Earmarks and Congressional Clout

Steve Benen posted a discussion of earmarks, on which I commented.  David Farenthold had an article in the Post on the lame duck House members, who have now moved out of their fancy offices into temporary offices in the basement until the House adjourns.  I see these two paragraphs as relating to earmarks:

The departing members also remembered, fondly, their power to intercede for constituents. As lowly as a freshman is on Capitol Hill, he is a giant to a bureaucrat.
"I was surprised by the extent of power that I had," said Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao (R-La.). Cao recalled his ability to make Federal Emergency Management Agency officials help his constituents still recovering from Hurricane Katrina. "I can go into a federal agency, and people would jump."

The point being, even if earmarks are banned, a bureaucrat is still going to jump when a member of Congress contacts her. So my fear is we'll replace earmarks which are in writing and fairly transparent with less transparent meetings and letters, all of which arrive at understandings, a wink and a nod as it were. Things might be helped if Congress agreed to post all correspondence with the bureaucracy and list all meetings on their web sites.

Bureaucratic Response of the Year

Cass Sunstein to his future wife, Samatha Power, on their first date, as he recounts at the recent e-rulemaking symposium:

"And she was trying to get to know me, so she said if you could have any job at all in the world, any job you wanted -- this is kind of a date-like question, isn’t it -- what would it be? And I found out many months later she was hoping I’d say play left field for the Boston Red Sox or be backup guitar for Bruce Springsteen. And I responded with apparently a glazed look in my eye looking off into the distance and in an imaginary sunset. I said OIRA." 

Orin Kerr Reveals All

Or at least the definitive theory of legal interpretation: " That doesn’t mean I don’t have my own normative theory of constitutional interpretation. I do: It’s called the Edsel X62 HutHut 1 Theory." 

Clue: Edsel

Food Deserts

James McWilliams discusses some options on reducing obesity, including this point:

There’s plenty of evidence supporting a strong correlation between ease of access to healthy food and reduced obesity risk. Similarly, there’s proof that those with limited access to healthy food spend less on it. Causation, though, is another matter. A couple of things to consider: a) a study of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients found that participants lived an average of 1.8 miles from the nearest source of fresh produce but still traveled an average of 4.9 miles (most likely to a superstore) to buy their groceries; and b) sixty-eight percent of Americans are fat but—at the most—8 percent of us lack easy access to healthy food choices. Interpreting these points, Michele Ver Ploeg sums up their implications nicely: “Even though most Americans have fabulous access to healthy foods, on average, they eat only about half the recommended daily levels of fruits and vegetables.”

 The first sentence struck me: there seems to be a strong correlation between class/money and obesity/thinness.  Given that the U.S. tends to segregate by money, perhaps the pattern is the new suburbs are designed and built around the super supermarkets. So the rich are better able to maintain their waistlines and the poor less able to.

Framing the Issue

How issues are framed is important.  "Extending tax cuts on taxpayers under $250K" is different than "extending tax cuts on income under $250K"

As an example of how easily even liberals slip into the wrong language:, the first sentence of a Huffington Post post:

"Last week, CBS News released a poll finding that 53 percent of adults preferred to extend the Bush-era tax cuts only to those making less than $250,000, twice as many as preferred to keep the cuts for everyone."

How difficult would it be to say "... only to income of less than $250,000, twice as many preferred to keep the cuts for all income."

Whoopsie

I get home delivery of the NYTimes so it often doesn't have the results of late games.  (The Post used to, but no longer, not since the cutbacks.) So I just finished reading William Rhoden's column in the Times about how the Jets were on the way up and the Patriots on the way down, I log on and see in the news headlines--Pats 45, Jets 3.

Procrastinators, Avoid Amazon

I thought I'd pass on a warning to all my fellow procrastinators about the perils of shopping on Amazon. I've developed a habit; I often go to Amazon, find something I want, add it to my shopping cart, then get hit with an attack of the "slows", as I think Lincoln said about McClellan. Ultimately I log off without paying for the item. Which means, of course, that the item remains in the shopping cart.  And, it turns out, when I come back and check the cart, the item is still there, tempting in all its glory.

