SSNs and VA

FCW describes a bill to force the VA to stop using SSN's.  On this weekend I want to pat myself on my back--the SCIMs data design was intended to allow FSA to stop using them, and that was 20 years ago.  I hasten to add that I've no information or confidence that all FSA systems no longer use SSN's, or even that SCIMS doesn't.  The force of inertia and the interweaving of dependencies hard to overcome.

No Cottonseed Loans But Another Cotton Program

AEI has a post criticizing the new cotton program, taking a cynical view of the motivations, as one might expect of them. It reminds me I never posted on the program.

What's the new cotton program?  It's a "one-time" cost-share program to assist in ginning cotton.

You ask: is ginning cotton a new requirement?  I thought cotton had been ginned for a few years.  I even read about Eli Whitney inventing the saw gin in 1797 and how that impacted history. If cotton ginning isn't new, why do cotton producers suddenly need cost-share assistance?

I suggest googling "cottonseed" in this blog--you'll find 3 posts back at the beginning of the year on the issue of adding cottonseed as an oilseed.  The issue then was whether Secretary Vilsack had the authority to do as the cotton producers asked.  He was saying no back in February.  I cynically said lawyers would find a way.  Apparently they didn't find a way to add it as an oilseed; perhaps the years and decades of history was too much. 

But they did find a way to authorize a $300 million program, which was announced mid June.  How?  Damned if I know.  I did a quick check for a Federal Register document, and found a notice, not a rulemaking.  The notice says: "The Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act (15 U.S.C. 714c(e)) includes authority for CCC to use its general powers to increase the domestic consumption of agricultural commodities (other than tobacco) by expanding or aiding in the expansion of domestic markets or by developing or aiding in the development of new and additional markets, marketing facilities, and uses for such commodities."  It goes on to argue the need for the program.

So, I rest my case, my cynical case: put enough pressure on the lawyers and they'll come up with something which sounds halfway reasonable.  As a retired bureaucrat, I can only applaud their chutzpah.  It's not PIK, but it's on that scale.  (Have I written about PIK--someday I must.)

Now if there were anyone really opposed to the program, they might find a favorable Texas district judge to slap an injunction on USDA for not following the Administrative Procedure Act, like the conservatives did on Obama's immigration (actually Jeh Johnson's) measure.  But there's no one opposed to doling out money, not like there is on immigration.  So no court case, only the Brazilians, whose victory over our cotton subsidies is probably ultimately responsible for the new program, might have problems with it.  And since it's one-time, they may not challenge it under WTO.

Given the decimation of Southern Democrats, I'm wondering the political motive for this action.  In the past you could account for favoring cotton because there were people like Sen. Lincoln, or Pryor still in Congress, but now not.  Was there a backroom deal, maybe to get Sen. Cotton to lay off on an appointee?  (I'm sure Sen. Cotton will be happy about this program. :-)

The Brits Do It Better

Wonky bureaucrats often admire Britain and its Civil Service, even to the extent of trying to reform our bureaucracy along its lines.  (See Jimmy Carter's civil service reforms, which created the Senior Executive Service with the dream, so far unrealized after 40+ years, of having the best people identified and moving from agency to agency and department to department as the need arose. In other words, Jimmy wanted to duplicate the Dwight Inks of the world.)

We bureaucrats and pundits forget the differences in the societies of the two nations, and the structural differences of our governments.  Nonetheless, when I see this report from FCW, I can't resist being envious.

"British citizens can access tax, pension and drivers licensing information through a single, secure login called GOV.UK Verify. The system is set to exit a public beta and go live the week of May 23."

The UK hasn't progressed as far as Estonia, but they're way ahead of the US.  

The Only Good Country to Study Crime

Where?

The US, according to this researcher who says:

"The only good country to study crime in is the United States, because we have so much of it."


"Harvey Molotch, a professor of sociology and metropolitan studies at New York University, took me through the contentious history of women’s bathrooms in a recent conversation. Molotch was the co-editor of the 2010 book “Toilet: The Public Restroom and the Politics of Sharing,” an anthology of papers by sociologists, anthropologists, architects, historians and others about the unfamiliar and dramatic history of the public restroom."

