Awesome photo gallery at The Atlantic featuring photographs of Chicago's rail yards by Jack Delano. Bonus points for the ones of the Illinois Central yard featuring the giant neon PBR sign.
Michael Cohen and the End Stage of the Trump Presidency - The New Yorker. I don't know, almost 46% of the voters in 2016 voted for the obviously crooked businessman, I'm not sure why even more evidence that he's a crook is going to convince them they've been conned.
Where Blue-Collar America Is Strongest - FiveThirtyEight. This map reflects the best farm economy in a generation. We've seen the peak, and it is going to be worse going forward.
Sure, it was only 4 or 5 inches of snow, but I think that was the most we've gotten in any storm this winter, and it is no longer winter. Anyway, I was busy imbibing on St. Patrick's Day, so it took a few extra days to find enough good stories. Here you go:
Included are suicide and undetermined deaths suspected of being
suicides. Teenage rate is deaths under age 20 divided by population age
15-19; adult rate is for age 20+.
Emerging analyses show rapidly rising suicide, firearms, and addiction-related “deaths of despair”
afflict whites the most in rural and suburban areas where white
populations are most concentrated. There are many more suicides among
the seven million white rural 35-64 year-old men than among all 40
million American teenagers of all races and both sexes everywhere. Rural
areas also tend to have higher rates of gun ownership and firearms
mortality (correlated with men’s suicide) and lack the level of mental
health services that have evolved in cities.
There has been a spate of articles pointing out that farmers have a suicide rate about twice as high as the rate amongst veterans. The scary part of that news is that we are just coming off of a generational price boom that I probably won't see a return to for the rest of my (assumed actuarial) lifetime. Those of us in agriculture are facing much darker days going forward, at least in a financial sense. Meanwhile, rural areas continue their steady decline. Considering these factors, I fear the trend in suicide deaths will continue to worsen. I don't anticipate that either the public or private sector will work to change any of these trends. What I can say is that faithful readers of this blog do not have to worry about me, I'll be with you until the bitter end. I enjoy hating life way too much to ever consider cutting it short. Plus, there is this to consider:
Yeah, that's right, we haven't started planting, and it's really eating at me. Anyway, here are some of the interesting stories I've come across since the last time I did enough work to post links:
Preparing for Chemical Valley - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Honestly, how economically depressed does a municipality have to be to wish to be more like Ascension Parish, Louisiana?
Confronting the New Urban Crisis - CityLab. Personally, I think rural folks are going to make sure city denizens are unable to fix these major problems.
Why Cops Shoot - Tampa Bay Times. The Times have done a couple of great investigative pieces in the past few years.
Sure, astronomy and groundhogs may disagree, but Reds pitchers and catchers report to spring training camp today, so spring is here. Also, there is bock beer on the grocery shelves.
Even though the college football season was over for Notre Dame back in September, the last game of the season is tonight. Thankfully, Ohio State fans are being quiet, so I'll post a few interesting stories from the last week or so:
The End of the Rural Hospital - Pacific Standard. A situation which was worsened by Republican governors refusing to expand Medicaid may be made worse by the repeal of Obamacare. This map explains the weather we had in 2016 - Washington Post. Not exactly, because it doesn't indicate that we had a crippling drought in late June, July and early August, but it is interesting nonetheless.
I just cracked a beer and I'll be here all night. So check in regularly.
5:59 The Farmer News Network has breaking news: We are projecting that Indiana, the Alabama of the Midwest, will award its electoral votes to Donald Trump.
6:35 Just finished some leftover wings, and now ready to get to work. First off, I'll make a prediction for the results for my home county. I think it will be 65% Trump, 31% Clinton, 4% other. Check back about 9:30 for the actual totals.
6:41 I would expect that the Indiana Senate race won't be declared for a while, but the first results I saw had Todd Young's current lead being smaller than Trump's. That can't be a good sign for him.
6:49 Honestly, I think several election cycles from now, whatever takes the place of the Republican Party will look back at 2016 and curse the fact that the GOP base selected the candidate who doubled down on favoring the dying demographics while attacking growing populations in the country. Much of the age group that will most strongly support the GOP will be dead in 2028.
6:54 I'm not sure how farm state Congressmen will be able to go to their colleagues in the next 2 years leading up to the renewal of the Farm Bill, and make the case that despite the fact that farmers don't think anybody else deserves welfare, farmers deserve welfare. And, most likely, it will be at a time when farmers really need welfare. We'll see what happens there, but I think farmers will be depending on the kindness of liberals.
6:56 Frank Luntz, father of labeling the estate tax the death tax, is calling the election for Hillary.
