The Day After

Wow.  I had gone into the election thinking that voters nationwide would have seen through Trump's lies and bigotry.  People in cities and suburbs did, but folks in rural areas just want to drink from the fire hose (with Steve King, how bigoted does one have to be to lose?).  In that respect, Trump was vindicated, so we can expect more of the same in the next two years.  In Ohio, Republicans cruised.  No incumbents in the state legislature lost.  Based on the Kansas and Wisconsin examples, the Republican party has to completely drive the state into the ground before they lose a statewide election.  I personally was hoping to avoid that, but I think that is what will happen.  For example, our next State Representative, like much of the rest of the legislature, wants to roll back Medicaid expansion.  The only reason the state expanded Medicaid was because John Kasich did it by executive action.  Now we have to depend on Mike DeWine and the health care lobby to keep it in place.  If it were to be rolled back, rural areas and the people who live there will suffer, and some places may lose hospitals.  I am sure we will get more useless tax cuts which strip resources from rural areas and put greater burdens on local populations, and more talk about rolling back regulations.  I doubt that much on the regulatory front will actually happen, but I expect you won't see DeWine pushing to deal with algae blooms in Grand Lake St. Mary's or Lake Erie, either.  Overall, rural areas will continue to decline, and they will continue to work to drag the rest of the country down with them. 

Election Day Live Blog

6:03 AM:  Off to the polling place.  I'm making sure my ballot gets cast.  Don't worry, I won't be casting a single one for the Republican Party cult.

5:33 PM:  Just got home from work and feeding the cows.  Cracked a Troegs Scratch Series #342 Fest Lager.  It is pretty damn good.  I've got some work to do yet starting the grill and wood stove and feeding the calves.  I should be settled in around 6.  That's when the polls close in parts of Kentucky and Indiana (which are practically the same state).

6:01 PM:  Fire is taking off and the grill is warming up.  Polls are closed in most of Indiana.  As is always the case, I don't expect anything good to come out of Indiana.  Hopefully Joe Donnelly can eke out a win, but I am personally chalking the seat up as a loss to the GOP. Maybe I will be surprised.

6:18 PM:  Just heard an interview on NPR with a FreeDumb caucus member who was repeating Jim Jordan's talking points about doing what they promise, even if it is miserably stupid.  About the time I was wondering who it was, they said it was my useless Congressman, Warren Davidson. Fuck me.

6:44 PM:  The first two stories on Marketplace tonight were about Foxconn and Amazon HQ2.  One thing I would like to see come to an end are subsidy giveaways to multinational corporations.  Maybe a Scott Walker loss will make politicians think twice about making outrageously foolish deals.  Then again, lots of suckers think Donald Trump is some kind of expert negotiator.  Maybe they ought to read about his negotiating prowess for The Art of the Deal.

6:53 PM:  I wonder what the race will be the first one that news organizations call?  Maybe Vermont governor (a Republican)?

6:59 PM: Just started on a  Sam '76 out of the Sam Adams Winter Classics variety pack.

7:00 PM:  CNN called Bernie and Tim Kaine as winners.  How many times will we be told we are waiting on results from Lake County, Indiana (home of Gary)?  Interesting side note, Crown Point is the county seat of Lake County.

7:05 PM:  While we wait for results to come in, I emphasize enough how important it is that we see some results that indicate Trump's ridiculous minority and refugee scapegoating doesn't work.  I'm afraid we'll see a Senate result which will cause him to double down on the crazy for the next two years.  I'm not sure I could get through that with my sanity.

7:09 PM:  Polls in Ohio close in about 20 minutes.   Because of radical gerrymandering, we only have one (OH-12) or two (OH-1, which is doubtful) potential seat changes, barring a serious wave.  The statewide races should be very interesting, though.  I'm almost optimistic there.

7:15 PM:  Election night distraction.  Wes Goubeaux, I know you are looking forward to picking up some Reds 1939 merchandise:

1939 Home. #RedsThreads pic.twitter.com/MZfaV1Ou7F

— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) November 5, 2018

7:21 PM: Also, this:

The Reds proudly commemorate the 150th anniversary of professional baseball in Cincinnati during the 2019 season. pic.twitter.com/PO2JX4NU7G

— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) November 5, 2018

Good video

7:26 PM: No matter who wins, it may be a tough slog economically between today and the 2020 election

Word to the wise. We have endured two 10% corrections in the same year for all three major averages. This has only happened in 1973, 1974, 1987, 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2008. All but 1987 signalled recession, but that wasn't a pretty picture either.

— David Rosenberg (@EconguyRosie) November 6, 2018

7:30 PM: Polls are closed in Ohio.

7:33 PM:  I would expect the race is called for the Ohio 80th House district.  Even though she really didn't campaign after the primary, I'm sure Jena Powell will win.  That is unfortunate, because she is a truly useless right-wing nut.  Her opponent, DJ Byrnes put together a couple of nice ads, but this district is ridiculously skewed to right-wing nutters.

7:39 PM:  Kent State vs. Buffalo is on ESPNU.

7:44 PM:  I can't believe college basketball is already here.

7:52 PM:  My county's results came in.  Powell beat Byrnes 68%-32%, while only repeating tripe about lowering taxes and cutting regulations that strangle business.  I hate how big of suckers rural voters are.

7:57 PM:  My county is so right-wing.  Jim Renacci won 57% of the vote even though his campaign was a joke.  

8:00 PM:   Luckily, the rest of the state appears to have elected Sherrod Brown.  Overall, Democrats seem to be doing well so far, nationally.

