This Is Sick

Assuming the post is correct, because the crime rate has been failing since the Clinton administration (or thereabouts--no causal relationship implied but Dems are happy to take credit) the supply of prisoners for private prisons is down.  So what should be done to renew the supply: crack down on illegal immigration, as in the Arizona law, which seems to have been pushed by the private prison lobby.

52 Dems in Senate?

That seems to be the current projection.  Of course, if the Republicans could persuade Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut to caucus with them, perhaps by giving Nelson the chair of Senate Ag, they could drop the number to 50/50. Then it just takes one upset in the last week, or one unexpected death among the Dems, to lose control of the Senate.

(Did I say I was feeling down today--switching to a new computer is depressing.)

Change of Address and Government Gab

The Government Gab blog has a post about changing one's address, which includes this sentence:

"The good news is that you can find all the government address change contact information you’ll ever need on USA.gov."

Unfortunately, it's not true.  The linked page has the links for USPS, IRS, and SSA, but nothing for FSA, Treasury, TSP, VA, Extension, Education, etc. etc.  Granted, for all the value the USA.gov page provides, you can achie

My Mother Always Said: Drink Your Milk

John Phipps quotes from research showing that milk was the secret weapon of the barbarians who sacked Rome (my distant cousins, I believe).

More Information Than the World Needs

Ozzy Osbourne's genome.  (Not that a geezer like me knows who he is, other than one of the weirdoes popular culture threw up after my youth.)

Pigsford, Keepseagle, and BP Oil Spill

I'm late in commenting on the resolution of the Keepseagle lawsuit (which roughly follows the Pigsford lawsuit, but with Native Americans as the aggrieved party). An agreement was signed last week. 

I haven't followed it in enough detail to know the answers on the issues of class action and funding.

• if I recall,  for Pigsford, the initial lawsuit didn't pass the threshold to achieve class action status.  If I remember, Congress had to pass legislation allowing the suit to be treated as a class action. Apparently Keepseagle didn't have that problem.
• also my memory says there was some reason the Pigsford settlements (the first one) had to be funded by Congress instead of using the existing Department of Justice fund. The Keepseagle ageement is using the DOJ fund, which means claimants won't have to depend on Congress to act.

The Post had a piece on the Keepseagle complainants.  No one in my position can talk about discrimination.  I did note, however, one of the complainants couldn't get a farm loan at 4 percent from FSA but was able to get an 8 percent loan from a bank.  This ties to something I may have written before: the original intent of the farm loan program was to help those for whom help wasn't available through normal commercial channels.  That is, if the local banker would make you a loan, then you should go there and not to the government.  Whether or not that theory is still in effect I don't know.  And it's quite possible it might be the policy on paper, but the reality is the well-connected are able to get FSA loans regardless.  And the situation may well vary from county to county and state to state.

Some Academics Are Not Sensible

See this review from Treehugger of the latest vertical farming missive. Just because someone has a PhD doesn't mean they have common sense.

FSA and the Amish

I was on a task force with the CED of Lancaster County some 35+ years ago.  At that time she didn't do much business with the Amish farmers, who were mostly dairy farmers and didn't believe in participating in government programs.  Thus it surprised me to read this post on the FSA blog, describing the outreach of the FSA farmer loan program in Cerro Gordo county, Iowa to the Amish farmers there.  I'm not clear whether the difference between a loan program and a production adjustment program makes a difference in acceptability, or whether it's just the passage of time which has changed their attitude.

More Tolerance for Promiscuity Today?

That's the claim of Prof. Hanson of GMU:

" Norms and practices have clearly moved in the direction of increased tolerance for promiscuity over the last century, though of course they aren’t remotely near an extreme free love scenario."  

I'm not sure what country and class the good professor has in mind, but he may be misled by popular history.  For example, my understanding is the British upper classes, as represented say by the Victorians (think of Churchill's parents), were very promiscuous; once you had an heir and a spare in the bank, wives were home free whereas the husbands were always free.

Elsewhere prostitution was more prominent in urban areas in the 19th and first half of the 20th century.  And notoriously, one-third or more of the first children of the Puritans of New England were born "prematurely".

Old News--Dems Get No Love for Farm Bill

That's in a recent Farm Policy--the idea was that the Dems would pass a farm bill which would please farmers, thus enabling blue dog Democrats to be reelected in 2010. But current polls show many of the Democratic representatives on House Ag to be in trouble, or walking dead.  What will happen on House Ag as the Republicans take control and the Tea Partiers talk about cutting government? Will the backscratching between farmers supporting food stamps and urban reps supporting farm programs continue, or will the coalition dissolve into short-sighted turf protection.  I don't like the idea of the Dems losing the majority, but it at least promises to make life interesting.