Tempting, that is, except in the interim Amazon has figured me out.  Mr. Bezos says to himself: Harshaw is already emotionally committed to buying this item, he just is hesitating over pulling the trigger. Let's boost the price a bit, 10 percent or so, and see if he still goes through with the purchase. And guess what, as often as not Mr. Bezos is right and I pay a penalty for procrastinating.

Wrongest Sentence of the Day

From Ta Na-hesi Coates: "The people" is not a synonym for "all those who agree with me."

At least as a description of how "the people" is used, this is 100 percent wrong.

Clause of the Day, Dec. 6

"If Congress does not extend the Bush-era tax cuts for the highest income levels, a typical worker who earns a $1 million bonus would pay $40,000 to $50,000 more in taxes next year than this year, depending on base salary.[emphasis added, from a NYTimes article on Wall street bonuses being moved up]

What Do Bureaucratic Leaders Do?

ProPublica has Secretary Geithner's schedule for several months on-line.

Just skimming through them, without worrying about what was hot during the time, Geithner talks a lot with Rahm Emanuel and the White House economists (Summers, Romer), talks a lot with Senators, talks a lot with foreign counterparts, and, other than staff meetings, very little with Treasury Department employees.

Why We Have Weak Government

Tyler Cowen links to an article on the possible reorganization of the DC-area Metro.

Cover Crops in Virginia

The Cotton Wife takes some pictures.

How Many Years Since WWII?

Who knew there was a commander of the German military for the US and Canada? link 

Is That the Best Ya Got?

That's my reaction to Michael Lerner's op-ed column in todays Post, suggesting to save Obama the left must run someone against him in the primaries.  His suggested candidates:

" Sens. Russ Feingold, Bernie Sanders, Barbara Mikulski or Al Franken; Reps. Joe Sestak, Maxine Waters, Raul Grijalva, Alan Grayson, Barbara Lee, Dennis Kucinich, Lois Capps, Jim Moran and Lynn Woolsey. Others include Jim McGovern, Marcy Kaptur, Jim McDermott or John Conyers. We should also consider popular figures outside of government. How about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? Why not Rachel Maddow, Bill Moyers, Susan Sarandon or the Rev. James Forbes?"

I don't see anyone there who should make Obama lose any sleep. On the other hand, I didn't think George H.W. Bush had anything to fear from Pat Buchanan either, but Pat (and later Ross Perot) deftly torpedoed the elder Bush.  The examples of Ted Kennedy in 1980 and Buchanan in 1992, not to mention Nader in 2000,  should be a sufficient caution to liberals against following Mr. Lerner's advice.  Yes, Nader was a different case, but the underlying logic is the same: go into the election united and you are likely to win, go in divided and you definitely lose.

Anthropology, A Blast

My sister took an anthropology course or two in college so I saw the books she read in her courses--like Malinowski on Magic is one I remember, presumably Margaret Mead would be another.  Off and on over the years I've happened to read a handful of other books in the field--Marvin Harris is one I remember from the 1970's and 80's. I read Respectful Insolence's blast at the American Anthropological Association's proposal to remove the word "science" from their mission statement with surprise and regret. 

I've no problem with being open to other cultures and other viewpoints. I understand anthropology often gets into description without much theory.  I've no problem with "valuing" other cultures.  But I do try to draw some lines: yes, I believe "science" in a broad sense is humanity's best method for learning and manipulating the universe; yes, I believe that some cultural practices should be beyond the pale. 

Ratification

Some thoughts from a reading of Pauline Maier's "Ratification":

• doesn't seem much concern for the right to bear arms in the discussions.  So far I think only NH mentioned it as a right.  
• VA was concerned about "arming" the militia, someone even proposed an amendment ensuring the states' right to arm their militias if the federal government failed to do so.  That suggests to me a recognition of the fact that depending on personal arms for the militia was not a consideration.
• VA's resolution of adoption included a statement that the "people of the United States" were adopting the constitution, but always had the right to change their form of government.
• opponents and proponents used whatever tactics they could to advance their cause.  For example, sometimes they delayed, sometimes they shanghaied their foes into the meeting to make a quorum.  
• as for advocates of "originalism", neither proponents nor opponent agreed on a reading of the Constitution; there were lots of variant interpretations.
• a stray thought: in one convention, I believe VA, an argument against a bill of rights was that such a bill would tend to limit rights.  By saying that A, B, and C were rights, a bill of rights would imply that X, Y, and Z were not rights.  I wonder if that's been born out over the years--I'm thinking specifically of the right of privacy.

