Friday, November 11, 2011

CFTC and MF Global

Chris Clayton has an outstanding post on the House Agriculture Committee's oversight hearings--two paragraphs:

"By my own count, the House Agriculture Committee has held six hearings on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's implementation of Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. More than 30 witnesses appeared before the committee, which has issued 13 news releases on its work from Jan. 27 to date.

But in the entirety of the House Agriculture Committee's work, no one, as far as I can tell from news releases and hearing transcripts, asked anything along the lines of "Are there any loopholes that need to be closed, or rules that need to be implemented to protect client accounts from being raided?" Or, "Is there a loophole big enough to drive a massive bankruptcy through?" "Is there anything we're missing?"

Veteran's Day and Calvin Gibbs

Today's Veteran's Day, a day on which many good words will be said and many good people honored.  But as a veteran myself, I want to remind us that Lt. Calley and Calvin Gibbs were also veterans. Good men and women can do great things; they also can do terrible things; they can also fail to act when terrible things are done (see Paterno, Joe).  The presence or absence of a uniform, the taking of an oath to serve the country, none of that affects the human capacity for good or evil. Veterans are human, just like the rest of us.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Some People Never Learn: Erin Is Back

Erin of Raising Country Kids is back, a good photographer (how can you fail with cute kids and a puppy), very good writer, and not having learned how to simplify her life at all.

Wednesday, November 09, 2011

US as a Christian Nation: an Omission

Much debate over whether the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation. (Some of my forebears knew it wasn't a Christian nation because it refused to acknowledge God in the Constitution, and therefore until 1830's refused to perform civic duties which would require oaths.) 

The National Archives has a daily "Today's Document".  Today's  is the "Secrecy Agreement"--after the Continental Congress had declared independence of George III, they started to get scared.  So they all signed an agreement in the fall of 1776 to keep their discussions secret.  Interestingly, although it's a solemn agreement, it doesn't include any swearing.  The fearsome consequence of leaking was to be treated as an enemy to American liberty.

Oops: Typos in Opera

From the Wolf Trap Opera blog:

"Watch out for those typos, some of which are inadvertently helped along by word processing… My recent favorite was Romeo’s aria “Slut, demeure chaste et pure.”  (In case you’re wondering, it’s “Salut, demeure chaste et pure”:

The Christmas Tree "Tax"

Ann Althouse is only one of the people highlighting the new "tax" on Christmas trees. Unfortunately USDA has a tin ear for political impact.  In the old days when the Directives Branch processed a Federal Register document for ASCS there'd sometimes be a press release included in the clearance package, particularly for CCC board decisions. These days they probably should do a blog post in anticipation of an FR document publication; just try to get their side of the story out.

I'm playing catchup today but this sounds like a new research and promotion program, voted on by the Christmas tree growers and with the fees to be used for promotion.  For some background on the research and promotion programs, here's the national ag law center's summary.

Tuesday, November 08, 2011

Election Report

We voted today.  Elections for the state legislature, Fairfax county board, school board, bond issue, soil and water conservation district. Lots of choices, so being lazy and too cynical for high school idealism basically used the Democrats' sample ballot.

The paper said there was a problem getting volunteers to man the polls, but there was the usual complement at our polling place. 

Because control of the state Senate hangs in the balance (the Reps are favored to take over, ensuring a lot of conservative social legislation will get enacted) we've gotten lots of calls.  Today we had 3 calls to be sure we voted since the Dems have us recorded as "sure" votes they're desperate to be sure we did.

After voting we went off to the theater to see "The Ides of March", which I'd describe as a mashup of Clinton/Edwards/Obama (played by Clooney, who was co-writer and director) as a candidate for the Dem nomination versus Ryan Gosling as an idealist whose illusions are shattered.  Good acting talent, well done, but no chance to feel good about either the country or the Democrats.  (That's unlike Primary Colors, which could break your heart.)

Monday, November 07, 2011

Farm Policy Versus EWG

Keith Good at FarmPolicy critiques the EWG assault on crop insurance in today's post.  In other news the AG committees haven't been able to agree on something to send to the supercommittee (last I saw rice and peanuts might keep direct payments) and Vilsack says USDA might cut 10,000 employees.

"I don't think the banks cared at all about borrowers."

[Grin]  That's from a Calculated Risk post on lawsuits over MERS (the computerized system for recording mortgages].

What the writer is saying is in setting up MERS the banks weren't trying to defraud home buyers, they were trying to save recording fees (i.e., defraud local government you might say) and enable the fancy derivatives and mortgage backed securities which led to the bubble.

Sunday, November 06, 2011

Where's the WTO Rules?

There's a blog, CAP Health, which discusses EU agricultural policy.  Based on a cursory review, it doesn't seem as if the EU is going to follow the US in shifting strongly to a crop insurance policy.  Which leads me to the question in the title: one of the advantages of the direct payment program in the Republican's Freedom to Farm legislation in 1996 was its compliance with WTO rules on agricultural subsidies.  These days I've not seen those rules mentioned in any of the discussion of changes to farm legislation. Are they no longer applicable, do we just not care, or does crop insurance fit within them as well as direct payments?