Are You a Screwball? Metaphors

A post at York Town Square provides a definition of "screwball", the definitive one.  It sounds logical to me, though a fast search doesn't reveal any confirmation.  But I know filter screens can clog, and I can imagine bouncing balls could vibrate it enough to keep it clear, and such motion (brownian, perhaps) would be erratic, erratic enough to lead to the modern definition of "screwball".

Food Waste

A while back I posted on the waste of food in the US, arguing that it was mostly due to our desire for choice.  I noted a contrast today in a NYTimes piece on the likelihood of soaring food prices in 2011:

China, which only really uses global markets for soybeans, is fretting over soaring shop prices for goods as diverse as pork and seaweed. In India, a fifth of the population is undernourished, according to the United Nations. Both countries have their own issues; for instance, in India, awful infrastructure means a third of produce spoils before it reaches the market. But something is clearly making the problem worse.  [emphasis added]

 For those curious, the "something" referred to in the last sentence is claimed to be an abundance of money.

Why Healthcare Is Costly

A nugget from a NYTimes article on the problems of providing adequate Wi-Fi connectivity to conferences, particularly of techies.

"“I’ve been to health care conferences where no one brings a laptop,” said Ross Mayfield, president of the business software company Socialtext and a technology conference regular."

 That's sad, and also revealing.  I doubt there's any conference in USDA where laptops aren't present, at least those conferences where there are worker bees.

Dan Drezner Decides to be Less Genuine

My takeaway from his post on being interviewed on cable news (taking off from Ta Nehisi-Coates post) is:

His fault: "I genuinely want to answer the question asked of me. "

His New Year's resolution: to improve as an interviewee.

You Think?

From a post on sex at Barking Up the Wrong Tree:

"Taking the data set as a whole, almost the only way to make the men’s and women’s answers consistent is for there to be some women in the United States who have enormous numbers of sexual partners without reporting that fact in our survey data. It is possible that this is because of the existence of prostitutes. An alternative, and perhaps more likely, explanation is that men overestimate."[emphasis added]

Central Cities Safer Than Suburbs?

That's the gist of a Grist post, based on a UVA study. Turns out the risk from things like car accidents and drunk driving outweighs the risk from the crime we think of when "central cities" are mentioned.

Cash Leasing Increasing?

Extension reports an increase in cash leasing as opposed to shares, suggesting an increase in the use of crop insurance to handle risk means farmers are more able to accept the increased risk of cash leasing.  There's another possible contributory cause: the declining impact of farm program payments. Relatively speaking, such payments are less important these days; payments have gone down and prices have gone up.  When payment limitation is a problem, there's an advantage to share leasing. But with the lesser importance of farm programs, there's also less incentive to worry about payment limitation in managing your affairs.

Merry Christmas from a Procrastinator

Haven't finished a lot of posts I wanted to, but I wish you all a Merry Christmas.

Let All Populists Rejoice

According to this blog post of a study, Harvard Law students are no good (i.e., their free representation of indigents didn't help, and actually delayed decisions).

I Use E-Mail, I'm a Geezer

All that fits this Times piece: usage of email by oldtimers is up; by teens is way down.

What Gripes Me: The Golden Rule

As in this case reported in the Times:

"Deutsche Bank agreed to pay $553 million and admit to criminal wrongdoing on Tuesday, settling a long-running investigation into tax shelter fraud that prosecutors say generated billions of dollars in bogus tax benefits."

"... Deutsche Bank will avoid prosecution for helping 2,100 customers evade taxes through 2,300 financial transactions. The arrangements, which took place between 1996 and 2002, helped wealthy Americans report more than $29 billion in fraudulent tax losses, according to the Justice Department."

Them as has the gold, rules; or at least break the rules.  (I know, Republicans, this is class warfare.  The war of class on the masses. Can anyone guess I'm not in a holiday mood today?)

Bronze Star Cook

Via Marginal Revolution, this short post on the Army Ranger and Bronze Star winner who's also a great pastry cook: no. 3 in the world.

Render Unto Caesar

A friend argues we should not have any marriages recognized by the civil authorities; everyone should use civil unions and leave marriages to the churches. That almost feels like Matt Yglesias on Christmas: let's have a universal secular festival on the solstice and leave Christmas and Hanukkah to their respective religions.

Government Project Wastes Millions on Failed Projects

A big government project, announced with much fanfare 5 years ago, admitted today it had failed to achieve its objectives after spending $450 million of taxpayer money. Few would be surprised by such a story.  But it turns out that the sentence (mis)describes a Bill Gates project.  Best I can tell, the project was similar to something the government might have done, particularly if you had someone like Rep. Dingell pushing NIH and funding its efforts. It actually was a group of projects, mostly conceived as top-down efforts, some of which were successful but most of which didn't meet their objectives.  

