West Virginia, Farm Bill, and Food Stamps

The Post had an article on how West Virginia has changed from a bastion of Democracy to a state shortly to be dominated by Republicans.  In it, they mentioned that JFK's first executive order included a reactivation of a pilot food stamp program.   This morning Farm Policy discusses the conference committee on the farm bill with the food stamp program being the top issue.

A couple thoughts:

•   even in 1960, black poverty was mostly invisible.  Civil rights issues sucked all the air out of the room, leaving little room to consider other issues.  So the poverty in the Appalachian region was a big focus.  Not only did JFK do the food thing, he also got legislation creating an Appalachian Regional authority, covering parts of 13 states.  The idea was a pale imitation of the TVA, trying to coordinate federal programs to help the area (which included my home county).
• the references to "food stamp program" are a bit misleading. Beginning in the 1930's the Feds distributed surplus commodities to the needy.  In 1939 there was a brief attempt at food stamps--allowing the needy to buy stamps which could be used only to purchase food.  But I believe that program died with WWII.  The surplus distribution more or less continued.  (I'm not sure, but I think schools, Indian tribes, and foreign countries all got surplus food in Ike's administration, along with some of the poor.
•  JFK's order really started a new food stamp pilot project, which worked okay and got legislated in 1964.  I believe, without checking, that Sen. McGovern was a major force behind it. By 1964 the Harrington book on Poverty in America was making an impact; awareness of poverty among blacks was growing, but it still wasn't as racially centered as it seems today.  (Used to be, and probably still is, that the majority or at least plurality of food stamp recipients were white.) That's perhaps why some West Virginians discount the importance of SNAP; the program seems part of the landscape and no longer seems an effort by Dems to help WV whites.
• the problems with distributing surplus food to the food are somewhat similar to foreign aid (PL-480)--you have to establish channels to ship the food to the right destination and the available surpluses aren't necessarily what is most needed by the recipients.  So food stamps for the poor were similar to today's ideas of "monetarization" of food aid. 
• food stamps used to be sold, so you'd get $10 face value of stamps for $x in cash.  The idea was to expand the poor's spending on food.  As the program has evolved, that element faded away. 

Farm Bill Time Again

The House and Senate conferees will meet next week on the farm bill. The Rural Blog passes on speculation about possible effects on FSA offices.

I wonder whether FSA employees are comparing the rollout of MIDAS (which seems to have had problems, though not very visible outside the walls of FSA) with the rollout of ACA. 

Software Problems

There seem to be many experts who are diagnosing the problems with the ACA online system.  I'm not going to join their ranks--I'm no expert.  I expect only those on the inside, and only some of those, know really what has gone wrong and how hard or easy it will be to fix.

The one thing I will say (immediately contradicting the paragraph above) is that they shouldn't have changed the design to put establishing an account first, instead of putting it at the end.  The problem seems likely to have been the change.  It apparently was too late in the day to make it; they should have kept on with the general design they started with.  That raises the question of whether they had buy-in on the system design from everyone, by which I mean Tavenner, Sebelius, OMB, and the President, well in advance.  

The closest I've ever come to this sort of problem was the 1983 payment-in-kind program, in which the Reagan administration strongarmed the lawyers into a tricky device to swap CCC-owned grain for acreage reductions, a program which I remember as being slapped together in about 2 weeks (though memory is probably fallible).  The Secretary had the Under Secretary ramrodding the implementation, because it was a high risk endeavor, and he had regular (daily?) meetings with the peons who were doing the scutwork. 

Found--an Honest Blogger

Diogenes may still be looking for an honest man, but I've found an honest blogger--Kevin Drum, in a post on post-shutdown polls:

I don't want to beat a dead horse, but — oh, who am I kidding? I love beating this particular dead horse.

(Returned from a 5-day trip to NY which explains the hiatus.)

Ranchers' Problems

I may have occasionally voiced the opinion that dairy farmers have a worse job than others, but here's a nice post on ranchers' problems.  Hat tip: Northview Dairy.

I wonder if the ranchers have considered pushing for federal subsidies for the cattle insurance that's available?

I Live in a Rut, But I'm Not Alone

An excerpt from an interview with Nobelist Robert Shiller, the economist:

"What was discovered by some of the behavioral finance research is people are inertial. They don’t do anything. If they have to sign up for the plan, they won’t do it. If they do sign up, they'll put their money in whatever asset seems to be recommended and leave it there the rest of their lives. You would think it’s kind of obvious, that some people aren't that interested in managing their portfolios."

The Right Stuff and Bureaucratic Reports

Was Chuck Yeager a "bureaucrat"?  I guess I'd go too far to call the exemplar of the "right stuff" such, but this laconic bureaucrat's report of his breaking of Mach 1 is worth noting.

(Incidentally, I'm not sure why the National Archives website is still up.)

AGI on Crop Insurance

Chris Clayton at DTN reports both Houses are generally in agreement on limiting crop insurance subsidies for high income insureds:

"On Friday evening, House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., saw his resolution tightening income eligibility pass the House on a voice vote. The language was comparable to the Senate provisions. While a voice vote doesn't get everyone on record, the resolution does show GOP House leaders support the provision.

Conferees will have to begrudgingly keep the income cap or find some way to pivot around the issue."

Wonder how USDA would administer this?  Conceivably through FSA, I suppose, so USDA hits IRS only once.  But that assumes the rules for determining a person between crop insurance and USDA are the same, doesn't it?  (As time goes by I"m more and more aware that what I used to know is getting obsolete.)  Given how long it took for RMA and FSA to coordinate on acreage reporting dates, I wouldn't hold my breath for that result.  Might be simpler (remember KISS?) to leave the two operations completely separate and put up with complaints from farmers and Congress about the duplicate paperwork and discrepancies in rules. 

Outed: the Secrets of the Obamas and Their Garden

Found 5.5 inches of rain in our garden plot over the last few days; actually more because the rain gauge only goes to 5.5.

Assuming the White House garden got equivalent amounts, the situation described in this long Obamafoodorama post from yesterday is even worse than the pictures show.  The point of the post is that the government shutdown means very little work done in the garden by staff, so it's quickly become overgrown and unharvested.

The garden evolved from a family project in the spring of 2009, where the girls were supposed to get their hands dirty, into a showcase project for gardening.  The post reveals explicitly for the first time that the plants growing in the White House garden were transplanted from an offsite greenhouse location.  Lots of other details about the garden in the post, [edit] including the fox now prowling the grounds.

"Actively Engaged" in Farming Revisited

You'd think we'd know what a farmer is; after all people have been farming for thousands of years.

But, here, via FarmPolicy at Sen. Grassley's website, is the latest GAO report on FSA enforcement of the rules.

I remember the people (WP and SN) originally developing the rules after the 1985 farm bill.  Amazing to realize that they might well be grandparents by now.  If I remember, the first crack at implementing the provisions got overridden by Congress.  That sort of history is probably why FSA is saying they won't change rules now without having Congress act.  Part of the problem is, once provisions are in the farm bill and passed, members' attention shifts elsewhere, so the members who are more responsive to their farmer constituents gain in influence.