Phantom Thread

Thursday and time for another short movie review.  This week it was Phantom Thread, with my spouse's favorite  actor (excluding beefcake types), Daniel Day Lewis.  As usual, he was very good, as were the two women. The cinematography was great.  It's getting lots of nominations for awards, and good reviews from critics. Having said all that, I was rather bored.    I'd give it 2 1/2 out of 4 stars.

My reaction to the writer/director's last film with Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood, was similar.

Program Costs and Farm Bill

From Illinois extension on farm bill:

Spending on Farmers: Commodities and Crop Insurance

The main components of the support system for commodity farmers are the farm programs in Title I of the Farm Bill and crop insurance. The information from CBO in Table 1 indicates that farm programs are currently on track to spend roughly $13 billion more than forecast in 2014. At the same time, the outlays for crop insurance are expected to be $11 billion less. Chart 4 provides a comparison of the outlays as projected in 2014 with outlays as reported and updated by CBO. Again year 1 corresponds to crop year 2014 and fiscal year 2016 for farm programs, but fiscal and crop years match for crop insurance.

What's Good for the Poor Isn't Good for Native Americans?

As I noted yesterday, what's proposed for SNAP in the way of food baskets seems similar to some existing programs, most notably one for Native Americans.  Liberals are mocking the administration proposal, which is fine, but why aren't we pushing to cash out the existing program?

Infoshare: Once More Unto the Breach

Thought I was quoting The Charge of the Light Brigade, but it turns out it's Shakespeare's Henry V.

This is triggered by an FCW piece/ report on a GovExec conference, quoting  Chad Sheridan, the CIO of RMA, discussing USDA's plans to consolidate CIO's, combine mission support functions of FSA, NRCS, and RMA, and serve as the pilot for a GSA program.  See also this FCW piece.

The new website, farmers.gov, went online February 1.  They're starting small, very small, which is good.

This is what they promise:


"Check back monthly for new features, including:

Mobile-friendly service center locator
Program descriptions with an interactive requirements tool
Improved account login process for easy access to USDA accounts
Customer and mobile-friendly digital forms
Calendar of local events and program due dates
Customizable data dashboard
And much more"

Changing SNAP (Corrected)

Just posted my guess on the SNAP proposal from the Trump administration--turns out I'm wrong.  There are existing programs to distribute staple foods: 

"Search here to find product information sheets for USDA Foods available to households through the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP), and The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP). Staff who operate USDA Foods programs and participants often use this information to help prepare healthy meals. Each fact sheet includes a description of the USDA Foods product, storage tips, nutrition facts, and two recipes that use the product."

So the proposal is to expand the existing programs, not to piggyback on school lunch.  (The website even has recipes for using the staples, though the ratings on most of them are 3 stars out of 5.)

Changing SNAP (Food Stamps)

The Trump administration's budget includes a proposal to provide a portion of SNAP (food stamp) benefits to families in the form of a monthly food package of staples.

The proposal won't go anywhere--the grocers will see to that--so I'm not going to spend time on researching.  Instead, I'll offer the guess, only a guess, that within the USDA bureaucracy someone looked at the existing setup to buy and provide staples to schools (used to be government surplus commodities) and suggest piggybacking on the arrangements to expand and provide packages to families.  For anyone who wants to go further, here's the FNS link.

Cottonseed Makes It In

Cottonseed will be a program crop in the farm bill according to Keith Good.

I've lost any expertise I once had in this area, but this might be a way for the cotton people to get more federal money, without raising what we used to call the target price for cotton.  They might be trying to get around Brazil and the WTO, but that's only speculation.

The Great Blog Post Title Is:

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610229/how-to-teach-a-robot-to-screw/

(

Harshaw Rule at the Olympics

From the blog of a relative, who attends almost all Olympic games and writes about them for friends and relatives:

"A lot of people over the years have asked me how I tell which are the best Olympics. I usually tell them that a lot of things just don't go well for the first few days when 7 years of planning meet the first day of reality, but the good Olympics are the ones that spot the problems and rapidly fix them. We will see whether POCOG (PyeongChang Olympic Organizing Committee) can rise to the challenge."

(The Harshaw rule is: "you never do things right the first time".  Maybe there's a corollary: spotting the problems and rapidly fixing them is essential?)

The Great Switcheroo: Republicans

A quote:
"

Second, the Republican policy reversals are staggering:

• Members of Congress who once claimed to be committed to debt reduction would increase debt by more than $2.7 trillion in just seven weeks.
• Congressional Republicans would increase government spending by 50% more than they cut taxes two months ago.
• The self-labeled fiscal conservatives in Congress, who had once insisted that all government spending increases be offset by spending cuts, would abandon that principle.
• A party that just a few years ago proposed reforming old-age entitlement spending, the principal driver of government spending growth, would have no proposals to do so. If press reports are true, this bill may even increase Medicaid spending.
• The Republican Congressional Majority, which built last year’s balanced budget plan on deep future cuts to nondefense discretionary spending, would be supporting big increases in that spending."

Who is saying all this: Keith Hennessey, CEA under Bush.