We voted today. Elections for the state legislature, Fairfax county board, school board, bond issue, soil and water conservation district. Lots of choices, so being lazy and too cynical for high school idealism basically used the Democrats' sample ballot.
The paper said there was a problem getting volunteers to man the polls, but there was the usual complement at our polling place.
Because control of the state Senate hangs in the balance (the Reps are favored to take over, ensuring a lot of conservative social legislation will get enacted) we've gotten lots of calls. Today we had 3 calls to be sure we voted since the Dems have us recorded as "sure" votes they're desperate to be sure we did.
After voting we went off to the theater to see "The Ides of March", which I'd describe as a mashup of Clinton/Edwards/Obama (played by Clooney, who was co-writer and director) as a candidate for the Dem nomination versus Ryan Gosling as an idealist whose illusions are shattered. Good acting talent, well done, but no chance to feel good about either the country or the Democrats. (That's unlike Primary Colors, which could break your heart.)
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
Monday, November 07, 2011
Farm Policy Versus EWG
Keith Good at FarmPolicy critiques the EWG assault on crop insurance in today's post. In other news the AG committees haven't been able to agree on something to send to the supercommittee (last I saw rice and peanuts might keep direct payments) and Vilsack says USDA might cut 10,000 employees.
"I don't think the banks cared at all about borrowers."
[Grin] That's from a Calculated Risk post on lawsuits over MERS (the computerized system for recording mortgages].
What the writer is saying is in setting up MERS the banks weren't trying to defraud home buyers, they were trying to save recording fees (i.e., defraud local government you might say) and enable the fancy derivatives and mortgage backed securities which led to the bubble.
What the writer is saying is in setting up MERS the banks weren't trying to defraud home buyers, they were trying to save recording fees (i.e., defraud local government you might say) and enable the fancy derivatives and mortgage backed securities which led to the bubble.
Sunday, November 06, 2011
Where's the WTO Rules?
There's a blog, CAP Health, which discusses EU agricultural policy. Based on a cursory review, it doesn't seem as if the EU is going to follow the US in shifting strongly to a crop insurance policy. Which leads me to the question in the title: one of the advantages of the direct payment program in the Republican's Freedom to Farm legislation in 1996 was its compliance with WTO rules on agricultural subsidies. These days I've not seen those rules mentioned in any of the discussion of changes to farm legislation. Are they no longer applicable, do we just not care, or does crop insurance fit within them as well as direct payments?
Income Inequality: Fairfax and Prince William
Propublica has an interactive site which shows, based on Census figures, how equal or unequal the distribution of incomes in your county is. According to it, about 26 percent of populous counties are more equal than Fairfax,VA. Meanwhile, Prince William, the next further county out from Fairfax and home of Manassas, VA, more equal than every populous county. Meanwhile, places like Essex county, MA, Baltimore, MD, and Orleans parish, LA are up there in the 90+ percent.
I'm not clear why the differences, though my guess is: history. Fairfax has a longer history as a populous county than Prince William, so it had longer to develop pockets of poverty and pockets of wealth (McLean and Great Falls). The same of course is even more true for the old urban and suburban areas (Fairfax was mostly rural until the 50's.).
I'm not clear why the differences, though my guess is: history. Fairfax has a longer history as a populous county than Prince William, so it had longer to develop pockets of poverty and pockets of wealth (McLean and Great Falls). The same of course is even more true for the old urban and suburban areas (Fairfax was mostly rural until the 50's.).
Saturday, November 05, 2011
Bruce Babcock's Choices: RMA or FSA
From his study for EWG:
"If the decision [by Congress] is that it’s up to the private sector to provide it, the logical course is to reform the current crop insurance program by eliminating the insurance industry’s windfall profi ts as well as insurance-type commodity programs, including ACRE and SURE. If Congress concludes that it would be more efficient to provide a safety net through USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA), it should design an easy-to-deliver program in the commodity title that protects farmers against major production risks and frees private insurers from federal oversight. A privatized crop insurance program could then offer policies to farmers who wish to fi ll in any gaps in coverage.The alternatives are logical, but Congress has rarely been logical.
Phd's Logic Loses Me
Professor Mankiw of Harvard has a post, the logic of which escapes me. To oversimplify, the question is whether education is the key factor in the rise of the "1 percent". Professor Krugman argues it isn't, Mankiw in his post argues it is. But his argument is weird: he says both he and Krugman are in the 1 percent because they both have doctorates (or at least that's how I understand it). If their education had stopped at a high school diploma they wouldn't be in the 1 percent.
Seems to me the comparison doesn't work. If education was the or a key factor, one would expect college professors to be in the 1 percent. They aren't, the examples of Krugman and Mankiw to the contrary. Depending on the year, the top 1 percent makes between $350000 and $450000, well above the salaries of almost all professors. (Harvard's average was about half that.)
Seems to me the comparison doesn't work. If education was the or a key factor, one would expect college professors to be in the 1 percent. They aren't, the examples of Krugman and Mankiw to the contrary. Depending on the year, the top 1 percent makes between $350000 and $450000, well above the salaries of almost all professors. (Harvard's average was about half that.)
Planning Ahead and the Auditors
This Federal Computer Week piece describes a conflict between Social Security Administration's management and its OIG: the IG wants SSA to plan its online services more thoroughly, more completely and for a longer period. SSA is resisting.