8:10 PM:  I still can't believe how big the rural/urban divide is.  Why do rural voters buy into the Republican bullshit about taxes when wealthier folks in cities and suburbs don't?

8:14 PM:  I would like to see a Democratic sweep of Governors' races in the Midwest.  It might be doable.

8:18 PM:  When I was signing the election register, I saw my sister's name listed as an active voter, even though she's been out of the state for almost 20 years.  She hadn't voted today.  I tried checking the Ohio Secretary of State's listing of registered voters.  I was there, but she wasn't.  All I could figure was that she was one of the voters who got purged in recent years for not voting, but maybe her name was restored because the ACLU won a suit against the Secretary of State for removing voters from the rolls.  Either that or my county is just incompetent, which is also likely.

8:24 PM:  Indiana is looking bad for Donnelly, and thus, for the United States.  Geez, I can't stand Hoosiers or Donald Trump.

8:34 PM:  Why do rural voters, who claim they don't like how their local economies are going, keep voting for Republicans who never, ever give them any help?  I just don't get it.

8:35 PM:  Well, I don't get it if I don't take into account bigotry.

8:36 PM:  I see the billionaire challenger in Illinois beat the nearly billionaire incumbent.  Unfortunately, Illinois residents will get four more years of dysfunction.  On the plus side, Rahner will probably be one of the few recent former governors of Illinois not to go to prison.

8:40 PM: Goddamn Florida.

8:42 PM:  If Democrats aren't working tomorrow to register voters for 2020, they are insane.  Donald Trump and his idiot base must lose.

8:44 PM:  In good news, felons may have voting rights restored in Florida.

8:48 PM:  Indiana is a shithole.  Braun and Pence win.

8:52 PM:  Things are not looking good for Democrats right now.

8:57 PM:  Going to have to speed up the beer consumption.

9:03 PM:  I still struggle so much with the idea that rural areas keep electing politicians who have no interest in helping out their constituents.  It is just like the Brexit abortion.  Rural voters are committing economic suicide electing conservatives.

9:11 PM:  Trump is going to be off the hook for the foreseeable future.  The United States is going to be screwed.

9:13 PM:  This is insane.  Who are all of these GOP voters, and why do they hate rationality?

9:17 PM:  County-by-county results do not show Ohio suburbs breaking for Democrats.

9:23 PM:  Donald Trump campaigned with an insane freakout about the caravan, and mountains of lies.  Why on earth do people support him?  Are they as big of assholes as he is?

9:29 PM:  CNN is currently building up Beto O'Rourke.  I dread watching his lead slip away, too, as it is one of the few bright spots on the map right now.

9:36 PM:  So far it looks like Republican voters in Ohio didn't find out who the GOP was pushing for state Supreme Court.  One bright spot for Democrats so far.

9:43 PM:  If Democrats don't find those 1.6 million felons in Florida and get them registered to vote, they do not deserve to be called a political party.

9:52 PM:  I understand why Ted Cruz is so unpopular, but how in the fuck can anybody like Donald Trump?

10:00 PM:  It looks like urban and suburban voters are going to carry Democrats across the line to gain control of the House, which is a very good thing.  However, rural results are so depressing that I'm chalking 2018 up as a loss.  Rural areas are going to suffer miserably in the future.

10:02 PM:  I see Kris Kobach is projected to lose.  Thank God.

10:04 PM:  Dem candidate wins Michigan, but Scott Walker is leading.  WTF is wrong with Wisconsin?

10:09 PM:  Warning to Ohio: Kansas has discovered how fucked up Republican governance is.  Are we going to have to follow them clear to the bottom before we get some goddamn sense?

10:18 PM: Ted Cruz wins.  Today sucks.

10:31 PM:  How in the fuck is Mike DeWine winning?  His campaign was godawful.

10:40 PM:  The rural/urban split keeps getting worse, and rural voters keep getting more and more wrong.  Brexit 2.0.

10:41 PM:  Republican plus third party vote is 55-45 in Ohio.  What the hell is going on?

10:59 PM:
Truth, and dominating in rural areas, but getting crushed outside of them.

Republicans aren’t running on taxes anymore. They’re running on bigotry. https://t.co/vXLXhm8ZOq pic.twitter.com/QmvC7hhLSC

— Slate (@Slate) November 7, 2018 

11:02 PM:  Ohio really feels like Indiana tonight.

11:26 PM:  Right now, all I've got is the hope that Scott Walker loses.

11:29 PM: 

That's what he says about all of his bankrupt enterprises https://t.co/BS7FzikZkl

— Daniel Larison (@DanielLarison) November 7, 2018 

 I needed that laugh.

11:35 PM:  Oh, I also forgot about the possibility Steve King might lose.

12:01AM:  There are a lot of things going on tonight.  Somehow, Republicans swept all of the statewide executive offices.  Oddly, I didn't really see any campaign ads for state Supreme Court justices, and they lost both seats (it appears).  That is one tiny bright spot in a very depressing bunch of electoral result in Ohio.  Regionally, Indiana is horrible as always.  Michigan looks pretty good, as does Minnesota.  Iowa could go either way, but it looks to remain with a Republican governor, but they lost at least one Congressional seat.  If Scott Walker loses, I'll be smiling.  Nationally, our Constitutional dysfunction gets worse.  We have a popular vote loser sitting in the White House, while a minority of the population holds the Senate.  It also appears the Democrats crushed Republicans nationally in the House.  This will allow the Republicans to continue to stack the courts with lifetime appointments, giving them a generation of control of the only branch of government that can prevent Executive overreach.  Additionally, the rural/urban split worsened.  Nothing good will come of this.  I dread our political (and economic) future.

