Afghanistan

I recommend this article in the Post focused on the now deceased son of Lt. Gen. Kelly.

Reducing Payment Acreage

This bit from Farm Policy raises a possibility I missed earlier: reducing payment acreage.

“Congress may also wish to consider reducing the portion of a farm’s acres eligible for direct payments. In 2009, GAO reported that reducing the portion of eligible acres to 80 percent from 83.3 percent might save millions of dollars annually. Further reducing the portion of eligible acres to 75 percent could save millions more each year. Such an across-the­ board reduction would affect all recipients. Moreover, Congress may wish to consider terminating the payments. Some agriculture organizations, including the National Farmers Union and the Iowa Farm Bureau, have recommended phasing out or terminating the payments altogether and using the savings to bolster other farm programs.”

This would perpetuate a device Congress first use way back in history: achieving budget savings by reducing the payment acreage and/or payment yield formulas.  Instead of being obvious what they're doing, they do it the sneaky way.  Never underestimate the capacity of a politician to be sneaky.
 

401k for Governments

The Times has an article on states looking to 401K type defined contribution plans [employee kicks in a percentage of pay, employer may match part or all of it, retiree gets back the results of investing the contributions, good or bad]. I assumed, as usual wrongly, that most states had gone to defined contribution plans decades ago.

Reagan's breaking of the air traffic controllers union is widely remembered.  What's less remembered is the redo of the federal retirement system.  Old timers, like me, are under the Civil Service retirement system, a defined benefit system [annuities are based on length of service and salary] with no social security.  During Reagan's time (1986) new employees were put on a three level system: social security, a smallish federal defined benefit annuity, and a 401K type investment plan, with matching from the government. Unlike social security, the government doesn't have a pension fund to cover my civil service annuity or the FERS annuity; those payments come out of the yearly budget. As it turns out, what I first wrote was wrong. I decided to do a little more research before posting and found this link, which explains the unfunded government liability for CSR annuities will rise to about 850 billion dollars in 2030. But the actuaries say that's okay.

The change was better for the government and employees got more flexibility through the 401k/TSP plan, though they assumed some risk.

From the Times article it seems many states are still where the Feds were before 1986.  I'm not clear whether the state pensions are indexed for inflation, which the CSR annuities. 

Pigford Is an Urban Legend?

Snopes.com has a post on Pigford, linking to the Congressional Research Service's report.

Army Chow Has Changed Since 1966

Matt Yglesias passes on a Slate piece on the military's food program.  Turns out today's recruits have choices
in what they eat. The modern generation is spoiled, spoiled, spoiled.

How Great We Are

Apparently, in addition to being the, or one of the, wealthiest county in the country, we also are healthy, according to this piece in the Reston Patch. The discussion is actually based on Congressional districts, not counties, but it's much the same.  Joe Moran's district includes the Dems closer to the Potomac as well as Reston. According to the map, I should have a few more good years before I kick the bucket, which is nice to know.

Extension.org Goes Piggy

The RSS feed at extension.org has been going wild over the past few days; I'd guess 2-300 posts on hogs, mostly in a QandA format.  Here's their answer to the question:

Why have pork production units become larger and the industry become more vertically integrated?

from eXtension by Contributors

Economies of size resulting in higher profits ? through purchasing inputs cheaper and reducing marketing risk (through contractts), more efficient use of resources, greater access to capital, specialization of labor.

The same reasons can be used for the increase in average size of farms for many crops.

Farm Programs Leave a Twisting Trail

Over the years farm programs have left their mark in many unexpected places.  For example, the price support programs in the 1950's accumulated a big pile of surplus commodities, much of which were sent overseas under the PL480 program.  Under part of the program, instead of being donated commodities were sold for the local currency, such as rupees. The accumulated rupees built up in US government accounts, and were used for various purposes, including one described in this Chapati Mystery post. accumulating research materials.

RD Takes a Hit

Rural Development loses $29 million in broadband funds in the 2-week Republican/Democrat budget deal. What's worse is the implicit criticism from both sides of the agency's capabilities.

Funny Paragraph of Feb 28

Megan McArdle scores, in an aside in her generally skeptical post about the Rolling Stone article on the military psy-ops in Afghanistan directed towards Congress:

[On a side note: really?  Someone in the military thought they needed secret psychological techniques to wrest more money for the military from John McCain?  This is like embarking on a course of anabolic steroids in order to prepare for taking candy from a baby.  But I digress.]