Time Flies When You're Talking Farm Programs

Seems like just the other day GW was vetoing the farm bill. And now it's time for House Ag to start the groundwork for the next one.  Chris Clayton reports on Representative Peterson's plans.  Apparently he'd like to insure "cost of production".  I wonder how that would work--I once looked at an ERS analysis of cost of production for cotton and found there was a very wide range.  So a payment which would work for farmer A would leave farmer B facing a loss, and presumably going out of business sometime down the line.

Anyhow, it should be interesting, it always is.

IRS and Taxes

The Times had an article on having the IRS fill out 1040's, something which California has experimented with. Supposedly the problem is that IRS doesn't get W2 data from employers in time to do this. And Matt Yglesias also has a post that touches on the same subject.

Seems to me if people can figure out how to do electronic interchange of data so that a bill can be paid directly from one's checking account, then they ought to be able to figure out how to dump data from corporations into the IRS the same day they print W-2's.  And then IRS ought to be able to put up a simple 1040 with the available data and all the payers from last year (i.e., savings accounts, brokerage accounts).  Needless to say the people like H&RBlock and Intuit don't like the idea. 

This reminds me of something the head of the Sherman County ASCS Office told me 18 years ago.  Someone had left ASCS and set up a consulting firm to help farmers with (evading) payment limitation rules. Mike S. wanted ASCS to change and simplify and automate so that the firm would go out of business.  Unfortunately that's not going to happen.  Neither is IRS going to give taxpayers a strawman 1040.

School Lunches

I usually quarrel, or at least quibble with the stuff I find on Grist. But there's a series on school lunches in the District of Columbia, which is interesting.  I don't necessarily agree with everything, but he acknowledges some of the trade-offs involved. (There's 6 parts, and here's the links to:
  first, second, and third posts. fourth

Elect a Grain of Sand to Congress

That's right, in some cases your elected representative acts exactly like a grain of sand in a sandpile.  Proven by the scientists--see this Technology Review article. Of course, your Congressperson has better hair than a grain of sand.

Everybody Gets a Fair Shot?

That's from Ed Rogers in today's Post, in a collection of opinions about the Supreme Court's decision that corporations and other associations have free speech in election:

As long as we limit the party's donors and restrict how campaigns can raise and spend their money, we dilute an important connection between the governed and government. We should remove the limits and disclose everything. That way everyone gets a fair shot.

I like transparency so my first, knee jerk reaction was:  hey, this sounds good. Then I thought: is it fair if some have more money than others. Personally I think, along with Kevin Drum, let associations and nonprofits operate freely with full disclosure, but keep profit-making corporations on the sidelines. 

British Bureaucrats Are Different

The first two paragraphs from the Guardian:

David Cameron would retain Gordon Brown's top civil servant as his right-hand man in Downing Street if the Tories won the general election – as part of plans aimed at ensuring a quick, efficient transition to a Conservative government.
The Tory leader, who is desperate to avoid squandering his first term in office, intends to reappoint Sir Gus O'Donnell – the mandarin who has been more closely associated with Brown than any other in Whitehall – as cabinet secretary for his entire first term in office. Senior Tory sources confirmed that Cameron would be "very happy" to retain O'Donnell in the post as head of the home civil service, and would rely on him heavily if and when the Tories return to government after 13 years out of office.

Turns out Sir Gus was John Major's press secretary, but rose to the top under Labor.  Imagine this happening in the U.S.--I can't either.

Crop Insurance and Disaster--Sen. Lincoln

Chris Clayton posts on the proposals to cut federal reimbursement of crop insurance companies by $4 billion over the next 5 years.  He includes this:

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., and Committee Ranking Member Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., along with 24 other senators sent a letter to USDA's Risk Management Agency on Wednesday asking the department to "refrain from making deep cuts to the federal crop insurance program," citing that a vibrant crop-insurance industry is vital to the agricultural economy.