12:08 AM:  Also, racism won where it normally wins.  That saddens me.

12:12 AM:  Why in the fuck is that useless sack of shit Rick Santorum on CNN?

12:20 AM:  Would Rick Santorum please shut the fuck up? 

12:27 AM:  How does a complete dumbass like Rick Santorum dominate the debate on CNN?  Every other person at that table is smarter than him and has more useful stuff to say.  This is a perfect example of what is wrong with our political discourse.  I'm going over to Twitter and drinking until I have to go to sleep.

Derby Day Links

More stories squeezed around planting, fixing the planter and working at the town job:

 Eating Dirt on Kentucky Derby Day - Bloomberg

The Gambler Who Cracked the Horse-Racing Code - Bloomberg

These Stories Of Horse Racing Gamblers Will Get You Psyched For The Kentucky Derby - Bloomberg.  It's a podcast, but as you can see, Bloomberg is all-in on the Derby.

Local Dallas Sportscaster Goes Viral For His 'Unplugged' Commentary - All Things Considered.  The part about his racist dad saying the one black family he knows is good and different from all the blacks he doesn't know is pure Midwestern bigotry.  I don't know if I could count how many times I've heard that. Sometimes it includes a statement that that black person or family agrees with that person about other blacks.

The innovation turning desert sand into farmland - BBC

Minnesota experiment upends notions about how plants will offset rising CO2 - Minn Post

On The Hunt For The Elusive Morel Mushroom In Ohio's Appalachian Country  - The Salt

Here's why Michigan Medicaid work requirements will kill people - Detroit Free Press.  Exemptions for rural counties, but not for poor urban areas.  That's the Republican party for you.

How Criminals Steal $37 Billion a Year from America’s Elderly - Bloomberg.  I would like to know what countries' GDP are smaller than the total economic activity generated in the US by crime and fraud.  I would guess it is the size of a medium-sized developed nation

Paul Ryan Just Got Trounced By a Priest - Charles Pierce and Ryan reverses, will keep House chaplain in place - Politico.  As if I needed to add anti-Catholic bigotry to my reasons to hate the GOP.  I did enjoy that more than one political commentator said that the moral of the story is that you don't fuck with a Jesuit (or The Society-God bless Catholic culture).

A Pruitt Aide's Attack on Zinke Angers the White House - The Atlantic.  So the cabinet secretary I hate the most had an underling try to undermine the cabinet secretary I hate the second-most.  That seems about like what I'd expect from the Trump administration.  Even they can understand who the assholes are.

This Map Shows Every State's Biggest Export - How Much (via Ritholtz).  Not too hard to figure out where Poet is based.

The Kansas Experiment

And it failed. Whodathunkit?

Spring Snowstorm Links

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:

Exploring great Indiana high school gyms - Indianapolis Star.  I hate the state of Indiana, but I do think they have some very cool basketball gyms.

For St. Patrick's Day, A True Tale Of 8 Sailors Saved By Guinness – The Salt

Catholic group offers alternative to payday lenders – Columbus Dispatch.  This is something I wanted to start up.

Attack of the extreme floods – Nature

This Father-Daughter Team Says It Has a Cheaper, Safer Way to Bury Nuclear Waste – Bloomberg 

Meet the world's deadliest female sniper who terrorized Hitler's Nazi army – The Independent 

Opinion: FCC Set to Waste Billions on the Wrong Rural Broadband Providers – Daily Yonder 

The Asset – Buzzfeed News

The Last Temptation – The Atlantic

Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, A Memo to the Publisher of the New York Times – TomDispatch.  From the 15th anniversary of the Iraq war.

The biggest Republican megadonor you’ve never heard of - Politico.  At least the Schlitz heir's governor candidate lost.

The Population Slowdown in the Outer Suburbs of the East and Midwest – NYT

I'm Getting a Bad Feeling About This

I have to say that my fear that we will end up in a war with Iran or North Korea or both increased significantly today.  I can't say that Mike Pompeo is as dumb as Trump, considering his extremely impressive resume, but the fact that he agrees with Trump about North Korea, Iran, climate change and environmental regulation is absolutely terrifying.  I didn't really think our country's future was tremendously bright before today, but it got quite a bit darker in this spin on the earth's axis.

End of February Links

Here are some stories from the last few days that caught my eye:

Canadian Grief: Curling and Hockey Losses Are “Terrible, Terrible, Terrible” – WSJ and The Worst Tickets at the Winter Olympics – WSJ

The Doomsday L Train Shutdown Just Might Save NYC - Wired
 
Like Lemons? Quinoa? Thank This Food Explorer For Bringing Them To Your Plate – The Salt

Refiner goes belly-up after big payouts to Carlyle Group - Reuters.  Ted Cruz is blaming the Renewable Fuel Standard and RINs.  I'm guessing Carlyle bled them more than the RFS.

Rainfall's natural variation hides climate change signal – Phys.org

Worst Roommate Ever - New York Magazine 

A Well-Regulated Militia - Part 0 - Advice Unasked.  A good explanation of the most poorly understood part of the Second Amendment.  I think this will have to figure in any assault rifle ban that may come about.

 'This is not normal': Glitches mar new tax law - Politico.  Democrats will have to help these idiots fix these fuckups.

