Banks and the Agriculture Committee

Here's a Salon article on how the banking industry loves the Agriculture Committees.  Why?  Because they oversee "derivative trading", which farmers know as "commodity futures".  Hat Tip Wonkblog.

FSA Makes Progress

I commend the MIDAS people for displaying metrics on their posts (i.e., how many visits the page has seen and how many today).  This update from the manager is an example.

Nostalgia Day

John Fea labels this image: "Prehistoric Googling".

Best Sentence of the Day

"I have always been quite happy with the skin I’m in, though I will now admit that there is more of me in the skin than before."

Beauregarde on growing older.

FSA and Drones

Here's a NYtimes blog post on the proliferation of drones in civilian life.  We already have a college offering a bachelor's degree in them.  One of the uses people imagine for them is agriculture.  And there's this from an article in the print Times on the same subject.

"Mr. Anderson, in contrast, said that later this year, his company would introduce a helicopter for agricultural surveillance that would sell for less than $1,000. “That’s not per hour, that’s for the helicopter,” he said."

 Sounds to me like aerial photography is going to see a paradigm change.

A Good Sentence on Rome

"There were customs duties, credit mechanisms and even the odd 'pop-up' shop for merchandise that had fallen off the back of a chariot…." from Brad DeLong, quoting from a piece describing the variety of markets in ancient Rome.

The Mysteries of France

From Mr. Beauregarde's blog:

" In France we have three choices of fuel at the pump – two star and four star unleaded petrol – which in France is classified by its octane content 95 for 2 star and 98 for 4 star – we also have diesel. A staggering two thirds of French cars run on diesel, and with good reason, a litre of diesel at the pump is on average 20 Euro centimes cheaper than a litre of petrol."

"successive governments ran scrappage schemes to try and get as many petrol cars off the road as possible. Well, petrol (although unleaded) was dangerous. Petrol fumes were far more harmful than diesel fumes, so via a system of generous « cashbacks » motorists were encouraged to trade in their old petrol guzzling cars for « cleaner » diesel cars. At the height of the scrappage schemes, anyone owning a petrol driven car over eight years old, could trade it in for a brand new diesel car and get a 1000 Euro cashback, generally given in the form of a reduction on the new car. Many dealerships often doubled the premium. The results were twofold. Not only did we all buy diesel cars, but also we bought small « economical » cars."

Why is gasoline  so much higher octane than in the States?

The Paperless Office

I remember when IRMD (IT types) was promising the System/36 would mean the paperless office. That didn't work out. But we may be working towards the newspaperless society, given the shutdown of this paper company's last newsprint machine.

Google Reader Is Doomed, and So Am I

One of the problems of growing old is maintenance.  Just getting going in the morning takes a while.  Have to do my 15 minutes of back exercises each day just to keep from having a sore back on a regular basis.  (It works--one visit to the doctor has averted lots of pain, but doing the routine is a pain...)  "Maintenance" also includes the obsolescence of one's knowledge. 

Back in the day when we first got our telephone it was a party line, and you had a crank to turn to ring the bell.  One long ring got you the operator, and a combination of longs and shorts was the code for each of the four or five other households on the line.  Now I was never physically coordinated, so when I first had occasion to use the phone my ringing was atrocious. I'd stutter on the long ring, making it sound like two shorts, etc. so you'd have to apologize to the person who answered because it was the wrong number. 

Anyhow, after time and practice, I finally got good with the phone.  Then of course we got it replaced with the old dial handset, which required a new set of skills...etc. etc.

What triggered this nostalgia? Almost anything these days gets me going but the announcement that Google was killing its Google software this summer is the trigger.  I've used it for years to follow a bunch of blogs and some other websites.  And now I'm faced with finding a new RSS reader, and learning it.  That's maintenance, and that's a problem.

"Appoint Someone With Authority..."

One of the old standbys of government bureaucracy is this: you elevate the issue/area which is important (to you) by asking that the big boss assign it to someone who reports to her.   Or, if you're Congress or the President, you direct that the issue/area be given a lofty title and moved up the bureaucratic ladder.