To be clear, I don't regard this as a waste of Mr. Gates' money, but I am intrigued with the similarities and differences with similar government efforts.

Christmas Tree Exhibited in 1840

I follow a couple of York, PA blogs because one line of ancestors lived there for a while.  Here's a post on an exhibition of a Christmas tree in 1840, plus related bits and pieces.

GPRA II Fails

I blogged on Senate passage of this bill but it failed in the House.  Brought up under suspension of rules, it failed to get 2/3 of the votes.  The incoming chair of Gov Oversight, Rep. Issa, has some problems with it because the Senate stripped his amendment requiring program-level goals.

New Type of Crop Insurance--Weather-Based

Via Farm Policy, here's the website of WeatherBill, which touts itself as a new type of crop insurance. I'm not clear how it works, but the leader used to work for Google so presumably it's based on better/faster access to data.   You do have to input some of the data from your crop insurance policy. And the policies are weather-specific: i.e., "rain on hay", "spring freeze", etc. Whether they can reinvent crop insurance, we'll see.

On Teachers and Education

Greg Mankiw passes on an estimate of the value added by a teacher who's one standard deviation better than the average: $400,000 for a class of 20.  Meanwhile, a comparison of the GRE (Graduate Record Exam) scores by discipline puts elementary educators 5 rungs from the bottom, with secondary and higher education above, but still below average.  (Public administration was just above elementary education, but I was happy to see, as a failed historian, history was third from the top--all rankings based on verbal scores.)

Declining Usage of Productive Capability

This post at Calculated Risk has a series of graphs, one of which shows the usage of productive capability over the years. What strikes me is that usage was at 88 percent or so in 1967, but the peak declined to 85 percent in the 1980's and 1990's and to about 82 percent in the 2000's. I wonder what's going on?

• Is there a systemic problem with the statistics?
• Are companies investing too much in capabilities?
• Have tax breaks for investment resulted in over investment?
• Something else?

Madison Is Right Again: Joe Lieberman

I interpret Madison's arguments for a big republic in the Federalist Papers as predicting Joe Lieberman would be a darling of the liberals, at least for a day. I may be stretching a bit, but Madison foresaw a number of different interests in competition, which seems to me logically to result in overlap and cross-pressures.  So while Lieberman has been a hawk and a friend of McCain on many issues, so much so he was beaten in the last Democratic primary, he's been good on many domestic issues and turned up trumps on Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

I'm probably showing my age, but I've more tolerance for such politicians than many, such as the Republicans who go hunting for RINOS (Republicans in name only).

Vertical Gardens Again

The Economist has a good piece on vertical gardens, which ends thus:

Rooftop farming may not be able to compete with other suppliers in a global market unless people are prepared to pay a premium for fresh, local food, says Mr Head. And it is much less glamorous than the grand vision of crops being produced in soaring green towers of glass. But, for the time being, this more down-to-earth approach is much more realistic than the sci-fi dream of fields in the sky.

Reihan Salam who is often a conservative I can listen to is duped  by Valcent.

How We Pay Teachers

From Ralph Luker's Cliopatria

Looking toward the AHA's annual job market orgy in January, one of our colleagues suggests Colonial Williamsburg's listing as a commentary on the state of our profession. CW wants a doctorate in early American Studies, with experience in museum-related historical research, and expertise in a half dozen or more programming technologies and languages. Must be both a self-starter and a collegial builder of community. Bring all of that to the job and you could hope to make up to $40 K.

Peter Hessler and Rapid Development in China

Been reading Peter Hessler's "Country Driving".  (I strongly recommend his previous books: "River Town" and "Oracle Bones".)  He is or was the New Yorker's correspondent in China, having first lived there as a Peace Corps teacher (River Town).  He's got a sharp eye for detail and for the culture, plus the daring to drive where he's not supposed to, and the ability to get along with people, although according to him in the Chinese countryside and in the new industrial areas people are uniformly welcoming, and friendly, except for the man nicknamed the "Shitkicker".

Anyhow, just read his description of the process of designing a 21,000 sq ft factory building (3 stories, with the dormitory for workers on the third floor) in southern China.  Guess how long it took?

• 3 months
• 3 weeks
• 3 days
• 3 hours
• none of the above

The answer is "none of the above".  Actually took 1 hour and 4 minutes for the two bosses to design it with the builder, the builder committed to providing a bid by the next morning.  3 months is the time it took to build it.

Paragraph of Dec 18

From RecoveringFed: 
"One day, as I was tweeting on the hotel computer, I noticed that on the French computer one does not have to shift to use the exclamation point. I think that says something about the French."