The Frat House of Representatives – Politico

Here are two bonus medical history stories I was talking about this weekend.  I think I've posted each at one time or another, but they are both fascinating.   How Moldy Hay And Sick Cows Led To A Lifesaving Drug - All Things Considered, and The 'Man Who Touched His Own Heart' Changed Medicine - All Things Considered.

35 Minerals Absolutely Critical to U.S. Security - Visual Capitalist

More February Links

Look at this, two links posts in less than a week:

An Oral History of The Wire’s Unforgettable 5-Minute ‘F*ck’ Scene - Vulture

Canada In Crisis.  Its Curling Teams Are In Trouble - Wall Street Journal

The Shape of Ancient Dice Suggests Shifting Beliefs in Fate and Chance - The Atlantic 

Doc: We're all better than this racist crap going on at our area high schools - Cincinnati Enquirer.  Racists on Cincinnati's west side? I'm SHOCKED.

Why Storms Seem to Follow I-95 – The Atlantic 

How Japan is preparing for the great flood – New Statesman

Besides, I’ll Be Dead – London Review of Books 

Could Brexit leave us in a French Revolution scenario of having no bread to feed ourselves? – Irish Independent

A University of, by and for the People - Sarah Vowell.  Second to abolition, land grant colleges are the finest work the Republican Party ever undertook.  The Montana tax levy vote will be one to watch.

The Business World Is Livid Over Trump’s Immigration “Train Wreck” - Vanity Fair 

How the New Tax Law Could Slow Disaster Recovery in Small Towns - Governing

Chart: The Population Rank of Every U.S. State Over 100 Years - Visual Capitalist 

Bomb Cyclone Demonstrates Boston's Climate Vulnerability

Boston Globe:

It’s time to start talking about ways to protect entire neighborhoods from rising seas, Abbott said. Actually, she said, Thursday’s storm showed it’s well past time.
“We keep talking like this is something that’s coming in 30 years,” she said. “The reality is it has been coming for a while now.”
And experts expect it will become more common, with sea levels in the region projected to rise between 3 and 7 feet by the end of the century. A city report in 2015 found that rising sea levels could make major flooding three times more frequent by 2030 and 10 times more common by 2050.
Both Walsh and Jack Clarke, director of public policy at Mass Audubon, said Thursday’s storm is a wake-up call.
“The reality of climate change makes storms like this the new normal,” Clarke said.
Indeed it was so intense that flooding exceeded what scientists typically call a 100-year storm, meaning one like it only comes once a century.
Climate change, though, is fast upending those calculations.
“This flood level will occur a lot more frequently in the future,” said Paul Kirshen, a professor in the School for the Environment at the University of Massachusetts Boston who studies coastal flooding and sea rise. “It’s possible that at the end of this century we could be seeing these kinds of tides with every tide.”

If I had a dollar for every time I've seen somebody comment that 100-year floods are occurring much more frequently, and that they will have to be recalculated, I wouldn't have to go to work tomorrow.  As it is, it is very obvious that climate change deniers are endangering everyone when they prevent planning for future flooding and other storm damage.

Mid-November Links

 I have a bunch more stories than this, but if I don't publish some I probably won't publish any.

Greetings From Palau, The Micronesian Archipelago That Baseball Built - Deadspin

The war against Pope Francis - The Guardian
\
The Saintliness of Undecayed Corpses - The Atlantic 

The Adaptable Cattle Saving Ranchers From Drought - The Atlantic

A Crimson Fracture in the Sky - Topic

Becoming a Steelworker Liberated Her. Then Her Job Moved to Mexico. - New York Times.  Rexnord.  They are one of our suppliers at work, and the transition to Mexico has been difficult, to say the least.

The Decline of the Midwest's Public Universities Threatens to Wreck Its Most Vibrant Economies - The Atlantic

 The Great College Loan Swindle - Rolling Stone.   Taibbi in fine form.

The Mythical Whiteness of Trump Country - Boston Review  

Here's What Happens When Republicans Have No One To Fight - Buzzfeed

Sabotaging U.S.D.A.

Michael Lewis covers the Trump Administration's (and overall GOP's) hostile takeover of the federal government by focusing on the Cabinet Department that has the largest impact on the rural voters who foisted these clowns on the rest of the country.  One of the main points of the article is that most people don't have any idea what U.S.D.A. does:

One day in his new job he was handed the budget for the Department of Agriculture. “I was like, Oh yeah, the U.S.D.A.—they give money to farmers to grow stuff.” For the first time he looked closely at what this arm of the United States government actually does. Its very name is seriously misleading—most of what it does has little to do with agriculture. It runs 193 million acres of national forest and grasslands, for instance. It is charged with inspecting almost all the animals people eat, including the nine billion birds a year. Buried inside it is a massive science program; a bank with $220 billion in assets; plus a large fleet of aircraft for firefighting. It monitors catfish farms. It maintains a shooting range inside its D.C. headquarters. It keeps an apiary on its roof, to study bee-colony collapse.

A small fraction of its massive annual budget ($164 billion in 2016) was actually spent on farmers, but it financed and managed all these programs in rural America—including the free school lunch for kids living near the poverty line. “I’m sitting there looking at this,” said Ali. “The U.S.D.A. had subsidized the apartment my family had lived in. The hospital we used. The fire department. The town’s water. The electricity. It had paid for the food I had eaten.”

