Blew My Mind

Texas lawmakers allow rural hospitals to hire doctors, to help relieve shortages.  That's the heading on the RSS feed for this.  Although the article explains the situation somewhat, I still find the original prohibition strange.

A Canticle for Leibowitz

Via Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution, famous science fiction writers pick famous science fiction books. I haven't read any science fiction since I turned 30 (I reread some favorites after 30, including the book by Mr. Miller.)

Farmer Suicides in India

Treehugger has a post publicizing the terrible toll of suicides among farmers in India: one dies every thirty minutes.

Let's see, that's 48 every day, or 17520 a year.  An amazing rate.

How many suicides occur in the US in 2007? 34,598 or a rate of 11.5 per 100,000

According to the CIA factbook on India, the labor force is 478 million, of which 52 percent are in agriculture, meaning there are about 250 million Indian agricultural workers.    17520 divided by 2500 (i.e., 100,000's) gives a suicide rate for agricultural workers of 7 per 100,000

I'm sure the stresses of the agricultural economy account for many of the suicides in India, but they need to be considered in some context. (Note: I've seen an earlier piece challenging the farmer suicide meme along these same lines, so this isn't original with me.)

Bureaucrats Will Be Our Defense Against Zombies

That's what I learn from one of the leading scholars of zombies, Dan Drezner, and his post (which cites another post which cites CDC).

Let's Spread Out SNAP Payments

In the old days people would have a hard time stretching their monthly welfare/food stamp benefits over the whole month.  These days "food stamps" are no longer stamps, or even paper; they're bits on a debit card.  I assume it would be as easy and cost no more to issue food stamps weekly instead of monthly 

There's research showing that people whose money comes in weekly spend more wisely than when the same amount arrives monthly. So why don't we change the payment issuance schedule to weekly?

Ad Hoc Disaster Isn't Real Money

From Farm Policy, quoting Mr. Stallman of the Farm Bureau:

“Farmers are willing to rely instead on Congress passing temporary ‘ad hoc’ disaster bills, he said. Spending on such bills typically is added to the budget deficit rather than being taken from the farm bill.

The point being is the political debate is always about authorizations (the farm bill) and appropriations (or the omnibus appropriation or the continuing resolution), never about the contents of the actual deficit.  That permits smart legislators to play games with spending, because all the pundits just assume the deficit is the result of the policies which are debated.  

How Old Am I? II

When skimming an entertainment column in the NY Times, I saw Peter Townshend was doing a memoir.  I said to myself, I didn't know Princess Margaret's true love was still around.

I gather The Who are some new rock band? 

Poor Timothy Geithner

Slate's piece on Dominique Strauss-Kahn's compensation says:

DSK's compensation and expenses are in line with his peers, the small handful of central bankers and finance ministers at the helm of the global economy. The president of the World Bank, for instance, makes almost exactly same amount. As per the bank's most recent annual report, Director Robert Zoellick earns $441,980 in salary, plus $79,120 for living expenses.

What's missed is our Treasury Secretary, arguably the most important of that "small handful". He earns $191,300, a cut of more than 50 percent from his NY Fed job. And I'm pretty sure ordinary government travel regulations apply.  He probably could get business class on long trips, seems to me I remember some other Cabinet members successfully arguing the point, but no $3000 hotel suites.

Changing the Pension System

A factoid from today's Post article on possible changes: "About 80 percent of federal employees are under FERS."  That says to me about 20 percent of federal employees have 25+ years of service, because they're still under CSRS, and therefore wouldn't be affected by current proposals. 

As usual, I like to see graduated changes: if they do change the contribution percentage I'd either phase it in over a few years (particularly years without a pay freeze) and/or phase it in with new employees getting the full hit and the older employees taking the smaller hit. 

Sherrod Still Negotiating

That's the word from the Post.   As I read the Jackson Lewis Civil Rights Assessment I thought I was seeing repeated suggestions that USDA hire Jackson Lewis for follow-on work.  I'm not clear whether Sherrod's group would be doing that, or whether it's two separate areas of work.

[Updated: corrected the name of the firm doing the assessment.]