"Bureaucrat", "Civil Servant", "Faceless Bureaucrat"

Back to the Google Ngram again.  The term::

• "civil servant" starts occurring in 1800, in British  English, peaking in the early 1940's then declining.  It starts occurring in the 1880's in American English peaking in the mid 1960's, then declining. It's about 5 times more common in British than American.
• "bureaucrat" starts earlier in British English (around 1840) than in American (late 1860's).  In American the peak is mid 1970's, then a decline.  In British the peak is the early 1990's, then a decline. Usage slightly more common in the U.S. 
• "faceless bureaucrat" is 10 times more common in American English than British, though the pattern over time is roughly the same.

I've had Google alerts for "faceless bureaucrat" and "civil servant" for a few years.  The pattern is for the members of the former British Empire to use "civil servant" quite a bit, and their usage of "bureaucrat" is generally neutral, not pejorative.  The U.S. doesn't use "civil servant" much, and usage of "bureaucrat" usually has an edge.  So the comparisons made available by the Google tool don't surprise me, but I am puzzled by the variations over the last 50 years.

Government Performance and Results Act II

Government Executive reports on Senate passage of an update to the GPRA, sponsored in part by Sen. Warner (has yet to pass the House and may not make it before adjournment). It sounds to me to be fairly reasonable, except as follows.  This paragraph struck me:

When developing or making adjustments to a strategic plan, the agency shall consult periodically with the Congress, including majority and minority views from the appropriate authorizing, appropriations, and oversight committees, and shall solicit and consider the views and suggestions of those entities potentially affected by or interested in such a plan. The agency shall consult with the appropriate committees of Congress at least once every 2 years.

Based on schoolbook theories of government, it would seem that Congress should be initiating reviews of such plans, rather than the agencies initiating the consultation. 

And my big concern is definition: it applies to "agencies", which if I understand means USDA, not NRCS and FSA.  Unfortunately, as Sec. Vilsack has no doubt learned by now, his control and oversight of subordinate agencies in the department is rather limited.  You have a puzzle: how does USDA do a plan which makes sense at the FSA level? 

I should note under the current GPRA FSA and the other components of USDA do their own plans.  Of course, FSA hasn't updated its webpage since July 2007, so one can assume the new administration isn't much relying on the plan to guide the agency.

Telework and Televote

If Federal employees can telework, why can't Senators televote.  (Sen. Wyden is having prostate surgery.)

"Faceless Bureaucrat"

Via Kevin Drum, the Google Ngram Viewer. It's a database of text from Google Books together with software which searches and graphs the occurrence of a phrase. The phrase, "faceless bureaucrat" first appears around 1958.  Usage rises steadily from 1964 to the 1980's, then has been up and down but mostly up since then. I wonder what was driving the usage.  Anyhow, as Kevin says, it's a great time waster and the NY Times says it's been used for a scholarly paper.

Interest Rates and Competition

I shouldn't venture into this subject, but I'm confused.  If I understand, which I probably don't, the Fed continues to make money available to banks at a low cost but the mortgage rate is rising.  How does that happen? Shouldn't the banks be competing to make loans, and therefore keeping rates low?  Or is the home mortgage market subject to frictions and problems which make it not very competitive?

Why You Can't Keep Them Down on the Farm

Roving Bandit quotes a professor on 7 reasons you can't keep people down on the farm (phrased as "reasons urban growth is a reasonable and natural phenomenon". (economies of scale, centrality,diversity cover some of the seven). The same rules mean bigger cities grow bigger.

Meanwhile Megan McArdle had a recent visit to China and an interesting post on rural life, including observations on how the government is trying to slow the rush of people to cities:

Yet even this level of income is achieved by substantial government intervention.  In part to slow the pace of urbanization to a manageable level, in part because they're worried about food security, and in part presumably just because they don't want the farmers to starve, the government offers some pretty hefty subsidies to rural communities.  The crop prices are supported above market levels; the houses, appliances, and someday cars, are acquired with substantial discounts through government programs.  According to our hosts, without those subsidies, it's not clear that there would be anyone left on Chinese farms.  Chinese agriculture is amazingly productive, as I mentioned, but it's also amazingly labor intensive, and tends to be done on a small scale; they can't compete with the massive farms of North and South America.