 And a little more along that thread:

There’s a drinking game played by people who have worked at the Department of Agriculture: Does the U.S.D.A. do it? Someone names an odd function of government (say, shooting fireworks at Canada geese that flock too near airport runways) and someone else has to guess if the U.S.D.A. does it. (In this case, it does.) Even people who have worked at U.S.D.A. for years wind up having to chug. So it’s no use pretending that I can actually explain to you everything the place does.

Lewis ends up focusing on several areas where Trump will likely do the most damage.  The folks who used to be at U.S.D.A he talks to come up with food aid for the poor, scientific research (especially related to climate change), food safety and rural development.  I think they are correct in that assessment.  Here are a couple of the most enlightening quotes from these sections:

“The food-stamps program,” he says, instantly, when I ask him for his biggest concern. The Trump budget had proposed cutting food stamps by more than 25 percent over the next 10 years and more or less abandoning the notion that the country should provide some minimum level of nutrition to its citizens. The Trump budget was just an opening bid and unlikely to become policy, at least not right away, because Congress could always fight it. But it signaled an intention and, perhaps, a shift in public attitudes. “Why is it that people channel so many of their hang-ups about people who are poor or unsuccessful into the food-stamps program?” asks Concannon as we settle into our chairs, then answers his own question. “No one really knows when you go to the doctor and the government is paying. But people see you with this card or coupon and react. People would say to me, ‘I saw someone buying butter with food stamps.’ And I would say, ‘Well, yes.’”...As the head of Oregon’s nutrition programs he learned that the country’s willingness to feed people who are hungry does not mean that hungry people are always fed. The federal government makes the benefits available, but then leaves it to states to administer them. “Where you live in this country makes a huge difference if you are poor,” says Concannon. “And it’s not just the weather. You have states with these 60- or 70-page documents people have to fill out to get benefits. Poor people are easy to wear down.” Georgia was usually a problem. Texas too. “If they ran any of their football teams the way they ran their food program, they’d fire the coach,” said Concannon. A Wyoming legislator, proud of how badly he had gummed up the state’s nutrition programs, told him, “We pride ourselves on doing the minimum required by the federal government.” An Arizona congressman proposed that the card used by people receiving food-stamp benefits be made prison orange, conferring not just nutrition but shame. In 2016, after several counties in North Carolina suffered severe flooding, the state tried to distribute federal disaster-relief food-benefit cards on the day of the presidential election, to give poor people a choice between eating and voting. In Kansas, Concannon had explained to an executive who oversaw the state’s food-stamp program how he had made it easier for people in Oregon who were going hungry to access their program. “He said, ‘Jeez, if we did that we’d have more people coming in the door.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, but isn’t that the idea?’”

This gets at the heart of the crazy experiment that is federal government in these United States.  Just like with the Affordable Care Act, and throughout our history with slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, the New Deal and environmental and safety regulations, state and local governments can actively oppose and intentionally undermine the best efforts of the federal government  to achieve the lofty goals set by the founding documents of the nation.  Promoting the general welfare is often not what states, especially in the American South are trying to do.  Do you know which states are seeing some of the worst financial strains on rural hospitals?  Well, Georgia and Texas are two of them.  And this article gets at one of the strangest divides in American politics-that rural voters whose communities and infrastructure are most dependent on federal spending are most hostile to that federal government.  To that point:

By the time she left the little box marked “Rural Development,” Lillian Salerno had spent the better part of five years inside it. The box’s function was simple: to channel low-interest-rate loans, along with a few grants, mainly to towns with fewer than 50,000 people in them. Her department ran the $220 billion bank that serviced the poorest of the poor in rural America: in the Deep South, and in the tribal lands, and in the communities, called colonias, along the U.S.-Mexico border. “Some of the communities in the South, the only checks going in are government checks,” she said. And yet, amazingly, they nearly always repaid their loans....

As the U.S.D.A.’s loans were usually made through local banks, the people on the receiving end of them were often unaware of where the money was coming from. There were many stories very like the one Tom Vilsack told, about a loan they had made, in Minnesota, to a government-shade-throwing, Fox News-watching, small-town businessman. The bank held a ceremony and the guy wound up being interviewed by the local paper. “He’s telling the reporter how proud he is to have done it on his own,” said Vilsack. “The U.S.D.A. person goes to introduce herself, and he says, ‘So who are you?’ She says, ‘I’m the U.S.D.A. person.’ He asks, ‘What are you doing here?’ She says, ‘Well, sir, we supplied the money you are announcing.’ He was white as a sheet.”

Salerno saw this sort of thing all the time. “We’d have this check,” said Salerno. “We’d blow it up and try to have a picture taken with it. It said, UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT, in great big letters. That was something that Vilsack wanted—to be right out in front so people knew the federal government had helped them. In the red southern states the mayor sometimes would say, ‘Can you not mention that the government gave this?’” Even when it was saving lives, or preserving communities, it remained oddly invisible. “It’s just a misunderstanding of the system,” said Salerno. “We don’t teach people what government actually does.”