Does this work?  I'm cynical.  I think the result is mostly pro forma, just resulting in multiplying the number of titles and the amount of bureaucracy. In real life any manager has only a certain number of hours in her day and she's going to spend her energies on the important issues and talk with the people in charge of those important issues.  Usually that means that things like administration, finance, technology, open government, HR, don't get much attention, at least until they make a noise in the Washington Post, on Fox, or on Twitter.


(The title is taken from something I saw on line--perhaps dealing with declassification or FOIA, but it applies to many areas.)

The Decline of WASP Culture

The American Spectator gloats a bit over the decline of mainline Protestantism, as represented by the National Council of Churches and the Rockefellers.

Customer Satisfaction

Recently got my car serviced at the dealers (which doesn't happen often because I don't drive much).  There were a couple followup customer satisfaction surveys, and the counter guy (not the right designation but the guy who wrote up my paperwork) said his pay depended on my satisfaction.

I mention this because I've never run into this followup with any government office, whether FSA, DMV, SSA, IRS, or whoever.  I don't know why.

Actually I do: government agencies figure their customer has to come to them and government appropriators see no need to provide money to measure customer satisfaction.

Though I dinged Al Gore for his Reinventing Government initiative, I think I remember that he tried to emphasize customer satisfaction. At least back when management was looking at county service agencies there was a survey Len C. ran.  I'm a bit skeptical of both the one-time survey and the followup one like the car dealer did.  I doubt the data is really accurate because I tend to be over generous, but I do think trends, particularly in the followup ones, would be informative. 

The Pioneers Get Arrows in the Back

I suppose that title is not politically correct, but it is a metaphor for a corollary of Harshaw's rule ("you never do things right the first time").  The latest example I've run across: Reston 50 years ago installed air conditioning using Lake Anne water. (Back then Reston was the epitome of what today we'd call crunchy trendiness.)  While cutting edge then, it's had problems in the last couple decades.

Maybe the better metaphor is, if you're a pioneer of what is supposed to be a better trail, you may end up eating things you don't want to, like the Donner party.

Crop Insurance and Politics

Chris Clayton reports on bills introduced in Congress to cut crop insurance.  It attracts an unusual number of comments, partly because the thread degenerates a bit (though farmers are still more polite than politicians.)

Program Time and Real Time

This excerpt from notice PL-251  spurs my memory:

In the past, changes made to data related to “actively engaged in farming”, cash rent tenant, member information, etc., simply overrode the previous information recorded. But since the determinations related to the information collected on CCC-902 are continuous, the concept of the Business File application is that the determinations are effective for a specific period of time until the plan is revised and new determinations are made by COC. At any point, users should be able to view the producer’s farm operating plans to get an historical view of the changes made to the operation.

This concept is similar to new functionality that is being developed through the MIDAS effort so it is important that State and County Office users understand the concept and how changes made in error affect the historical information available. The reason a “delete” option is not available in the system is because of the need to maintain the historical data.

The problem in the data model always is mapping reality to program requirements.  In the real world, a death, a change of ownership, etc. occurs at any time, which to me argues for specifying the date of such change. But then the question is how the event is applied to program requirements, which is another kettle of fish, and not an easy set of fish to fry.

When we automated operations on the System/36 we seemed to have two options offered by the IT types: continuous files (i.e., name and address, farm file) or year-specific files (acreage reporting, contracts). That meant the clerk/PA had to translate in her head the significance of new/changed data into the meaning for the applicable program and year.  Experience showed those didn't work well enough, so we gradually added time data to some (beginning and end years in the farm producer file) and created year-specific records within others (eligibility file).  That helped, but changing file structure was always a major commitment of programming and testing time, so it was hard to justify with our other priorities.


I wonder: is Ctrl-Z a standard in MIDAS, because while good data should be retained, there's always the need to back out bad data.

Justifying War: Rationale Versus Results

Ta-Nehisi Coates blogged yesterday on the Iraq war, triggered by this James Fallows post, which Kevin Drum also commented on here. Fallows' original point was that we Americans have usually inflated the threat we face, whether in Iraq or elsewhere on the international scene.

