The Romantic Virtues of Dirt

The NYTimes had an article on the definition of "organic": specifically can vegetables grown through hydroponics be considered "organic"?  There's different views, particularly the big hydroponic growers who can get premium prices for their hothouse produce as compared to the dirt based organics.

Back in the day there would have been no question:  the organic movement had IMHO a romantic view of the virtues of dirt: there was a magic in the dirt, perhaps embodied in the bacteria and organisms present in natural soil, soil which had not been denaturalized by the repeated applications of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides.  (Though back in the 1950's it was mostly fertilizers, not so much herbicides and pesticides.)  The organic people had a faith in nature, usually "Nature", that exceeded their faith in man.  It's partly the old top-down, bottom-up dichotomy.  If you believe in human reason you think people can figure out anything and then improve on what's developed from the past.  If you have a less strong belief, either in the strength of reason or in current development of understanding of natural phenomena, or if you want to avoid the work of understanding, you trust in nature.

I see a similar dichotomy in the controversies over GMO's or the precautionary principle.  I'd generally expect the Trump USDA to go with the hydroponics people, but maybe I'm just using the stereotype of Republicans favoring business people.

Too Much Fear, Too Little Calm

My title could apply to many things, including the current agita over the Trump administration to be.

I want to note the election, specifically the lack of major problems at the polling place, as reported by this ProPublica blog post. All the fears of intimidation at the polls, etc. weren't borne out.  People have the ability to work themselves into a lather (a metaphor dating back to the horse age) over things which don't come true.

The reality is that Trump and his people will make mistakes, do some bad things, do some good things, and often kick the ball down the street.  They may well be as bad for the country as were Nixon and Reagan, but maybe not.  We'll see. 

Harry Potter and Bureaucracy

Any bureaucrat who's a fan of Harry Potter knows he's also a bit masochistic (the bureaucrat, not Harry).  Here's an old essay which makes that point, several times.

The Benefits of Immigrants

Andrew Gelman writes about attitudes to Hungarian refugees in 1958.  I commented

One of the lesser contributions of immigrants to American culture is the soccer-style field goal kick. Yes, before 1959 all field goal kickers kicked straight on. It was Pete Gogolak and his brother Charlie who brought soccer-style kicking to the college level (Cornell for Pete), and then to the pros. They were Hungarian refugees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Gogolak

An example of how we all benefit from the interchange of people and ideas.

I Was Wrong, Again

Sometime recently I believe I blogged about the difficulty in undoing regulations which had been finalized after the rule-making process.  The idea was, and is, that an agency needs to go back through the rule-making process in order to revoke a reg, a process which takes a while and can, in controversial cases, result in lots of comments to respond to.

That's still the case, but I'd forgotten Newt's baby, which is briefly referenced in this post.
It's the Congressional Review Act, part of Gingrich's Contract with America, which allows simple majorities in both Houses to nullify major regulations within 60 legislative days of promulgation. With divided government it hasn't been used, hence my forgetting about it.  Twill be interesting to see how many of the candidates the Republican Congress actually nullifies.  My bet is a minority, perhaps a small minority, unless some wiseass packages a number into one legislative act.

Spikes in Homicides and Traffic Deaths

Peter Moskos picks up on the same thing I did.  The only difference is he wrote about it: the increases in traffic deaths and homicides are roughly the same percentages, but the Times minimized one and not the other.

Not good, NYT, not good.

On Reconciliation With Enemies

Boston 1775 cites a letter by Jonathan Sewell, a Loyalist, regarding his old friend, John Adams, the Partriot.

Some Good from Trump?

Whatever else happens in the next four years, Trump's election and administration will act like a bowling ball (no, not a gutter ball), knocking the pins around and disturbing past patterns.  Any change of political party does that, but he will do so more.  In that sense, voters who wanted "change" will get it.

What do I mean:  take the farm bill, for example.  For decades it's been an omnibus that served the interests of those liberals who wanted food stamps (SNAP), the greenies who wanted conservation, and production agriculture who wanted farm programs and insurance.  This alliance has been stressed at times, most recently in the House during the consideration of the last farm bill.  This time around is likely to see more changes.