I enjoy listening patiently to farmers bitch about how much money poor people are given by the government and then asking them how many poor people they think have been given more money by the government than they themselves have been given.  Surprisingly, they often think most poor people do, which is laughable.  However important all the economic damage the Trump and GOP clowns can do to poor people and rural areas, the threat to important scientific research is the most dangerous, because it is the hardest to recognize by everyday people.  When the funding for the water system doesn't come through or when the folks you go to church with are having to get food from the church food pantry, you tend to notice, and changes can be made.  But when research into climate change or contagious disease isn't getting done, we won't find out until it is too late:

We don’t really celebrate the accomplishments of government employees. They exist in our society to take the blame. But if anyone ever paid attention they would note that Woteki’s department, among other achievements, had suppressed the potentially catastrophic 2015 outbreak of bird flu. They’d created, very quickly, a fast new test for the disease that enabled them to cull the sick chickens from the healthy ones. Because of their work the poultry industry was forced to kill only tens of millions of birds, instead of hundreds of millions. In the early 1990s, the U.S.D.A. had also dealt with the outbreak of ring-spot virus in papaya trees, when the papaya industry in Hawaii faced ruin and extinction. Inside the little box marked “Science,” the U.S.D.A. helped genetically engineer a papaya tree that was resistant to ring-spot virus....
His (Sam Clovis, who has since withdrawn from consideration) appointment as the U.S.D.A.’s chief scientist felt like a practical joke to those who had worked there: this was the place that, back in the early 1940s, had taken Alexander Fleming’s findings and effectively invented penicillin. It had triggered the antibiotics revolution. It had coped with endless blights and outbreaks. The consequences of the science it funded—or did not fund—was mind-boggling. The person Clovis was replacing had taught at universities, worked in the White House, and, along the way, been inducted into the National Academy of Sciences....

 In recent years, much of the department’s research has dealt with the effects of climate change. The head of science directs nearly $3 billion in grants each year. Woteki directed the science that leads to nutritional standards for schoolchildren. She set research priorities. Hers had been food security; domestic and global nutrition; safety of the food supply; and figuring out how best to convert plants into fuel. “All of that has to be done in the face of a changing climate,” said Woteki. “It’s all climate change.” It might sound silly that the U.S.D.A. funds a project that seeks to improve the ability of sheep to graze at high altitudes—until you realize that this may one day be the only place sheep will be able to graze. “We’re going to become even more reliant on the efficiencies that come from the investment in science,” she said. One-quarter of the arable land in the world is already degraded, either by overfarming or overgrazing. “Changing temperatures and changing rainfall patterns will force changes in the way crops are grown and livestock are raised,” she said. “The changing climate brings new risks of food-borne disease. Even the pathogens are influenced by temperature and humidity.”

If the Trump administration were to pollute the scientific inquiry at the U.S.D.A. with politics, scientific inquiry would effectively cease.

The Trump Administration and Republican control of the federal government is going to do a lot of damage to the United States, and rural areas, while most responsible for putting them in charge, are going to be hurt the worst.  Unfortunately, the damage done to scientific research, both at U.S.D.A. and in other areas of the federal government, are going to negatively impact all of humanity.  This should be the first thing you should complain to your Congressperson about.

The Monster the GOP Created

So nearly 40 years of lying and brainwashing their base has finally caught up with Republicans. Apparently, the saner office holders realize that their base is completely out of its collective mind, and they are retiring in droves to keep from being whipped in the primaries by the craziest loons on the ballot.  Aren't they just profiles in courage.  They and their donors whipped up the regular folks with bullshit about the tyrannical federal government and taxes as theft, and watched as the craziest idiots possible got elected to the local school board and city council.  Then those folks moved to the state legislature.  Then to Congress.  Now they control a large minority of the Senate, and the prototypical 71-year-old Fox News viewer is President of the United States.  The country club set that controlled the Republican Party for years has now realized they no longer can control the lunatic base they used since 1980 to get the votes to overturn regulations and give themselves tax cuts and screw the poor and minorities.  And things are going to get much worse.  40 years is a long time to lie to folks and promise them you are going to help them out, only to enrich yourselves and screw them, over and over and over.  The base wants revenge because even though they can't see Donald Trump is a lying, useless dumbass, they've come to figure out the establishment has been screwing them forever.  All I'm sure of is that I'm going to get very drunk on election night 2018 and that the nation I grew up in is never going to be the same.

Yes, I've Been Terrible At This Lately

Sure, I haven't posted anything in over a month, but I have composed parts of a number of posts in my head.  Usually, it is after some terrible Trump action, and after a little while I get the feeling that if I posted every time he pisses me off, it is really going to be a long three and a half years.  I must say, though, that the Democrats have also been fairly frustrating this summer.  They appear to be trying to position themselves to lose to Lord Combover the Fuckup.  All is not lost,though.  Bannon (although I did find myself agreeing with him somewhat on taxes, Afghanistan and North Korea) and Gorka (ding dong the Douche is gone) are out of the White House, and not a moment too soon.  Anyway, I figured I would throw up a post to prove I'm not dead, and to share a few of the interesting stories I've seen recently.  Here you go:

Robert E. Lee at West Point - Andrew Bacevich.  Bacevich does a good job laying out the case for dealing with Lee's name at the service academy.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio is no conservative and no hero, no matter what President Trump says - USA Today.  He is, however, a sadist and a total asshole.

These Sugar Barons Built an $8 Billion Fortune With Washington’s Help - Bloomberg.  Corporate welfare at its finest.

A Big Tobacco Moment for the Sugar Industry-The New Yorker.

A flood of problems - Washington Post.  On the danger posed by Peru's melting glaciers.

Climate change will likely wreck their livelihoods – but they still don't buy the science- The Guardian

Hell and High Water - Texas Tribune and ProPublica.  An investigative series from last year on Houston's lack of preparation for a direct hit from a hurricane.

The Moneyman Behind the Alt-Right - Buzzfeed.  Could be titled, "Reason #1 for an estate tax and higher income taxes."