Why the Food Movement Should Like High Estate Taxes

A common refrain against the opponents of the death estate tax is it will harm family farms. It will force the sale of farms which have been in the family for generations.  Assume a 1,000 acre in Iowa, valued at $7,000.  If husband and wife are the owners, then the exemption has to be at least $3.5 mill (which I think is what House Dems want).  But of course, some farms these days are larger.  So what happens if the estate tax is applied: presumably the owners sell off some land.  Selling land puts more land on the market and presumably improves the chances for aspiring farmers to break into the business.  That's what the food movement would like, more and smaller farms.   So the food movement should be pushing for lower estate tax exemptions.  And I don't see a free market rationale for preserving the larger farms--if bigger is better, as most commercial farmers think, the new owners will simply assemble land parcels into a new, big farm.

House for Sale

Here 
[Updated: Ipswich, MA]

The NRA Is More Powerful Than the Farm Bureau

Why do I say that?  The Post has been running articles on guns, and yesterday's piece describes how, when the ATF revokes a gun dealer's license, games can be played so a relative gets a license and the gun shop goes on as before. Apparently these games  over who is the entity receiving the license are permitted by the terms of the relevant law(s) and the way Congress has directed the ATF to administer the law.

While the supporters of farm program payments such as the Farm Bureau have exerted influence over the payment limitation provisions of the law, including issues of who is considered the entity receiving payments, they don't seem to have been quite as successful as the NRA.  The last I knew, FSA was still looking for paper entities.  It may not be a great distinction, but when the issue is payment limitation, FSAers will take anything they can find.

A Juxtaposition

In today's Post there was a report that some hotel workers had their assignments changed because someone didn't want them working on the same floor where the party of  an Israeli cabinet officer had rooms. They were Muslem, apparently.  Separately an update on Richard Holbrooke's last words mentioned the names of an attending doctor and surgeon, one possibly Arab and one born in Pakistan.  One wonders what would have happened if the Israeli cabinet minister had been injured in a traffic accident and rushed to the ER where Holbrooke was treated.

A Liberal's Wet Dream

Via Matt Yglesias, NY Times has an interactive website for the new Census data.  Looking at the tract in which I reside (western Reston/eastern Herndon south of Toll Road BTW I think the center of the Internet) the racial ethnic distribution is:
white 39%
Hispanic 24%
black 14%
Asian 22%
other 2 %

Median household income $84K

Odd figures for housing: the median unit is at $507K, up 97 % from 2000 to 2009 but the median rent is $920, down 2 %.  I frankly can't believe the house price, unless it excludes townhouses.  The discrepancy between the rise in housing and the decline in rental rates is interesting.

Variety in School Lunches, A Thought

The White House has released a "before" and "after" school lunch menu. Obviously the "after" is both more nutritious and more attractive (at least to a geezer's eyes, perhaps not to those of a 10-year old).  One thing which strikes me about the menu is there's more items in every "after" menu than in the "before".   Just on a fast skim, the "before" averages about 4 items, the "after" about 7.  Just thinking about logistics, as a bureaucrat often should, the difference implies an increase in costs as you've got a more complicated inventory to procure and manage and a more complicated and more labor-intensive process to assemble the meal.  I wonder whether school lunch administrators were involved in creating the menus.

A Good Sentence for Dec 14

"And in those 20 years, he’s never been right" (from Matt Yglesias on Thomas Hoenig, the inflation-fighter Fed man from KC.

Words on Inequality from a Founding Father

Brad DeLong posts a letter from Jefferson to Madison which I remember reading in college.  It's of interest in many ways (sentiments which were the basis of appropriating the land of the Native Americans, botanical research, etc.) but here's one sentence:

I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable, but the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind.

I might link it with this Tyler Cowen post relative to Australia's equality.

Cleopatra as the Great Bureaucrat

Reading Cleopatra, one of the Times' 10 best books of the year.  Parenthetically I note the readers' reviews at Amazon average between 3 and 4; a rather surprising result which is explained by the fact many reviewers expected to find a biography full of sex, even a book of historical fiction.  Instead, they find a book which tries not to go too far beyond the available sources, which are few and untimely. (Consider trying to describe the Constitution from a book by Charles Beard and one by Glenn Beck.)

Because of the scarcity of sources, the author weaves in lots of detail about Egyptian society and Roman society, which strongly appeals to me. What surprised was the extensive bureaucracy the Egyptian state possessed, even down to tracking the amount of seed provided to a farmer and requiring the return of that amount after harvest, in addition to taking 50 percent of the crop. And Cleopatra served as chief bureaucrat, likely being a more hands-on administrator than such heads of state as Henry VIII and Khrushchev.

Sen. Warner's Regulation Proposal Is Wrong

Sen. Mark Warner of VA has an op-ed in today's Post on regulation.  Specifically, he's proposing legislation to require agencies to kill a regulation for each new regulation they write, alleging: " our current regulatory framework actually favors those federal agencies that consistently churn out new red tape. In this town, expanded regulatory authority typically is rewarded with additional resources and a higher bureaucratic profile, and there is no process or incentive for an agency to eliminate or clean up old regulations."

