NYTimes on Muslims

The Times does a piece on a Gallup poll of American Muslims.

“We discovered how diverse Muslim Americans are,” said Dalia Mogahed, executive director and senior analyst of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, which financed the poll. “Ethnically, politically and economically, they are in every way a cross-section of the nation. They are the only religious community without a majority race.”

I was struck by the fact the plurality of Muslim Americans are Africans. Otherwise, the results are about what one might expect--Muslim Americans are more satisfied than their counterparts in most other countries, but less so than other religious groups.

Politics and the Obama Budget

I was thinking about the immediate opposition Obama's 2010 budget has run into--various farm state Reps and Senators stating their disagreement. I'd been going on the assumption the opponents would be able to prevail, particularly because of the 60-vote "rule", but maybe not.

My vague memory is Pres. Reagan got his way in 1981 basically by putting everything into one package, so it was an up-or-down vote. Vote for the package and you took credit for his tax cuts. Vote against, and you were protecting special interests, opposing tax cuts, and going against a balanced budget. (Not that Reagan's package really was balanced, but they had Stockman's magic asterisk and the Laffer curve so their supporters could make the claim.)

The method was something called budget reconciliation. Also see this.

And that could change the terms of the debate--now the farm state Dems can wrap themselves in support of a popular President, saying they've done their best to preserve the farm bill, etc. etc. And Obama can get some Republicans in support as well.

It should be an interesting spring for those with an irrationally robust interest in politics.

Land Sales and GIS

Here's an article from the Imperial Republican I found of interest (the hook was an academic moving from ND to NE):

" The biggest factor was Nebraska’s full disclosure of ag land sales data. Shultz told participants at the Holdrege Water Conference in early February that in North Dakota, only county assessors have access to sale details.
Nebraska assessors must send detailed reports, including land prices and equipment sales, to a database for all sales that aren’t family to family. That data is used by UNO researchers to create Geographic Information Systems computer models that can sort and compare many variables.
One project involves mapping Republican Basin ag land sales and analyzing the value of water. Shultz said a goal is to identify the premium payments required to get landowners to retire parcels from irrigation."

My bureaucratic mind says there ought to be convergence of GIS layers and owners--why is everyone reinventing the wheel. But one obstacle is always the concept of private data. Until we get some community standards for what is acceptable use, the convergence can't happen.

Locavores in a New Field--Pot

Kevin Drum discusses a proposal to permit "grow your own" pot.

The Feminization of American AGriculuture

Via Ethicurean, the Christian Science Monitor reports women own almost 50 percent of the farmland in Iowa. And they, some of them, have definite expectations for how the land should be farmed, namely with a concern for conservation and the environment. It's a long story. (I wonder if owners these days feel rich enough to be concerned for these issues, as opposed to maximizing return. Or, is it just a feminine thing?)

Reducing Base Acreage on Federally Owned Land

Here's an article about a change in rules by FSA. I'm not clear on the details. Here's the notice. I remember Mississippi had a bunch of leased land, maybe Corps of Engineer land, maybe between the river and the levee (what's that song--the chevy and the levee) ONe of the big problems in administering a nation-wide program is the variation in timing--different states have different times at which leases change, sometimes, perhaps always governed by laws. It may be DC thought Dec 2008 was early enough, but it may not have been for Mississippi.

In the old days, when Jamie Whitten was the head of the House Appropriations Committee (one of the longest serving Congressmen, though I think Dingel just broke his record) one knew the rule would get changed. I'm not clear the current delegation from MS has that much clout. We'll see.

The Unappreciated Importance of Infrastructure

We take things for granted, things which over time for many people count up. Malcolm Gladwell's new book suggests that Chinese get a leg up on math because the structure of the language in counting is so much more logical than English. (For example, "one two" instead of "twelve"; "two one" instead of "twenty-one".

Another example is the metric system--one of the great Enlightenment ideas which Thomas Jefferson hoped to give to the U.S., but only succeeded in part (i.e., money). See here for some of the friction which results from our failure to adopt it. (The difference between EU metrics and US metrics on airline safety.)

Meanwhile, the Farm Payment Story in Europe...

While Obama initiates a fight against direct payments to farmers with gross income over $250,000, Europe has its own payment system costing about $50 billion (at current exchange rates). Jack Thurston starts an explanation why that's politically unsustainable:

1. the payments started as replacement for subsidies but have been in place for 2 decades
2. most money goes to the biggest farmers with the best land, like Queen Elizabeth II
3. landowners get rich, not working farmers
4. poultry, pig and horticulture people don't get paid
5. the most money often goes to the people who do the least for the environment (i.e, who farm the most intensively)

Most of the above sound as if they could apply to the U.S.

Welcome to DC, Foodies

Via Treehugger:

CBS News Hot Sheet is reporting that Neil Hamilton, an adviser to USDA head Tom Vilsack, was heard saying:

I believe that by this summer there will be a garden – another garden, a vegetable garden – on the White House lawn...I believe the Obamas are committed to that. It’s a big idea, and its gonna happen. During the campaign, going around shaking peoples’ hands, he never got sick once. He was eating well, and it could have to do with having an organic chef with him. This is someone who 'gets' nutrition.

I've got news for you--anyone hoping to garden in DC this year needs to be started already (said smugly as I've turned a majority of my garden space already). And, unless the Park Service has been tending the lawn organically, it will be years before the Obamas can have an organic garden, at least one warranting certification by USDA.

Obama and PART

Some hints of direction on PART from Government Executive:

In addition to eliminating redundant or wasteful payments and programs, the Obama administration plans to "fundamentally reconfigure" the Program Assessment Rating Tool, a questionnaire the Bush administration used to determine which federal programs were effective.

The summary said Obama will address criticisms of PART by opening up the "insular performance measurement process" to the public, Congress and outside experts. The administration pledged to eliminate "ideological performance goals and replace them with goals Americans care about and that are based on congressional intent and feedback from the people served by government programs."