Third, dam removalsare more likely when states are in better fiscal health, willing to innovate inrelated policy areas, and pressured by pro-change advocates
Generally more liberal and environmental states
Third, dam removalsare more likely when states are in better fiscal health, willing to innovate inrelated policy areas, and pressured by pro-change advocates
Generally more liberal and environmental states
Status quo interests
number of dams
While this diffusion has been particularly noticeable insome regions, several outlier states have also pursued significant river res-toration.
And the regions are very non-contiguous
caused substantial environmental damage
Love it here
33 states had established riverprotection programs
Its sort of a beauty thing
Secretary of the Interior Babbittnoted that the Quaker Neck removal would stimulate creative thinking atdam sites across the country
Its funny how uninteresting this is
Over 300 dams havebeen removed from United States' rivers
No time constraint?
in orderto restore migratory fish routes on the Neuse River.
People in the west will oppose out of scarcity?
Historically, the U.S. government hasdeferred to the states in matters of water allocation, use, and managemen
Gonna be pissed when the feds get involved
clean up American waterways and setaside portions of rivers as wild and scenic
Environmentalism
with water interests and members of Congress eagerto bring home capital water projects, like dams
Especially in the west
institutional variables may play a greater role for less controversial policies
Radicalness overcomes bureaucratic bullshit
I hypothesize that the more entrenchedthe status quo becomes, the less likely that policy reversal will occur.
Feels very obvious
States are more likely to adopt policy innovations for which their citizensexpress a demand.
you don't say
Accordingly, Ihypothesize that state fiscal stress will deter policy reversals.
I think probably just better to think of it as a spectrum of radicalness
will be less consequential in predicting policy reversal
because the changes are gradual and the people have time to react
ationalized, making learning from neighbors nomore common than learning from states elsewhere in the country
Which is likely given the revolutionized nature.
Such reversals can be so dramatic that theyproduce patterns of political behavior different from those surrounding themore typical adoption of new policy
More hesitancy
Did this deregulation generate politics that were different from thatwhich led to regulation in the first place
Or does the causation flow the other way?
Second, the rate of adoption is more gradual for policy reversals thanfor new policies or less extensive modifications to existing ones.
Makes sense, most radical change.
using and controlling rivers by building dams to a focus onrestoring rivers' natural conditions by removing or breaching dams
Especially salient in places where water access is critical, i.e. the west
Diffusion of reversals involves more states outsideof active regions than is seen typically with policy adoption, and reversal diffusionoccurs more gradually than adoption diffusion with many policy innovations
Because water is public good.
conversely, that the acquisition of the otherdepartment’s lands would add to the institutional stature of his ownadministration.
They had political and pragmatic importance which reflected "owners" importance.
permanent national property.
and pride
Emotion was evident on both sides, of course, but the Interior De-partment produced nothing like The Western Range to support Ickes’sdetermined belief that the forests should be transferred to a new Con-servation Department, which he would lead.
I mean maybe just illustrates the salience of the issues still
contentions that therange was a critical part of the entire agricultural program, for both theWest and the nation, and that good government required that thoselands be placed with the USDA
But it read like a basic power grab?
the creation of the grazing district or the is-suance of a permit pursuant to the provisions of this act shall not createany right, title, interest, or estate in or to the lands.
But in practice
Technically speaking, the permit gave a rancher merely a licenseto use the range, meaning that the rancher’s use of the range was a priv-ilege conferred by the government for a finite period.
But really a pandoras box situation
Clearly, denying a permit toa rancher would “impair the value of the grazing unit,” and it wouldtherefore be very difficult for the government to do so.
And so the permits were more or less permanent
These range rights are as much a part of the land as thegravel in the soil.
Giving away public land
who simply ranged their animals on the public do-main without having a base property from which to operate.