Although the regulations I wrote for ASCS/FSA were mostly not the sort of regulations Sen. Warner has in mind, iI've multiple problems with it

• A nitpicky problem is one of definition: what is a regulation?  Is it a section of the Code of Federal Regulations or a part? Does it relate to a specific law, or perhaps a title of a law, remembering that many "laws" as passed actually contain multiple "laws", particularly in the case of such legislation as the farm bill? How about a regulation for a yearly program: if the 2007 direct payment program is different than the 2009 direct payment program, is that two regulations or one? Whatever definition is used, a sufficiently ingenious reg writer can work around it, by judiciously combining and splitting documents, or including the new regulatory provision in a revision of the old regulation.
• "Old regulations" don't necessarily mean obsolete regulations.  AMS has probably not changed many of its regulations defining commodities for many years, but those regulations don't need changing or dropping just because they're old.
• "Obsolete regulations" need not be oppressive regulations.  For example, suppose the government regulates the making of buggy whips. Well, IMHO there's few buggy whip makers around to be adversely affected by the obsolete regulation, and therefore little economic gain to using scarce resources to do away with them.
• It fails to consider the Congressional role in rulemaking.  For example,  a recent NYTimes article described the regulatory work involved in implemented Obama's healthcare and financial regulation packages; I believe Sen. Warner supported both.  What obsolete regulations would he have Treasury and HHS drop?  When Congress creates some programs and sticks them in the farm bill, without killing old programs, what regulations is FSA supposed to kill?
• It's a de novo proposal, by which I mean it's made without any recognition of past efforts in this direction.  (Sen. Warner's too young to remember the Carter administration and its love of sunset provisions.)  Someone fed Sen. Warner the OECD report on regulations and he saw a chance to make his name based on adopting it here.  I would be more impressed if Sen. Warner and his staff had looked at the existing inventories of federal program and rulemaking activities,  consulted with the people in the Obama administration who are working in the area of rulemaking, thought about public involvement, talked to GAO which did a report last year, and made some considered proposals.
• [Updated: The proposal requires more work for federal regulation writers, without providing any funding.  Therefore we need to consider what the writers won't be doing if they carry out Sen. Warner's proposal: ignoring public input on regulations or taking longer to write new regulations (the GAO study already outlined how long it takes to get new things out the door). As a former businessman, Sen. Warner should realize there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Note: Sen. Warner is one of my senators, I voted for him, and I plan to vote for him in 2012.  But  he should take this back to the draft stage.]

Flash: Farm Subsidies Popular in US

That's the take-away from this Kevin Drum post, which says Wall Street bonuses are twice as unpopular as farm subsidies. (Which must mean that farm subsidies are more popular, right?)

Sentence of Dec 13

"Fortunately for America, Alabama has a legendary good-government political culture that’s allowed it to climb to the top of so many social indicator league table"

From Matt Yglesias, commenting on the rise of Alabama politicians to power over finance.

NYTimes Mag and Zuckerberg

Virginia Heffernan writes about "The Social Network" and Mr. Zuckerberg in today's NY Times Magazine. A paragraph:

The real Mark Zuckerberg has taken measured issue with the way “The Social Network” portrays him. He has disputed, especially, the filmmakers’ suggestion that he built the site as a means to worldly ends. “They frame it as if the whole reason I invented Facebook was that I wanted to get girls or to get into some kind of social institution,” he told an audience at Stanford University in October. “They just can’t wrap their head around the idea that someone might build something because they like building things.”

 I note the alternative motives here: sex or curiosity, not money.  The book, "The Facebook Effect", which I just finished, is consistent with the movie in this respect.  Zuckerberg is depicted almost as an artist with a pure vision of what Facebook could be, a vision which excludes lots of ads and commercialization and includes declining multiple opportunities to cash in for the big bucks.

So what's the role of money as an incentive?  I'd suggest it plays a role in some choices, like an initial choice of occupation.  I'm sure some people choose to work on Wall Street instead of Teach for America because of money. And many people who go into medicine may choose a specialty partially because of money. But I don't think money is that important in the big scheme of things.  So why worry about the impact of taxes on incentives for work? The best answer is because taxes can be changed but you can't change sex or curiosity.

White House Garden for Winger

Obamafoodorama has a post on the White House installing hoop houses for winter.  One of our fellow gardeners has something similar, though she's had problems with it withstanding wind.  Snow may be the big challenge, based on last year's experience.

