High Prices at GPO

I've been looking at the history of Washington, DC in the 1800's for a couple different reasons.  One is a writing project I may post about later.  Anyhow, I'd like to see this book on the Army Corps of Engineer involvement with DC.  I've read a bio of Gen. Montgomery Meigs, who engineered the dC water system, bridges, etc. in the 1850's-60's, and was quartermaster general in the Civil War.  Also read Liberty's Cap (I think that's the right title), which deals with the process by which the Capitol Building was given its final dome in the same period.  So I've got some idea of what might be involved, but this would be interesting.

Look at the price, though: $61.00.  I don't understand it at all. Why doesn't the GPO use print on demand?  Looking at Amazon, it appears a number of outfits have scanned old books, and are now selling them as print on demand books for amounts in the range of $15-20.

Johanns Gets Poor Memory

Farm Policy quotes Johanns as
“I can remember during Hurricane Katrina when the price dropped. We paid out about $4 billion almost overnight. I can point to the year 2000 where that farm policy paid out about $30 billion.

but EWG shows $25 billion as the total in 2000 and $24 billion in 2004

COBOL Is Hack Proof

That's the official conclusion of a House committee, at least its head.  So old no one understands it enough to hack it.

Your Cell Phone or Your Rifle: A Choice

A mental experiment for those who believe the Second Amendment is important in protecting freedom.

Suppose, for sake of argument, a leftie President has purged the military of all right-thinking people and is obviously plotting a coup to establish a dictatorship.  It's time to take to the hills.  Now, you have a choice: you can only take one of the following with you, and your choice applies to every member of the resistance:  your cell phone or your rifle?

To me, that's a no-brainer given the scenario and reasonable assumptions for what's not described.  A cell phone would be much more useful in organizing resistance than a rifle, however large its magazine.

Livw by the Sword....

There's some sense from President Obama's speech yesterday that he may use executive authority to advance some of his goals.  That's fine, I guess, but liberals shouldn't applaud without remembering whatever one President does by way of executive orders, etc., a later President can reverse the same way.

We Once Had Self-Driving Transport

This is inspired by a post at Freakonomics, which discussed trains.

In my case, I'm referring to horse and buggy.  It's true horses don't require nearly the amount of close attention that cars do.  My mother would remember driving into Binghamton with a load of cabbage and potatoes, spending the day, and allowing the team to find their way home that night.

I'm enthusiastic about the idea of Google (and others) self-driving cars--especially important with my declining abilities as I age, but I'm not ready to go back to horses.

Combine USPS and FSA

A report on a report from the inspector general for USPS says:

The white paper -- which represents suggestions but not final policies -- pointed to USPS’ expansive brick-and-mortar operation as a valuable resource to all federal agencies

Depleting the Soil--It's Not Astrophysics

This post at Time/World beats the drum about our broken food system:

some experts fear the world, at its current pace of consumption, is running out of useable topsoil. The World Economic Forum, in collaboration with TIME, talked to University of Sydney professor John Crawford on the seismic implications soil erosion and degradation may have in the decades to come.

Read more: http://world.time.com/2012/12/14/what-if-the-worlds-soil-runs-out/#ixzz2IXgCD64m

Prof. Crawford has this background: "John Crawford was awarded the prestigious Judith and David Coffey Chair in Sustainable Agriculture at the University of Sydney in 2008. He holds a BSc in Physics from the University and Glasgow and a PhD in Theoretical Astrophysics from the University of London."

I'm being a bit hard on him.  

Bureaucrats Suck at Prediction

The release of the notes from the Federal Reserve Board's deliberations in 2007 causes one blogger to conclude:

One lesson here is that our public officials, even the hard-working, highly intelligent ones, are far from demi-gods. They have the same blind spots and tendency toward analytical failures of anyone else. Secrecy allows public officials, whether in the world of monetary policy or others like national security, to create a Wizard of Oz like illusion of holding great power, of maneuvering levers with information in hand that mere mortals can only dream of. When reporters interview a high official, there is often a subtext the high official aims to convey: If you knew what I know, you would understand the supreme wisdom of my actions.
Seeing what the Fed officials were saying privately, to each other, in 2007 is a reminder that this isn’t always so, and just because a person has more information, it doesn’t mean he or she has the right answer.

Republicans Will Violate the Constitution?