In case I wasn't clear enough from my previous tweets:
Hillary Clinton will be the next President of the United States. #ElectionNight
7:06 Hopefully this isn't a domestic terrorist attacking our election process.
7:08 I haven't seen anything about this shooting on CNN or Fox News, nor heard it on NPR.
7:26 Lots of interesting ballot issues voted on today. I'm watching the death penalty referendum brought by Governor Pete Ricketts to overrule the legislature's ban on the death penalty. The Ricketts family is a major reason I was rooting for the Cubs to lose the World Series.
7:29 If Clinton wins Florida, this race is over.
7:31 The FNN calls the congressional races for Jim Jordan and Warren Davidson in Western Ohio. The do-nothing caucus secures 2 wins.
7:37 Trump needs Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa and someplace else. He's probably going to do pretty good with the first four. Apparently, though, Frank Luntz must have different information.
7:42 It's kind of hard to gauge anything about the races soon after the polls close. The crazy conservative rural areas tend to turn in their results quicker, since it doesn't take long to count a dozen votes, skewing the early projections.
8:03 A growing rural-urban divide, combined with greater representation by do-nothing jackasses like Jim Jordan bodes very poorly for rural areas. We are kind of baking in further decline and greater dysfunction like the current heroin epidemic.
8:06 It will depressing if Florida goes for Clinton but Ohio goes with the Donald. Ohio, don't make Buckeyes look like jackasses.
8:10 Honestly, this election make Obama look so much better than a decent election would.
8:17 Thank God
Police in Azusa, CA believe a shooting that happened there today was focused on a residential area, not nearby polls https://t.co/OPkSTlip3o
8:22 Florida is ridiculously close. Trump has to win this to have any chance. Clinton is leading Ohio. Western Ohio results must not have been tallied yet.
8:27 We could use a marijuana referendum result to lighten things up a little.
8:33 Looks like Evan Bayh may blow the Indiana Senate race. Governor may still be interesting. It would have been more interesting if Pence was still in it to reap the whirlwind from "defending religious freedom" to hate gays.
8:39 Virginia is really showing the exploding rural-urban divide. Not good for rural areas long-term.
8:48 Being out-of-touch with the rest of the country is not a good thing
Trump running well ahead of Romney in rural America. It will keep Michigan and Pennsylvania close. pic.twitter.com/lQ1nMFpW27
8:52 Fox News is cheerleading right now, really building up the rural landslide for Trump. I think the population centers will win out, but Fox will keep the rubes locked in.
9:04 Early on, Pete Ricketts is winning his campaign to bring back the death penalty, according to the Omaha World-Herald. I sure hope that asshole loses.
9:12 My county went 68% Trump, 27% Clinton, 5% other.
9:18 If Trump holds leads from rural votes in Virginia and Ohio, but urban votes come in to top him, the Fox News viewership is going to lose its shit about voter fraud.
9:21 It may come down to Nevada.
9:23 If Trump wins, expect the market to to take a shit tomorrow. And for weeks afterwards.
9:27 Virginia is the biggest surprise so far.
9:29 If you are actually reading this and want to add something, please comment.
9:36 Now Michigan and Wisconsin become interesting. There may be a lot of people with hangovers tomorrow.
9:39 There is panic in the liberal Twitterati. Bad news for Clinton, but maybe just a major scare for them. Pretty early yet.
9:45 Oops, more votes still coming in in my county. More going for Trump.
9:47 If Trump wins Virginia, this may be over. Revenge of the rural voters. W may be off the hook as the worst president of the century.
9:49 I'm into the can beer. May as well start saving money. My stock portfolio is going to get pretty ugly. I doubt that this will inspire corporate America, either.f
9:54 Checking Fox News to see how giddy they are.
9:58 Wow, Fox just called Virginia for Clinton
10:03 Wow, Trump is winning 80% of the vote in Mercer County, OH, 79% in Auglaize and 78% in Shelby. That is crazy, even for extremely racist areas. This is heavy government farm payment country.
10:14 Trump vote totals in West Central Ohio are insane.
10:17 Brexit 2.0? The whole lesson of 2016 may be that rural areas can fuck entire nations at will.
10:19 In other words, showing up matters, even if you are crazy.
10:23 Ohio is probably gone. Clinton is done without Michigan and Wisconsin. If she wins those, everything comes down to Nevada.
10:33 NPR is reporting that evangelicals are going 80% for Trump. WTF? Christianity is dead.
10:37 If you thought W was bad, you haven't seen nothing yet. If you thought W was good, you were wrong, and now you are even more wrong.
