Identifying Voters, Taxpayers, and Patients

There's a sudden spurt of interest in going to a national voter-registration system. See Kevin Drum, Matt Yglesias, and Reihan Salam.

So it's time for me to renew my plea to do away with Social Security numbers. Implement a system that identifies eligible voters, potential patients (based on the recent RAND study) and taxpayers but at the same time phases out the use of SSN's. I'm convinced we could come up with a system that increases the safeguards for each person's privacy, gives people much more control over how their data is used and to whom it is available, and improves efficiency.

The key model is the virtual credit card number, not the one you're used to using but the one VISA offers which few people use. Most people give merchants their credit card number, which can be risky. But you can choose to have VISA provide a number that works only for the transaction, or the vendor. See this. Adapt the same principle and you can have a government-validated identification number for each employer-employee relationship, each patient-healthcare provider relationship, and each voter-voting district relationship; each different, each safeguarded, and none requiring an SSN.

Seems to me if you point out to reasonable people that they already have a unique identifier (their email address) and we get rid of the SSN it's a reasonable deal.

Next Secretary of Agriculture, Take Two

This Politico article mentions Gov. Vilsack and Rep. Collin Peterson as possible Obama Secretaries. I must say, I don't see a whole lot of diversity in the potential officials, but Obama hasn't, like Clinton, promised a Cabinet that looks like America.

Apples and Rocks

Many years ago when I was maybe 8 or 10 one fall evening I formed a temporary alliance with another neighborhood kid against two other kids (which represented the total number of kids within 2-3 years of me in the neighborhood). There was a creek running down the hill, with a field on one side and houses on the other side. There were one or more apple trees near the houses, and a handful of trees bordering the edge of the field. So our conflict escalated from name calling to throwing fallen apples back and forth at each other. Mostly you can dodge an apple, and if you get hit, it's not all that bad. Of coure, the problem comes when you run out of apples on the ground handy to throw. Then you have to run back to retrieve apples from further away, then dash forward to throw them, and repeat the process. It's easy in the adrenaline rush to move from fallen apples farther away to stones right handy on the ground. So soon we were tossing stones.

Don't remember how it ended, no big damage done. And none of us was ever elected President of the United States.

The Problems of the Athlete

Who to support for President? "We're coming from Democratic backgrounds, but we got Republican money right now." Fred Smoot from a Post article

Obama Channels Pollan

:-( See this story in the Des Moines Register. Hat tip: Brownfield Networks.

So When Will the U.S. Do a Wiki?

Canada has just launched a wiki for its government, according to this post.

I hope our next President will follow suit.

Another Liberal Joins the Club

There's a group of moderate and conservative Republicans who have endorsed Sen. Obama (Sec. Powell most notably, and just today Reagan's chief of staff, Ken Duberstein). They get called "Obamacan's", I think.

Maybe there's a club for liberals who think, as I do, that Gov. Palin will be a significant force in American politics, even if the McCain/Palin ticket is defeated. Eugene Robinson, columnist for the Post, just joined today. His last three sentences: "She has learned much in a very short period.

And she will learn more. I predict we'll have Sarah Palin to kick around for a long, long time."

HFCS, Corn Subsidies and Obesity

An interesting study of the relationship among sugar usage, corn subsidies, and obesity from Iowa State. Its abstract:

Major changes in the use of US sweeteners have occurred since 1970, in both the amount and composition. Increased consumption of caloric sweeteners, especially in beverages, has been linked to excess energy intake and lower-quality diets. We examine how US farm policies (specifically agricultural research and development [R&D] expenditures and commodity programs) have affected the consumption and composition of sweeteners in the US diet. R&D expenditures have lowered the unit cost of most commodities and increased their use in food production, ceteris paribus, although corn has benefited more than sugar crops in the technical progress. Commodity programs have raised the price of sugar and decreased the price of corn; high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) became an inexpensive substitute for sugar in food beginning in 1970. However, the effect of this change in the price of ingredients has become less important
over time. Today the farm value share in sweetened food is very small (below 5%), and HFCS has become a specialized input in many food items. Countries with different or no commodity programs experience similar increases in consumption of added sugar. We conclude that the current link between the US consumption of caloric sweeteners and farm policy is tenuous, although historically the link was stronger.

I would have liked more research on the next to last sentence, but it's good to read.

Counting Chickens--Sec of Ag

According to this piece, Tom Vilsack, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, and Tom Buis are possible Obama Secretaries of Agriculture. Sandlin would cost a seat in the House, but helps on diversity.

Re-reading a Study

Sara at Down to Earth highlights a Cornell study which finds some meat/dairy in a diet is more efficient than a pure vegetarian diet, since it enables use of poorer quality land (study was done in NY and NY has lots of poorer quality land) for grazing.

Very interesting, but I'd like to highlight a different aspect of the study. The idea was to figure out, using a complete diet of only foods that can be grow in NY, the "agricultural land footprint" of the diet. "Locavore" isn't mentioned in the study but that's the definition. They compared 42 diets with different mixes of foods and found that one person takes .44 acre on vegetarian and 2.11 acres eating 3/4 a pound of meat a day. But the best case is NY land can support between 22 and 32 percent of its population. (I'd assume the study used all sorts of assumptions in terms of farming methods and agricultural workforce.)