Payment Limitations and College Students

Cox News service has a good article on payment limitations in farm programs. A couple of notes--they could have added Queen Elizabeth to the Crown Prince of Lichtenstein in the summary of the background of changes in the mid 80's and it's unclear how much money is "actually left on the table". Ag committees argue that it's effective; cynics disagree.

Foley Hypocrisy

Always love a good serving of hypocrisy but this is overdoing it. Curses on all concerned in this mess.

Farmers and the Future

The Times has an article today on the Kansas farmer who owns the geographic center of the U.S. and his concerns over whether his son will leave the farm. It's nicely written, but with the standard themes. Lebanon, KS has lost 25 percent of its population (now 278 est) in the last 15 years. (Median resident age: 52.4 years; median household income: $23,056 ; median house value: $10,100. )

He farms 3,000 acres, which probably means that there used to be 15-20 families, each with a quarter section, farming where he is now.

Clinton Failed and I Failed

Clinton said he failed to get bin Laden and I failed in the project to get USDA agencies to share data. Here's an excerpt from an article on crop insurance fraud:

In 2003, government investigators found that the Risk Management Agency of the USDA had incomplete information on ownership of 21,000 of the nation's largest farms, so it lost a valuable tool to determine whether farmers falsified production figures to file unwarranted claims.

"It's really a shell game ... to show a loss that probably didn't occur," Bertoni said.

Another branch of the USDA had the ownership information but didn't provide it to the RMA. Up to $74 million in possible false claims resulted.

The difference between Bill and I is that I never headed the project. Well, there are other differences.

What Does The Future Hold?

The Times has an analysis of the new legislation on terrorism which includes these thoughts:

How the measure will look decades hence may depend not just on how it is used but on how the terrorist threat evolves. If a major terrorist plot in the United States is uncovered — and surely if one succeeds — it may vindicate the Congressional decision to give the government more leeway to seize and question those who might know about the next attack.

If the attacks of 2001 recede as a devastating but unique tragedy, the decision to create a new legal framework may seem like overkill. “If there is never another terrorist attack and we never obtain actionable intelligence, this will look like a huge overreaction,” said Gary J. Bass, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton.

The last paragraph is what I'm inclined to think.

Why Catholics in the FBI?

Reading Mr. Wright's "Looming Tower" on the rise of al-Qaeda. It's good. One interesting side note is John O'Neill, the retired FBI agent who died on 9/11 who was quite a character. Wright mentions that Italians and Irish predominated in the ranks of the FBI. I wonder why and when? Was it from the beginning or was it after J. Edgar?

Perhaps it was a generational thing: the sons of policemen who went to college wanted to follow in the steps of their fathers and do law enforcement. Perhaps it was a prejudice thing in that early graduates of Catholic law schools (Fordham, Notre Dame?) found it easier to get admitted to the FBI than to existing WASP law firms?

Why Is a Fighter Pilot Like a Farmer?

This piece in the Times on how the fighter community beat Rummy to get more F-22's (at $350mill a crack) prompts me to compare pilots and farmers:

• Both are robed in the rags of former romantic glory: fighter pilots as the gallant solo aces of one on one combat; farmers as the gallant son of the soil fighting nature.
• Both have strong, bipartisan lobbies on the Hill
  
• Both get taxpayer money for programs of dubious value (a jet designed to outclass the Soviet jets; direct subsidy programs that do little for conservation or production adjustment)
• Both are wedded to past methods that are fast losing potency (I predict the manned fighter jet will be successfully challenged by pilotless drones; individual farmers are being replaced by contract farmers (as in poultry and hogs).
  

Republican Management--An Oxymoron?

Perhaps the most significant long term aspect of the uproar over the National Intelligence Estimate is buried at the end of the Karen DeYoung/Walter Pincus piece in the Post, after noting the NIE was transmitted to the Senate and House committees in April:

In the House, "there was a bit of a snafu with this particular document," said a spokesman for Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the intelligence committee chairman. "We had a massive computer failure on our classified side." The first that the committee knew of its existence was late last week, when "it was requested specifically by a member. That was when it was found and scanned into our system."

Whether the document was ignored or disappeared into cyberspace, however, it seemed to have made little impact on Capitol Hill at the time. No one in either chamber, on either side of the aisle, requested a briefing or any further information on its conclusions until now, the sources said.

If the Republican administration can't communicate with the Republican-led House, what hope is there for the CIA and FBI to communicate with each other? The failure must be both systemic and political.

• Systemic because even the USPS offers "return receipt requested" service. Any electronic transmission system should have the same sort of safeguard to ensure that recipients have received the transmission.
  
• Political because surely any new/updated NIE on the war on terror should have been discussed between the Congressional staffers and Negroponte's office, who should have been waiting for the report to arrive and raising flags when it didn't.

This is just an instance of the broader failure of Congress to carry out its oversight responsibilities. Can you imagine a similar lapse during a shooting war like WWII? (Whoops, we are in a shooting war.) But the Republicans can't take all the blame. If the incumbent Democrats were really out for blood they would have been on this earlier. Perhaps the answer is that incumbent House Democrats feel safe this year, thanks both to custom tailored districts and the political climate.

A final nod to a Republican--the NIE has revived the Rumsfeld question of a couple years ago--are we capturing and killing more terrorists than we are creating. It was the key question when he wrote it and it's key now.

Why I Drink

From a paper trying to prove that male drinkers make more money than nondrinkers, via Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution:

"Whether abstainers choose not to be as social or whether organizers of social occasions involving drinking exclude abstainers is unclear. Abstainers may prefer to interact with other abstainers or less social people. Alternately, abstainers might not be invited to social gatherings, work-related or otherwise, because drinkers consider abstainers dull."

The argument is that drinking benefits one's social network and the paper is one of two that show a correlation, at least for male drinking. A separate stereotype says females tend to be more social than men, perhaps meaning men rely more on crutches. For me at least that's true--I use(d) drink as a social lubricant, depressing my sense of social unease while participating in a social ritual. So drink is both an indicator of my social participation and a facilitator of it.

I wonder though whether this is as true today as it used to be. My impression is that drinking, at least liquor, is down. Certainly the bars at the Kennedy Center don't seem to be doing the business they used to. Maybe someone should do a study of coffee drinking?

As Close as I'll Come to Making the Front Page of NYTimes

That's today's article on "generator men" in Baghdad:

"In offices across Iraq, a ritual plays out every morning during the hottest months. Haggard employees drag themselves into the room, mumble a pleasantry or two and slump into their chairs, moaning about what a bad night’s sleep they had: the power went out, the backup generator was broken, the heat was unbearable, the baby would not stop crying, mosquitoes were everywhere.

Inevitably, these grievances, like hornets, will gather in a single cloud of fury and swoop down on one target: the generator man, probably the most vilified figure in Iraqi society after Saddam Hussein."

I was a "generator man" in the Army. We had power (a pun).