More on Wikileaks and State Department Cables

Here's a story on the background to the Wikileaks episode, describing how the State Department linked up to the military's secure SIPRNET.  It doesn't change my previous feelings about the need to track the usage history of each person authorized to access the network.

As a side note, back in the day at ASCS we were on the distribution list for State department cables, or at least some subset of them. Some were "Secret", some were not.  Because I didn't have a security clearance I didn't routinely see them, but they came into the records management shop under some arrangement with the defense preparedness people in the agency.  As I write, I'm becoming aware of how foggy my memory is, or perhaps how foggy my original understanding was.  Were these cables from agricultural attaches, perhaps, and not defense related at all?  Maybe.

Republican Change I Can Support

From Politico, Boehner is changing the House Parliamentarian's office with a women's restroom.

Funny Paragraph of Dec 1: White House and Econ 101

From Brad DeLong:
"I think that one of Christie Romer's predecessors as CEA Chair, Stanford economist and Republican Mike Boskin, says it best. Being Chair of the CEA and advising all the political appointees in the White House is, he says, a lot like teaching Econ 1 at Stanford. Only at Stanford your students do their reading, pay attention, and ask deeper and more thoughtful questions."

Early Precision Agriculture?

Here's an extension report on the savings from precision agriculture from better information on the farming operation and more precise application of inputs of fertilizer, seed, pesticides, etc. which cuts the amount needed.  Coincidentally I was reading a book, I think Bill Bryson's At Home, which mentioned Jethro Tull and the invention of the seed drill, which cut the amount of seed needed from the 3 bushels used in broadcast seeding to 1 bushel in the drill.

Cover Crops

The NY Times has an article on how organic farmers combat pests. Not remarkable, except the next to last paragraph brought back a memory:

As far as weeds on organic farms, the biggest help there may also be cover crops, things like rye and fava beans. Many cover crops aren’t seeded at a high enough rate, Dr. Brennan said. “We have five times more weeds in vegetables where cover crop is the accepted rate,” he said. “If we increase the seeding rate by three times, we have virtually no weeds. That’s extremely important because organic farmers have no herbicides.”

My first boss at ASCS sent me to North Carolina for a month to see how the state and county offices operated.  I remember joining one county executive director on a drive to a local saw mill where for the first time I saw a veneer cutter.  At least that's what I'd call it: to describe it I'd say think of a pencil sharpener, except larger and instead of the blade hitting the cylinder of wood (pencil) at an angle it was parallel, so you got an a cylindrical wood shaving about 1/8" thick.  Cut the cylinder into strips and you have the materials to weave wooden garden baskets. 

Anyhow, what the director was doing was signing people up for conservation practices under the old Agricultural Conservation Program.  ASCS would share the costs of things like farm ponds and, in this case, liming fields and sowing a winter cover crop.  The Nixon administration battled with Congress trying to end this governmental subsidy program, arguing that USDA was just encouraging farmers to do things which, if economical, they should do themselves.  By the mid 70's the program got extensively changed, with liming and cover crops dropped, and eventually it was given to NRCS to run.

The director knew that some of the sawmill workers were farmers who, since it was November and the crops were in, were picking up some money by working at the sawmill. The director had an incentive: the better job he did in signing up farmers to participate, the better he looked in the eyes of the district director and state office.  And cover crops and limed fields improved agriculture in his county.

Small Dairies Reviving in NY

A reminiscence from Mr. Dubner at Freakonomics tied to a possible resurgence of small dairy plants catering to the food movement in NY.

