Changing SNAP (Corrected)

Just posted my guess on the SNAP proposal from the Trump administration--turns out I'm wrong.  There are existing programs to distribute staple foods: 

"Search here to find product information sheets for USDA Foods available to households through the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP), and The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP). Staff who operate USDA Foods programs and participants often use this information to help prepare healthy meals. Each fact sheet includes a description of the USDA Foods product, storage tips, nutrition facts, and two recipes that use the product."

So the proposal is to expand the existing programs, not to piggyback on school lunch.  (The website even has recipes for using the staples, though the ratings on most of them are 3 stars out of 5.)

Changing SNAP (Food Stamps)

The Trump administration's budget includes a proposal to provide a portion of SNAP (food stamp) benefits to families in the form of a monthly food package of staples.

The proposal won't go anywhere--the grocers will see to that--so I'm not going to spend time on researching.  Instead, I'll offer the guess, only a guess, that within the USDA bureaucracy someone looked at the existing setup to buy and provide staples to schools (used to be government surplus commodities) and suggest piggybacking on the arrangements to expand and provide packages to families.  For anyone who wants to go further, here's the FNS link.

Cottonseed Makes It In

Cottonseed will be a program crop in the farm bill according to Keith Good.

I've lost any expertise I once had in this area, but this might be a way for the cotton people to get more federal money, without raising what we used to call the target price for cotton.  They might be trying to get around Brazil and the WTO, but that's only speculation.

The Great Blog Post Title Is:

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610229/how-to-teach-a-robot-to-screw/

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Harshaw Rule at the Olympics

From the blog of a relative, who attends almost all Olympic games and writes about them for friends and relatives:

"A lot of people over the years have asked me how I tell which are the best Olympics. I usually tell them that a lot of things just don't go well for the first few days when 7 years of planning meet the first day of reality, but the good Olympics are the ones that spot the problems and rapidly fix them. We will see whether POCOG (PyeongChang Olympic Organizing Committee) can rise to the challenge."

(The Harshaw rule is: "you never do things right the first time".  Maybe there's a corollary: spotting the problems and rapidly fixing them is essential?)

The Great Switcheroo: Republicans

A quote:
"

Second, the Republican policy reversals are staggering:

• Members of Congress who once claimed to be committed to debt reduction would increase debt by more than $2.7 trillion in just seven weeks.
• Congressional Republicans would increase government spending by 50% more than they cut taxes two months ago.
• The self-labeled fiscal conservatives in Congress, who had once insisted that all government spending increases be offset by spending cuts, would abandon that principle.
• A party that just a few years ago proposed reforming old-age entitlement spending, the principal driver of government spending growth, would have no proposals to do so. If press reports are true, this bill may even increase Medicaid spending.
• The Republican Congressional Majority, which built last year’s balanced budget plan on deep future cuts to nondefense discretionary spending, would be supporting big increases in that spending."

Who is saying all this: Keith Hennessey, CEA under Bush.

Trump's Parades and Nixon's Uniforms

Post had an article saying President Trump has told DOD to come up with plans for a military parade in D.C.  The idea is getting a fair amount of mockery among liberals.

Because it's such a serious topic :-) I want to offer a historical parallel, President Nixon's new uniforms for the White House police.  Nixon supposedly found the old uniforms to lack class, whereas uniforms on honor guards he saw overseas were classy.  The new uniforms didn't last long, because he was mocked for having a palace guard.   See Megan McArdle some years ago.  And the NYTimes on the unveiling

Imprisonment and Clemency: Two Examples

The Washington Post has two articles which offer perspectives on punishment and clemency:

This Metro article reporting on MD judges concerns about life sentences for juveniles:

A central question for the Maryland Court of Appeals is whether a young person can be sentenced to life without what prison reform advocates say is any realistic chance of release. The cases follow several Supreme Court rulings that distinguish between adult and juvenile offenders, who the court says are not as culpable and have a “heightened capacity for change.”
The high court in 2016 prohibited mandatory life sentences for juveniles without parole and has said young offenders must have a “meaningful” chance to show they have matured and to be released.

Then there's this Chico Harlan article about a North Korean spy who successfully bombed a South Korean airliner, killing 115 people, during the run-up to the Seoul summer Olympics.  She's living quietly as the mother of two teenagers.

The contrast between the situations is stark, mind-blowing in fact. 

Inflation and Rising Interest Rates

After the events of 2008, as Congress passed the stimulus bill and the Obama administration took charge, conservative bloggers such as those at Powerline started to worry about inflation.  Liberals such as Kevin Drum and the liberal economists mocked the concerns.  I have to admit that while I mostly agreed with the liberals, my memory of the inflation of the 1970's caused occasional qualms.

Turns out the liberals, and Bernanke and Yellen were right--we didn't have inflation over the Obama years.  Interest rates remained low.

But, with today's news of the stock market fall, there's more discussion of inflation.  Maybe finally inflation will hit and pass the 2 percent a year benchmark the Fed has used.  I'm no economist and I'm not panicking about the stock market.  But I do want to point out something I've not seen mentioned.

The federal deficit is projected to rise very significantly this year.  Trump's tax cut will hit revenues, and even if he's correct it will stimulate the economy, any increase in revenues will take a while to show up.  But what if it doesn't?  And what if inflation is at the door, and the Fed raises rates faster than expected?  The net result of higher interest rates is greater budgetary pressure and a larger deficit.  (We know that from Clinton's early years.)  That's not a good formula.

(A parenthetical note: I've not seen the Powerline bloggers raise any concerns about the deficit since January 19, 2018.)

Cows Don't Have Privacy Any More

The Internet for Things also applies to dairy cows.  This piece describes 4 ways in which cows are being tracked: movement and location, behavior, activity, and lactation.