Too Late Wise

Our temperatures are in the low 70's, Monday's snow has melted, the garden calls. So I spent some time at our plot in the community garden, working on replacing two of the beds. That is, replacing the sides of the bed. Reston Association runs the garden and requires it to be organic. 30 years ago or so I was the first or second gardener to set up a raised bed. At that time treated lumber was fine for use in making beds, but over the years RA has changed the rules so new treated lumber is a no-no. So far they've grandfathered in the wood in the existing beds.

The site of the garden is on the right of way of a set of pipelines which run through Reston. A few years back the pipeline company ran their "pig" through the pipe and found some weak spots. So they had to dig down to the pipeline and fix them. Naturally one of the weak spots was below our plot, so we lost most of the good dirt we'd built over the years and had our beds deconstructed. After the repairs were finished, we rebuilt the beds, but somehow after doing the first 4 beds we ended up short of wood for the last 2. So, being too cheap to buy untreated 2"x10" lumber which would rot, I bought some man-made "wood" trim material and used it for a couple years. But it's not satisfactory, so this year I'm planning to replace it.

That was my goal today. So some digging of old sides, measuring new boards, (hand) sawing of new material, etc. ensued. Long ago, back on the farm, doing outdoor work the first days of spring I likely would have raised blisters on the sides of my thumbs. But today, not so. I'm home with hands which tingle a bit, but no blisters. Was it the wisdom gained by age that saved my thumbs? No, fraid not. Because I've lost whatever endurance I once may have had, my get-up-and-go left before my blisters developed.

USDA's Recovery Sites

Well, USDA now has an active link from the recovery.gov site. It's a good bureaucratic creation, lots of boilerplate and repetition, (as is the pdf file entitled "USDA's plans") but it does contain links to three agency sites, FNS, FS, and NRCS.

From the NRCS link you get another bureaucratic page, then a link to this page, which shows promise of tying dollars to projects. Unfortunately, none of the 3 links on that page work, which seems odd because my impression is the stimulus package gave NRCS money to do more work under existing programs, so I would have thought they'd be able to link to existing pages. I would have notified NRCS of the problem, but got discouraged by the number of links I was facing.

FNS, on the other hand, does well, at least for SNAP (i.e. food stamps)--providing a page of explanation of the increased benefits. Unfortunately the other links under their recovery page haven't been updated for the stimulus package.

FS does so-so--they look good, but the video is out-of-date (done before ARRA was signed) and is possibly addressed both to FS employees and to the public and the text page is bureaucratically vague. Additionally, the chief forester promises the work will be done in 2-3 years, mostly. I wonder if that's what they promised OMB?

Where's FSA? Not a clue.

Unemployment Statistics

Are out today, and are bad. Some discussion in the blogosphere (Brad DeLong and TPM among them, I think) about comparisons with the past. As between now and 1930, say, I think the following are true:

• we may have fewer (proportionately) people institutionalized for mental problems
• we definitely have more people imprisoned (there's an interesting argument that since the 1950's we've moved people out of mental hospitals and into jails, keeping the proportion in some sort of involuntary confinement roughly the same)
• we have many more people in educational institutions
• we have more women working outside the home
• we have more people working inside the home (i.e., by computer, call-centers)
• we have more temporary workers.
• we have more older people able to work (i.e., better health and longer lived)
• we have fewer old people working (Social Security)
• we have more people in the military
• we have more people in the government

Obama's Bureaucratic Problems

First he has problems in filling slots, just today three candidates (for Surgeon General and two posts in Treasury withdrew), that's after two withdrew yesterday. Prof. Light has been compiling figures on the number of nominees and the number confirmed, he needs to keep score on those withdrew. That's one downside of proclaiming high ethical standards.

Another problem is implementing good ideas, like "recovery.gov". See this Federal Computer Week article on the problems in feeding data from the agencies into the site.

A third problem is confirmations--two nominees for the Council of Economic Advisors are being held up in Congress.

