Politico has a post on the unseen advantages of "Codels"--Congressional delegations visiting foreign countries. Because there's lots of travel time, and less actual meeting time, a codel throws the members together in a non-political environment, allowing them to experience each other as humans, not stereotypes.
A codel also has the advantage of seeming to be work; it doesn't seem to be a vacation or a boondoggle (at least sometimes).
So maybe some foundation should sponsor domestic codels.
Don't know if I've blogged on this part of the Pigford case before, but here's a case which ends in pleas of guilty by four of the six defendants.
A quote from an assessment of the conflict:
One challenge here is that NATO standardisation is not very standardised, with different countries’ howitzers not only having completely different maintenance requirements but also using different charges, fuses and sometimes shells.
The old story
I found this table in the CRS report on farm bill basics interesting:
Frederick Douglass had a speech on the US, partially focused on Chinese immigration during a time when that was a big thing.
Our geographical position, our relation to the outside world, our fundamental principles of government, world-embracing in their scope and character, our vast resources, requiring all manner of labor to develop them, and our already existing composite population, all conspire to one grand end, and that is, to make us the perfect national illustration of the unity and dignity of the human family that the world has ever seen.
That's a vision of America I can endorse. It's backed by this Bloomberg interview about immigration.
Boston 1775 has a post on Hutchinson's view of the Declaration. Denies that the thirteen colonies constitute a "people" and points to the conflict between "life, liberty, pursuit.." and slavery.
So the founders hypocrisy was apparent early (and to themselves, given the rapid progress of gradual emancipation in the northern colonies by 1790).
It's interesting though that he thinks there are 100,000 slaves. (The 1790 census showed about 700,000.)
In response to a tweet by Will Hurd:
I understand and appreciate why 72% of the country thinks we're on the wrong track, but despite this pessimism what is one reason why you are thankful to be an American?
— Will Hurd (@WillHurd) July 4, 2022
Lots of people from all over want to come here, and most find it good enough to stay and live.
— Bill Harshaw (@BillHarshaw) July 4, 2022
Is the popularity of the country sufficient reason to be proud? YES.
It's an objective measure of the value of the country. It's one which both conservatives and liberals, the far right and far left ought to be able to embrace.
My curiosity was triggered by this tweet:
In fact, the only denomination among whites that has increased recently is "mainline Protestant," which is decidedly liberal on abortion. The decline of "evangelical Protestant" - especially compared to other sects - since 2006 is very noticeable. pic.twitter.com/XUxdJa4VV0
— Aaron Astor (@AstorAaron) July 3, 2022
So I did a little looking at Wikipedia. It seems Pew did surveys in 2014 and 2020 of individuals, asking their affiliations. And the survey does show an increase between those years, with 16.4 percent being members of mainline Protestant churches (Episcopal, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Church of Christ, Lutheran, Disciples of Christ). But in 2010 a survey of denominations for their membership showed 7.3 percent.
That's quite a gap.
Much of what government,at least American government, does is to take over what private initiative has started and make it more uniform, more universal.
For example, roads--many of our roads started as Indian trails, simply because of the influence of geography. Colonies did some roads, private initiative did other roads ("turnpikes" as I was taught), eventually governments took over almost all roads, except for driveways. That was mostly true through the 20th century; now private enterprise is building roads again, toll roads.
Another example is redlining. The simple version is that the New Deal's agency to provide mortgages for housing and distressed homeowners divided cities into two areas: those where no mortgages would be supported and those where mortgages were available. The redlined areas were black, the others were white. That's drastically oversimplified, as McWhorter describes in this Times piece.
The reality is that bankers were always deciding who could get a mortgage and who couldn't. As their volume increased, they simplified their decision making by generalizing to areas. When the Feds got involved, they further generalized the process.
See this piece by Colin Gordon in Dissent.
David Brooks on Newshour Friday said he'd learned, contrary to the assumptions of political scientists, that people don't want power. He was talking about Congress not being willing to write specific authorities in legislation, as SCOTUS in this week's decision, says they ought to, rather than relying on agencies like EPA to decide and act.
It sort of fits with something I learned from "The First Congress", a book by Fergus Bordewich on the wheelings and dealings during 1789-91. I've learned the Bill of Rights was not the Congressional version of the Ten Commandments, words of wisdom widely debated and finally etched in stone. Some legislators saw them as rather meaningless, sops thrown to the Anti-Federalists who'd extracted the promise of amendments as part of state ratification of the Constitution.
Much more important to Congress was the location of the national capital. It took months of maneuvering and deliberations before the final compromise which settled it.
That also fits with another action this week: Congress blew up efforts to rationalize and modernize the Veterans Administrations healthcare facilities. That reminded me of a similar attempt back in the early 1980's to rationalize ASCS offices. It ended badly.
So my bottom line: Congress doesn't do well on difficult policy questions; it's much more interested in offices and jobs and will never delegate authority to agencies to change them.