The general thrust of the three posts, plus the commentary on the TNC post, is that we've been lied into war (a big oversimplification because the commentary was more thoughtful and various) in the past and wars/military interventions were not worthwhile from America's viewpoint.

I took the contrarian position, as you might expect, and pushed back, citing Kosovo and Korea as examples, which I'm not going to repeat here.  But thinking about Truman and Korea last night I believe there's often a big gap between the rationale for an intervention and what the results actually are, some years down the road. :

1. In the case of our intervention in Iran, overthrowing Mossadegh and reinstating the shah, the rationale was defeating a leftist, pinko leader and supporting someone we could work with. The result we've seen after 60 years is our actions led to a religious dictatorship. 
2. In the case of our intervention in Korea, we thought we were keeping the communists from taking over the whole peninsula.  The result we've seen after 62 years is our actions led to the development of the 15th biggest economy in the world. 
3. In the case of our intervention in Iraq II, the result hasn't matched the rationale.

Maybe the bottom line is that we never really know what we're doing, so we just do our best.

Crop Insurance and Organics

Sustainable AGriculture highlighted RMA's dropping of the 5 percent surcharge for organic insurance, which seems to have been counterbalanced by their acceptance of OIG recommendations on transitional yields and loss adjustment for organic crops.

This OIG report finds that FCIC/RMA has been offering "transitional yields" (the crop yields assigned to a farm for years when there's no actual production history availabe) for organically grown crops which are too high.  For example, if the transitional yield is 125 bushels an acre for organically grown corn, and the true yield is 11...  Congress has pushed the expansion of crop insurance to organic crops, RMA has responded, but had a contractor evaluate the experience. Excerpts:

The contractor recommended that transitional yields be lowered by 35 percent for insurance plans that use APH yields as the basis for the production guarantee in order to better reflect experience data and lower loss ratios. RMA acknowledges that transitional yields for organic crops are generally too high, but has not implemented the recommendation because it considers the production data currently available to be too “thin” to support a methodology for setting separate transitional yields for organic crops.

We found that insured producers for 35 of 48 organic crop policies with losses did not have production histories supporting that they could grow the insured crops to reach the yields used to determine the production guarantee or amount of insurance.16 This occurred because RMA directs AIPs to apply transitional yields and underwriting standards established for crops produced using conventional farming practices to crops produced using organic farming practices. As a result, at least $952,000 of $2.56 million in indemnities that RMA underwrote were excessive. In addition, insured producers with organic crops experienced a programwide loss ratio of 105 percent.17 In contrast, insureds with conventional crops experienced a loss ratio of only 67 percent.

OIG also found the loss adjusters did not follow procedures for adjusting organic crops.·

Twenty-two stated that the AIPs do not require them to obtain and/or review the organic plan and inspection report.
·
Seven said that the loss adjustment requirements for adjusting crops produced using organic farming practices were no different than for crops produced using conventional farming practices.
·
Five stated that the agent and underwriter collected the organic plan and inspection report.
·
Five loss adjusters gave varying reasons for not obtaining and reviewing the organic plans and inspection reports.

 Bottom line: Organic crops can't actually match conventional cropping in yields, at least not on available data.  It will take years to build the data and the loss adjusting experience to do a good job on organics.

The Persistence of Historical Patterns

Mississippi was a major source of the guns which the Chicago police department recovered (third ranking state after Illinois and Indiana). Mississippi was also a major source of the black population of Chicago during the "Great Migration".

Henry Wallace Revisited

Oliver Stone with a collaborator have made a program/book revisiting American history: the untold story.  One of their themes is praising Henry Wallace, former USDA secretary, former VP, for his position in 1948 challenging the Cold War.  In their view, the aggressive stance of the US vis a vis  the Soviet Union under Truman triggered it; a more conciliatory attitude would have avoided it.

