The Problem With Government Is...

We humans deal with assumptions and universals, but reality is a lot more messy.  Example 1 is the Pennsylvania voter ID law, which assumes that everyone either has a photo ID or can easily get one, because everyone has their birth certificate stashed away in their safe deposit box along with all other vital papers.

Example 2 is the reliance on crop insurance, because every farmer is rational and is going to buy it.  Chris Clayton at DTN reports getting calls from farmers like this:

"Is the government going to do anything? I don't have crop insurance.

How could you not have crop insurance? We've been saying since before the 2008 farm bill that you have to have crop insurance.

One farmer only has 160 acres. Crop insurance every year just didn't pencil out.

You didn't look into catastrophic coverage, or CAT?

I don't know what that is.

I wasn't sure what to think of this conversation, but I have to believe there are more people like this farmer out there. He's a small farmer in the scheme of things. He's never needed to rely on government payments and didn't want to. But now he doesn't have a corn crop and concerned the beans won't make anything either.

Is there some type of help available for him at the Farm Service Agency office. He said they couldn't think of anything that would specifically help him out."

 The advantage of disaster programs, perhaps their only advantage, is they apply across-the-board.  If that farmer and others like him make enough of a stink, Congress will do something ad hoc, which partially undermines the whole idea of crop insurance.  The situation is rather like that of a 30-year old who passes on health insurance because it didn't pencil out, then gets into a car crash which leaves her paralyzed.

[Updated to add the link.]

Voter Fraud on Fox and Those Liberals

Fox ran a piece on voter fraud in Kentucky, home of Sen. McConnell today.  Seems to be well-authenticated and widespread.  So much for those liberals who oppose voter Id laws by claiming there's no such thing as voter fraud, right?

One small problem: it seems that Kentuckians are people of honor, which means if you buy their vote they stay bought, so the "voter fraud" Fox is flogging is really "vote buying" ($25 a vote apparently).  As far as I can see requiring a photo id to vote would not have changed anything.

[I'm really going to have to stop blogging until after the election, or my partisan sympathies are going to run away with me.]

Budgetary Games and Livestock Programs

An innocent little question, based on the fact the House Republicans considering something like this (from Farm Policy):

"The bill extends a number of programs through 2012: the Supplemental Revenue Assistance Payments Program (SURE); Livestock Indemnity Program (LIP); Livestock Disaster Forage Program (LFP); Tree Assistance Program (TAP); and Emergency Assistance for Livestock, Honey Bees, and Farm-Raised Fish Program (ELAP)."

The question?   Why weren't those programs authorized through 2012 in the original 2008 farm bill?

My suspicion is that it was a budgetary game--by cutting them off with 2011 the total cost of the bill was lowered.  And the Congress people would know that they'd have the chance to do an "emergency" bill in 2012 if needed.  What may also be true is that they don't need to pay for it.

Chicken Republicans, or the Wisdom of Discretion

It seems to be the case the House Republicans are going to duck a vote on the 2012 farm bill until after the election, presumably because part of the party would like to cut the bill further (perhaps particularly the food stamps) and another part of the party fears running on such a vote.

I could call them "chicken" or I could admire their wisdom in following the lead of the Senate Democats in refusing to vote on a budget which would raise the similar problems and a similar split.  See Ivy Brashear at the Rural Blog. I tend to lean in the direction of "wisdom", but such wisdom won't help the bureaucrats at FSA who have eventually to implement the damn thing.

"Fun To Be Around"--A Founding Father

I think Henry Knox rates as a founder, certainly a leader in the Revolution and Washington's Secretary of War.  Boston 1775 post on the relationship of Knox and Washington uses the phrase "fun to be around" in describing Knox and his wife. 

While I know it's true, people in the past were fun to be around, somehow I never think of them that way.

Gun Control: A Modest Proposal

Three things strike me about mass slayings using guns in the U.S.:

• the shooters are young males
• the shooters aren't NRA members that I know of.
• most of them have multiple weapons.

That leads me to this modest proposal:

• permit men to buy 1 gun every other year on their birthday, or
• permit men to buy a gun if they provide proof of being an active member of an NRA club for at least 1 year.

 In theory that should slow down the accumulation of weapons and mean that they're successfully handled social relations with others for a year.

Not that I expect anyone to take this seriously, but I get tired of the fights liberals have with the NRA.

Surprise of the Day: Fewer Gun Owners

While the US has gotten much more permissive on issuing permits to carry guns, what's surprising is that gun ownership has declined very significantly in the last 40 years.  That's from John Sides at the Monkey Cage.  Once you stop to think, we've become a more suburban nation over the years, and suburbia doesn't hunt and often doesn't have guns.

Climate Change Bad News for Dairy

The "standup economist" has gotten links from Prof. Mankiw and Paul Solman at the Newshour.  He's funny, but he does serious research, including this paper projecting the decreased production of dairy cows resulting from higher temperatures of climate change.

The research has been so strong that it inspired progressive students to rally in support of Holsteins, as described here.

The GRH Zombie Rises from the Dead?

Reading the Congressional Research Service report on sequestration it seems to me that Gramm-Rudman-Hollings is starting to stir.  (GRH for the whippersnappers in the audience was the attempt in 1985 to fix federal budget deficits, by applying a flat percentage reduction to federal expenditures if certain conditions weren't met.  In 1986 we reduced deficiency payments by a factor (I think 4.6 percent) under GRH.  The result, when combined with the System 36 automation and the new farm bill, was total disaster administratively.  That was partially my fault because of the way we ended up applying payment limitation, and partially fiscals because we didn't have the coding and entries for refunds in place.) 

I wish FSA well if they have to apply sequestration in the new year.

No One Ever Washed a Rental Car

That's my best memory of something some economist once said.  Turns out the Zipcar is just another rental, according to this from Treehugger.  The advantage Zipcar presumably has is their continuing relationship with their customers and computers to track when their customers fudge on the agreement.  It's just another way in which modern Americans trade privacy for advantage in the age of the Internet.