Anti-poverty
He therefore believed that ranchers’ assured access to rangewould secure and increase the land values in the rural West
Basically making public land semi private
regulatory authority resided.
ranchers will say nowhere
that the governing bodies involved in ad-ministering the Taylor lands overlapped considerably with the alreadyorganized stockmen’s association
And so the power of the federal government was actually quite little
he simply wanted to map out the proposed grazing districts as quicklyas possible
And didn't actually have democratic or small man interests at heart
ack of formality involvedin this process was quite remarkable.
Personal politics
produce a new political structure in theWest.
A new hierarchy which favored ranchers
Those lands that could not beplaced in a district would be taken care of some other way— either soldoutright, exchanged with other lands, or leased to individual ranchers,and at least some of the heated politics would focus on what Carpenterand others called the “shot-gun” lands
ends up enriching farmers like the homesteading act
in setting up an administration that would reduce the un-certainty of their land tenure and bring back the productivity of therange.
And his overseeing of the pasture creation is going to put more power in the hands of the farmers
careful planning, thinking, and readjustment
And the help/control of the federal government
federal administrative authority
People are must taking whatever land they want
This reluctance was the stance that he would take before western live-stock producers, emerging from a genuine belief in “self-governance”and in the ability of ranchers to adjudicate their own local ranges.
Federal imposition on individuals
Finally, Ickes’s grand language about national duty had roots, ofcourse, in early twentieth-century conservation.
Sort of emblematic of this fight between the jeffersonian farmer and big government, who does the land belong to?
right
All dependent on government sanction
Nation
Symbolic
by which I mean that he sawthat conserving these lands reflected the moral strengths of the nationand the sovereignty of the federal government
One of which the inhabitants were likely to agree with
The struggles over ForestService grazing fees thus bore legislative fruit for western ranchers, whohad consistently argued that access to public grazing lands formed an in-tegral part of the valuation of their property. The Taylor Grazing Act es-sentially solidified that connection in policy
Pseudo extension of the property
under existing law validly affecting the public lands
Status quo should not change
to perform such workas may be necessary amply to protect and rehabilitate
Federal government gets unfettered control over many many MANY acres
I am not appearing here in behalf of big cattlemen, big sheep men, or anything of the kind. I am trying to protect thelocal man who pays taxes
Because really the large farms were the ones who were doing considerable damage
when federal land managers spoke innational terms about the need for unified administrative authority overthe public lands
As part of a more generalized need for unified government
[a]tremendous deterioration of the land has resulted, due to the overuse wehave been making of it
Making the government skeptical of the homesteading project
captured
They were the ones controlling the trade and interchanging of ownership
would build on these histories of property,restructure them, and give them new meaning
It would cement them and make them rare as well
was that the land endedup in federal administration
Public goods
Many Americans value open space and public lands precisely because they areamong the reasons their families settled where they have and why they stay there
particularly in the west, they are fundemental
whereasother environmental ballot measures that fared less well, such as legalizing betting on horseracing or creating public commissions, did not impose direct costs on citizens.
Citizens prioritize public lands even at a personal cost
This point is consistent with the argument scholars made recently regarding civilrights policy wherein they show that content of the specific policy in question is morecrucial to understanding elite behavior than broad characterizations and blanket assertion
Sort of a boring point
They are also more likely to pass if they involve bonds ratherthan taxes. They are less likely to pass if they are initiatives rather than referendums andif they occur in states with high percentages of public lands.
Some of this is just tricking voters
public lands
Barely
passed
So yes, obviously they are more popular but why is the more interesting question
74
Relatively few
rash and reckless spoliation
Ah capatilsm
Colorado Springs concludedthat local parks raised property values for nearby residents over $500 million and generatedtax revenues over $2.5 million per year
The west is the king of public land and tourism on that land
Public lands bring substantialeconomic benefits to local communities.
But why keep them public then
Cultural and aesthetic values that citizens assign to public lands are deeply engrained inthe American society.
Manifest destiny type shit
citizens in conservativeRocky Mountain states supporting permanent protection for wilderness, parks, and openspaces
culturally important to these places as well, tied up in how they settled and recreation
protection of natural places draws much higher levels of support from across theideological spectrum than just about any other environmental issue
Because constituents across the aisle both benefit from it
hunters, conservationists, and outdoor recreation enthusiaststo form coalitions to stop, or at least delay, the proposals
Coming from multiple party angles, lots of electoral incentives to stop.
anathema
A strong dislike
lumpstogether everything from nuclear power to the endangered species.
