FSA and Stimulus Dollars

Here's the press release from yesterday issued by USDA on use of stimulus dollars (I used Tinyurl because I've heard a complaint about the length of the urls USDA generates). It went out yesterday. Here's the FSA reference:

The Farm Service Agency (FSA) will use immediately $145 million of the $173 million provided in the Recovery Act for its Direct Operating Farm Loan Program, which will give 2,042 farmers – almost 50% are beginning farmers and 10% are socially disadvantaged producers - direct loans from the agency. These loans will be used to purchase items such as farm equipment, feed, seed, fuel and other operating expenses and will stimulate rural economies by providing American farmers funds to operate. Currently, farmers are struggling with the high costs of running family farms, seriously affecting beginning and socially disadvantaged producers.

But there's nothing on the money for FSA computers. It's not clear from the release whether the 2,042 farmers already have approved applications with the agency, but that would be my assumption. (Otherwise, how do you know the number and the demographics?)

Taste for Porn

Marc Fisher has a post on various correlations of porn subscriptions to characteristics of states. Best I can tell, there's no "take it to the bank" correlation with anything.

First Reading

Understanding Government has a post in praise of the Sunlight Foundation's proposal that no bills should be passed before they have been available for reading for 3 days. It's the sort of good government reform I'm okay with (my lack of enthusiasm is based on cynicism).

Makes me wonder though. If I recall my days of reading the Congressional Record (back in college, when I got seriously lost in doing a term paper amidst the debates on naval building at the turn of the century), parliamentary procedure calls for three "readings" of a bill, once when it's introduced, once when referred to committee, and then upon consideration. (See this link for more precise information.) Problem is, the "readings" are pro forma and are waived. I suspect that practice evolved because people could rely on reading the printed page. And, where time became critical, people just acted on trust. I think now the pattern is--the clerk reads the title of the bill (or amendment) and it's considered read, and GPO inserts the text when the Record is printed.

My point: rules on paper can only go so far in making people use their heads. Cynically, thinking is hard work and people are often lazy. (Until their ox is the one gored [to use a good old agricultural metaphor]).

IBM, Farms, and Cities

The back page of the NYTimes has an IBM ad, which notes figures something like: in 1900 13 percent of the world's population lived in cities, now it's 70 percent. This leads to various profound thoughts supporting IBM's business strategy.

What that says to me is two things: "industrial" agriculture with its efficiencies has made the migration possible, and people prefer the opportunities in cities to the back breaking of "artisan" agriculture.

Mother Jones on Organic and Sustainable Agriculture

Via Kevin Drum, here's a long and good article in Mother Jones on the current and future state of organic and sustainable agriculture. It's challenged by some of the comments, but because it agrees with me, I think it's good. I do think he gives too much credibility to the urban agriculture possibilities and ignores the importance of market forces.

For example: "food miles". Whether or not it's more environmentally friendly to grow sheep in New Zealand and ship the resulting lamb to the UK is a question. But IMO the way to answer it is to ensure the cost of transportation includes all the externalities. In other words, a carbon tax. (I've more faith in a carbon tax than in trading carbon offsets under a "cap and trade" policy. My experience in implementing payment limitation rules suggests a tax would be better and more easily enforced.)

Car Seats Kill Innocents

Gene Weingarten has a very good article on how parents kill their children in today's Post magazine. It's called "Fatal Distraction" (through the Swiss cheese syndrome). (The rationale of my title--by moving young children from the front seat, which is where they rode (and died) in my youth, to the back seat, car seats have made children less visible and therefore more likely to be left in a closed car on warm days.)

The article introduces various parents, describes the inconsistent ways in which the legal system treats them, and notes the obsession we humans have with believing the world is understandable and operates by rules.

George Will Channels Michael Pollan

In his Sunday Post column. The "comments" are interesting, since Will ends up on the left, surprising many. As I've said before, I find Prof. Pollan to be a fine writer who's unforgivably careless with the facts. And Will's second paragraph is so sloppy as to be almost senseless. So, as usual, I find myself disagreeing with Mr. Will

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