I remember back in the day, maybe 1981 or so, either GAO or the USDA IG tore ASCS up over the issue of programmable calculators. For you whippersnappers, at one time calculators were the hot electronics item. This was, I think, back in the day when integrated chips were first being made on a large scale, and companies found they could stick a chip in a case with a numeric keypad and a small display and sell it for big bucks (particularly when you consider inflation, probably several hundred by today's values).
There were a slew of such manufacturers, some in the US, in Japan. As Moore's law kicked in, the manufacturers hotly competed by adding features and lowering prices. But that's a side story. Anyway by the late 70's we had programmable calculators costing in the low hundreds. And a few ASCS employees, mostly CED's, found they could save a lot of time by buying one and creating a formula for such things as calculating the deficiency payment, cutting the work down to just keying in the data. These guys (almost all male I think) used available funds and shared their work.
By the time GAO got involved, ASCS had an investment in programmable calculators of maybe $3 million (all facts herein based on an aging memory) and one person in DC who tried (rather ineffectually IMHO) to coordinate usage, encouraging sharing of programs, etc. GAO took a look at the situation and issued a bad report. They wanted DC to assess which county offices needed the calculators, make one national purchase to save money, and provide standard programs to the counties.
I got involved in drafting the response, which pushed back against the idea. I'm not sure how well the response would stand up over time--whether we mostly argued for a do nothing approach based on inertia, or whether we were more perceptive.. What we (and GAO) didn't know was that the first CED's were about to buy, or already had bought, personal computers (maybe an Apple II, maybe a Commodore, maybe a Trash 80) to play with and possibly apply to ASCS business. My perception is that led to a push from the field which combined with leadership from DC, eventuated in the purchase of the IBM System/36.
Anyhow, our response should have pointed to Moore's law and the rapid transformation of the field and our lack of comprehension of what was happening (always hard for bureaucrats to admit we don't know). In such a situation, it made sense to stay flexible and relatively decentralized.
That episode was one of my learning experiences, which sometimes counters my tendency to believe, like IG's do, that good bureaucrats located at the center can establish patterns and systems which work best for the field. The truth is, it all depends.
I remember back in the day, maybe 1981 or so, either GAO or the USDA IG tore ASCS up over the issue of programmable calculators. For you whippersnappers, at one time calculators were the hot electronics item. This was, I think, back in the day when integrated chips were first being made on a large scale, and companies found they could stick a chip in a case with a numeric keypad and a small display and sell it for big bucks (particularly when you consider inflation, probably several hundred by today's values).
There were a slew of such manufacturers, some in the US, in Japan. As Moore's law kicked in, the manufacturers hotly competed by adding features and lowering prices. But that's a side story. Anyway by the late 70's we had programmable calculators costing in the low hundreds. And a few ASCS employees, mostly CED's, found they could save a lot of time by buying one and creating a formula for such things as calculating the deficiency payment, cutting the work down to just keying in the data. These guys (almost all male I think) used available funds and shared their work.
By the time GAO got involved, ASCS had an investment in programmable calculators of maybe $3 million (all facts herein based on an aging memory) and one person in DC who tried (rather ineffectually IMHO) to coordinate usage, encouraging sharing of programs, etc. GAO took a look at the situation and issued a bad report. They wanted DC to assess which county offices needed the calculators, make one national purchase to save money, and provide standard programs to the counties.
I got involved in drafting the response, which pushed back against the idea. I'm not sure how well the response would stand up over time--whether we mostly argued for a do nothing approach based on inertia, or whether we were more perceptive.. What we (and GAO) didn't know was that the first CED's were about to buy, or already had bought, personal computers (maybe an Apple II, maybe a Commodore, maybe a Trash 80) to play with and possibly apply to ASCS business. My perception is that led to a push from the field which combined with leadership from DC, eventuated in the purchase of the IBM System/36.
Anyhow, our response should have pointed to Moore's law and the rapid transformation of the field and our lack of comprehension of what was happening (always hard for bureaucrats to admit we don't know). In such a situation, it made sense to stay flexible and relatively decentralized.
That episode was one of my learning experiences, which sometimes counters my tendency to believe, like IG's do, that good bureaucrats located at the center can establish patterns and systems which work best for the field. The truth is, it all depends.
Friday, November 04, 2011
Apologies to Commenters
I've screwed up. There are comments on some of my posts to which I've not responded. I'm sorry and will try to do better. Responses coming this weekend.
Politico and EWG on Crop Insurance
To balance my recent post on the goodness of crop insurance, let me link to this Politico article on the returns crop insurance offers: when Rain and Hail was bought by the Swiss they promised Wall Street 15 percent return on investment. The Politico article mentions a new EWG study.
Here's a link to the EWG summary.
Both point out the $8 billion cost of crop insurance, greater than the direct payment and CFC programs currently cost. But a partisan of FSA can only feel schadenfreude, because EWG would make crop insurance free and open administration of it to competitive bids.
Here's a link to the EWG summary.
Both point out the $8 billion cost of crop insurance, greater than the direct payment and CFC programs currently cost. But a partisan of FSA can only feel schadenfreude, because EWG would make crop insurance free and open administration of it to competitive bids.
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