Brad DeLong links to a reconsideration by Wallace in 1952 of his 1948 views, in which he totally recants his views.  It's worth mentioning, because some on the left took a lot longer to become skeptical of the Soviets. It took Khrushchev's speech criticizing Stalin, then the violent putdown of the Hungarian rebellion in 1956 (a rebellion which led to soccer-style place kickers in the NFL in the form of Pete and Charlie Gogolak), to convince many.

Al's Back Reinventing Government

Government Executive reports Al Gore will speak at a 20th anniversary event of his "Reinventing Government".   Though I voted for the guy, 3 times actually, I didn't and don't think much of his initiative. Why?

• one big thing was government procurement credit cards.  A fine idea, except someone forgot to include oversight functions to catch fraud, abuse, and screwups.  Those had to be added later, after news reports which gave bureaucrats a bad name.
• another big thing was flattening the bureaucracy, reducing the number of layers. I'd like to see a GAO analysis comparing now with 20 years ago.  My bet is there's been no real change.
• a small thing--getting rid of agricultural programs.  As I remember, he got the honey loan program and the wool/mohair incentive programs.  Last I checked, Congress had replaced both. 

More generally, I thought he was too conservative in his approach, just adopting a few ideas which might be good, but didn't really reinvent government

Uphill Both Ways

Memory is fallible.  I posted a comment on the Wonkblog yesterday recalling the 1986 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings reductions.  Easy to do, since it was agony for us.  All fine, except I wrote it was a 5.6 percent reduction.  Did a little searching this morning; it was actually 4.3 percent.

So memory is fallible, but I know I walked to and from school uphill both ways.

COBOL and Binary

Back in the dark ages when I learned COBOL, the prerequisite was a course on computer basics, including number systems, binary, hex, etc..  Which is why I unabashedly steal this joke from James Fallows:

"There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't."

Least Surprising News of the Day

"Agriculture Has Slipped from DC's Radar" is the headline on a Politico article.

Innovation and Productivity

The head of Yahoo is making the news because she's telling her employees to come to work; they can't work from home.  Apparently there's research showing there's more innovation when employees meet face-to-face, have casual interactions, etc. (I don't remember which company, Bell Labs, Apple, who, which designed its building to maximize such interactions. On the other hand working from home increases employee satisfaction, enables you to hire better employees, maximizes productivity, etc.

My only contribution: face time and casual conversation is important.  That's also a reason for meetings, national conferences or just meetings in the FSA context.  Perhaps my best contribution to FSA was when I overheard Solomon Ramirez talk about his work with DFU (an early System/36 utility software package) when we were all imbibing after a national meeting.

[update: see article on Google's building]

Parker on the Past and USDA Sensitivity Training

Kathleen Parker, the conservativish columnist for the Post, writes mocking the sensitivity training at USDA.  I understand the mockery, but she grew up in a very different America than I did, when she writes:

There was a time when such lessons, otherwise known as manners, were taught in every American home [emphasis added]. Said homes were not privileged in most cases but they were occupied by a mother and father who, though they perhaps did not adore each other every waking moment, were at least committed to the mutual task of rearing thoughtful, well-behaved children.

The WASPy upper middle class was taught to be considerate of people's feelings; we would use "Negro" rather than "colored", at least to people's faces, and the "n-word" was reserved for the locker room.  But those "good manners", if they were such, are not sensitivity to others.

When I Don't Post, My Page Views Go UP?

Having been traveling for a few days, I find the increase in page views amazing.  I don't really want to face the logic of the message the statistics are sending me: my audience [sic] wants me to blog less.  I take back everything I've written about wanting government websites to publish their statistics.

Even Slower Blogging and the Horde of Dollars

Tom Friedman, the columnist for the Times, is much richer and smarter than I.  But today he wrote about Apple's "horde" of dollars, a mistake which provides a lovely image: convert Attila the Hun's horde into dollar bills on horses.  (He meant "hoard").

It always pleases me when big shots screw up and I can feel superior to them.

Having said that, we'll be traveling for a few days so my blogging is likely to be nonexistent

FamilyFarms Family Farms

I'm sure few people think of  these as family farms.