Another example: it looks as if the intra-party coalitions which comprise both parties are under strain. The Democrats are debating whether to change the Clinton/Obama formula to be more aggressively liberal and perhaps more class-conscious, a direction which may lessen their support from the professional upper classes.  The Republican coalition of fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, libertarians is now figuring out whether it can accommodate a renewed appeal to the "Reagan Democrats".  IMO the original Reagan Democrats tended to be Catholic working class who left the Democrats as a result of social issues, mostly abortion, and resentment of blacks. The new working class seems to be more populist in tone, which doesn't work well with Wall Street Republicans.

So if Trump is successful as a change agent, does that mean he'll be successful as a President.  My answer--no.  But are these changes "good"?  I'd resist that term; rather I'd say the changes are somewhat inevitable.  We shall see.

What's Wrong With California?

It doesn't matter this year, and may not matter in the near future, but what's the matter with California?  Suppose the election is such that California's electoral votes will be decisive.  Are we really willing to wait for weeks until they get through counting all their ballots?

Trump's Popularity

Matt Yglesias tweets reminding us that Trump is unpopular. But what do we think will be the future?

Personally I think during his term in office his approval rating will hit 65 percent and fall to 30 percent, perhaps not in that order.

Bitter Defeats: A Life Following Politics

Live long enough, and be into politics enough, and you'll have some bitter moments.  Two of mine:

• Hubert Humphrey was a leader in civil rights from the time he spoke to the 1948 national convention, passionately appealing for Democrats to end racial segregation.  (No, the only thing I remember from 1948 was the sound of Alben Barkley speaking--my interest in government and politics grew in following years.)  Humphrey was the standout liberal during the 50's and the author of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. 1965 was the best time to be a liberal, given the Dem's majorities and LBJ's mastery of Congress, even though it was also the year I got drafted.  In a just world Humphrey would have reaped the rewards of his endeavors by succeeding LBJ in 1968 by beating Tricky Dick Nixon and the demagogue George Wallace.  Alas, the world was not just.
• I remember listening to Ronald Reagan on radio during the 1964 campaign, speaking on behalf of Goldwater.  I think I turned him off, his assertions seemed so ill-founded, and his speaking seemed so glib.  I had problems taking him seriously even after he beat Pat Brown for governor of California, nearly beat President Ford for the 1976 nomination, and ran again for President on a platform of keeping the Panama Canal and rigid anti-communism. I knew he was a genial lightweight, who talked well but glibly and with no regard to factual accuracy.  I fastened on every straw in the wind to believe Carter would beat him as he deserved.  
• The deaths of JFK, MLK, and RFK.  We're lucky to have survived almost 50 years without more such killings.
• .I was disappointed by the results in other elections, notably 1988 and 2000, but as I grew older I began to have more perspective. But I haven't gained enough perspective to make 2016 less than bitter.

Young Protestor: Write or Visit Washington

As a followup to my previous post, Emily Ellsworth has a set of suggestions for how people  should work to influence Washington. 

Go To Washington, Young Protestor

The research shows that the way to have impact on politics is face to face.  So instead of marching in protests the protestors should plan on visiting DC to talk to their elected representatives. Granted that it doesn't provide the emotional release of marching, but it's more effective long term.

[Turns out the women are planning a march on Washington for Jan. 21.  Hope they plan on visiting their representatives as well as talking. ]

Trump and Reagan

Some comparisons between the Reagan administration and what may happen in the Trump administration:

Seems to me there were three power centers in the Reagan administration: the true believers (Reaganauts), the establishment (most notably Baker), and Nancy.  Over the course of the administration each group won some.  There may be a similar dynamic for Trump:

• the establishment would be Priebus, Ryan and McConnell
• the Trumpites would be Bannon, Giuliani, Sessions
• the children would be Nancy.

In the Reagan administration over time the establishment outlasted most of the Reaganauts--Schultz, Baker, and Weinberger--and tended to have the major policy posts  The Trumpites like Hickel (Interior), Block (USDA) and Pierce (HUD) ended up with lesser posts and scandals and major snafus.  Nancy protected her husband's longrange image, which is the role I see for the children (their future is their name, their inheritance is their name).

Hypocrisy or Just a Matter of Time?

Orin Kerr at Volokh Conspiracy notes it's time to turn our clocks back to before Obama, so liberals and conservatives will switch places on matters of principles.

