Keep It Boring

Words of wisdom from Joel Achenbach on the fiscal cliff:

That’s the blueprint for a deal: Do stuff that people can’t understand or don’t really notice. Keep it boring!

The Decline of Cursive

Saw an article on the decline of cursive writing, the sort my aunt, who was also my 2nd grade teacher, tried to teach me. Apparently since people are typing, not writing handwritten letters, we've all forgotten how to do cursive.

That's confirmed today by my personal Christmas card from the Obamas.  Barack and Michelle sign in cursive; Malia and Sasha print their names.

Just another example of change, if not of declining standards

Post Versus Times

Both newspapers had articles today on the same subjects; in both cases the Post article seemed a tad better:

Both reported the shooting death of a woman's rights advocate in an Afghanistan province. Both described previous deaths and both suggested Taliban involvement.  The Post, however, also described another possibility: the woman's male relatives might have been responsible.  No way to know for sure.

Both reported the results of an international test of 4th graders on reading and math.  US students were in the middle, below the usual suspects. Both reported that Florida was a state which volunteered to be tested as if it were a country, and its results were better than the U.S. as a whole.  The Post, however, interviewed a critic of Florida, who suggested that a policy of holding back 3rd graders who were below standards on reading had reduced the 4th grade population being tested (by a random sample) and improved the average ability.   Again, no way to know, but having the fuller picture was valuable.

Richer Is Worser

From today's Farm Policy,an article discussing Rep. Noem of SD

The Register article explained that, “Noem, now 41, said people today planning to pass a farm operation on to a family member are in ‘a much worse position than we were back then’ because of the increase in land values.
“When Noem’s dad died in 1994, an acre of land in Hamlin County in the eastern part of the state sold for $650 to $800 an acre.
“Today, some of the same land is fetching $7,000 an acre.”

Comment on Comments

Until recently there haven't been many comments on this blog. Every few days I check for comments and usually respond.  But in the last few days it looks as if the amount of spam comments has been growing. If it continues maybe I'll have to adopt a spam filter. 

A Study in the "Iron Triangle"

Shortly after being reelected, Rep. Emerson of Missouri is resigning to work for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association .

I remember, sometimes I think that's all I do is remember, when President Reagan wanted to get rid of the Rural Electrification Administration.  Didn't happen, and this helps to explain why:

NRECA represents more than 900 rural cooperative utilities in 47 states that have a combined national membership of more than 42 million customers. When the group and its members come to Capitol Hill, they’re people who know the lawmaker’s district.
That base supplies a veritable army of 2,500 to 3,000 co-op members that NRECA brings to Capitol Hill every year, outgoing NRECA CEO and former Oklahoma Rep. Glenn English said in an interview.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2012/12/jo-ann-emerson-nreca-84813.html#ixzz2EgMQpQXo

GAO Report on Pigford

Here's the link.  And the two recommendations:

We are making the following two recommendations:
• To improve the internal control design, we recommend that the Claims Administrator establish and document procedures to provide reasonable assurance of identifying claimants who obtained prior judgments on their discrimination complaints in judicial or administrative forums, including reaching agreement with USDA on the Claims Administrator’s request that USDA check its records of judicial and administrative determinations.
• To help ensure that the design operates as intended to provide reasonable assurance of identifying and denying fraudulent or otherwise invalid claims, we recommend that the parties charged with carrying out the terms of the settlement agreement continue their efforts to fully and correctly implement the remainder of the internal control design, including measures to (1) identify duplicate claims and claims submitted on behalf of the same farming operation or the same class member and (2) verify timeliness
determinations.

Raising Swine, and Not

Walt Jeffries at Sugar Mountain Farm in Vt and his family continue building their swine raising enterprise, and their own abbatoir.  Meanwhile Stonehead in Scotland just sent his last pigs off to the butcher. His problem was a smaller operation, bad luck with accidents and illness, and perhaps most of all resistance from customers.

Finnish Schools

I've generally been a quiet (on this blog) supporter of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.  The point being that while teaching to the test is a problem, we can't make progress unless we somehow measure how we're doing.  So the Bush and Obama initiatives seem better than the status quo, however many problems they have.  The idea of measuring value-added for teachers, looking at how much a class advanced during the year, rather than absolute scores also is attractive.

But then you watch this slide show on the Finnish school system and say, maybe I've got it all wrong. Or maybe it's interesting for a small homogenous country but not workable for us. Whatever is the answer, it's worth considering.

Before the Days of COLA

Back in 1950 Congressmen vied to introduce bills to raise civil service salaries.  That's documented in this Post look back at its Federal column from those days.

Also back in the day Congressmen vied to expand the coverage of Social Security and to improve its payments.

Finally back in the day Congressmen vied to enact tax cuts.

Clearly those times were different than now. How so?

• we have 79 Congresswomen, rather than nine.
• civil service salaries are indexed to inflation, removing the opportunity to pass regular salary increases as inflation raises prices.
• Social Security is indexed to inflation, removing the opportunity to pass regular benefit increases as inflation raises prices.
• income tax rates are indexed to inflation, removing the opportunity to pass regular tax cuts as inflation raises people to the next tax bracket and increases the take from income taxes.

Maybe, in consideration of the last 3, being a Representative is a less attractive job, which might explain the first item.