Stains in the Oval Office?

What stains did GW leave--inquiring minds want to know?

From the Post this morning, on Obama's meeting with bankers:

""Excess is out of fashion," Obama said, according to participants in the gathering.

The president held himself up as an example, saying that he had not yet renovated the Oval Office and was still using George W. Bush's furniture, even noting the stains on the carpet. He urged the banks to show comparable "constraint and responsibility," adding that the nation had undergone a cultural shift.

Meals To Come, Same Old, Same Old

Warren Belasco has a book, Meals to Come, which reviews debates over food during the last two centuries. It has lots of facts, but I'll try a brief summary. (Looking at Amazon, I'm guessing maybe he reuses his researches in several books, but that's a guess.)

Since 1800 or so, the poles of a debate have been symbolized by Malthus, arguing current food production and patterns are doomed, the dystophia, and Condorcet, celebrating the power of reason to come up with solutions, the cornucopia of engineered and designed food systems. Different viewpoints get caught up in the systems--racism, eugenics, the cold war, futurism, science fiction, egalitarianism,

Belasco believes different events and trends tend to trigger and reinvigorate the debate over the future of food: famines and spikes in the price of food, particularly in the 19th century, demography, etc.

When debate over food flares, it's characterized by urgency (war, gloom, and doom), lots of statistics, assumptions, all leading to missed predictions.

All in all, it's a sobering reminder of how fallible we can be when we talk about something as important to us as food.

Decreasing Consumption of Corn

Dr. Pollan and other foodies decry our dependence on corn. Pollan would like us to return to more traditional foodways. In that context, here's a factoid from ERS:

From 1890 until 1920, the greatest increase in food consumption occurred with sugar, and the greatest decrease was in cornmeal. Rising prosperity led to a pronounced shift from cornmeal to wheat flour, especially in the South, and an equally important substitution of sugar for wheat flour. Sugar prices had been dropping sharply since the 1850s with the development of improved refining technology.

And again:

These trends helped increase per capita wheat product consumption in the United States for the last quarter of the 20th century.

I've said before and I'll say again, when it comes to agriculture and food, things are more complicated than any party to current debates admits.

It All Depends on How You Hold Your Tongue

I was reminded of this profound truth by Erin's photos here.

France Is a Different Country (L'Ancien Regime Still Mourned by Some)

We got rid of our Loyalists to Canada, but not so in France--an excerpt from Dirk Beauregard's post on religion:

In very traditional, and unflinching, intégriste, or fundamentalist Catholic circles, there is still a lot of nostalgia for the Ancien Régime. The 1789 Revolution is viewed very much as a cataclysm and a rupture with God and the natural order. However, the vast majority of Catholics are quite happy living within the republican scheme of things.

A Good Paragraph

John Phipps says:

What I have learned as far back as the Apple/PC beginnings is waiting for a clear winner probably isn't the best choice. If nothing else, taking the plunge generates significant practical knowledge of an emergent technology that could be a significant advantage. This happened for early personal computer users regardless of which platform they eventually ended up with.

As long as you've got some margin for error (money-wise, etc.), this works for me. Learning is always good (except when it intrudes on an old guy's routine).

In Defense of Checking With IRS

Republican members of House Ag have written to USDA objecting to the requirement that producers sign IRS forms granting FSA access to their data (see this post). From the letter:

We did offer a choice to producers. Congress allowed for a verification of income statement, prepared by a certified public accountant or another third party acceptable to you, to be submitted every three years that confirms the producer’s adjusted gross income which makes he or she eligible to receive payment.

By forcing every producer to give USDA the power to verify with the IRS information submitted by the farmer or rancher takes away this choice, unnecessarily invades privacy and contravenes the intent of Congress. We, of course, do not want ineligible producers receiving payments, but Congress provided an explicit mechanism to address the problem without involving the IRS

So why would FSA bureaucrats do differently? Basically because it's easier, more accurate, less expensive and less revealing of private data. Other than that, the Republicans' suggestion would create jobs, increasing the employment of CPA's, so no doubt FSA should scrap its plan and go with the Republican one.

Shall I explain? (Note, I don't really know what FSA is planning, but I know the sort of proposal I would take to USDA management and IRS, if I were still there.)

Very simply put:

• FSA would create a file of the tax ID's of the producers subject to the AGI limit.
• FSA would give the file to IRS.
  
• IRS would, from their data, create a file of tax ID's whose tax return shows an AGI amounts over $500,000 (or whatever is the appropriate figure). Note the actual amount wouldn't be on the file, just the fact the AGI level was exceeded.
  
• IRS would match the data on the two files, and create a return file showing the tax ID's of the matches.
• FSA would take the return file and sit down with the producers to resolve the discrepancy between their statement that their AGI was below the limit and IRS indication it was above.

That solution appeals to a DC bureaucrat--it treats everyone the same, all the work of handling people who are complying with the rules (i.e. 99 percent) is done by computers, and you only have to disturb people when there's a good possibility of a problem of fraud.

I'm not sure what appeals to a county office bureaucrat--is it easier to explain to a producer why he or she needs to sign the IRS form or why they need to get a CPA? My guess is the latter.

Far be it from me to suggest that any farmer would ever have a CPA lie, but as a taxpayer I'd sooner trust IRS's report.

It would be an interesting question to see if Pell Grants are checked with IRS. See this for required documents

Obesity and Fast Food

The Times has an article on a study which found proximity to fast food outlets was strongly correlated with obesity. It sounds impressive.

New Farmers in Nebraska

U of Nebraska has a piece on ag students possibly returning to the farm and the hurdles they face. It's interesting, but would be discouraging for the alternative ag people--the only farming option discussed is the "factory farm", or "industrial ag"--no consideration of mini-farms growing fruits and veggies.

House Ag and Implementing Conservation Programs

House Ag had a hearing with NRCS and FSA, plus the OIG and GAO types, on problems with handling conservation program payments, including this GAO report. I briefly yield to my FSA partisanship and note the following excerpts from the IG's prepared testimony.

These problems occurred because NRCS lacked federal financial accounting expertise. Until 2004, NRCS had relied on FSA employees to help account for its transactions, and had not cultivated a staff of accounting professionals. Part of this problem also has to do with how NRCS understands its mission within USDA. Many NRCS officials perceive their primary role as providing technical and scientific assistance to producers. Training employees to correctly account for its activities was not the agency’s first priority.

We found possible noncompliance issues on approximately 40 percent of the[WRP] easement sites we inspected.

I'm wondering about the background of shifting payments from FSA to NRCS--presumably the NRCS interest groups had bigger clout on Capitol Hill than the FSA interest groups.

This area is of more than passing interest to me, given my guess that NRCS will be given responsibility for Vilsack's carbon offsets (remember, you heard it here first).