Schadenfreude: Both Sides

I was going to label the first sentence of this paragraph of a NYTimes article as the best sentence of November:

Mr. Trump will have no immunity from lawsuits involving his corporate ventures, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling involving Paula Jones, one of President Bill Clinton’s accusers. And nothing will stop Mr. Trump’s family from continuing to run its vast international web of businesses. Federal ethics laws and conflict-of-interest statutes that apply to other federal employees and cabinet members do not apply to the president.

But fairness compels me to note that Obama did expand the scope of the President's powers, so we liberals will be mourning that in a few months. 

Why Rural Areas Went Trump

One factor I haven't seen mentioned (which was IIRC key to Truman's victory in 1948): bad economics for farmers.  Prices are down, land values are down.  For example, per bushel corn prices have declined from $6.89 to $3.61 in four years.

Good News for Some, Bad for Others

Gun maker stocks took a big hit after Trump's win.

What If? Immigration First?

Matt Yglesias asks somewhere what would have been the result if Comey's letter had come out earlier and Trump's video had come out later?  The moral is the effect of contingency.

Along somewhat different lines, what would have happened had Obama opted to put immigration reform first, and health care second back in the first days of his presidency?  I could argue that there was a deal to be made on immigration (almost had one in the last year of GWBush's presidency) that would have reduced the heat the issue had this year.  If he'd then failed to pass Obamacare, the Tea Party uproar in 2010 might have been less effective, meaning less energy for the populist resentment this year.  And having passed immigration reform might have improved the Latino support for Clinton this year.

Of course, with all those what-ifs, Trump might not have become the nominee. 

Social Media and the Government

Dan Drezner has a couple posts at the Post about the future.  I commented this way on one
which included a discussion of some of the structural constraints on Trump:

You fail to note one factor not present in the past: social media.  Is the government much more permeable and transparent because of it?  Remember Nixon's tapes were secret and only revealed by accident.  Clinton's emails were hacked. Anyone with a gripe, justified or unjustified, can now find a speaking trumpet. Or does social media tend to empower the more extreme partisans, further dissolving the moderate middle?

The Hidden Toll of Gay Marriage

Does anyone remember it's been just a year and a half since same-sex marriage became legal nation-wide?  I didn't, and was surprised when I looked it up.

I may be the only one, but it seemed to me that the nation had quickly moved on to other things so issue quickly receded into the rear-view mirror.  Is it possible that the "elites" have assumed that relative silence (except over issuing marriage licenses, photography, baking) means the nation had accepted it? 

What if that assumption was wrong? Even though President-elect Trump didn't talk about it that I remember, and the Republican convention didn't make a big deal of it (not that I watched the speeches), perhaps one of the (many) reasons whites and some African-Americans went more strongly for Trump than Clinton is resentment that the rules were imposed from the top, by the lawyers and the Supreme Court? 

I Was Wrong

See this, and should retire as a predictor but I'm still optimistic.

Voted in 5 Minutes

That may be an exaggeration,but we parked, walked up the sidewalk to the elementary school, picking up a Democratic sample ballot, walked into the gymnasium and up to one of about seven desks, handed in drivers license which was scanned, repeated my name and address, the poll worker repeated it into a recording device, gave me a card to take to another station where I picked up the ballot.  Was directed by another worker to a long line of cubicles, sat down, filled in the ovals, got up and went to the scanning station where my ballot was scanned and accepted.  No lines.

Of course this was at 1:12 pm. I took this as I waited for my wife.  The initial reception stations are behind the woman on the right, the cubicles to complete the ballot are behind the divider on the left, the scanning station is at the immediate left.  All in all it was a new system and impressive.

The Conservatives I Follow

I've three blogs I keep up with which are mostly conservative.  The Volokh Conspiracy is a bunch of law professors.  Powerline is four lawyers/scholars.  Ann Althouse is a law professor.  Althouse voted for Obama in 2008, don't think she revealed her choice in 2012, and is keeping quiet about her vote in 2016, though I'd say her posts tend to be pro-Trump and her readership definitely tilts to the right. (She tends to tease her views.)  Powerline contributors are torn, but my guess is they'll vote Trump or a write-in, never Clinton.  Orin Kerr at Volokh did an anonymous survey of contributors--only one voting for Trump, the rest for others.

