Keeping Congress Honest

Congress people like to pontificate about the faults of the executive branch, but there's often some hypocrisy involved. That makes a provision of the stimulus bill noteworthy--see this OMBWatch post for details. As the writer says:

The LOC [Library of Congress] database, THOMAS, provides a lot of good information and gives access to full text bills and Congressional Research Summaries. However, it is outdated and lacks a decent user interface and persistent URL’s. Browsing and searching are difficult…don’t even think about asking for an RSS feed. GovTrack.us, OpenCongress.org, and MAPLight.org provide similar Congressional information but with a far more usable format. The downside to them is that they are forced to rely on THOMAS as their source of information. That is, until now.

Wealth, Not Scarcity, Was the Cause of High Food Prices

We got through a scare about food scarcity last year--prices soared. Some foodies thought it was a sign of impending disaster, as the industrialized agriculture system was starting to totter. Now things have changed and people have looked at data.

From Farm Policy:

“‘The report indicated world demand is going to be anemic this year,’ leading to more supplies than analysts expected, said Don Roose, president of U.S. Commodities Inc. in West Des Moines, Iowa. ‘It’s a very fragile world economy.’”

"In part, the Farm Foundation report stated that, “In 2008, Farm Foundation commissioned three Purdue University economists to write the report, What’s Driving Food Prices? Released in July 2008, the report had two purposes: to review recent studies on the world food crisis, and to identify the primary drivers of food prices. The economists, Phil Abbott, Chris Hurt and Wally Tyner, identified three major drivers of food prices: world agricultural commodity consumption growth exceeding production growth, leading to very low commodity inventories; the low value of the U.S. dollar; and the new linkage of energy and agricultural markets. Each was a primary contributor to tightening world grain and oilseeds stocks."

What it says to me is that last year the world (outside our borders) was wealthy, had money to spend, and spent it on food, driving up prices. That's what "consumption growth" means to me. The "low value of the U.S. dollar" simply says the world got richer vis a vis us.

This year the world is poorer and we are richer (those of us who are employed or living off Uncle via a pension).

A Sardonic Smile for Grants.gov

Turns out the Bush Administration didn't give grants.gov enough horsepower to handle all of the Obama Administration's activity. See this NextGov article and here.

I guess the smile's actually on me--I've harbored a sneaky suspicion that many government websites, such as grants.gov, are overhyped and under-used. So the good news would be if Obama can crash a whole string of sites.

Newspapers, the End of

John Kelly has a cute piece in the Post painting the scene as the last newspaper and the last newsroom closes.

Stimulus Watch

An article in the NYTimes on the Interior IG who's moved over to oversee the stimulus mentioned this site as better than recovery.gov. I can see why. The voting pattern seems to favor big projects over small, but that's to be expected. When I checked, just before posting, the Laurel, MS doorbells were the top item. (After reconsideration,I removed "(the $155 doorbell)" from the title of this post--it's perhaps unfair. Let's see what the bid is.)

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.)