The Critic Who Refuted Trump's World View - In 1916 - The New Yorker

How Moldy Hay And Sick Cows Led To A Lifesaving Drug - Joe Palca

God Bless You, Mr. Oliver

Eat shit, Bob. Also, fuck you Don Blankenship and Don Trump.

Chart of the Day: Word Cloud Edition

Quinnipiac asked, "what is the first word that comes to mind when you think of Donald Trump?":

The most common responses, in order:
1. idiot, 39 times
2. incompetent, 31 times
3. liar, 30 times
4. leader, 25 times
5. unqualified, 25 times
6. president, 22 times
7. strong, 21 times
8. businessman, 18 times
9. ignorant, 16 times
10. egotistical, 15 times
It is good that we only did the top 10, because the 11th most-common word is not suitable for a family newspaper. It rhymes with “mass soul.” And actually, it’s only tied for 11th … with “stupid.”

I would have probably used moron or dumbfuck.

The Case For More Government

NYT:

Last month, four academics — Jeff Madrick from the Century Foundation, Jon Bakija of Williams College, Lane Kenworthy of the University of California, San Diego, and Peter Lindert of the University of California, Davis — published a manual of sorts. It is titled “How Big Should Our Government Be?” (University of California Press).

“A national instinct that small government is always better than large government is grounded not in facts but rather in ideology and politics,” they write. The evidence throughout the history of modern capitalism “shows that more government can lead to greater security, enhanced opportunity and a fairer sharing of national wealth.”

The scholars laid out four important tasks: improving the economy’s productivity, bolstering workers’ economic security, investing in education to close the opportunity deficit of low-income families, and ensuring that Middle America reaps a larger share of the spoils of growth.

Their strategy includes more investment in the nation’s buckling infrastructure and expanding unemployment and health insurance. It calls for paid sick leave, parental leave and wage insurance for workers who suffer a pay cut when changing jobs. And they argue for more resources for poor families with children and for universal early childhood education.

This agenda won’t come cheap. They propose raising government spending by 10 percentage points of the nation’s gross domestic product ($1.8 trillion in today’s dollars), to bring it to some 48 percent of G.D.P. by 2065.

That might sound like a lot of money. But it is roughly where Germany, Norway and Britain are today. And it is well below government spending in countries like France, Sweden and Denmark.

To me, this seems like common sense.  But I've yet to be able to convince any of my neighbors that that is the case.  I think the article hits on an important note: that people are fine with programs that benefit them, but they are sure the "lazy blacks" or whoever are unfairly benefiting from their tax dollars.

Personally, I think the biggest job creation plan of all would be a national healthcare plan that took the burden of the provision of health insurance from employers and put the government in charge of cost-control.  For-profit health insurance makes zero sense whatsoever, and higher income tax rates on the truly wealthy might convince doctors they don't need so much income to keep up with the hedge fund assholes and overpaid attorneys (not to say anything about entertainers, athletes and untalented reality stars like Donald Trump and Paris Hilton).

Sure, a lot of unique ingredients contributed to the egalitarianism and shared prosperity (amongst white folks) of the post-war years, but I feel confident that a progressive income tax and government investment and transfers contributed significantly.  I don't think it is a coincidence that income inequality increased as top marginal tax rates and government programs for the poor decreased.  But, hey, what do I know?  I'm just a stupid farmer (who gets plenty of help from the government, in spite of being pretty well off.)

The Mistake on the Lake

I really don't know what to make of the shitshow that has been the GOP convention so far.  I already couldn't actually watch the speeches, because I just don't recognize the country that Republicans describe.  Does this country face immense problems?  Certainly.  But how can Republicans act as if they are blameless in this?  When people talk about how the economy has sucked under Obama, I would like to explain that it was much worse under Bush.  When Republicans talk about Hillary being responsible for the deaths of 4 Americans in Benghazi, I'd like to remind them of the more than 4,000 American deaths in Iraq thanks to Bush.  When they talk about how Americans are under attack by terrorists because Obama is weak, I think of September 11.  When they talk about how Hillary should be in jail for her email fuckup (she should probably get a punishment like Petraeus), I wonder how that trial for torture would go for Bush and Cheney.  When they talk about how California is a failing state, I like to bring up Kansas.  But the circus in Cleveland really makes it appear that the Republican Party has finally jumped the shark (although it was Chachi who spoke at the convention, and not the Fonz).  It's been all about tax cuts, guns and the freedom to be an obnoxious asshole and bigot.  I did catch a little bit of Mike Pence's speech last night, and I was amazed when he said Trump had an utter lack of pretense.  Seriously?  I thought Trump was all pretense.  However, that Ted Cruz self-martyrdom (or Trump's Cruz heel turn) was the craziest mess I've ever seen at a convention.  Thank you, Republicans, for making me feel better about the crazy mess that is my life.  At least I'm not a Republican.