How Far We've Progressed

A conjunction of two articles in today's NYTimes: one describing Nixon's views of Jews, and different ethnicities, the other describing a video used to raise money for the American Jewish World Service:

The film they commissioned, by the director Judd Apatow and the writer Jordan Rubin, is different from the standard nonprofit propaganda, different enough to have been watched nearly a million times since it made its debut a month and a half ago.
Mr. Apatow’s short film features a medley of Hollywood stars, Jew and gentile, making light of Jewish stereotypes, suggesting that donors “send a self-addressed stamped matzoh,” and generally having more fun at a religious group’s expense than their grandparents might think proper.

Regulating Eggs

Post has an article on the complexities of regulating eggs for salmonella.  Two bits illustrate the complexities:

[In the 1980's]For egg farmers, however, the problem was not so easily dismissed. Faced with bad publicity and multimillion-dollar liability claims, they voluntarily began testing for the bacteria, disinfecting henhouses, refrigerating eggs, removing manure and controlling rodents. But those farmers soon came to think that they were at an economic disadvantage against competitors who weren't spending money on prevention....

The fact that the egg industry was on board [with draft regulations] didn't sway Dudley [GWB's person for regulations in OMB]. "One needs to be skeptical when an industry seeks regulation, because it often confers competitive advantage. It could be over other companies or over international firms," she said. "And it often raises costs and it's consumers who get hurt."

 Basic fairness says everyone in a market should be competing on an equal basis.  The government should set the rules and let the competitors fight it out. Of course, that raises the issue of  who is in the market?  Should someone with a thousand hens be considered a competitor the same as someone with a million hens? How about the person with 20 hens who supplies neighbors?  I think that's basically what Dudley gets at when she speaks of "an industry". She's really talking about the big boys in an area who have the bucks to come to DC and hire lobbyists, etc. The economics of regulation sometimes, not always, create additional costs; costs which if you're big can be spread over many units of production but if you're small can be make or break.  (I'm thinking of shifting from milk cans to a bulk tank, which was a hot issue for dairies when I was 20 or so.)

So the tradeoff can be: draw the line in one place and you allow free-riders; draw the line in another place and you encourage concentration and kill the small producers.

Meat Consumption in the US

Freakonomics provides a graph showing the US consumption of beef, chicken, pork, and turkey since 1909.  They highlight the drop in beef and rise in chicken, suggesting that chicken is faster to prepare and the rise relates to the rise in female employment (as well as the health concerns of red meat versus white).

What I see is a steep rise in beef consumption from about 1953 to 1976 or so.  I guess that was a reflection of American prosperity, where eating steak was a sign one had arrived.  (Except for cube steak, which was sort of our staple steak when I was growing up.  Not sure you see much cube steak these days.)   I'm curious, though; the rise in female employment surely started earlier than 1975.

And So Much for the Minimum Wage

Apparently the recession and consequent loss of immigrants has enabled builders to cut the wages of their laborers down to the minimum wage. I wonder how aware of the minimum wage immigrants of any stripe are? And this seems to be an instance where wages are not "sticky", as the economists say.  Contrast the fate of civil service employees, or financial sector employees, whose wages haven't decreased at all in this recession.

On the Intrinsic Superiority of Market-Driven Organizations

See this post at Propublica, for a study comparing the death rates at dialysis clinics: profit versus nonprofits.

Anyone knowing my biases knows which group does better.

Pigford II Is Signed, And Breitbart Digs Away

I've been slow recently in following the Pigford II story.  Briefly, yesterday Obama signed the legislation.  It passed the House despite some speeches against it by Michelle Bachmann and Steve King. And it seems that Mr. Breitbart is promising revelations, including allegations that more than 50 percent of Pigford claims are fraudulent.

I'd comment today simply that any discussion needs to distinguish between Pigford I and Pigford II claims, A and B claims, claims which were filed and claims which were approved.

Earmarks and Congressional Clout

Steve Benen posted a discussion of earmarks, on which I commented.  David Farenthold had an article in the Post on the lame duck House members, who have now moved out of their fancy offices into temporary offices in the basement until the House adjourns.  I see these two paragraphs as relating to earmarks:

The departing members also remembered, fondly, their power to intercede for constituents. As lowly as a freshman is on Capitol Hill, he is a giant to a bureaucrat.
"I was surprised by the extent of power that I had," said Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao (R-La.). Cao recalled his ability to make Federal Emergency Management Agency officials help his constituents still recovering from Hurricane Katrina. "I can go into a federal agency, and people would jump."

The point being, even if earmarks are banned, a bureaucrat is still going to jump when a member of Congress contacts her. So my fear is we'll replace earmarks which are in writing and fairly transparent with less transparent meetings and letters, all of which arrive at understandings, a wink and a nod as it were. Things might be helped if Congress agreed to post all correspondence with the bureaucracy and list all meetings on their web sites.

