Sectional Politics and Partisan Politics

A reminder: not all politics is national and partisan, or local.  Some is sectional, as this quote from Farm Policy shows:

“U.S. agriculture — and particularly southern agriculture — faces perhaps the most daunting challenge in decades to get its message before Congress and the administration, says Chip Morgan, executive vice president of the Delta Council at Stoneville, Miss.
“With the crafting of the 2012 farm bill in the hands of predominantly non-southern House and Senate Agriculture Committee members, many of them brand new to Congress, ‘our challenge is to make a concentrated effort to educate the new members about the importance of agriculture and to emphasize to them that one policy may not fit all segments of agriculture,’ he said at the annual meeting of the Mississippi Rice Council at Cleveland, Miss.”

 Southern ag doesn't believe as strongly in crop insurance, and dislikes much more strongly payment limitations.  My generalization, for what it's worth: southern crops like rice and cotton are higher in value per acre, and southern agriculture still feels the effects of the way the land was originally settled.  Used to be AAA/ASCS had an administrator from corn/hog country and an associate administrator from cotton/rice country, or vice versa.  Both sides had to be represented.

On the Universality of Murphy's Law

Tom Ricks quotes from another blogger, applying Murphy's Law to determine which person in a company will make first contact with the enemy.

On Globalization

Two straws in the wind:

John Kelly is a local columnist for the Washington Post.  His wife is now working in the Netherlands, so he's writing about the problems of having a bi-continental marriage, and attracting correspondence from others who have to deal with the same problems. His daughter is also college-hunting, including UK universities.

Apparently people from 47 countries have ordered pizza from Madison WI pizzerias to feed the demonstrators.

Remembering back to the post WWII era, I'm amazed.

Unions and Public Employees: Federal Versus Wisconsin

I follow Kevin Drum in my general attitude to unions: they're a necessary part of the republic, but they have their problems like other parts of the republic.  I was in management when ASCS employees in DC voted in a union. Managers got some orientation on how to deal with the union.  The bottom line seemed to be: do what you should have been doing all along.  That is, document poor performance, consult with employees on what you're doing, etc.

Of course, federal employees can't use unions to bargain over pay.  I've forgotten most of what I once knew about the laws and regulations.  It seems, though, Wisconsin employee unions could bargain over wages. So in one sense, what Gov. Walker is working for is to make those unions as powerless as federal unions, not that that's very obvious from the discussion.  The big difference I can see is the requirement about voting for the union every year.  That's really critical.  I suspect the reality of unions, as for other institutions, is many members lose enthusiasm after time.  So inertia takes over.  People go with what's easiest.

CSpan Program

Frank Sesnos hosted a program at GWU with Ari Fleischer, Dana Perino, Mike McCurry, and Dee Dee Myers which is here. I recommend it: lively, friendly, informative, idealistic.  (All four said things will be better in the future.)  Perino noted no one is delivering the NYTimes to her grandfather's ranch in Wyoming, but now he can get it online.  I guess he, unlike some other residents of rural areas, has broadband access.  But that's nitpicking--the program was a good way to decompress from a day where my sacred routine was disrupted. Perino said, and the others agreed, Washington is not as partisan a town as it comes across in the media.

The Power of Bureaucrats in a Parliamentary System

A sentence buried in a discussion of French agriculture at blog on the EU's Common Agricultural Policy:

"Many traditional farmers had turned against the Sarkozy government, when Michel Barnier (then minister of agriculture) reallocated some €1.4 billion Single Farm Payments to extensive grazing under the Health Check provisions.

Think what effort it takes for our government to reallocate a few millions from one farm program to another, much less close to $1.75 billion.

Also of interest--the note the French government has been paying farmers to reduce their nitrate leakage, and the refusal to make public the amount of payments tied to individual farmers.  (USDA has also refused to continue to give EWG this information. IMHO on rather specious grounds of expense.)

Sidewalks and Paths in Reston III

I've blogged on this before, but here's a new perspective on paths versus sidewalks in Reston: paths accommodate strollers, sidewalks create unsettled norms: if a stroller meets a couple walking, who has right-of-way.

Funny Paragraph of Feb. 20

From Alex at Marginal Revolution, ending a piece on the Feds trying to suppress an embarrassing con job perpetrated on the CIA.

Are you surprised that Playboy would break such an important story? I was, that is, until I remembered that Playboy has been uncovering fakes for a long time.

Republicans in the House and Agriculture

President Obama proposed, again, some cuts to farm programs by reducing figures in the payment limitation figures.  One would figure those stern, tight-lipped budget cutters in the House would be glad to agree to his proposal.  Politically it would seem wise to say: we'll pocket all your cuts and we'll cut some more.  (I'd put this into poker terms, but my mother thought poker was a tool of the devil.)  But not so, as Sallie James observes at Cato.  Bottom line: political principles are remarkably flexible, much like cooked spaghetti.

The Fallibility of Memory

President Obama proposed a big cut to the program which helps low income people with their heating bills. See Pro Publica's discussion here.  Now I would have sworn the program originated under Carter in response to the big rise in oil prices and the embargoes of the 70's.  But while a weatherization program seems to have begun then, the LIHEAP was begun in 1981.  I repeat, 1981!  The first year of Ronald Reagan's term, the President notorious for being personally amiable but professionally hard-hearted.  And 1981 was the year he was cutting taxes and some programs.  So, what happened then?