USDA Sensitivity Training Gets Attention

From the right, see this Daily Caller article.  It brings back memories of my past sensitivity training sessions.  As described, it sounds as if the instructor kept the session lively enough so no one went to sleep. I've mixed feelings about the worth of such session.  On the one hand I feel superior to them: of course I'm above average in sensitivity so why would I need training (a Lake Woebegone trait Mr. Keillor skipped), on the other hand occasional bits stick--I remember being told by the instructor in our ADA training that everyone was only temporarily able-bodied.

It's easy to mock this stuff, and hard to do it well.

Trade Direct Payments for Disaster and No Future Cuts?

That seems to be the deal the Senate Dems are proposing. Sen. Stabenow agrees to chop direct payments in return for funding 2012/13 disaster programs and no requirement for additional cuts in future legislation.

Factoid of the Day: DC Life Expectancy

Spurred by a Coates blog post on Chicago homicides, I found a site with lots of good data.  Perhaps the most startling:

What state has the highest life expectancy for whites?  DC 83+

What state has the lowest life expectancy for blacks?  DC 70+

USDA Is Not an Agency

My title isn't quite true, but here's my point:  Megan McArdle writes about federal regulations here.  In doing so, she mentions the "Department of Agriculture" twice, both in contexts which are vaguely adverse.  The problem I have is that USDA is a bunch of different agencies, each with their own missions and regulations, each with their own attributes.  To write of it as if it were a unitary agency is simply to misunderstand and oversimplify.

Recession, What Recession, Not for Dogs and Cats

This extension piece on careers servicing "companion animals" reports current spending of $50 billion, with an increase of $12 billion in the last 5 years.  That's roughly a 25 percent rate of increase in hard economic times.

I can believe it: we have two aging cats in the household, one of which will be amazingly costly over the rest of her life span.  I keep surprising myself that I love her that much, because she was mean (feral mother) as a youngster. 

Doesn't Anyone Know How to [Do Big Systems]?

I'm probably misremembering, but I believe Casey Stengel, when he was manager of the expansion NY Mets, asked something like: "doesn't anyone know how to play this game?" 

Anyhow, that saying, whatever its source, came to mind when I read that after 4 years of effort by DOD and VA to have one system of health records for the military and military veterans, they're giving up. Only $1 billion shot to hell.

Fenceless Cattle?

Atlantic has a post on this:

"A relatively straightforward technological innovation -- GPS-equipped free-range cows that can be nudged back within virtual bounds by ear-mounted stimulus-delivery devices -- could profoundly reshape our relationships with domesticated animals, the landscape, and each other."

 As someone who remembers his time fixing fence, a springtime routine on a dairy farm, and the occasional adrenaline-filled times when one or more cows got through a fence and started roaming the neighborhood, the idea sounds good to me.  

Now that we have electronic chips which can connect to a human nervous system, the next step will be to implant such chips into cows so you don't have to go get the cows and bring them into the barn for milking.  (Sorry--I forgot dairies are feeding operations these days)

Obama Gets Praise from GAO

The Comptroller General cited the stimulus bill as providing lessons in administration:

But the most instructive experience, he said, was implementation of the 2009 Recovery Act, doling out federal stimulus money around the country under emergency conditions while minimizing waste. “That was an example of the folks at signing ceremony walking right to the control room, with boots on the ground from the president, the vice president, the secretaries and deputy secretaries,” Werfel said. “That urgency brought out the best in accountability and opportunities for collaboration. It had us doing business differently, without cutting corners. It compressed six months down to six weeks, driving through those competing stakeholders in real time,” he said.

 I think VP Biden was in charge.  He never struck me as a good administrator, but apparently a forceful personality at the top is enough.

Direct Payments and Sequestration

The direct payment program may be axed as part of the delay or resolution of the sequestration issue--so says Politico.

The Super Bowl Ad

Has apparently been tweaked to add images of Latino farmers. (I'm not sure whether it would have been USDA-approved, given Vilsack's outreach program.)  But John Phipps thinks it should have shown some CAFO's and snow-birds.

Ode to Village Life

Here's a paean to village life:

"The Joys of American Village Life in the 1800s

How different is the state of things to-day, and in our own country! Village life as it exists in America is indeed one of the happiest fruits of modern civilization. Our ancestors, familiar with the English and French villages, could never have dreamed of all the many striking differences which would appear two centuries later in the village homes of their own descendants in the New World. The idea would never have occurred to them that the remote village could ever share so freely in the enlightenment and civilization of the capital city. But steam, the great magician, serves the rustic to-day as faithfully as he serves the cockney.13

  Comforts, conveniences, new inventions, striking improvements are scarcely known in New York and Philadelphia, before they are brought to the villages, hundreds of miles in the interior. You find there every real advantage of modern life. Your house is lighted by gas -- and, if you choose, it is warmed by steam. The morning paper, with the latest telegram from Paris or London, lies on your dinner-table. The best new books, the latest number of the best magazines, reach you almost as soon as they reach the Central Park. Early vegetables from Bermuda, and early fruits from Cuba, are offered at your door. You may telegraph, if you wish it, to St. Petersburg or Calcutta, by taking up your hat and walking into the next street. This evening you may, perhaps, hear a good lecture, and to-morrow a good concert. The choice musical instrument and the fine engraving may be found in your cottage parlor.

What more can any reasonable being ask for, in the way of physical and intellectual accessories of daily life? And in addition to these advantages of modern civilization shared with the cities, there are others of far higher value, belonging more especially to country life. The blessings of pure air and pure water are luxuries, far superior to all the wines of Delmonico14, and all the diamonds of Ball & Black.15 And assuredly to all eyes but those of the blindest cockney, the groves and gardens and fields and brooks and rivers make up a frame-work for one's everyday life rather more pleasing than the dust-heaps, and omnibuses, and shop-windows of Broadway. And, happily for the rustic world, the vices, the whims and extravigances -- the fashionable sin, the pet folly - - of the hour are somewhat less prevalent, somewhat less tyrannical on the greensward than on the pavement. There is more of leisure for thought and culture and good feeling in the country than amid the whirl of a great city. True, healthful refinement of head and heart becomes more easy, more natural under the open sky and amid the fresh breeze of country life

. Probably much the largest number of the most pleasant and happiest homes in the land may be found to-day in our villages and rural towns -- homes where truth, purity, the holiest affections, the highest charities and healthful culture are united with a simplicity of life scarcely possible on our extravagant cities. And these advantages, thanks be to God, are not confined to one class. Even the poorest day-laborer in the village, if he be honest and temperate, leads a far happier and easier life than his brother in the cities. The time may come, perhaps, when the cities -- greatly diminished in size -- shall be chiefly abandoned to the drudgeries of business, to commerce and manufactures during the hours of day and deserted at night; when the families of the employers and laborers shall live alike in suburban village homes. In the present state of civilization, every hamlet within a hundred miles of a large city may be considered as one of its suburbs. In former centuries, he was a wise man who left the village for the city. To-day, he is wise who goes to the city as to a market, but has a home in the country."

The author is Susan Fenimore Cooper, the year is 1869.   [Threw in some paragraph breaks.]

Cafeteria in South Building

Turns out USDA has banned deep-fat fryers in its South Building cafeteria. The article seems a bit skeptical on whether the big shots' efforts at getting their employees to eat more healthily will work.

White House Garden

Obamafoodorama has a report on the winter harvest--cabbage and broccoli.  Given their hoop houses and the relatively warm winter we've had, the garden should be productive.  (We've had some cold spells, with lows into the teens, but neither terribly low nor prolonged.)

Security Software

NY Times reported  that hackers based in China had been attacking their computer system and the identities and passwords of their staff.  Buried in the article was a factoid: their security software provided was Symantec, and its software failed to identify all but one intrusion.