J.I. Bell at Boston 1775 notes the Republicans are now proposing to violate the Constitution, specifically the 27th Amendment which prohibits varying the salary of Congress people.

Corporate Agriculture Is a No-No

The foodies distaste for corporate industrial agriculture is perhaps the most recent manifestation of our American populist hatred of corporations.  As witness this article and Rural Blog post on already existing restrictions on corporations in farming.  9 states have such restrictions.

Rep. Lucas Says I'm Wrong

I blogged here that 2013 direct payments wouldn't be made.  The Chair of House Ag says they will be.

The same Farm Policy post notes Vilsack is also a bit skeptical.

Pinball Bans

Conor Friedersdorf has a post on the history of banning pinball games.  He finds it incredible.  I don't--because I grew up in a time and place where pinball machines were morally suspect. 

I'm not sure why--poker games used to be banned.  There was a suspicion of games of chance, perhaps on the belief that it was infringing on God somehow.  I note the Amish use chance to choose their bishops--I understand it's because they believe the hand of God governs the choice, or maybe it's just a good way to avoid divisive campaigns for the post.  

Gains in Afghanistan

David Ignatius has a column in the Post today on the positive side of the war in Afghanistan.  Most notably:

"Life expectancy has increased from 44 years to 60 in the past decade; the maternal mortality rate has declined 80 percent; the under-5 mortality rate has dropped 44 percent. The number of primary health-care facilities has increased nearly fourfold."

I'm amazed the gains can be so great in such a short time.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place--FSA

The good bureaucrats at FSA are between the rock of current law (the extension of the 2008 farm law) and a hard place--the certainty that direct payments aren't going to survive this Congress.

Why do I say "certainty"?  Because all parties agree there needs to be more cutting, and direct payments was already on the block last year, so it will be one of the first candidates offered up this year.  According to today's Farm Policy, cutting direct payments was already proposed in a Republican amendment to the Sandy disaster aid package: i.e., the Republican majority wanted to offset some of the disaster aid with cuts to spending and they included direct payments.

So the bottom line is that FSA has to act as if they were going to have direct payments, but we all know farmers won't see a nickel of them.

Vilsack Stays

That's probably good news, since in my experience every new leader comes in thinking he/she has better ideas than the old leader, and at least half the time they're wrong.

Ben Franklin, the Chinese and Soybeans

I understand Ben Franklin imported the soybean  because of  tofu.  Today China accounts for 60 percent of soybean imports.

Suicides and Combat Deaths

According to this military suicides exceeded the number of combat deaths in Afghanistan in 2012. We don't pay much attention to either these days but apparently suicides are up and combat deaths down.  There might even be a relationship: possibly combat creates meaning which is missing when based in the states?  I don't know.

Nevada and Voter ID

I don't have much problem with phasing in voter ID requirements, as long as it recognizes the problems of the elderly (and others).  I'm struck by this paragraph in a Politico story:

"One state, Nevada, is proposing a different kind of voter ID law — one that would cull photos from the DMV and state databases rather than making voters bring their IDs to the polls. If a voter doesn’t have a photo in the database, they would be photographed at the polling station.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/voter-id-battle-set-to-rage-again-86080.html#ixzz2Hmgw08u0

Makes sense to me.  If the bureaucracy already has a photo associated to a name, why not put the burden on the bureaucracy instead of the citizen.

The Oscars and Bureaucrats

The papers today note some of the top movies are favorable to DC figures, although the Post calls them "bureaucrats".  I don't think Lincoln qualifies as a bureaucrat, he was a politician and a good one.  The heroes of "Argo" and "Zero Dark Thirty" could be called bureaucrats I guess, and since they'll never make a movie, good, bad or indifferent, about a USDA employee, it's about the best we can do.  (I enjoyed "Lincoln" and "Argo", haven't seen ZDT yet.)

The Past Was Long Ago--Pope Pius XII and the Nobility

Via Brad DeLong, this is the speech Pope Pius XII gave to the "nobility" (I think of the Vatican, but I'm not clear on it) in 1943.  (DeLong is blogging WWII.) What struck me was how archaic the sentiments seem: the belief in the duty of the nobility, the patriarchy, the antagonism towards both the Reformation and the Enlightenment, etc.  It's a long way from this speech to Vatican II.