Where I'm At: Optimistic

At noon on Election Day, I'm optimistic, both about the election and the country:

• I want and expect Clinton to win.
• Trump will concede, either graciously or at the behest of his family.
• If the Dems take the Senate, they'll still be at the mercy of their conservatives: Manchin and Donnelly. If they don't, I expect the remnants of the Gang of Eight (or was it Sixteen) to help pass legislation.  (Republicans don't have many running in 2018 so Senators won't be pulled to the right by primary fears.)
• Clinton will likely work from the center, both as a result of Congress being narrowly divided. She'll turn out to be a good president.

As always, I'd predict an extension of past trends (which is a sure way of being wrong--things stay the same until they don't)--growth in the economy, improvements in social trends (teen pregnancy down, crime low, lower obesity), and innovations which help and hurt (autonomous vehicles, health care innovations, etc.)

You Don't Get It Right the First Time: China's Carriers

If there are any long-term readers out there, you'll recognize the title as one of my rules from early on.

Robert Farley has an interesting take on the new Chinese carrier.  (Full disclosure: I was a long timer naval war addict.  Ballantine paperbacks had a series of WWII books back in the 1950's.

Terrorism in Vermont?

Beings with destruction on their minds destroyed a portion of the Internet yesterday--I'm sure it's just a taste of what will happen on election day.

That's Our President

Obama tells crowd to "respect" protester at Clinton rally: "We live in a country that respects free speech." https://t.co/DlTg7Y6ULY

Sixty Plus Years Later--Appalachian Regional Commission

JFK got the Appalachian Regional Commission established as a result of campaigning in West Virginia and seeing the poverty.  For political reasons (gaining more support in Congress) they made Appalachia spread into NY, including Broome County. (I never thought of myself as living in Appalachia.) The ARC is still around, and The Rural Blog has a post on their latest status report.

A Sixth Hack--Mess With GOTV

David Sanger at the Times has a piece on five possible hacks of the election process. All very good, but he misses what seems to me to be the most significant hack: messing with a party's "get out the vote" (GOTV) operation. Unlike most of the election operation, this seems to be centralized, so if there's one central database it's a high-reward target. Screw up the database and the GOTV effort is wasted. Barring that, do a denial of service attack, and you have a similar effect.

Humans Are Strange

"Active and ambitious in a career notorious even among slave owners for its viciousness, Bacon Tait nevertheless married a free woman of color, Courtney Fountain, whose extended family were involved in the abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad."

From a book review at Dead Confederates, a reminder that history is stranger than fiction.  Book sounds good.

Times and GMO's--II

I blogged previously about the NYTimes article on GMO's,  Tyler Cowen links to another approach--the writer arguing that farmers are making rational decisions on which seeds to buy, which must mean that GMO seeds have advantages over nonGMO.

An Idea for Grain Elevators

This post from Life on a Colorado Farm caught my attention.  They are in the midst of corn harvest:

"One of the things she wanted to do was ‘Go with Grandpa to the Elevator’.  Terry left early…7:30 in the morning…he was 11th in line.  The Elevator opens at 6:00 a.m.  There were trucks there starting at 4:30 a.m.  The days are long during harvest. The wait is longer."

Not clear how long it was before he unloaded but at least 3 hours or more.  So with 11 trucks at 3 hours per that's a good bit of time.

How difficult would it be to do a software program to coordinate scheduling between farmers and grain elevators? It is, after all, just a scheduling problem:  you've got a resource that's time-bound just like a doctor's time, and you've got patients wanting service.   I suppose the reason there is no such program (if that's a true fact, maybe there is one used everywhere but in this Colorado county?) is that it's only a yearly thing, and maybe farmers enjoy the break and the chance to compare notes with the others waiting? 

Dairy: Supply Management Versus Organic

NYTimes has a story on Canadian dairy farmers and their relationship to the EU (remember the Canada/EU treaty which was delayed for a bit by Walloon dairy farmers (i.e., Belgium).  Their concern is that more cheese may be imported from the EU into Canada. Two paragraphs:

The way the country’s “supply management” system works now, Canadian dairy farms are almost guaranteed to prosper. Milk production is controlled by quotas, marketing boards keep prices high and stable, and import duties of up to 300 percent largely shut out competition from abroad.

