Common Reporting Dates

From the press release announcing FMA and RMA have come up with common acreage reporting dates(ARD):

Before the streamlining, RMA had 54 ARDs for 122 crops, and FSA had 17 ARDs for 273 crops. The review team consolidated all of them into the 15 common ARDs.

 RMA and FSA will implement the July 15, 2012, and August 15, 2012, ARDs for certain commodities during the 2012 crop/program year. The remaining common ARDs will be implemented during the 2013 crop/program year.

Back in 1993 or so there was an initiative along these lines. one which obviously was unsuccessful. I wasn't involved in those discussions.   I'd be curious whether the resistance in the 1990s, and up to now, came more from RMA or FSA,. My guess, given the ratio of dates to crops between the two agencies, is that RMA had more problems.  They also perhaps had greater leverage.  Note that only 2 of the 15 common dates are being implemented next year.  That's probably because RMA needs to revise crop insurance policies, which requires a long lead time. I can imagine meetings where the prospect of such a long time to implementation was a wet blanket on any enthusiasm on the FSA side. Maybe there was more leadership from the top in 2011 than there was in 1993/4. Or maybe the people at the operating level (i.e., branch chiefs and specialists) were more capable and flexible this time around..

This is one prerequisite for the ACRSI common reporting initiative. Not sure how the software will work when you don't have common reporting dates for the crops: might be a real problem, might not be, might be something to be solved by a kludge.

EWG and Direct Payments

EWG released their database on direct payments on Friday. Here's the press release.  A quote I can't figure out:

The EWG database also smokes out the names of the individuals who ultimately cashed the subsidy checks. Their identities have been hidden by these corporate structures and not publicly disclosed by the US Department of Agriculture since the 2008 farm bill.

(FSA quoted EWG what was, IMHO, a ridiculous price for doing the processing necessary to attribute payments made to an entity like a corporation down to the constituent individuals.) I'm not sure how EWG did this.  Their statement about individuals "who ultimately cashed..." is technically inaccurate.  What they mean to say is something like "individuals who were the ultimate beneficiaries of subsidy checks written to corporations."

Surprising Factoids

"...police work is actually less dangerous than nursing." 

The omission is a critical qualifier, in terms of nonfatal injuries.  From Matt Yglesias

A less surprising but completely true factoid: farming is twice as dangerous in terms of fatal injuries as police work.

Two Good Sentences From History

With apologies for the attitudes implicit here:

War aims, like a cat held up by the tail, have a way of clawing back at those who propose them....Women and war aims must be understood before they can be handled.

Via Brad DeLong's blog, the Harvard Crimson of Nov. 10, 1941 wrote on war aims (think Atlantic Charter and the Versailles peace conference).

One can only think of the long and extensive discussion of our war aims which occurred before the second Iraq war.

World Food Crisis?

So say some foodies.  But I see thisand I wonder:

Corn production outside the US in the 2011-12 marketing year is projected to be 6.6 percent larger than production of a year ago. Argentina, Brazil, China, and the Ukraine are all expected to have larger crops than those of last year. Of the larger producers, only Mexico is expected to have a smaller crop. Foreign wheat production is expected to be up 6.8 percent, led by a 39 percent increase in production in the countries that make up the former Soviet Union as that area recovers from the drought of 2010. Foreign soybean production is expected to increase by 1.4 percent

CFTC and MF Global

Chris Clayton has an outstanding post on the House Agriculture Committee's oversight hearings--two paragraphs:

"By my own count, the House Agriculture Committee has held six hearings on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's implementation of Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. More than 30 witnesses appeared before the committee, which has issued 13 news releases on its work from Jan. 27 to date.

But in the entirety of the House Agriculture Committee's work, no one, as far as I can tell from news releases and hearing transcripts, asked anything along the lines of "Are there any loopholes that need to be closed, or rules that need to be implemented to protect client accounts from being raided?" Or, "Is there a loophole big enough to drive a massive bankruptcy through?" "Is there anything we're missing?"

Veteran's Day and Calvin Gibbs

Today's Veteran's Day, a day on which many good words will be said and many good people honored.  But as a veteran myself, I want to remind us that Lt. Calley and Calvin Gibbs were also veterans. Good men and women can do great things; they also can do terrible things; they can also fail to act when terrible things are done (see Paterno, Joe).  The presence or absence of a uniform, the taking of an oath to serve the country, none of that affects the human capacity for good or evil. Veterans are human, just like the rest of us.

Some People Never Learn: Erin Is Back

Erin of Raising Country Kids is back, a good photographer (how can you fail with cute kids and a puppy), very good writer, and not having learned how to simplify her life at all.

US as a Christian Nation: an Omission

Much debate over whether the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation. (Some of my forebears knew it wasn't a Christian nation because it refused to acknowledge God in the Constitution, and therefore until 1830's refused to perform civic duties which would require oaths.) 

The National Archives has a daily "Today's Document".  Today's  is the "Secrecy Agreement"--after the Continental Congress had declared independence of George III, they started to get scared.  So they all signed an agreement in the fall of 1776 to keep their discussions secret.  Interestingly, although it's a solemn agreement, it doesn't include any swearing.  The fearsome consequence of leaking was to be treated as an enemy to American liberty.

Oops: Typos in Opera

From the Wolf Trap Opera blog:

"Watch out for those typos, some of which are inadvertently helped along by word processing… My recent favorite was Romeo’s aria “Slut, demeure chaste et pure.”  (In case you’re wondering, it’s “Salut, demeure chaste et pure”: