Foodies Lose in Public Vote

Burger King tried "Satisfries", which are french fries with less fat and sodium.  After their trial, they allowed their franchises to choose whether to keep them on the menu or not.  Apparently 3 out of 4 franchises opted to stop cooking Satisfries.  

Voter Fraud--Almost Nonexistent

Actually my title is misleading.  This article doesn't report any voter fraud; it simply says that our voting files are in a mess. And that proven cases of fraud are rare. Dead people aren't removed; people who move aren't updated, etc. etc.  All of which would permit some fraud, but nothing has been proved.  Our federal system is prone to this sort of problem because there's no centralized clearinghouse.

What interests me is the fact that an NGO, IBM, and local election officials are developing a system to crosscheck records and cleanse the files.  As a bureaucrat, my kneejerk reaction is/was that the feds should have developed the system, but that's not going to happen as long as our governmental structure works/doesn't work the way it does.  So score one, or maybe a tenth of one, for the libertarians and conservatives who talk about order emerging, rather than being imposed.

Obama Greatly Disappoints Me

I think over the years I have mentioned my near-obsession with mono-spaced type.  To summarize: in the old days typewriters mostly were either pica or elite, using the same amount of space for each letter.  Once we moved to word processing, particularly with inkjet and laser printers, we could easily produce proportionally spaced type. There's now no reason to use monospaced type.  Readers do much better with proportionally spaced type.

So what does President Obama use for his War Powers Act letter to Congress?  See here.

Epithets and the Bureaucrat

Turns out Lois Lerner used "___hole"  in an email to her husband, referring to some conservatives.    I know nothing about Ms Lerner except what I read on wikipedia . She seems to have been a career government lawyer.  Now I don't like lawyers much, though I suspect our family attorney with whom we've been dealing this summer doesn't know that.  I also believe I did a good job of hiding my feelings back in the 1980's, when I used routinely to refer to President Reagan as the "senior idiot" and my division director as the "junior idiot".

My point is that a professional bureaucrat should be able to separate personal feelings and professional behavior, just as an attorney should be able to defend a person she believes is guilty.  Maybe it's that separation which many may perceive as inauthentic which leads people to dislike both attorneys and bureaucrats.

What We're Good At

As reported by Dan Drezner:
As a senior U.S. diplomat once told me, “If there’s anything the United States is good at, it’s telling other countries what’s in their best interests.”

I'm From Wall Street and I've Got a Deal for You

ProPublica studies the tobacco bonds.  Last century (1998) the state attorneys general and the tobacco companies reached a settlement, which gave states money over a number of years with the amount dependent on how much people smoked: the more they smoked, the more money since the logic was to cover the costs/externalities of smoking.

Wall Street came along and persuaded states to securitize the settlement, to sell bonds based on the stream of anticipated income from the tobacco settlement.  States would get more cash upfront (to be used as the politicians desired).  That's not a new idea but surprise, surprise, the deal is turning out to be better for Wall Street firms than for the states.

There were a lot of fancy deals made during the 90's and 00's; I hope someday there's an overview study which shows how many turned out okay and how many were snake oil.  The KISS rule also applies to finance.

SNAP and the USe of Time

Don't remember where I got this from.

Note the significant difference in time usage. What it says to me is that SNAP recipients, specifically mothers with kids, are time-constrained so they buy food which can be microwaved or is otherwise ready to go.  Individuals who receive SNAP benefits have time to cook.  Extrapolating, it means that SNAP  mothers are feeding their kids more fast foods.  My guess is that's less a "food desert" problem than a time scarcity problem.

Rights, We Have Rights

Two interesting bits on the rights front today: 

• A district court judge in Alabama issued a decision comparing regulation of abortion clinics to regulation of gun shops.  Both relate to constitutional rights, so shouldn't the balance between restrictive regulation and protecting rights be similar in both cases?
• And Missouri appears to have incorporated the "right to farm" into its constitution by referendum.

GMO's and Drugs

Buried in an article on the experimental drug cocktail given to the Ebola patients is the information that the contents of the cocktail derive from genetically modified tobacco plants.  Tobacco has attracted a lot of research interest, partly to find an alternate use instead of cigarettes and partly because it has characteristics which make it adaptable to producing proteins in its leaves (my memory of the science--likely to be inaccurate).

This raises a question for those foodies who diss GMO food: will you also diss GMO drugs?  Seems to me the arguments against both are the same. The possibility of harm to humans from something new.

A Blast From the Past--Price-Gouging on Rail Cars

Back in the 1800's farmers complained bitterly about freight rates charged by the railroads.  There was some justice to the rails' pattern, but because farmers depended so much on the rails to get harvests to market, any exploitation was too much. The result was our first independent regulatory commission, the ICC (Interstate Commerce Commission) and a strong impulse to the populist movement.

Fast forward to today, and this excerpt from Farm Policy:

What’s more, rail car rates than ran $300 to $400 a car a year ago have ballooned to $3,000 to $3,500 now, he says [Jerry Lehnert]. Eventually, those excess costs get passed on in bids, eroding farm incomes in the process.”