Ok so one takeaway is just be more specific
e find exceptional support for open spaceballot measures in simple comparisons and in fuller models of ballot measure passage
What are open space ballot measures
Arguing that “anyinvestment made in terminal elevators . . . would be a waste of the people’s money as well as a humiliatingdisappointment to the people of the state,” the committee came out “strongly against the expenditure by thestate of any money for the erection of new terminal elevators.”
Farmers will not be happy
Townley grew up on a farm.
Farmers were and are at the bottom of the US capitalist hierarchy chain
he wasn’t like the city socialists. He saw more from thefarmer’s standpoint.
He gonsta redistribute
All this threatened agrarians’ already tenuousmiddle-class status
Knife's edge
Economic divisions within the ruralmiddle class—between townspeople and farmers—emerged
And resentments followed presumably
A handful of village elitesand itinerant wage laborers represented the apex and the nadir of economic and social possibilities.
Known entities
If you want Congress to protect farm owners, it may be wiseto elect more farm owners. And if you want Congress to stop pro-tecting farmers, it may be wise to stop electing them.
Kansas isn't just voting against its own interests, it is against that of the country.
but the relationships areconsiderably noisier.
Especially for preferences
an increase in a district’s poverty rate is associated with adecrease in the likelihood that a legislator will support agriculture
Proxy for urbanization?
Note, however, that the fact that thecoefficient on PAC contributions does not change much with theinclusion of other variables suggest that lobbying has an effect allof its own, i.e., that very little of what it captures is captured by law-maker preferences for agriculture or by electoral incentives
Scary
on agricultural policy.
When taken alone, career becomes less important in the complete model
awmakers who received more money from farmgroups were more likely to support agriculture in each of the rollcall votes
Would also be interesting to see the continuous effects
both parties when we examined whichmembers were designated Friends of the Farm Bureau, our mostcomprehensive measure of support for agriculture.
So there is evidence that time spent working on a farm has some effect
0.689
So many people voting to pass
The first is the score given to eachlegislator by the American Farm Bureau Federation (
new response
x is a vector of otherlegislator- or district-specific attributes, d s is an indicator variablecapturing whether a legislator is a senator, dj is a vector of statefixed effects, dt is a vector of Congress fixed effects,
Controls
measure ofelectoral incentives,
% of base who are farmers
is a measure oflegislator preference for agricultural protection
Proxy: time spent as a far
whose constituents are indifferentor rationally ignorant about the groups’ preferred policies.
This is not gonna be true of the agricultural sector
Or perhaps the institutional environmenthas somehow stacked the deck in agriculture’s favor.
Could be tradition
conference
after edit success
passage
straight success
whose members are often advocates ofagricultural protection,
where from?
energypolicy
Ethanol
Labor became ever scarcer in ruralareas and, as a result, the agricultural sector developed severallabor-saving technologies that allowed for increasing returns toscale in agriculture. Farms became bigger and fewer in number
Start of the decline
which added a host of agricultural protection measures.The most important were price supports, which set the prices ofselected agricultural commodities equal to purchasing power par-ity for the period 1910–1914, which had seen high commodityprices and farm incomes
Partly, it is american legislative tradition to support pro-farmer bills
‘‘Inconclusive evidence of correlation between moneyand favorable legislative behavior.’’
Almost universal
Because many membersappear to have electoral incentives to—and because many of thosewho don’t seem to have other personal or strategic interests at stake.