10:52 Holy shit. Ron Johnson won easily. The man is a bump on a log in the Senate and never should have gotten elected in the first place. I honestly think Clinton is done now. It looks like the Midwest is going to carry Trump to the Presidency. We are going to get punished for this stupidity.
10:59 It is over. Trump wins.
11:02 Wow.
11:04 This is Brexit 2.0, and it will be a disaster.
11:10 Fox is talking about the ins versus the outs, and how people are voting for Trump because they don't like the establishment. This is true. The thing is, the outs are pissed off because the ins weren't sharing productivity gains. And yet, Trump's tax plan is to reward the ins for stealing the productivity gains. The outs are going to continue to be pissed off, and even worse, the Trump crew will slash the social programs that keep the real poor from getting completely pissed off about how badly they get fucked. This is the worst possible outcome.
11:18 My prediction at this point is that Trump will win Wisconsin, Michigan and the presidency. The stock market is going to crash tomorrow.
11:24 My point isn't that a Hillary Clinton victory would save America from disaster. My point is that the economic and tax policies Hillary Clinton would support would be more likely to counter-balance the inequalities that are causing working-class people to be pissed off. Cutting taxes and regulations will not improve the standing of the working-class. These policies will only make their standing worse. I wish that wasn't the case, but it is.
11:35
Over and done. Election 2016. American century. Whatever else you want to add.
11:48 The problem throughout the economic struggles, especially those felt in the manufacturing field, over the past 40 years has been that the U.S. had to deflate an economy that saw 5% of the population consuming 15 to 20% of the world's resources. What we needed was a fairly equal sacrifice amongst the wealthy and the working class. We didn't get anything like that. Hell, we haven't even quit consuming that 15 to 20% of the world's resources. We just quit sharing the gains from that economy. This election will make that tension worse, even if the working class feels like it won. That is what scares me. Well, that and Donald Trump as President.
11:56 God, this just makes things worse for rural areas
1:30 Fasten your seat belts. Come January 20, the Republicans will control the House, the Senate and the White House. And soon enough, the Supreme Court. This will not work out well for average people.
It takes hop developers such as S.S. Steiner Inc. and Select
Botanicals Group about 10 years to cross-pollinate the beer-flavoring
plants to create proprietary varieties with unique flavors and aromas.
The results are new types including lemondrop and citra.
Only
about 10 hop varieties are central to many of today’s popular IPAs, and
more than 4,000 brewers are battling for them, says Wicked Weed co-owner
Luke Dickinson, who named the brewery after Henry VIII’s reported description of hops as a “wicked and pernicious weed.”...
In addition to the 10 high-demand hops, farmers have to balance
demand for more than 40 other varieties that are less popular but
equally as important to some beer recipes.
Production is
complicated by the time it takes to grow hops. The plants produce about
50% to 75% of their potential yield in the first year on average and
don’t mature fully until their second or third year. Meanwhile, new
breweries open daily. Those startups often are uncertain about growth
plans, making it risky for farmers to commit to long-term contracts with
them....
The Pacific Northwest produces about 40% of the global hop supply and a
majority of the kind of hops that craft brewers prefer. Until about
2012, farmers mostly grew alpha styles that are used to give established
brews such as Budweiser and Miller Lite their bitterness. Now more of
that production is done in Germany, according to Hop Growers of America,
a trade group.
We have to be reaching peak craft beer. I am tempted to plant some hops just for shits and giggles, though.
Why didn't Flint treat its water? An answer, at last - Detroit Free Press. No surprise there. I didn't understand why a city would even have a treatment plant when it was buying treated water. This makes the decision to switch to the Flint River all the more criminal.
The United States has more breweries than at any time in history:
Got a hankering for a local beer? You're in luck: There are now more
U.S. breweries than at any other point in recorded American history.
According to data
released today by the Brewers Association, there were 4,269 operating
breweries in the country at the end of 2015, surpassing the previous
record logged all the way back in 1873 when a lack of transportation and
refrigeration meant breweries had to be local.
"Prior to the late 1800s, the market for breweries was essentially the
distance a horse drawn cart could travel out and back in a day," Bart
Watson, chief economist at the Brewers Association, said in an e-mail.
As the invention of refrigerated railcars and pasteurization expanded
the range beer could travel, the number of breweries fell rapidly. That
is, until the craft beer movement came to life in the 1980s, a trend
that has continued to grow for decades....
Big-name beer companies may still churn out more barrels, but small and
independent breweries comprise 99 percent of the total breweries in
operation by count, according to the Brewers Association. At the end of
2015, there were 2,397 microbreweries, 1,650 brewpubs and 178 regional
craft breweries, preliminary data from the not-for-profit trade group
show.