Bureaucratic Response of the Year

Cass Sunstein to his future wife, Samatha Power, on their first date, as he recounts at the recent e-rulemaking symposium:

"And she was trying to get to know me, so she said if you could have any job at all in the world, any job you wanted -- this is kind of a date-like question, isn’t it -- what would it be? And I found out many months later she was hoping I’d say play left field for the Boston Red Sox or be backup guitar for Bruce Springsteen. And I responded with apparently a glazed look in my eye looking off into the distance and in an imaginary sunset. I said OIRA." 

Orin Kerr Reveals All

Or at least the definitive theory of legal interpretation: " That doesn’t mean I don’t have my own normative theory of constitutional interpretation. I do: It’s called the Edsel X62 HutHut 1 Theory." 

Clue: Edsel

Food Deserts

James McWilliams discusses some options on reducing obesity, including this point:

There’s plenty of evidence supporting a strong correlation between ease of access to healthy food and reduced obesity risk. Similarly, there’s proof that those with limited access to healthy food spend less on it. Causation, though, is another matter. A couple of things to consider: a) a study of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients found that participants lived an average of 1.8 miles from the nearest source of fresh produce but still traveled an average of 4.9 miles (most likely to a superstore) to buy their groceries; and b) sixty-eight percent of Americans are fat but—at the most—8 percent of us lack easy access to healthy food choices. Interpreting these points, Michele Ver Ploeg sums up their implications nicely: “Even though most Americans have fabulous access to healthy foods, on average, they eat only about half the recommended daily levels of fruits and vegetables.”

 The first sentence struck me: there seems to be a strong correlation between class/money and obesity/thinness.  Given that the U.S. tends to segregate by money, perhaps the pattern is the new suburbs are designed and built around the super supermarkets. So the rich are better able to maintain their waistlines and the poor less able to.

Framing the Issue

How issues are framed is important.  "Extending tax cuts on taxpayers under $250K" is different than "extending tax cuts on income under $250K"

As an example of how easily even liberals slip into the wrong language:, the first sentence of a Huffington Post post:

"Last week, CBS News released a poll finding that 53 percent of adults preferred to extend the Bush-era tax cuts only to those making less than $250,000, twice as many as preferred to keep the cuts for everyone."

How difficult would it be to say "... only to income of less than $250,000, twice as many preferred to keep the cuts for all income."

Whoopsie

I get home delivery of the NYTimes so it often doesn't have the results of late games.  (The Post used to, but no longer, not since the cutbacks.) So I just finished reading William Rhoden's column in the Times about how the Jets were on the way up and the Patriots on the way down, I log on and see in the news headlines--Pats 45, Jets 3.

Procrastinators, Avoid Amazon

I thought I'd pass on a warning to all my fellow procrastinators about the perils of shopping on Amazon. I've developed a habit; I often go to Amazon, find something I want, add it to my shopping cart, then get hit with an attack of the "slows", as I think Lincoln said about McClellan. Ultimately I log off without paying for the item. Which means, of course, that the item remains in the shopping cart.  And, it turns out, when I come back and check the cart, the item is still there, tempting in all its glory.

Tempting, that is, except in the interim Amazon has figured me out.  Mr. Bezos says to himself: Harshaw is already emotionally committed to buying this item, he just is hesitating over pulling the trigger. Let's boost the price a bit, 10 percent or so, and see if he still goes through with the purchase. And guess what, as often as not Mr. Bezos is right and I pay a penalty for procrastinating.

Wrongest Sentence of the Day

From Ta Na-hesi Coates: "The people" is not a synonym for "all those who agree with me."

At least as a description of how "the people" is used, this is 100 percent wrong.

Clause of the Day, Dec. 6

"If Congress does not extend the Bush-era tax cuts for the highest income levels, a typical worker who earns a $1 million bonus would pay $40,000 to $50,000 more in taxes next year than this year, depending on base salary.[emphasis added, from a NYTimes article on Wall street bonuses being moved up]

What Do Bureaucratic Leaders Do?

ProPublica has Secretary Geithner's schedule for several months on-line.

Just skimming through them, without worrying about what was hot during the time, Geithner talks a lot with Rahm Emanuel and the White House economists (Summers, Romer), talks a lot with Senators, talks a lot with foreign counterparts, and, other than staff meetings, very little with Treasury Department employees.

Why We Have Weak Government

Tyler Cowen links to an article on the possible reorganization of the DC-area Metro.

Cover Crops in Virginia

The Cotton Wife takes some pictures.

How Many Years Since WWII?

Who knew there was a commander of the German military for the US and Canada? link 

Is That the Best Ya Got?