But after the deal, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, which was signed on Sunday, comes into effect, much more imported cheese will be allowed to enter Canada duty-free from the Continent. And farmers worry that this one dent in their defenses could be the beginning of the end for supply management.

Later the article cites an estimate of over $200 per year in additional costs for dairy products for the average Canadian farmer, or roughly $.50 a day.  Some speculations:

So the Canadian system probably maintains a lot of smaller family dairies, farms which have been lost in the U.S. as dairies got bigger and bigger.  (Maybe I'll get ambitious and research the point--looks like 11,000 farms averaging about 90 cows.  It's hard to get comparable data but a quick skim of this says my generalizations seem valid. This seems to say that there's proportionately more organic dairies/cows in the US..)  The food movement would like that.  But the dairy products in the grocery stores are likely rather generic; with supply management protecting a farmer's place in the economy, there's little incentive to experiment with organic milk, raw milk, or niche cheeses.  The food movement won't like that.

The bottom line, very tentatively, is: families can pay more to preserve family farms or pay more for choice of milk products (i.e., organic).  The downside of supply management is the higher prices apply to all; the upside of the US system is consumers can choose whether to pay the premium prices for organic.

FSA Aerial Photography Using Drones?

FCW has a post on USDA's IT budget requests.  It includes this paragraph:

Then there's the outright fanciful. When the Federal Aviation Administration issued permits allowing commercial drones to be used in agriculture, USDA set plans in motion for its own implementation. To plan for resource allocation and budgeting, the department will need big-data analysis of crop imagery and related data gathered by unmanned aerial vehicles.

So I go to the FSA website and search for "drones", get two supposed hits although I don't see the word within the document, but one of them discusses four-band aerial photography as being available in some states.  

Trump's Taxes

Kevin Drum as usual has a good post on the issue of how Trump handled his tax returns in the 90's, specifically how he avoided declaring forgiveness of debts as income.  I think I'm wrong in my comment on the post--this Trump issue occurred before the Republicans started hammering the IRS (in Congressional hearings during Clinton's second term).  So if the IRS accepted a dubious interpretation of law in the first term, it may reflect something other than badgering from Congress.

Those Damn Boomers

I'm a member of the silent generation (born 1941) so naturally I don't like the boomers. Turns out I'm right, as usual.  Two sentences from a piece on trends in incarceration:

"Multiple factors account for the rising proportion of older Americans in prison. First, ever the trendsetters, baby boomers are somewhat more criminally active in late life than were previous generations."

Alaskan Ag--The Reality of Climate Change

The skeptics of climate change challenge the accuracy of temperature graphs, so I like to find phenomena which can't be challenged, like the Northwest Passage or growing cabbages outdoors in Alaska.

(I remember back in the late 70's there were a few farms with bases or maybe normal crop acreages on record in Alaska. )

Congressional Research Service on Payment Limitation

A new website has lots of Congressional Research Service reports (which are usually not made public, unless the member of Congress who requested the report releases it), including this one on payment limitation issues.

The Times and GMO Crops--Something Screwy

NYTimes has a front page article on the usage of GMO crops: comparing the yields and herbicide usage between US/Canada and Europe.  Not sure how I got this referral, but this commentary post 
seems quite on the point, pointing out some of the problems in the article.

One thing I haven't seen discussed; perhaps it's too elementary for these writers to explain, but it's straight line graph of yields. Turns out the Times sticks its graphics in a separate url--I've stolen it here:


The arrow points to the place where GMO's come into play and the graph covers early 80's to 2015 I think.  What I don't understand is what the lines represent.   If they show the average increase/decrease in national yield each year, each would be a jagged line, with an upward slope.  So it must be some average over the time period.  But obviously an average over the whole time period won't show any change for GMO adoption in the middle of the period.  It might be an average over the whole period for Western Europe and two averages for US/Canada--one up to the adoption of GMO's and one after, but it's certainly not labeled that way nor explained.

The unit of measure is "hectograms per hectare", which is a metric yield measure, like kilograms per square meter.  I read the graph as implying the corn yields for the US and Western Europe are the same, which can't be right. I know damn well corn yields in the US vary greatly, so there's got to be a big difference between countries.  I did a search and found this: "These analyses indicate that Western Europe started with a lower yield than the USA (29,802.17 vs 39,895.57 hectograms/ha) and managed to increase yield much more quickly (1,454.48 vs 1,094.82 hectograms/ha per year) before any use of GM corn by the USA." (The source is some Kiwi's blog working on the same issue back in 2013.  See this post.)