I can't resist noting that apparently Mr. Dubner's family had a miraculous cow which gave milk 365 days a year.  (No mention of a bull.)  Traveling 10 miles to a dairy farm sounds odd to me, although I'm probably imagining that he's my age and lived in my area of upstate.  And, unless the farm had Jerseys or Ayrshires, I really doubt the 2 inches of cream on a gallon of milk.  No way, no how.

Stovepipes, Silos, and Wikileaks

Apparently the conventional wisdom  (i.e., my reading of the NYTimes today) is the State Department cables now in the news can be traced to Mr. Manning, the private who's accused of  also providing a bunch of military documents to Wikileaks.  And how was a lowly private in intelligence able to access both military and diplomatic material?  The answer seems to be after 9/11, in line with the recommendations of the 9/11 commission, there was a drive to knock down walls between bureaucratic silos.  In additon, State Department managers saw an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: by piggybacking on an existing secure intranet developed by the military they could save the costs in time and money of developing their own system (State was still stuck in a pre-Internet world with their cables) and get brownie points for sharing information.

Seems to me this doesn't show we should maintain silos and stovepipes; what it shows is good system designs need to track users and usage of data.  If my credit card company is smart enough to know when my usage is different than my historical average, and to call me it on, then government databases should know what sort of usage pattern is expected from a given job position and to raise red flags when it changes.

Two Takes on TSA

In the Times:

• David Carr views the uproar over TSA's patdowns and body scans as a media-fueled tempest in a teapot. 
• Ross Douthat uses it as the hook to build a discussion of how partisanship alters one's view of reality, reviewing controversies over the last 15 years where Dems and Reps have switched positions.

I agree with them both.

Men and Machines

Confirming what I said in a recent post about the difference in cultures::
Dana Milbank talks about Israeli security using people versus US security using machines:  their version costs about 8 times per passenger what ours does.  And the NYTimes runs a piece on the many robots being developed for our armed forces.

Organic Dairy--How to Judge

A set of bullet points from a study of organic dairy:

• The average cow on organic dairy farms provides milk through twice as many, markedly shorter lactations and lives 1.5 to 2 years longer than cows on high-production conventional dairies;
• Because cows live and produce milk longer on organic farms, milking cow replacement rates are 30% to 46% lower, reducing the feed required and wastes generated by heifers raised as replacement animals;
• Cows on organic farms require 1.8 to 2.3 breeding attempts per calf carried to term, compared to 3.5 attempts on conventional farms;
• The enhanced nutritional quality of milk from cows on forage based diets, and in particular Jersey cows, significantly reduces the volume of wastes generated on organic dairy farms; and
• The manure management systems common on most organic farms reduce manure methane emissions by 60% to 80%, and manure plus enteric methane emissions by 25% to 45%. 

I've some quibbles: how does quality of milk reduce volume of wastes? What's unique about organic manure management? (Presumably the organic dairies are small enough to spread manure on the fields, while the non-organic are too big for that?)  3.5 breeding attempts strikes me as high, particularly if we're talking actual inseminations. 

But my bigger criticism is that these don't seem to me to be the right metrics.  What would be right?  Taking a dairy-wide view over years, standardizing the units for both conventional and organic. For example, take a 10-cow dairy (i.e., 10 milkers, plus appropriate replacements) over 10 years.  What's the total feed input and its cost, what's the total output of milk, and meat over the 10 years, what's the total manure output and their related emissions?  Throw in some metrics for quality of milk (is more fat better--it used to be but maybe not now).  Once you do that comparison you can proceed to the advantages of large versus small, as in the manure issue.

John Phipps Disses Vertical Farming

No surprise here--John states the obvious, the obvious except to a few enthusiasts.

Thoughts on the Return from Farming

This is an excerpt from a farmgate post on the economics of corn in Illinois:

With the crop contributing $321 from a 151 bushel per acre yield on continuous corn and $386 from a 161 bushel yield on rotated corn, a producer has to further estimate a return to labor, management, and land. The Purdue economists estimate $20 for USDA Direct Payments.
From that income, the economists deduct about $80 for machinery replacement, about $15 for drying and handling, and about $55 for family and hired labor. Their cash rent estimate is $167 per acre, which leaves a $13 per acre earning for continuous corn and a $93 per acre earning for rotated corn. Those numbers could quickly turn negative with higher cash rent, higher fertilizer prices, seed prices, a lower marketing price, or any combination of those.