That's my reaction to Michael Lerner's op-ed column in todays Post, suggesting to save Obama the left must run someone against him in the primaries.  His suggested candidates:

" Sens. Russ Feingold, Bernie Sanders, Barbara Mikulski or Al Franken; Reps. Joe Sestak, Maxine Waters, Raul Grijalva, Alan Grayson, Barbara Lee, Dennis Kucinich, Lois Capps, Jim Moran and Lynn Woolsey. Others include Jim McGovern, Marcy Kaptur, Jim McDermott or John Conyers. We should also consider popular figures outside of government. How about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? Why not Rachel Maddow, Bill Moyers, Susan Sarandon or the Rev. James Forbes?"

I don't see anyone there who should make Obama lose any sleep. On the other hand, I didn't think George H.W. Bush had anything to fear from Pat Buchanan either, but Pat (and later Ross Perot) deftly torpedoed the elder Bush.  The examples of Ted Kennedy in 1980 and Buchanan in 1992, not to mention Nader in 2000,  should be a sufficient caution to liberals against following Mr. Lerner's advice.  Yes, Nader was a different case, but the underlying logic is the same: go into the election united and you are likely to win, go in divided and you definitely lose.

Anthropology, A Blast

My sister took an anthropology course or two in college so I saw the books she read in her courses--like Malinowski on Magic is one I remember, presumably Margaret Mead would be another.  Off and on over the years I've happened to read a handful of other books in the field--Marvin Harris is one I remember from the 1970's and 80's. I read Respectful Insolence's blast at the American Anthropological Association's proposal to remove the word "science" from their mission statement with surprise and regret. 

I've no problem with being open to other cultures and other viewpoints. I understand anthropology often gets into description without much theory.  I've no problem with "valuing" other cultures.  But I do try to draw some lines: yes, I believe "science" in a broad sense is humanity's best method for learning and manipulating the universe; yes, I believe that some cultural practices should be beyond the pale. 

Ratification

Some thoughts from a reading of Pauline Maier's "Ratification":

• doesn't seem much concern for the right to bear arms in the discussions.  So far I think only NH mentioned it as a right.  
• VA was concerned about "arming" the militia, someone even proposed an amendment ensuring the states' right to arm their militias if the federal government failed to do so.  That suggests to me a recognition of the fact that depending on personal arms for the militia was not a consideration.
• VA's resolution of adoption included a statement that the "people of the United States" were adopting the constitution, but always had the right to change their form of government.
• opponents and proponents used whatever tactics they could to advance their cause.  For example, sometimes they delayed, sometimes they shanghaied their foes into the meeting to make a quorum.  
• as for advocates of "originalism", neither proponents nor opponent agreed on a reading of the Constitution; there were lots of variant interpretations.
• a stray thought: in one convention, I believe VA, an argument against a bill of rights was that such a bill would tend to limit rights.  By saying that A, B, and C were rights, a bill of rights would imply that X, Y, and Z were not rights.  I wonder if that's been born out over the years--I'm thinking specifically of the right of privacy.

More on Wikileaks and State Department Cables

Here's a story on the background to the Wikileaks episode, describing how the State Department linked up to the military's secure SIPRNET.  It doesn't change my previous feelings about the need to track the usage history of each person authorized to access the network.

As a side note, back in the day at ASCS we were on the distribution list for State department cables, or at least some subset of them. Some were "Secret", some were not.  Because I didn't have a security clearance I didn't routinely see them, but they came into the records management shop under some arrangement with the defense preparedness people in the agency.  As I write, I'm becoming aware of how foggy my memory is, or perhaps how foggy my original understanding was.  Were these cables from agricultural attaches, perhaps, and not defense related at all?  Maybe.

Republican Change I Can Support

From Politico, Boehner is changing the House Parliamentarian's office with a women's restroom.

Funny Paragraph of Dec 1: White House and Econ 101

From Brad DeLong:
"I think that one of Christie Romer's predecessors as CEA Chair, Stanford economist and Republican Mike Boskin, says it best. Being Chair of the CEA and advising all the political appointees in the White House is, he says, a lot like teaching Econ 1 at Stanford. Only at Stanford your students do their reading, pay attention, and ask deeper and more thoughtful questions."

Early Precision Agriculture?

Here's an extension report on the savings from precision agriculture from better information on the farming operation and more precise application of inputs of fertilizer, seed, pesticides, etc. which cuts the amount needed.  Coincidentally I was reading a book, I think Bill Bryson's At Home, which mentioned Jethro Tull and the invention of the seed drill, which cut the amount of seed needed from the 3 bushels used in broadcast seeding to 1 bushel in the drill.