The Good Old Days Weren't: West Pittston, PA

My paternal grandfather was a Presbyterian minister in West Pittston, PA. I recently got access to some of the letters received by his wife.  One thing they show is the conditions around 1900 in that area

In 1907 Ada seems to have written to a prominent Presbyterian layman, looking for a new post for her husband, based on the fact his voice and his health were being injured by the atmosphere (I assume a combination of the smoke from household stoves and fireplaces and the fumes which were a byproduct of coal mining). After they moved to Minneapolis, he got a letter from West Pittston recounting their search for a replacement, and describing the family's reaction to a settling of the earth, caused by a mine collapse under the town.

It turns out that event doesn't make the history books, or Wikipedia, but the CDC has an amazing list of mine disasters here.

No Toto, No Dorothy, But Fallows Is in Kansas

 James Fallows has a piece on immigration in rural areas, which ties into a two-part blog series by the Center for Rural America.  An excerpt from Fallows:

These cities of western Kansas, Dodge City and Garden City, are both now majority-Latino. People from Mexico are the biggest single immigrant group, and they are here mainly for work in the area’s big meat-packing plants. Others are from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Cuba, and more recently Somalia and Sudan, among other countries. You might think of Kansas as stereotypical whitebread America. It’s pure America, all right — but American in the truest sense, comprising people who have come from various corners of the world to improve their fortunes.

I don't like his title, "real Americans" are everywhere, but it's a worthwhile piece.  I wonder how much immigration has affected rural UK?

Brexit

May you live in interesting times, goes the Chinese curse. 

I share the conventional wisdom of most of the political class that the decision is wrong.  We shall see.

The Magic of Low Expectations: Trump

I follow a handful of outlets for conservative and moderate Republican opinion  Today it strikes me that Mr. Trump is going to consolidate Republicans behind him, simply through a piece of magic. 

Trump has established a baseline of expectations for his candidacy, a rather low baseline IMHO.  But I'm not a Republican.  So where I read Dana Milbank's Post article on Trump's speech yesterday which finds the speech filled with falsehoods, some Republicans can find it good.  And I think by "good" they mean it was better than they expected, it attacked Clinton, and so they feel better about Trump.  Continue this process for another 4.5 months and Republicans will be united behind him.

I only hope Trump's magic is not from the same barrel as Ronald Reagan's was, when we had some similar dynamics.

British Agriculture in the Modern World

I found this long piece from the London Review of Books very interesting. The writer's hook is Brexit. The EU budget is heavily focused on agricultural subsidies, but the EU also imposes regulations, so he can find a mix of opinions.  The writer interviews farmers about Brexit and considers the various impacts, but the piece ranges broadly. What's especially fascinating to see what's common to English and American agriculture, such as expanding farm size and conservation concerns, and what's different, particularly the continuing position of the wealthy/noble landowners. And finally the writer discovers the variety which exists behind all the stereotypes of farmers.

A couple quotes:

"[a farmer involved in conservation] was grateful for one aspect of his new life: he gets to meet people when he talks about his work. Mechanisation has isolated farmers. Wright and his brother farm alone where once 14 people worked."

"When the English government recently had the chance to carry out its own, independent CAP reform – in agriculture, there essentially is an English government, with the four parts of the United Kingdom having separate policies – it proved eager to go on subsidising the big landowners"

 Read it.

Thanks to commenter "rupello" for the lead.

Haspel on Vertical Farming

I respect Tamar Haspel's work, so I buy her conclusions on the tradeoffs involved with indoor, vertical farming.  Bottomline: because of the energy involved, the carbon footprint of current day vertical farms (of lettuce) is much bigger than for more conventional operations.  Efficiencies might import, and the lettuce produced has some advantages.

I've mocked vertical farming before, but that's the plans relying on sunlight.  I'd observe that growing lettuce is, I'd guess, the choosing the easiest path for artificial light farming.  And while these operations fit the locavore template, they don't fit the organic template.