James Fallows Defends Bureaucracy

Though he may not know it.  This observation from a blog post relating to software is true:

Almost any organized human activity is much more complicated and interesting than you would expect, once you examine its particularity. For instance: I have never taken mail delivery for granted after my earliest paying jobs as a parcel-post sorter and then letter carrier at the local Post Office. People scoff at the USPS, but it pulls off some amazing feats of volume management -- even as today's volume sadly goes down.

Candy Thompson

I see I'm late in realizing that Candy has been appointed to be Associate Administrator for Administration and Operations and her bio hasn't been posted yet.  I remember her 27 years ago when she and Chris Niedermayer were in Kansas City working on testing the price support software for the system/36.

For all the newbies, yes, it's true that we walked to and from Ward Parkway uphill both ways in the snow barefoot.  Those were the days. 

Animal Rights/Welfare

Extension.org has a series of posts in this area.  Here's one on cages and chickens.

What Was on Their Minds in 1787?

Stumbled on an item from New Jersey in 1787.  After the NJ convention had ratified the new constitution, they adjourned to a tavern to celebrate.  "After dinner, the following toasts were drank:

1. The new constitution
2. The united states in congress.
3. The president and members of the late federal convention.
4. The governor and state of New Jersey.
5. The states of Delaware and Pennsylvania.
6. May the independence of the union, reared on the basis of the new constitution, be perpetual.
7. The princes and states in alliance with the united states.
8. May the interest of the united states be ever deemed the interest of each state.
9. Religion, learning, agriculture, arts, manufactures, and commerce, in harmony and mutual subserviency to each other.
10. The memory and posterity of those who have falled in the late war.
11. May the gratitude of the American citizens be equal to the valour and patriotism of the American soldiery.
12. The daughters of America.
13. May the united states be the asylum of invaded liberty.

Volunteer [sic?] May the American drums soon beat reveille to the dawn of the new government, and tattoo to anarchy and confusion.
Ditto.  Universal liberty, justice and peace. "

Stolen From DeLong: 14th Century

"A Commonplace Book: Buying Power of 14th Century Money: "In the second half of the 14th century, a pound sterling would: (i) Support the lifestyle of a single peasant laborer for half a year, or that of a knight for a week. Or buy: (ii)( Three changes of clothing for a teenage page (underclothes not included) or (iii) Twelve pounds of sugar or (iv) A carthorse or (v) Two cows or (vi) An inexpensive bible or (vii) ten ordinary books or (viii) Rent a craftsman’s townhouse for a year or (ix) Hire a servant for six months…. It should be obvious from the above list that the conversion rate depends a great deal on what you buy…""

Stole this from Brad DeLong verbatim.  Can't wrap my head around the various conversions.  It seems a knight is worth 26 times a peasant or a servant.  That's not a bad ratio, given the relationship of the wages of modern CEO's and their lowest employees, but it would seem bad to anyone before 1970.

Industrial Farming and "Soiling Cattle"

"Industrial farming" usually includes "factory farming".  I think the usual assumption is that in the good old days, as when I grew up, dairy cattle were pastured and only recently have they been confined with the feed brought to them.  As is often the case, that assumption is wrong.  It seems in the old days "soiling cattle" was a recognized method, promoted in this Google book of 1874. Other references found by Google are earlier.

CAP

Chris Clayton at DTN reports on the EU's Common Agricultural Policy.  They're not following the Americans in moving from direct payments to crop insurance.

Gun Nuts Should Use Puritans, Not Hitler

Politico has an article where the Anti-defamation League warns against using Hitler in the context of the current debates over gun safety.  That's fine, but one does need an extreme example in any political argument, so I'll offer one: the Massachusetts Puritans.  I'm reading Bernard Bailyn's Barbarous Years which is interesting.  He observes that in the early days of the Bay Colony, when there was a raging conflict between Wheelwright and Hutchinson and the leaders of the colony (I'm sure that was covered in your history class--Anne Hutchinson being the first prominent woman protestor), the leadership took the step of confiscating all the arms possessed by the 60-70 people who supported the dissidents.

So instead of using a photo of Hitler, use one of the standard pictures of a Puritan, like John Winthrop, the man who used "city on a hill" before Ronald Reagan.