"Welfare Queens" and Crop Insurance

Ronald Reagan made a career out of the welfare mother who financed a Cadillac and other abuses.  That thought, because I don't really like Reagan, sprang to mind when I read a post at Environmental Working Group, which led with these paragraphs:

"Marcia Zarley Taylor recently posted a blog aptly titled Extreme Insurance. As executive editor of DTN, which publishes The Progressive Farmer magazine and website, Taylor is one of the more cogent observers of crop insurance and this year’s drought.
Her post highlighted the happy experience of Seth Baute, a 26-year-old farmer in Bartholomew County, Indiana. As Taylor reported, the combination of a private sector insurance policy on top of a federally subsidized 85 percent Revenue Protection policy “will push [his farm’s] income to at least 110 percent what they had projected last spring when corn was supposed to tumble to $4 a bushel at harvest.”

 I haven't been able to access the post referred to, but EWG is not known as a friend of production agriculture so I would anticipate they will eagerly highlight anything in 2012 results which puts crop insurance in a bad light.

When China Was a Role Model

From the report of the Commissioner of Patents in 1843:

The wonderful skill of the Chinese in improving their soil not so good as most parts of our own naturally by which they are enabled as it is now well ascertained to support a population of more than 300,000,000 throughout their vast empire is owing to their wisdom and care in adapting their manures and modes of cultivation to the peculiarities required by the soil As they separate its enriching elements rejecting the parts that can have no effect they are not constantly exposed to a new growth of weeds and the seeds of which are sown among the loads of compost had other manures carried out into the field Hence a weed is a rare thing in their fields and as soon as it makes its appearance is easily seen and eradicated The time is not far distant when the ammonias silicate of potash phosphates &c which render a particular manure valuable will be prepared and used in the form of salts or in a liquid form sprinkled over the soil instead of whole loads being carted out from the barn yard and compost heap for this purpose

South Versus the West in Ag

Sen. Roberts says he'll accept target price supports for southern crops if he can get crop insurance for his crops.  See this Politico article.  Back in the old days we had separate programs for each crop, but we gradually simplified the programs and legislation down to cover almost all crops the same.  But realities sometimes break through the best plans of bureaucrats, legislators, and simplifiers.

Factoid of the Day: NH Legislature

" At 400 members (for 1.3 million people) it's the third-largest legislative body in the English-speaking world, and you only need about a thousand votes to win a seat."

link

Lincoln, the Movie, and Bureaucracy

Just came from seeing the movie. Very good, well-acted, mostly well-written, but I'm no critic.  Why then do I blog about it?  Simple: one of the bad guys, i.e., a leading opponent on the 13th Amendment in the House was George Pendleton.  Yes, you're right--some 18 years later he was to be the sponsor of the Pendleton Act, which established the civil service. 

Metrics and Dollar Coins: Once More Into the Breach

GAO says we'll save money using dollar coins, which is true.  We'd also save money by converting to metrics.  But neither is going to happen.

White House Garden Gets Full Time Gardener

That's the word from Obamafoodorama.  Over the course of 3.5 years the garden has evolved considerably.  If I remember correctly it started off as more of a family project, with the idea the daughters were going to get their hands dirty.  I haven't heard that in a while, about 3.4 years in fact. 

With the garden being in the public eye there's lots more emphasis now on how it looks, which means they do a lot of swapping transplants in.  Most real gardeners don't have that room, nor that concern.  Although I remember my aunt and uncle had a terribly obnoxiously neat and pruned garden, which went with the terribly clean and organized house.  But then my aunt was the youngest daughter in a house with German parents and a mother who apparently was a bit of an obsessive.  But I digress.

A full-time gardener seems overkill for the square footage involved, but I suspect he's got other duties.  As the concerns for how the garden looks grow, the garden itself becomes less realistic.  The first year garden a tourist could view and say to herself: "mine is just as good or better" or "I could go home and do that".  I don't think a tourist could say that now, and a first-time gardener might not realize how high the hurdle has been set.

There's more emphasis on the organic plants being used, though I'm not clear that they are claiming the garden itself is organic. I believe they could, since it's now been more than 3 years since the beginning and I haven't noted any reports or inorganic fertilizer or pesticides being used. 

So the bottom line is the garden is much more a public relations thing than an Obama family thing, not that there's anything wrong with that.  Perhaps it's an indication of how hard it is to maintain a normal existence in the White House.

Estate Tax/Death Tax

I note a couple of items on the estate tax problem, as part of the fiscal cliff negotiations.  I'm struck by the fact it's now "estate tax", no longer the "death tax".  I don't know if that's just my limited sample, or the juice has gone out of the effort to stigmatize estate taxes.

Drought Costs 3.3 Percent

That's the takeaway from the Des Moines Register piece on the USDA estimate of 2012 income. That says to me, whatever I think of crop insurance, the current system puts an effective floor under income for most crop producers.

Dairy Farmers Needed?

This is rather stale now.  I have seen pieces saying dairy farmers are in trouble because the law covering their current program expires at the end of the year.   Who to believe? 

In other policy related news, Rick Barrett reported on Sunday at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Online that, “Thirsty for milk, and the money that comes with it, South Dakota has ramped up efforts to recruit dairy farmers from other states and countries, including England, Ireland and The Netherlands.

Farm policy