FSA Has an Administrator!

Secretary Perdue announced three administrators today, including FSA's Fordyce, formerly SED in Missouri.  It's only 16 months since the inauguration, but who's counting?  I remember Randy Weber was acting Administrator for a number of months after Clinton's inauguration.  I suspect the appointment process is taking longer and longer; someday we'll see an administrator appointed when she has less than 2 years to serve.

(I see the president of NASCOE is also from Missouri, for what it's worth.)

Mount Will Erupts

Beneath a slightly graying cap of hair, there lurks a sleeping volcano, a volcano named George Will, who erupted this morning in the Washington Post, devastating the VP.

A Veto for the Farm Bill

It's been decades since a President threatened to veto a farm bill--so long that the last time has escaped my memory.  (I'd be pretty sure that Truman may have threatened but I don't believe anyone since Nixon.)

But President Trump is promising a veto to ensure work requirements for SNAP.   This will be interesting.

They Made It

The Caps beat Pittsburgh last night to reach the conference final.  I wrote yesterday that the losing streak had to end, and it did.  Now we'll see what happens in the finals.

Caps and Brooklyn Dodgers

I'm old enough to remember when the sports jinx haunted the Brooklyn Dodgers.  They'd make it to the World Series nearly as often as the NY Yankees, but always lose.  Gil Hodges, their elite first baseman, wouldn't hit and so was often the goat.  Their motto was "Wait Til Next Year".  That streak lasted until 1955, when Johnny Podres led them over the Yankees in seven games.

I write this because the Washington Capitals, who I sort of follow, have a streak of losing in the playoffs, so they've never made the conference finals.  This may change. This must change.  This will change, but will it be this year?

(Someone has observed, what can't last forever, won't. I think that applies here.)

The Swamp, John McCain and President Carter

Sen. McCain is attracting favorable articles now, for pure and understandable reasons.  After his death, whenever it comes, more commendations will come and slight criticism will be unbecoming.

So let me offer a bit of criticism and context now.

There's been much discussion of "the swamp" in DC and the need to drain it.  Very laudable I'm sure. But I've a vague memory, I think based on Timberg's book, that McCain was a denizen of that swamp for a while.  After his release from the POW camp, and recuperation from his injuries, and before he retired from the Navy and entered electoral politics, he was assigned to the Pentagon as a liaison to the Senate.

Now the Ford and Carter administrations had a project for medium-sized aircraft carriers, conventionally powered and cheaper than the nuclear carriers the Navy and Rickover had been building.   As a naval officer McCain's ultimate commander was President Carter, but his real allegiance was to his bureaucracy, the Navy.  And the Navy, or at least many of the big shots, wanted the biggest and best of everything (pardon my cynicism).  McCain was an effective lobbyist with the Senate for the nuclear carriers, operating against the official policy of the administration.  It was a little reminiscent of the "revolt of the admirals" of 1949, except that McCain and the others were able to achieve their goal with less publicity.

That's how the swamp works, and Sen. McCain was once a swamp dweller.

Wendell Berry Meet Westby Cooperative Creamery

Washington Monthly had a piece on the Westby:

Westby is the exception, not the rule. It’s a holdout from an earlier era when co-ops helped farmers and rural communities keep a much larger share of the nation’s wealth than they do today. Most everywhere else across rural America, the powerful cooperative movement has either faded or, worse, become co-opted by giant monopolies that prey off the very small-scale producers they’re supposed to protect. In that way, they reflect a broader change in the economy. While pretending to represent farmers’ interests, these co-ops in fact dictate prices to farmers just as Amazon dictates prices to book publishers and Walmart to its suppliers. Cooperative Creamery in WI

Wendell Berry writes for the Henry County Local on the recent spate of creameries and distribution channels dropping dairy farmers and includes this:

The person interviewed in these several articles who makes clear and admirable sense is Gary Rock, a dairyman, one of Dean’s terminated, in LaRue County: “He would like to see a base program across the nation that sets production quotas in line with market demands.” He thus sees through the problem to its solution. He is advocating the only solution to the problem of overproduction. Kentuckians don’t have to look far for an example of the necessary solution, for we had it in the Burley Tobacco Growers Co-operative Association. That organization effectively controlled production, maintained fair prices, and gave the same protections to small producers as to large ones. The history of the Burley Association disproves, as its membership conscientiously rejected, the “inevitability” of the destruction of family farms by agribusiness corporations.

Of course Berry is wrong.  Production wasn't controlled by the co-op, but by your faithful USDA/ASCS bureaucracy (operating in conjunction with the co-op).  "Supply management", one term for the sort of program involved, is something Canada still uses for dairy and eggs and maple syrup. We dropped the tobacco and peanut supply management programs after I left, not that there's any relationship. :-)

Working at USDA Is Injurious to Your Health?

Apparently USDA's South Building, where I used to work, is undergoing lead abatement work.  (Makes sense, given when it was constructed.)  Now employees are reporting health problems and tying it into the (non)availability of telework under Sec. Perdue's new policies.  See this GovExec piece.

Farmers Feeling Blue

From an outlook post from Purdue:

The undercurrent of concern expressed by producers in March became more pronounced in April as the trade dispute with key export customer China continued. For example, compared to February of this year, producers in April were more negative about future agricultural export prospects. In February 2018, when asked to look ahead 5 years, 13 percent of producers said they expected agricultural exports to decline. When the same question was posed in April, the share of producers expecting lower exports increased to 17 percent.

Those Stuck-in-the-Past Old Fogeys

Like me, many elderly don't like change.  But it varies, and we can surprise you if it's to our benefit:

"Elderly participants were most excited about the idea of autonomous vehicles, but only 36 percent of young adults were comfortable with the idea of riding in one. "

From the Rural Blog, discussing research into attitudes to self-driving cars.