sloping bank up to a strip of the woods which remain from the original landscape before the townhouse cluster was developed.  Originally when I bought the townhouse from the developer the bank was planted to grass.  When the maintenance company's crew mowed the lawn it also mowed the grass on the bank.  For a few years.

Unfortunately the bank was good Virginia red clay, so the grass never thrived. It was invaded by weeds, which soon the mowing crew decided not to cut. Over the years some woody brush has filled in behind the weeds, which have advanced down the bank and into the strip of lawn. Just the other day I noticed how narrow the strip of lawn had gotten, as each year the crew abandoned more land to the weeds.

The situation reminds me of the borders of our fields, back on the farm I grew up on.  Something similar happened there.  First you have a fence, and a few weeds grow up around it.  The fence posts prevent you from mowing under the fence, so you mow within a foot or two of it.  But areas which aren't mowed become a niche for brush to grow up, which shades the adjacent area, where the weeds invade next. 

When mowing hay, you don't really want to cut brush which might get baled, or which might clog the cutter bar of the mowing machine.  So each year you mow just a tad further away from the original fence, and so the brush becomes a hedgerow, and the hedgerow grows and grows.

Which is sort of like my sideburns.  Particularly since covid, I go a long time between haircuts. When I shave each morning, somehow my sideburns become a little longer, meaning when I do get a haircut the barber needs to shave them back to their original place.

Bottom line: I think hedgerows and sideburns become good metaphors for what happens on the margins of states, the Roman empire, and organizations. Often the returns from maintaining them don't really justify the investment needed to sustain the difficult maintenance. 

Coal for Heat and Hot Water

This Smithsonian piece on coal brought back memories. The theme is the process and the difficulties in getting American households to switch from wood to coal, from open burning to enclosed burning.

I grew up in a house with two coal burners--our kitchen stove was a coal burner, though we could burn wood as well.  In fact, in order to get a coal fire started first you burn some wood.  During the colder months we kept the coal fire going all the time, banking the fire during the night, bringing it alive during the day, after removing the previous day's accumulated ashes to the dump near the side door.  Midway during my years we added an electric stove, very handy for cooking, particularly during the hot days of the summer when you really didn't want a fire going.  (Before the electric stove there was a kerosene cook stove.)

The other coal burner was the furnace, providing hot air to heat the house.  The evidence of the past was visible in the shapes of the chimneys in the walls, two of them; one was still used for the cook stove and the "one-a-day" (a woodburner in the basement which heated water, mostly for weekly baths; the other was closed off.  The chimney for the furnace was outside the house.  I've a vague memory of its being built, or perhaps rebuilt with cinder blocks, so possibly it was originally connected to the second chimney.   It too was banked during the night, which was an acquired skill.

The coal was delivered yearly by dump truck, maybe a couple tons of anthracite of different sizes: smaller for the cook stove; larger for the furnace, into separate bins in the basement.