Is the public motivation driven by tradition?
endogeneity
True only within the sample, not in this case
is important to know what determines support for a set of mea-sures which most academic economists decry as wasteful
Gonna be real depressed when we learn that its to stay in power
a leading agricultural advocacy organiza-tion
Lobbyists
In this article, we explore how preferences, electoral incentives,and lobbying can influence legislative action on agricultural policyin the United States Congress
All three
Interest groups representing agricultural producerslobby policy makers and contribute to the re-election campaignsof those who support agriculture
With what money remains a question
Voters prefer agricultural protection, andre-election-oriented policy makers follow their lead
Seems most plausible to me
In developing countries, the answer seems tobe that urban elites pressure governments to subsidize foodconsumption, often via the threat of social unrest
To avoid taxation themselves
legislatorpreferences, (ii) electoral incentives, or (iii) lobbying.
How would lobbying help if its a declining sector
the broad array of subsidies to farmers and taxesand quotas imposed on agricultural imports—in developed countries
The political support of the labor base perhaps
It included the iron triangle, local governance arrangements, civic associa-tions, and most importantly unions.
Will this be in danger as we move forawrd in the half life?
The layering of multiple dimensions of decline andmarginalization is distinct to the region and has produced cultural distancebetween it and the rest of the country.
Still confused why republicans aren't balmed as well
Trump has already ‘made America great again’ becausehe has conclusively demonstrated that the white privilege of denigrating minor-ities without consequence is alive and well
Jeez
autarky
Economic independence
presidential politics, a capacity that had previ-ously been grounded on their unions, civic associations and their party
Which had been granted by the dems
Itwas also rooted in expectations that are a legacy of white supremacy
Explains why he did well in the south
ignores the role of lost working-class power and voicein the Democratic Party
Gives too much credit to trump and rep.
If we interpret Trump’s ability tosecure votes as his ability to channel white revanchism against a morediverse society then it is possible to see the loss of relative status in theRust Belt as an important explanatory factor.
Thesis here
withholding their vote
Exit/voice
the Democratic Party does not appear to be particularly con-cerned with the well-being of either
Burn
newly won and briefly held material afflu-ence
Material affluence whihc brings privelage they did not have before, leaving with half-life of industrialization
polemical
critical
The opposition between the credentialled and the uncreden-tialled had its purest partisan expression in 2016
Old incomomy = industrial, new econonmy = tech/finance
myopia
Nearsightedness
After getting sent to jail nearly 20 years later forracketeering, bribery and tax evasion, he ran for Congress again
Holy real trump parallel and they dont even know it
Bill Clinton’s tradepolicy was widely understood as both a betrayal and an existential threat tomany communities in the Midwest
Greivence
Theability of unions to anchor white workers in the Democratic coalition is gone.
because the unions are gone
because people of colour and the educated are likely to vote Demo-crat regardless of union membership
But labour unions are no longer mobilizing the other populations
In 1964,unionization rates were well over 30 per cent in the Rust Belt, now they arearound 10 per cent
Less democratic voting by extension
labour unions and political institutions unravel long after deindustrializa-tion itself
delaying the effect of deindustrialization
civic associations, theDemocratic Party itself, local growth-oriented elites, and social policies thatreflected the worldview of industrial workers.
Which all eroded as the midwest become non-defined by industrialism
More generally, as partisan conflict was reorganized aroundrace, issues of economic equity declined in importance.
And the unification of races around labor would have eroded
enthusiastically supporting the political parties that oversaw and facilitated thedestruction of their communities
and fair enough, but shouldn,t they attach that to both parties, or to specific policies
dynamics disorganizing them and capturing theiraccumulated wealth
And in that wake, the institutions that once supported the industrial sector were no longer relevant
From scrapyards in theupper Midwest, material was loaded on otherwise empty trains and ships forthe return trip to China.
Midwest city was literally being robbed of its livelhood
Midwest were being sucked into a new urban vortex in China
Industry
Much less commented upon is theeffects of extreme devalorization on the physical structure of the region’s neigh-bourhoods and communities.
Which was not happening in the city
Thegeographic dynamics of this growing inequality are often overlooked.