On a football Sunday I've now exhausted my energy on this issue--perhaps more later.

Weren't Abedin's Emails Synced?

If I understand, the FBI got a PC/smartphone from Anthony Weiner as part of their investigation of his texting and found some of his wife's emails also on the PC/smartphone.  I'm not clear:

1. did Abedin have an email account on the PC or did she receive/send emails under her husband's account?
2. if she had a separate email account (most likely) was it different than the account(s) for which she's already turned over emails?
3. if it was different, was it associated only with the PC or their ISP account or was it a cloud account (i.e., hotmail/yahoo)?
4. if it was different and unique to the PC/home, did she fail to reveal it to the FBI?
5. if it was part of a cloud account (i.e., she had one email account which she accessed from different devices, which I assume is probably the most common configuration these days) was the account on the PC synced with the cloud account?
6. if it was synced, then presumably the FBI should have already seen the emails.

Given the time lapse for Weiner's transgressions, I'm amazed the FBI is just now looking at the PC/smartphone.

Politics Back in the 18th Century

From Boston 1775 which has been running a series on the celebrations of Washington's birthday (first as president, then as historic man) and the controversies involved as Americans tried to figure out what sort of government and society they had, Albert Gallatin writes:

"The court [i.e., the Adams administration]is in a prodigious uproar about that important event. The ministers and their wives do not know how to act upon the occasion; the friends of the old court say it is dreadful, a monstrous insult to the late President; the officers and office-seekers try to apologize for Mr. Adams by insisting that he feels conscientious scruples against going to places of that description, but it is proven against him that he used to go when Vice-President."

First the Truck Drivers, Then the Soldiers

Kevin Drum blogs about the threat to long distance truck drivers (and a commenter notes the follow-on impacts on restaurants, etc.) presaged by Uber's use of a self-driving truck (with driver on board) to ship Budweiser a long distance.

Meanwhile, the NYTimes discusses new developments in weapons, including autonomous drones.  

GMO's in Africa

Technology Review has a piece on trials of GMO crops in Tanzania and the possibility African countries are becoming more open to them.  I think this is how change occurs--while humans may resist the new, usually there come times when the advantages of the new outweigh the resistance.

But the example of Japan's resistance to modern firearms cautions that it can take a long time for the advantages to become clear.

The Unrealized Greatness of Cows

Cows as the answer to diseases?  See this Technology Review piece.

Politics Is Checkers Not Chess

Some of the bloggers I follow, particularly Althouse and Powerline on the right but also some on the left, sometimes fall into fancy theories about what the other side is doing.  IMHO they tend to be a bit paranoid, figuring that their opponents are smart enough to play a double game.  Unfortunately I don't have any examples to hand; maybe now I'm posting on the subject I'll remember to point out future examples as I come across them.

As you can tell by my description, I usually doubt such posts.  In my experience, it's often better to consider that people have tunnel vision and focus on the near than to expect them to be playing games.  My metaphor in the title then is people play checkers, not chess.  I suppose expert checker players can set traps, but even beginning chess players can come up with a knight fork, or a revealed check.

I'm blogging today because it seems to me that the Wikileaks of Podesta's emails tend to confirm my view--I haven't noted any fancy stratagems being revealed, just  day-to-day planning.

Small Gardens in the UK

The "allotment" in the UK is like a plot in a community gardens in the US, except with a much longer history..  It's a reflection of the difference in the two nations that a scholar is able to come up with estimates of the total number of allotments over more than a century, up to a million such gardens in a nation of maybe sixty million people.  Also in the UK, unlike the US, the national government had legislation on the subject, dating back to 1907, with allotment gardens dating back to the early or mid 19th century.

According to the linked piece, the evolution of allotments in the UK involved differing motivations and rationales: supplying the needs of the working class; serving as a hobby for middle classes; a focal point for socialization; and finally the trendy ecological concerns of recent times.

I show my prejudices by noting this long historical perspective should serve as a caution to US enthusiasts.