How Dayton Explains Today's GOP

This is a very good piece at ProPublica about the Dayton region and the changing GOP.  Here is a sample:

For decades, Dayton had been an exemplar of American capitalism and ingenuity — back when America not only invented things but still made the things it invented, Dayton did a lot of both. In 1890, it generated more patents per capita than any other city — there were the Wright Brothers and their bicycle shop, of course, but also James Ritty, the saloonkeeper who invented the mechanical cash register to keep his employees from pilfering dough, and John Patterson, who transformed Ritty’s invention into the National Cash Register company, and Charles Kettering, the engineer who turned Ritty’s creation electric. The sound of Dayton in these years was, literally, ka-ching. The Third National Bank was finished with imported marble and mahogany woodwork; patrons did their business at bronze check desks. Local hotels included the Biltmore and the Algonquin — the aspirations were transparent, and not unjustified.
Kettering went on to found the auto parts giant Delco, where he developed the electrical starting motor and leaded gasoline, plus side ventures with DuPont and others to invent Freon and colored paint for cars. In the postwar years, Dayton had a higher concentration of auto workers than anywhere outside of Michigan. The city swelled with new arrivals in search of work — not just African-Americans on the Great Migration, but Scots-Irish up from Kentucky and Tennessee. By 1960, Dayton was still one of the 50 largest cities in the country — bigger than Charlotte, Tucson and Austin.
But as Whalen’s tenure carried into the 1970s, changes were underway. As elsewhere, the arrival of Southern blacks had been answered with white flight. In 1930, nearly three-quarters of Montgomery County’s population lived in Dayton, but half a century later, that share had plummeted to less than a third. They had moved to working-class inner suburbs like Miamisburg and Huber Heights, tight-knit communities with modest, well-kept frame houses and bungalows, and more upscale Oakwood or Beavercreek, which was just across the line into Greene County. The city that remained was the second-most racially segregated of Ohio’s eight largest. And the Appalachian migrants had added a more conservative element to the area’s political landscape.

It leans toward the rural versus urban dynamic, with the suburbs being the swing vote.  The prosperous suburbs with high percentages of college graduates tend to lean away from Trump, while the more working class suburbs are Trump country.  It is depressing to me how many people I know who support Trump, but I don't think there is much that's going to change that.  I suggest reading the whole piece,  it is very good.

Another Set of Rain Break Links

I spent a good portion of the weekend sowing beans, but I did manage to catch the Derby.  Here are some links I came across in my winding-down time (a few Derby-linked):

The $100 Million Superhorse Powering This Year's Kentucky Derby - Bloomberg and Nyquist's Win is a Boost for Uncle Mo - Wall Street Journal

Churchill Downer: The Forgotten Racial History of Kentucky's State Song - NPR and The Forgotten History of African-American Jockeys - NPR

Voters approve nation's most-expensive high school football stadium - USA Today (h/t the Reporter).  Texas, always with the right priorities:

At $62.8 million,  the total would be more than the $60 million that Allen spent for Eagle Stadium, which is an 18,000-seat stadium. It also would be more than the $62.5 million that Katy is spending for its stadium scheduled to open in 2017. Construction is ongoing.
The bond was approved with 63% of the vote.

U.S. Corn Production Set to Rise, Boosting Supplies - Wall Street Journal.  It is going to get ugly here in the midwest.

Under Attack, Commodity Promotion Programs Try To Hide Their Emails - The Salt

How Breakfast Became a Thing - Priceonomics. Or, breakfresh, as my grandma used to pronounce it.

Exploring America's Largest Collection of Early Tavern Signs - Atlas Obscura

The Road To The Chicken Ranch - Texas Monthly.  I didn't realize the origin of the name came out of the Great Depression.

'You want a description of Hell?' Oxycontin's 12-Hour Problem - Los Angeles Times.  America's drug epidemic has many very dark and interweaving themes, and big business is one of them.

Private schools, painful secrets - Boston Globe.  Spotlight focuses on another decades-long institutional sex abuse coverup.

Why is simpler better? - Aeon

Warren Buffett's mobile home empire preys on the poor - Center for Public Integrity.  Sure, a lot of his folksiness is just marketing, but this really does look bad.

A Portrait of Coal Town on the Brink of Death - VICE

I Know Why Poor Whites Chant Trump, Trump, Trump - STIR

Donald Trump Is Campaigning on the New Deal - New York Magazine

Ted Cruz Backers Seek to Control Convention Platform - New York Times.  As if the GOP convention wasn't going to be a big enough fiasco already.  This party needs destroyed.

Graphs Showing Agricultural Trends - Big Picture Agriculture.  Thankfully, Big Picture Agriculture is back.  Nothing especially surprising about this milk production chart, but I need some kind of graphic for my links post, and this one will work.

If You've Lost Northwest Iowa...

This is the part of the state that elects Steve King as their Congressman:

Even in this most conservative corner of Iowa, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley on Monday faced tough and repeated questions over his refusal to hold hearings on a nominee to the Supreme Court.
Crowds at two town hall meetings here  Monday afternoon returned again and again to Grassley’s decision as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee not to consider the nomination of Appeals Court Judge Merrick Garland to the high court.
“It’s not fair for this man not to get a hearing,” said Randy Waagmeester, a Rock Rapids attorney who attended the town hall here. “It’s not right for this country to be short-staffed on the Supreme Court.”
Others objected that blocking the nomination elevated politics over functional government, continued a worrisome politicization of the courts and could even hurt Republicans’ reputations.
“There’s nothing in the U.S. Constitution that says we can’t have a hearing and then vote yea or nay, so that we don’t constantly have it thrown at us as Republicans that all we say is ‘no,’” said Glenda Schrick, 78, of George, Iowa.
But whether such criticism was reflective of the overall sentiment in the room or the feeling in this remote corner of Iowa is not clear.

The article goes on to say that a sizable portion of the crowd supported Grassley refusing to give Merrick Garland a hearing for the Supreme Court nomination, but it is still telling that people actually voice opposition to the decision in public in crazy red county America.