The midwest is (understandably) butt hurt
unions were still hamstrung, a freetrade regime in international commerce was being established, and disinvest-ment was continuing unchecked in the upper Midwest
His policies hurt the people of the midwest besides just ignoring them
Clinton left office welfare was tied to‘character
i.e. race
Rather than beingthe ‘universal class’ associated with America, the industrial working class wasreclassified as a ‘special interest’ that was scuttling the American economy withits greed.
Dark
incentivize a shift ofinvestment from manufacturing to finance, tech and services, and ensure theinvestment would pay off due to lower risk and higher profits than other invest-ments
Midwest to coast shift
radical reorganization of geo-graphic privilege over the last forty years
And its contunied fleeing and inequality compared to the coast
While it is notthe most important inter-group tension in American society, it is one of themost clearly evident ones
And also as professionals defect to the democratic larty, one with clear political implications
peripheraliza-tion in economic and political terms.
Getting worse and nobody cares
Indeed, looking atvoting behaviour in this election it would appear that the poor and workingclass of the region are unified in their growing hostility to the Democratic Partyeven if they are not unified in their attraction to Trump.
Because trump remains at least in part decided by race while the hostility towards democrats is more ubiquitsly economic
White post-industrial communitieshave benefited from racial privilege, but this has not conferred any immunity.
White people are affected too
it merely exacerbated regionalracial inequality
Because whites had something to fall back on
“Fordism”–that was distinc-tive to the mid-twentieth century upper Midwest, but which was widely mim-icked around the world (Gramsci 1989).
Work, stability.
butdue to disconnection between communities and their party representatives
Media mobilizes real grievences
More importantly, the inevitable transformation and decline of place will shapethe values of those living there, just as the initial development of industrial soci-ety once did
Getting ignored dismantled the institutions that kept the midwest democratic and now they are revolting
kleptocracy
System where powerful steal resources
Organizations, institutions, networks and associations, in turn, poten-tially shape these into political subjectivities and moral values which can beinstrumentalized and expressed in politics, development strategies, and culture,which we can summarize as a ‘communal ethos’
Individuals feeling is shaped by the institutions in their community
Americans and from mostAmerican communities.
Which are really situated in the homogeneous midwest
not the economic protections that would facilitatebroader social inclusion.
Which is in part a coastal elitist thing
In Detroit alone the decline in black voter turnout wasseveral times the margin of Clinton’s loss in Michigan.
Not inspired/ felt supported by clinton
thefew rural counties that were not already solidly Republican and (2) post-industrial counties (see Figure II)
Post-industrial is the midwest
. For the first time in the history of thetwo parties, Republicans did better among poor white voters than among afflu-ent whites
Saying this was a long time coming but I have trouble buying that it was not also connected to trump
this is a notable contrast to the ethnona-tionalist and protectionist candidates who preceded him
who lost
Today, the Democratic Party is a party of professionals, minoritiesand the New Economy
As opposed to the once blue collar worker
The counties Trump won – over 2,000 more in number –accounted for a much smaller share of GDP
Left behind
but what is more recent isthe collapse of the institutions that had been built to incorporate industrialworkers and their communities into the mainstream political life of the country,including governance arrangements, work and consumption arrangements, civicassociations, social policies, party organizations, and labour unions
Why now?
to explain the largely enthusiastic support for Obama in thesesame counties
How did it shift so quickly in Obamas term though
This way of thinkinghas set up an unproductive discussion of the relative explanatory power ofrace and class.
Which matters much more at the individual level
But the collapse of the regional economy has alsoresulted in the collapse of the institutions and organizations that provided thoseconnections.
But the dems might have been oblivious
with the plight ofthe industrial Midwes
What is that plight I hope we learn
Clinton lost the election because of radicaldeclines in support from within the Democratic coalitio
Same with Harris
Due to this, the party pursued poli-cies that would magnify the region’s difficulties rather than alleviate its cir-cumstances
Which pushed them towards republicans
From thisperspective we can see that the active dismantling of the Fordist social orderset the region on a divergent path from the rest of the country
what is that
revanchism
Seeking to retaliate
This paper argues that the election of Donald Trump is the product of a con-fluence of historical factors rather than the distinctive appeal of the victorhimself. B
Ready to buy that
pers and magazines the “Trump Democrats” narrative and its historicalantecedent—stories about Ronald Reagan’s capture of the industrial Mid-west—will return with a vengeance once campaigning for the 2020 presi-dential election begins in earnest
But the question is will trump leave behind the urban centers that screwed over reagan? does he even need them?
