Big Dairy

Via Robin Hanson at Overcoming Bias, I come late to an Atlantic piece on dairy genetics.  Choosing the right bull now considers life span and pregnancy, not just pounds of milk.  (We got about 11,000 pounds when I was growing up.)  Interesting that big data can now pick the best bull in the country.

Movie Lines and Evaluating Government

FCW has an interesting piece on how government is evaluated: we get criticized for failures but rarely rewarded for successes, whereas the private sector gets punished by the market (sometimes) and rewarded both.

How To Increase Your Social Security? Kill the Ex

That's the advice the Business Desk at PBS NewsHour gives, entirely tongue in cheek.

Our Stalwart Forebears

Many conservatives, including a recent Presidential candidate, seem to believe we've lost our way and become too dependent on "gifts" from the government.   In reading a paper on the early days preceding the establishment of USDA I ran across this quote from the Commissioner of Patents, with respect to the seed distribution program:

It has been the special desire and object to provide and place within the reach of the
people, wherever scattered, the means of propagating such new and improved varieties of plants as they would not otherwise have had access to, and which are adapted to their
respective climates. It certainly was never the purpose of Congress to convert this O ce
into a common seed-store, intended to supply the public at large gratuitously with the
means of planting their ordinary vegetable gardens. This fact seems frequently overlooked by applicants to the O ce. It requires no little care and discrimination to guard against a growing tendency of this species of abuse. It would not only be overstepping the bounds of propriety, but would be doing injustice to the people at large, if, instead of their being accustomed to depend mainly upon their own e orts for the means of supplying their wants, they should be encouraged to turn their eyes habitually to the government, as a reliance for such purposes. If this were once established as the rule of action, it would be silently but certainly doing much to work a change in the very character of the government itself, by causing it to be regarded in this particular as the fountain of favors and bene ts. The   people would gradually be parting with that self-reliance which is the parent of energy and the main-spring of success in every undertaking, and which is so necessary to the preservation of individual self respect, and therefore of personal, and nally of national independence.

 This was in 1856.

Progress on Farm Bill?

Politico reports the House and Senate ag types are working out their differences, meaning there might be a way to get a farm bill passed.  I don't know if Nate Silver has any predictions on this; I suspect he's postponing that challenge until after he figures out how to predict earthquakes.

The Epitome of Bureaucratic Architecture

And named to honor one of the great all-time bureaucrats: J. Edgar Hoover.

As the Washington Post article this morning says:

The Hoover building was constructed at a time when the government needed room for fingerprint records, investigative reports and files, a requirement computers have rendered largely unneeded.

 GSA is proposing to trade the building to the private sector in return for a new FBI campus somewhere in DC or suburbs.

It's constructed in the "brutalist" style popular in the 1960's, goodness knows why, except we were idiots then.

Corey Booker Revisited

Politico has an article on Corey Booker's menu on food stamps, at least one they suggest. The menu shows all the faults I assumed in my previous post on the subject: prices which don't allow for bulk buying, which is the way to go.

I also have to wonder about the prices they use: they say 2 Safeway eggs would be 53 cents, meaning they're allowing $3.18 for a dozen.   That seems high, I think our last purchase was about $2 and 18 eggs are even cheaper.  Maybe eggs are pricier in NJ?

"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.