USDA Garden?

Obama Foodorama posts on the planting of an organic garden outside the ivory tower, I mean the Administration building of USDA. Mostly photos, with a promise of text later. I note they're following the example of the Obama garden and using lots of seedlings. I don't find any publicity for it on the USDA site, although I do note a bunch of appointments (14) mostly of former campaign workers to confidential assistant type posts.

To provide a touch of reality to the hype about the Obama and USDA gardens, the Post's garden editor had a column today, recounting all the hazards beginning gardeners have to negotiate.

Early Days in Colorado

The New Yorker has a nice piece about two women from Auburn, NY who went to rural Colorado (Elkhead) in the early 20th century as an adventure to teach school. [Registration required to read the whole piece.] But there's an audio slide show here which is open to all (though you don't get the love story).
I like it, a bit of romance, a glimpse of the past, some upsetting of stereotypes about who the settlers were.

Taxes

Just filed my tax returns. :-) Obviously I can't complain, since my retirement pay is from the taxpayers.

One thought, however, if you could move to any other place in the United States, with the same compensation you have now, would you do it? (I'd have to see some cash on the barrelhead before moving, but not much for some places.)

How about moving to any other country in the world, with the same compensation you have now, would you do it? If not, how much more money would it require for you to move?

How Does Your Garden Grow?

See this picture from Obama Foodorama of the White House garden. I observe they've sort of cheated by going with seedlings, rather than seeds.

What I really want to know is what are those white stones? pellets? scattered around. I can't think of anything that looks like that.

I'd also say, someone really likes their dill.

Right and Left Extremes

The right is blogging about a report from DHS, analyzing the likelihood of greater terrorism from the extreme right.

But through Steve Benen at Washington Monthly and then Greg Sargent, here's the URL for DHS analysis of some threats from the extreme left. Of note from the summary:

"It focuses on the more prominent leftwing groups within
the animal rights, environmental, and anarchist extremist movements that promote or
have conducted criminal or terrorist activities...."

It's interesting, sometimes the extreme libertarian view on the right meets the extreme anarchist view on the left. Our image of a linear continuum is an easy assumption, but often misleading.

Being Unfair to the Right

Rep. Brad Miller has the audacity and poor taste to quote Cato and Stephen Moore from back when--on the Community Reinvestment Act and subprime loans.:

The conservative Cato Institute published an article in the fall of 2000 that said CRA should stand for Community Redundancy Act. The article argued that “progress predicated on technology, financial innovation and competition — not CRA — has broadened the U.S. financial marketplace,” including lending in neighborhoods that had once been redlined. If a lender discriminated against a low-income neighborhood, “the profit motive would lead another lender to move in and fill the void.”

Proof that increased lending in low-­income neighborhoods was not the result of requirements of the CRA, the Cato article said, was that much of the lending was by “institutions outside CRA’s jurisdiction.”

I appeared with Stephen Moore on CNBC on Oct. 25, 2007. Moore is a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board and founded the Club for Growth. Moore said that legislation I introduced to protect homeowners from predatory mortgage lending would have a “negative effect on homeownership.” “Ultimately,” Moore said, “for all the talk of how evil the subprime lenders are, let’s not forget, you know, 94 percent of these subprime loans are paid on time. And subprime lenders have actually increased the rate of homeownership in America.”

I wonder--the Internet makes it easier to catch people of all stripes in inconsistencies and flip-flops over time. Will that eventually make us more careful in forming and voicing opinions?

No, I didn't think so.

New Technology

The Times blog has a post about a new cellphone/credit card system--the phone has a chip that communicates to a credit card reader. I believe recently I've also read of a cellphone/ID system, with user ids and passwords securely stored in the phone. So soon all of one's identity can be stored securely in one small device.

The only thing lacking will be a mental link--i.e. for us geezers who have senior moments, we need a device smart enough to sense when we're panicking about being unable to find it.

Newspapers and Legal Notices

So, if the newspapers go under, what will be the requirement for legal notices? (For the past year, I think notices of foreclosures have been the mainstay of the Washington Post.)

Seems to me we could do a lot better with such notices, just as we could with the Federal Register, by using current technology.

Gardening Boom?

Secretary Vilsack says here (interview while helping plant) the Obama garden may have spurred seed sales and others have speculated that the recession will cause people to save money gardening.

This may be so, but I can't see it at my community garden. The rules call for visible activity by the first week of May and usually there's only a couple plots idle by then. Right now there's a number idle. It may be the spring has been cool. Or maybe just a statistical anomaly. Or maybe Obama has all my fellow gardeners working overtime so they're too tired to dig.

Schafer on FSA Computers

According to this long interview post-Jan 20 with the former Secretary of Agriculture, FSA computers are his top concern. "An ongoing effort to get funding FSA computer revamping is just one of the issues of unfinished business when Schafer cleaned out his office Jan. 16. Security for the inauguration was using USDA offices because they’re directly on the National Mall."

I think the article errs on one point--last I knew the Secret Service doesn't protect cabinet secretaries. Which isn't to say they don't have security personnel, they do and Newt Gingrich fussed about it 15 years ago.