Video Teleconferencing Systems

This notice announces that systems bought in 2009 for FSA state offices are no longer under warranty and may be repurposed or disposed of.  Apparently they've been replaced by Cisco systems.  That should tell me two things:

• video teleconferencing has been very productive.  I suspect, though I'm too lazy to check, I've expressed skepticism on the point in the past.  So I'm glad to hear I was wrong, because in theory I'm all for it.
• the Cisco system is a very big upgrade over the Microsoft system.  If not, what's the justification for replacement?  There may be a hint when the notice says that many of the Microsoft systems are still workable; maybe they weren't very durable.

Profiling the Customer

Had an appointment at my HMO yesterday (Kaiser).  For the first time the technician was filling out fields for my race, languages, etc.  He was apologetic, explaining it was a new requirement.  I was struck by the parallel with FSA/USDA getting similar information from its customers. 

But his explanation was a bit different than FSA's would be: because Reston has so many people from different countries, the big justification for the data was to determine whether there were language barriers and, if so, whether Kaiser could get an interpreter with the right skills.

Whoops--Meade Screws Up

From my RSS feed I see this at the Ann Althouse blog:

The Clown Suit Solution.

by noreply@blogger.com (Meade)

Did you see the comment by Patrick that Glenn linked to:

“I think it would be the ultimate act of honesty to dress the Secretary of the Treasury in a clown costume. I have no objection to that at all.”

Well that gave me an idea. What would be the value of having all 14.5 million federal government employees - starting at the top with the President - made to wear clown suits for, say, the next four years? Who knows? But the free market should give us an idea, right?

For whatever reason, this is no longer on the blog.  I don't know if the blogger thought better of the taste of the comment, but I doubt it, or actually checked his facts and found there are more like 2.1 million federal employees.  I'm tempted to put it down to the conservative mindset, but I'll attribute it to a screw up, nothing more significant.

[Update: this morning the post is back up on the site, with no change]

Words for the Ages?

"A little petting each day goes a long ways towards making the livestock [people] manageable."  From the Sugar Mountain Blog, brackets added.

Killing Farm Subsidies

That we should do so is Robert Samuelson's opinion in today's Post.

The Pace of Change

Does anyone remember electronic calculators and digital watches?  Both used to be big, big in popularity and big in price, if not in size.  I used to do office work on my summer job using an old hand crank calculator, so electronic models seemed a great advance.  Over time the price came down and the capabilities went up, and then the pocket calculator was really subsumed by other electronics.

I try to keep that lesson in mind: electronics changes faster than you expect.  Here's another example: a NM super computer which the latest thing in 2008 is now outmoded and uneconomical in 20013.

The Geezers and the Future

The Times has an article today arguing that Social security is in worse shape than we know, because the actuaries at SSA don't have a good grasp on demographics.  The authors present a lot of graphs and seem rather convincing.

However, I've my own theory, based on simple economics, so it's probably wrong.   

Everyone points to the facts that the baby boomers are getting older, and mostly they're living longer, while the working population is not increasing as fast.  The result is each geezer dependent is and will be supported by fewer workers, meaning the taxes on the workers will have to go up to provide the pensions the geezers have been promised.  That seems sound logic.

But, the geezers don't and won't live on their pensions, not on paper money, they will live on bread and butter and real things, produced by real people during the days and months they're living.  So what happens?  If I understand economics, when the supply (produced by workers) gets small, and the demand (from geezers with fat pensions) is large, the effect will be to boost the wages of the workers.  That should bring more workers into the system, whether by geezers finding it rewarding to work longer or to work parttime, or by workers having two jobs and working overtime, or by immigrants coming into the country.

The one problem I see is the indexing of pensions for inflation, because this process of adjusting the economy would go a lot faster if the pensions weren't indexed.  Perhaps the alternative will be for workers to be paid in intangible benefits, stuff which benefits them and makes work more attractive but which doesn't get reflected in the cost of living indexes.  Is that what's happening in Silicon Valley, with all the fringe benefits? 

Peak Oil, Not So

Sharon Astyk writes well.  She does locavore/food movement things, while raising a family and taking in foster children. She and her husband have big hearts, for which she deserves much praise. She's also  a peak oiler, who has in the past predicted gloom and doom: our economy is falling apart, running out of oil, etc. etc. This year though she's decided not to make predictions.

