Questions for Trump Which Won't Be Asked

The White House is smaller and less lavishly decorated than the homes you own and use now. Do you plan to live there when elected or in your homes or the Presidential suite in your DC hotel?

If you live at the White House will you redecorate?

Will your airplane become Air Force 1?  Will you continue to charge the Secret Service for their travel in it?

Do you intend to replace the White House staff with your personal employees?

Will you require the White House staff to sign the confidentiality agreements you require of your employees?

Will you protect the rights of whistle blowers?

Will you paint the White House gold?

Will you convert Camp David to a gold golf course?

Will you tell the IRS to end its audits of your tax returns and then promptly release them?

What arrangements will you make for Presidential records--will you continue to release records of visitors to the White House?

If I Were Clinton

I've never debated, but if I were the Democratic candidate in tonight's debate, I would counter Trump's lies very simply:

"that's wrong".   Repeat over and over as necessary.  Have your staff ready to post documentation on each time you say it.  Then segue into "What I would...(say, do, propose,).

Don't engage in factual disputes, focus on positive plans.

[updated: so much for my advice on debating.  :-( ]

Bambi's Mother Is Dangerous

I apologize, I sullied the reputation of the Internet for factual accuracy by my mistaken post the other day alleging that bees were the deadliest non-human animal in the US. It turns out that's wrong. Bees do kill many more people on average than terrorist (yearly average over the years since 2001).  But it turns out the true villain is that adorable, big-eyed denizen of the edge lands, whose population keeps growing: deer.  I hope the debaters tomorrow night will take a firm position with respect to this growing threat to the lives of our citizens.

Medicare Scams: Braces

I'm old.  I'm on Medicare. I see ads on Accuweather for knee and back braces covered by Medicare.  I get phone calls offering free braces. 

When I google "Medicare scam braces" I get a long list of hits.  Apparently some scams can work by getting access to your Medicare number, then billing Medicare for stuff, which may or may not be delivered, but never is prescribed by a doctor.

Urban Density Versus Urban Farming

Many people, Matt Yglesias  for one, believe in urban density, arguing that it's efficient, supports interesting lifestyles, helps the environment, etc. etc.  Many of the same sort of people (i.e., highly educated types) believe in the food movement, some of whom believe in urban farming.   There's tension between the two principles.  This piece in Modern Farmer on the battle over converting an urban garden to an urban hospital shows the tension.

The Granary of the Roman Empire

In my memory that's what Egypt was--why Cleopatra had wealth--Egypt grew wheat and exported to Rome.

This from a Keith Good Farmpolicy post on export issues:

Meanwhile, Emiko Terazono and Heba Saleh reported yesterday at The Financial Times Online that, “For the world’s wheat farmers already reeling from decade-low prices due to bumper crops around the world, it is the last thing they wanted.
“Confusion surrounding quarantine rules in Egypt has effectively taken the world’s largest wheat importer out of the international market, depressing prices, which are already weak from plentiful harvests.

Volatility in Farm Incomes

One thing non-farmers never (almost never) understand is volatility in farm income.

Illinois extension's website has a post on their sample of farms in the state:  in 2012 the average net labor and management* income per operator was almost $258,000, in 2015 it was -$1,700.

Of course, on average these farms had over 1,100 tillable acres.  Without looking up the average value per acre that means probably $10,000,000 in (owned and rented) land and equipment.  (On average the farmer owns about 25 percent of the land she farms.)

These are field crop farms, returns on livestock, fruit, and vegetable farms not farmed under contract would have different rates of volatility and in different years.

* One thing I learned from my high school ag class was you need to count both the return on labor and the return on management when looking at income.

Beware of Innocent Seeming Names

Someone, I suspect on Powerline but I'm not sure, included a link to this site, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.   It seems be an okay organization, but a skeptical eye might note this mission statement:

"Since 1943, AAPS has been dedicated to the highest ethical standards of the Oath of Hippocrates and to preserving the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship and the practice of private medicine."

 The "private" is a give-away, to me at least.  Back in the day the American Medical Association was a pillar of the fight against socialized medicine.  But my suspicion is that they didn't fight strongly enough, so a splinter group founded the AAPS to be more stalwart.

(I swear until I started writing this 10 minutes ago I hadn't checked the wikipedia entry.)

The Art of Persuasion

I don't expect to see Government Executive run an article like this, 
discussing the philosopher Pascal.  He wrote this, as quoted in the article:

"When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken, and that he only failed to see all sides. Now, no one is offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken, and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything, and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions of our senses are always true.

Pascal added:

People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others."

Editing Common Land Unit

A QandA from the notes of the NASCOE convention:

": Are there discussions regarding allowing NRCS to edit our CLU layer?
A: Brad Pfaff: Yes those discussions are happening to have NRCS edit the CLU and SCIMS. Darren Ash: They are looking at the impact it could have allowing other agencies to have that type of access.  The goal is to have agencies be able to share information since we have common customers, but they are looking for an appropriate way to administer this."

I'll suppress some emotions here by making a couple points:

1. the "Common" in the CLU refers to the idea it would be shared between FSA and NRCS. I've a vague memory that we made some compromises or changes in the business rules for it in order to support NRCS data.  Essentially it's the lowest common denominator between ASCS acreage data and NRCS. 
2. the dream of enabling one change to update both ASCS and SCS databases for name and address and land data dates back to the late 1980's, as a result of the impact of the sodbuster/swampbuster rules in  the 1986 farm bill.  So thirty years later we're still struggling with the issue.
3. as a liberal, I usually support government programs, but sometimes I wonder how capable we bureaucrats really are.  (Of course, I quickly turn to blaming Congress for many of the failures. :=))