North Korean Agriculture

The Post has an interesting article on North Korea, much of it on food. North Korea makes an interesting test case for theories on food and famine and economics. It turns out the international food aid has greased the way for free enterprise--North Korean bigshots grab the aid and sell it on the open market, encouraging the powerful and connected to support markets. But that doesn't do much for encouraging private agriculture (which isn't much discussed in the article).

North Korean is reverting back to organic fertilizer, i.e., night soil, since they've lost their access to chemical fertilizers which they were very dependent on, but is struggling to feed its population. (That surprised me--I would have assumed their agriculture was not that modernized, but I guess collective farms must have adopted chemical fertilizers.) So, my prejudices are reinforced, private "industrial" ag is the way to go to feed people, at least in today's world.

Thundra and Kundra

Vivek Kundra is the new Chief Information Officer of the Federal government--here
and here. He'd been rumored for a while, so I guess the new, tighter vetting didn't turn up any dirt. Should be interesting as he runs into the entrenched Federal IT bureaucracy. See this for an example of transparency in DC.

Going Gray

Both Post and Times have articles on Obama's graying hair. See MSNBC .

They say stress leads to gray. By that measure my life must not have been stressful, as I'm not much grayer than Obama. Course, he has more hair left than I do.

On Snow Shoveling, Virture and Competition

Joel Achenbach is one of the Post's better writers, specializing in science and humor. In this post though he excerpts from another of the Post's writers, David Von Drehle, on snow shoveling (after tweaking Obama about snow and schools). It begins:

"I suppose a case could be made that snow shoveling is not a sign of virtue. That a man is not morally worthy simply because he cleans the entire sidewalk, edge to edge, as opposed to scooping a single shovel-width lane."

By this standard I admit to a lack of virtue. Given my advancing age, when I totter outside to clear the 5.4" of snow from my sidewalk, and the cluster's sidewalks out to the mail boxes, I count it a clear victory if I've beaten any of my neighbors. I used to have a neighbor, whom we called "Juan the Manic", who was stiff competition. He lived up to von Drehle's standards, clearing all 48" of the sidewalk, leaving not a snowflake behind. Me, I was satisfied just to clear the width of my shovel. "Clear", that is, meaning getting close enough to concrete that the sun and rising temperatures could take over the job of removing the rest of the snow. (That's known as "good enough for government work".) What I lacked in perfection I made up for in length of path cleared. I don't know where Juan is now, but he sold close to the peak of the housing boom. I hope he didn't over-extend. I miss him, miss the competition.

Grassley on Payment Limits [Updated]

Sen. Grassley disagrees with gross income, wants LDP's included in caps (hat tip, Brownfields)--from a conference call:

"Do you support his budget proposal to eliminate direct payments to any farm with more than $500,000 in gross revenue?
GRASSLEY: The answer is no. But for those of you that have followed me for the last several years, you know I am for great and restrictive limits on how much one operation can get. That's best expressed through the $250,000 hard cap that I've put in place. And, of course, he does have that in his program.

So from that standpoint, he and I are on the same page. We're not off the page. I'm not off the page with him on the $500,000, but it can't be on gross income. It's got to be on net income for farmers or let's say adjusted grow income for farmers because sales do not make a determination of whether or not you're making a profit or not.

So it's got to be related to capability of paying. So that would be one change I would make. Now, here's another consideration that goes beyond just a cap. And that is direct payment or include all payments. I would be one to include all payments. That's why my way of $250,000 is a better way of doing it because it -- a direct payment dollar, an LTP dollar, a countercyclical dollar, they all look the same. So you should have all of them included. And then you want to remember that some of this eventually has to be taken into consideration with our WTO and our negotiations. We want market opening. We get market opening. We're willing to change our subsidies that are trade distorting.

Direct payments and conservation and maybe some others are not trade distorting. LDPs and countercyclicals are a trade distorting. Maybe countercyclicals a little less trade distorting than LDPs. "

A Common Error

"Instead of solving the world's food crisis, [since WWII] the USDA's policies have only made it worse."

Jim Goodman in Grist

Goodman's obviously a whippersnapper with no memories before 1990.