I think this is a sign of the wisdom which comes with age.  I'm sure wisdom comes with age, it doesn't have much else to recommend it. 

Walt Jeffries: Always Helpful

The Post had three articles on a couple who raised some pigs, then slaughtered them, exploring our relationship to food. Here's a link to the last one which begins:

The death we want for our animals is the one we want for ourselves: painless, instant, on a day like any other. Our three pigs took seven months to reach slaughter weight , and my husband, Kevin, and I had been thinking about that slaughter for the duration. Painless. Instant. On a day like any other.

 Turns out Walter Jeffries was helpful.  As he also is here, at his Sugar Mountain Blog.

Whoops: a Wrong Forecast

"I continue to think that there is a higher probability that the 2012 Farm Bill will be passed before the end of this year than that the current farm bill will be extended. My reasons for this assessment include the broad agreement that currently exists in much of the two farm bill drafts, the concern over what a new budget baseline will mean for the farm safety net, and the potential use of the budget savings in the new farm bill to fund bi-partisan priorities. Of course, this assessment means that the House and Senate will need to compromise over the existing differences in the two draft bills."

That's from Illinois extension on Dec. 6.  A reminder: we often are too sure of our views.

Washington Times Criticizes RMA

Washington Times has an article criticizing the Congressional mandate for RMA to push crop insurance.

"...the RMA’s money is going toward educating farmers on how to make use of crop insurance, adding potential new customers to an already overburdened federal program that costs taxpayers billions of dollars each year, the agency’s own documents show."

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/30/usda-agencys-largesse-grows-crop-insurance/#ixzz2GwjWgxb5
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

Unregenerate Chauvinist: Big Hair, Nice Legs

That's my chauvinist reaction to the departing commander of the Space Station.  See her on Youtube here conducting a tour.

Who knew Sunita Williams held the record for space flight for a woman? And lots of other facts at Wikipedia.

John Phipps and the Fiscal Cliff Package

John says farmers made out like bandits.

Sept Extension of Farm Bill

Apparently the legislation which passed the Senate extends the 2008 farm legislation through September, although some disaster provisions weren't included. Sequestration is delayed for 2 months.  If it comes into effect, I think it hits direct payments.  

[Updated to reflect passage]

Bureaucrats and Civil Servants

Other English-speaking countries seem not to have the prejudice against bureaucrats we have in the US.  Based on Google alert, in the US it's a pejorative term, while in other countries it's more descriptive.

In India, there's even a horoscope for bureaucrats (hat tip Marginal Revolution).

Round Bales (of Cotton, Not Hay)

The cotton growers have discovered the virtues of round bales, according to this.  The piece mentions the changes ginners have to make, but nothing about the rest of the trade.  Back in the days of "King Cotton", we used to export bales on steamships.  I wonder whether we still export raw cotton today, and if so in what form?

It's Not All Partisanship in DC

Despite the headline news stories over the past week, month, year, decade from Washington, you'd be sorely slightly mistaken if you think the Capitol is solely devoted to partisan bickering.

The continuing saga of the farm bill is evidence to the contrary.  According to this Politico story from this morning, the four leaders of House and Senate agriculture committees are united in proposing a 1-year extension (i.e., through Sept. 30) of the 2008 farm legislation, but Speaker Boehner is opposed.

Battered Farmers and Extension

From a piece yesterday in the Times on prospects for an extension of the farm bill:

"Congressional aides say the extension could be for a year, giving farmers, who have been battered by the worst drought in 50 years, a reprieve after lawmakers were unable to come up with a new farm bill."

Funny, but I thought I'd seen some reporting showing that, at least for crop farmers with crop insurance, 2012 was a good year despite the drought.

Why There's People Talking Past Each Other?

Via MonkeyCage, here's a map showing school shootings in the US over the last 15 years. Not sure of the criteria, looks to be a rather low bar.  But two things struck me:

• a lot more shootings than I would have thought because it's not limited to mass shootings
• the wedge of states with none:  Montana, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas look to have no shootings.  I'm guessing, but I'd suspect these states are mostly rural and mostly retain the hunting culture I grew up in, a culture where kids went deer hunting when they were old enough, having a 30.06 rifle was a mark of maturity, and handguns were things brought back from WWII.  I suspect it's also an area with strong NRA representation. 