I don't exactly qualify as unbiased, but there's an interesting contrast here.  Sen. Lincoln has been pushing for special disaster assistance for her farmers because of losses this year. Part of the reason help is needed is farmers have settled for cheap CAT insurance coverage, and have failed to buy the higher priced policies from the private companies. That seems to indicate some problems somewhere in the crop insurance system.  And her proposal for disaster aid is one way to undercut crop insurance: presumably if farmers knew disaster aid was not available, they'd be more willing to buy crop insurance.  So Lincoln (like others) is talking out of both sides of her mouth: on the one hand it's important to have a good crop insurance system and have farmers buy policies; on the other we must help those who don't buy full coverage.  The poor taxpayer ends up paying both ways. 

Factoid of the Day

Via Ezra Klein, a video of a biologist at Stanford on Class Day:

chess grand masters uses 6-7,000 calories thinking during a match. (He begins at about 5:30)

We Should Have Gone Metric Like the Founding Father Wanted

Thomas Jefferson was a metric nut. Unfortunately the U.S. only adopted metrics for its money.  Just think of the lives and money we would have saved if we'd gone metric from the beginning.  For a start, that Mars explorer that failed because of software that operated in feet rather than meters (or vice versa) would have succeeded.  And Sen. Grassley says we've a similar problem in healthcare sofware.

(At some point in the past I remember we actually had a metric law and the bureaucracy was tasked with the job of getting ready to convert.  But the impetus behind it faded.  Once again short term gains and convenience trumped long term advantage.)

How Do Bureaucrats Interpret the Law--a Test Case

One of the great myths of the old civics texts was that Congress writes the laws, the President signs them, and the executive branch implements them.  Why a myth: because it implies everything is clear and straightforward.  (IMHO it's of a piece with the originalist interpretation of the Constitution.)  In fact Congress often writes laws which can be interpreted multiple ways.  Sometimes that's intentional: when you're trying to compromise to reach an agreement coming up with words which mean different things to different people is a common tactic.  Another tactic is to use fudge words like "appropriate" or "as applicable".It's called kicking the can down the road, leaving issues up to the bureaucracy to resolve.

All that is a lead-in to issues raised in FSA's implementation of the new biomass crop assistance program. It starts with this post critical of FSA at Sustainable Ag.  Essentially the criticism goes that FSA is issuing too much money to old users of biomass to the detriment of developing new uses of biomass and these procedures accord neither with the intent of Congress nor the letter of the law. (In passing I've noted criticisms coming from others, including the Hill as mentioned in the post, but I don't have those handy.)

It continues with a comment by Paul Harte (warning: I knew and worked with Paul back in the day) taking the author to task.  His position is the wording of the law requires the procedures FSA is using, OGC (Office of General Counsel) and OMB signed off on FSA's regs, and the manager's report doesn't support the critics.

And there's a response to Paul posted on Sustainable Ag.

I don't have the energy or the interest to get into the weeds and decide who's right.  But I will offer comments;

• you can usually find lawyers who will argue different interpretations of the same wording but my experience with USDA lawyers (OGC) is they're typical bureaucrats, not very adventurous in interpretation.  
• Paul is right in pointing out that OGC and OMB review (and OGC rewrites, and rewrites) regulations.  That doesn't mean their view is right, but it does mean FSA isn't being arbitrary.
• CBO and OMB have pictures in their head (in Lippmann's phrase) of how the program will operate but that doesn't mean the pictures match the way the bureaucrats and lawyers are going to interpret the language. And just because FSA, OGC, OMB and CBO are all part of the federal government doesn't mean they communicate welll, or at all, with each other.

So what happened in blowing a $70 million program up to $514 million.  There are logical possibilities:

• the critics are right, FSA blew it  The question would be why: did lobbyists for paper mills etc.wield improper influence or are the bureaucrats and lawyers just incompetent?  Those seem to be the alternatives.
• Paul is right, FSA is administering the law in accordance with the most reasonable interpretation of the wording.  Then the question would be why did the lobbyists for the sustainable ag people and the staff attorneys on the Hill fail to write the law better, or did the lobbyists for paper mills etc. stick an oar in?
• neither is right or both are right.  FSA, OGC, and OMB made their decisions without realizing the potential for paper mills, etc. to get money and so did not alert the Hill to ask for a technical correction to clarify the language.
• something entirely different.

(Paul by now is probably eligible to retire--I'm wondering what the USDA reaction to his comment will be.)