1,539 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2026
    1. its rotten tenements, its failed sanitation, itsvulnerability to epidemic, its corrupt building inspectors, its clattering factories, its sulphurous chimneys,its manure-strewn avenues, the rudeness of its poor, and the avarice of kleptocratic party bosses.

      All the more happy to watch it fall I imagine

    2. Economic citizenship, expressed as the ownership and active management of enterprise,generally coincided with political citizenship, expressed as local residence and electoralparticipation

      Political interests were representative of the local population

    3. This was driven less by taste than by economic and technological forces thatcompelled those engaged in either industrial work and management, or in the operation of otherenterprises, to live fairly close to the job

      would change the most with cars and electricity

    4. Within a few years, the balance would shift perceptibly toward a44dispersion of residential population, work activities, and commerce—and toward what I will call the end ofurbanism

      Cars and electricity allow people to move away from centralized areas

    5. Their yearly numbers averaged more than 500,000 for the five decades, rising to nearly a35million (994,000) each year from 1904 through 191

      And the abundance of food and infastructure was there to welcome them

    6. The inevitable consequence of this was that industry was concentrated in compact anddensely populated industrial towns, or directly along the waterfront in sea ports.

      Had to be close to the goods

    7. Railway transportoverthrew, for the first time in history, the natural barriers which had hitherto prevented too great aconcentration of industry in any urban center. The great cities of the world up to that date indeed had beenstill built up primarily for political, military, or religious importance rather than their commercial orindustrial functions; from 1830 onwards the latter were to predominate.

      Now you could center a city around its economy

    8. mmigration allowing accelerated growth in thesupply of urban labor; and a delayed and uneven spreading out and implementation ofdistance-compressing technologies such as alternating current (AC) electricity

      more people and only one area with the capacity to house them

    9. In seeking ever fresh forms of production, ever larger markets, ever higher returns oninvestment, capitalism routinely destroys older ways of doing business, older technologies, olderplants—and in so doing profoundly transforms the communities that have formed around them

      Even when those old ways are better

    10. Even as the Depression set in, the city churned out enough demand that a smart kid could find his way intothe money stream on a weekend’s notice

      The height of urbanism

    Annotators

    1. 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

    2. 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

    3. 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

    4. Such reversals can be so dramatic that theyproduce patterns of political behavior different from those surrounding themore typical adoption of new policy

      More hesitancy

    5. 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.

    6. 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

    7. 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.

  2. Feb 2026
    1. 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.

    2. 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

    3. 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?

    4. 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

    5. 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

    6. 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

    7. 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

    8. 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

    9. 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

    10. 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

    11. 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?

    12. 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

    13. 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

    14. 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

    15. 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

    Annotators

    1. 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

    2. 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

    3. 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

    4. 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

    5. 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

    6. 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

    7. 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

    8. 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.

    Annotators

    1. 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

    Annotators

    1. 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.

    2. 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

    3. 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

    4. 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

    5. 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

    6. 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

    7. 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

    8. 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?

    9. 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

    10. In this article, we explore how preferences, electoral incentives,and lobbying can influence legislative action on agricultural policyin the United States Congress

      All three

    11. Interest groups representing agricultural producerslobby policy makers and contribute to the re-election campaignsof those who support agriculture

      With what money remains a question

    12. 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

    Annotators

    1. 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?

    2. 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

    3. 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

    4. 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

    5. 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

    6. 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

    7. 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

    8. 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

    9. 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

    10. 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

    11. 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

    12. 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

    13. 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

    14. 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

    15. 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

    16. 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

    17. 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

    18. . 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

    19. 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?

    Annotators

    1. 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?

    2. 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

    3. 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

    4. 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

    5. 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

    6. 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

    7. 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

    8. 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

    9. 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.

    10. 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