Why Milk Prices Shouldn't Rise: Break the Law

Usually bureaucrats think the law is sacrosanct, it's what we do.  But the dirty reality is laws aren't self-executing; there's lots of provisions enacted into law which become a dead letter.  The price of milk in 2013 should be one of them.

Without a new farm bill, the provisions of old law come into effect. That means for milk the government is supposed to support the price at a level which means $8 a gallon.  But suppose USDA doesn't do so?  Theoretically some group, presumably milk co-ops, could haul out their lawyers and file suit in federal court to force USDA's hand.  My theory is, by the time the suit is written and filed, and DOJ works with OGC to come up with a reply, new law will have superseded the old law, and Congressional attorneys will have put in a provision which essentially nullifies the suit.  Net effect: consumers don't see a rise in milk prices.

[Update:  This is an example of why there are dead letter provisions: if the bureaucracy doesn't act on its own to implement a provision of law, there needs to be someone who can take USDA to court and/or with enough PR clout to raise a stink about it.  In many cases there's neither.]

Benghazi

A small part of the recent report on Benghazi is that top state department management was restrictive on resources.

the report that Mr. Pickering oversaw suggested that there was a culture of “husbanding resources” at senior levels of the State Department that contributed to the security deficiencies in Benghazi. Without identifying Mr. Kennedy or other senior officials, the report said that attitude “had the effect of conditioning a few State Department managers to favor restricting the use of resources as a general orientation.”

I'm sure the Republicans who have been lambasting the Obama administration over their handling of diplomatic security and the fatal attack on our diplomats will use this as further ammunition.  What right does management have to control spending by the people in the field?

Merry Christmas to All

Happy holidays.

Praise for USA.gov

One of my hobbyhorses is more transparency on websites (excluding my own), particularly government ones.  We as a community don't know what works and what doesn't unless we see some metrics.  And if we don't know, we can't improve.

In light of that, I'd like to note usa.gov has a post of its most posts, pages, links.  I wish more gov sites would do the same.

Merry Christmas from Chris Clayton

He has a tongue-in-cheek thank you post to Boehner and Cantor looking forward to the 2013 farm bill discussions.

Hennessey or Brooks

Interesting: Keith Hennessey is an economist who worked in the Bush White House.  David Brooks is the columnist for the Times.  Hennessey is on record as saying Obama was bluffing about vetoing a fiscal cliff bill he didn't like; Brooks today says (sounds like an off-the-record interview with the President) it's no bluff.

Politics is so interesting.

The Faults of Liberals

Kevin Drum has an interesting post reporting on a Haidt survey:

"what do people think? Answer: they substantially exaggerate the moral differences between liberals and conservatives. In fact, they exaggerate the extremity of moral concerns for both their own group and the other group. And there's bad news for us lefties: as the chart on the right shows, we were the biggest exaggerators. Apparently conservatives know us better than we know them."












He suggests some explanations.

Guns

Not much to say except this: I'd like to see Congress focus more on the ATF.  Last I knew they hadn't had a permanent director for about 6 years, basically because NRA has enough clout to stall Obama's nominees and Obama hasn't had enough interest to try to push one through.  But that's no way to run a railroad.

Further, IMHO, it's ridiculous that they're prohibited from maintaining a database on gun purchasers--they have to destroy the data which is submitted for background checks. Given everything which is available on the internet and all the cross-checking which the government is now trying to do, such as e-Verify and the erroneous payments thing, this is ridiculous.

Set up an advisory board for the ATF database, stick an NRA rep on it, and they'll be in a position to blow a whistle if there's abuses.

No EEO on USDA Investments?

Here's the USDA's list of major investment areas for IT, reached from the performance.gov site.  Don't I recall that Vilsack was supposedly redoing the culture of the Department, and hasn't his Assistant Secretary for EEO (not the correct title, but I'm too lazy at the moment to check) responded to OIG/GAO with proposals for better systems in the EEO area?

Where does that appear in the list?  Is Vilsack really putting money where his mouth is?

[Damn, as I age I'm getting more cranky.]

Non Land Costs on Small and Big Farms

Here's an Illinois study comparing costs among farms of different sizes.  The surprise to me: big farms don't have any cost advantage, at least among the farmers included in the study (which I would suspect is a bit biased towards the farmers with the best records).

The other surprise: the smallest farms are defined as under 500 acres.