Yet, as compelling as these critiquesmight be, they have had little effect on the broader narratives. Indeed, thepublication of articles on “Trump Democrats” continued without sign ofabatement.
This is whats being studied in the other paper
politics was often shaped or driven moreby a desire to resolve problems that seemed to imperil the whole commu-nity than by deeply held ideological principles
Fickle, easily changed
challenges narratives that depict the 1980s as a de-cade of growing antitax, antigovernment conservatism.
At least in the industrial midwest, basically the republicnas help coause the decay but then the dems turn a blind eye to it which makes midwesterns ultimatly turn back towards rep
As aresult, neither of the constitutional amendments was approved when thequestion was put before Ohio’s voters
Wow, the people have spoken
At a state level, tax rises were even more commonplace. Much as withCleveland and Detroit, it was often fear of default and fiscal emergencydriving these decisions.
And they were not getting helped out by Reagan
64 percent of voters supported the taxincrease
contrary to national levels
It is the revenue side of the budget whichmust be increased.
Gotta tax boyo
the political centerof gravity in the industrial Midwest did not shift decidedly to the rightduring the Reagan years. Perhaps most importantly, it also demonstratesthat though national politicians may have rediscovered the market andembraced a politics of antistatist individualism, this was not a develop-ment that inevitably led (or trickled down) to state and municipal politics
There was a schism between state and federal support, which would eventually have secondhand influence on the common wealth
Cleveland’s Republican mayor George Voinovich described cuts infederal government urban programs as being carried out with “a meatax” rather than a “scalpel.
Some might call this tension between the municipal and the federal government
Young and his diverse coalition of public and private sector supportersembraced the Ford administration’s offer of funding for the constructionof a major new mass transit network.
Ignored once
Sincemost US cities depended on property and income tax revenues to providemunicipal services and maintain infrastructure, this eroded municipalrevenues
And then people went out of work, white flight is a real bitch ya know.
The economic shockwaves created by these events helped producetwo recessions and the worst economic downturn since the Great De-pression.
Which the midwest felt disproportionately as their industry was outsourced
the demise of the New Deal order and rise of anew conservative/neoliberal order.1
Party realignment in black and black
Despite this national and Missouri trendtoward conservatism,
Moral politics + reagan
he opposed the Nixon administration’sattempt to weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and voted to approve astrengthened extension of the law. He supported labor and Missouri agri-culture by advocating for federal subsidies for cotton producers.*”
Holy progressive
a Republican won the state—by a mere 20,488 votes over Democratic presidential challenger HubertHumphrey.
Although more surprising is that he was non-liberal given their senatorial track record
landslide by earn-ing the votes of more than one million Missourians.*
Again, missouri has a liberal agenda
his views opposing the nation’s en-try into NATO and the Marshall Plan.
Jeffersonian foreign policy, ask finn to explain
The destruction of this social philosophy is the aim of the conservativesand reactionaries of both parties.
Arguing to keep the party more radical
if the State would be willing to have two Senatorsfrom Saint Louis at the same time.
Cultural hub though, no?
Long cast his vote infavor of the Civil Right Acts of 1964 and 1968 and the Voting Rights Actof 1965. In 1966 Long published the book The Intruders: The Invasion ofPrivacy by Government and Industry,
So hint of modern day anti-federalism but also what the hell happened, why did missouri become conservative
must be noted that Hennings made singular contributions toMcCarthy’s ultimate fall
What a fucking guy, on the right side of history again and again
federal anti-lynching law.”
Not until Biden
internalsecurity createdanewadministrativecriminallawapparatus,inviolationoftheBill ofRights.
Missouri as liberal in the early to mid 20th century