 Some random thoughts:  

• Jane Smiley wrote a book called "A Thousand Acres"; the center of which was a thousand acre farm.  That's a nice round number, and Washington bureaucrats like me prefer to deal with nice round numbers.  So assume a 1,000 acre family farm.  According to this analysis, their return is $167,000 for the land,$55,000 for labor, and maybe $15,000 profit, giving a $235,000 total cash income before taxes, of which $20,000, or 10 percent, is farm program payments.  What strikes me is this is a reaffirmation of my mother's saying of long ago: farmers would do better to sell out and put the money in the bank.  1,000 acres at $8,000 an acre is $8 million, earning 3 percent is $240,000 annual cash income before taxes.
• note the farm program payments aren't that significant in the scheme of things.  They do make the difference between whether the enterprise shows a profit or not, but farming isn't really about making "profits", as defined by accounting professors.  Farming, at least for farmers who own the land they farm, is about cash flow, the return to land and labor.

Sidenote on TSA Issues, War, Building, Education

I've noted a couple times in the hullabaloo over the TSA scanners/pat-downs a meme contrasting American approaches to European or Israeli approaches.  I think I'd summarize things this way:

• Americans tend to rely on machines, whether in airport security, in warfare, or whatever.
• Europeans tend to rely on people.

This is probably all wrong, particularly since it doesn't account for most of the world, like Japan with its robots and China with its people. But this is a rambling set of thoughts.

But I remember a conversation with a civil engineer major at college who relayed an observation by one of his professors.  It went something like: Americans tended to design big and simple structures while Europeans tended to design more complex ones.  In America building materials were always abundant while labor was expensive, so the designers had different constraints than in Europe where labor was cheap and materials were less abundant. 

In warfare, at least beginning with the Civil War, military historians theorize that we rely on the weight of material to wear down the enemy.  We don't admit it, but valor and great generalship don't play that much of a role in our history.  For those conservatives who doubt me, read James Q Wilson's "Bureaucracy", which uses German small-unit cohesion and tactics as one example of effective bureaucracy.

In education, we are awestruck by the latest innovation in technology, whether's it's filmstrips and overhead projectors back in the day, my day, or "clickers" and Powerpoint today.  Similarly, we tend to trust the technology of testing over the power of personality. 

Just thoughts.

So my impression is that Israel, for example, depends on people interviewing people, while we trust machines.  Does it follow that we don't trust "faceless bureaucrats", while maybe other societies do?

British Exceptionalism

From Ralph Luker at Cliopatria comes a hilarious video on all things British?

Thanksgiving Wishes

Hope you all enjoy Thanksgiving.

Conference Rooms and Potted Plants

Reading the Steven Rattner book on the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies/bailouts.  As he used to be a reporter, it's a well written narrative, and I'm enjoying it.  I gather it was his first experience on the inside of a governmental bureaucracy, and he has a sharp eye for how it operates. A couple of the bureaucratic touches:

• "potted plants", which is the internal name for the people who stand behind the President as he's giving comments or making an announcement.  Rattner mourns one occasion where he and his aides didn't even make that status, being pre-empted by assorted cabinet secretaries.
• conference rooms.  Early on his group had a problem locating a conference room within the Treasury Department to hold a meeting in.  He says, or implies, there were a number of such rooms in the building, but each room was the property of a different agency within the department, so identifying a free one was difficult.  If I remember this used to be the case in USDA, but somewhere towards the end of my tenure there someone at the departmental level at least created a consolidated list for secretaries to work from, if not a single person in charge of scheduling.  Such things are an example of why the first priority of any ad hoc group leader should be to grab an experienced, top-flight secretary.

The Blinkered Conservative

Scott at Powerline has a post attacking Obama's foreign policy in regard to nuclear weapons, and other issues.

Based on my recent reading about Reagan's negotiations with the Soviets, I don't think Reagan would have much problem with Obama's view, particularly his: "...I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons..."  That's precisely what the Ronald the Great wanted.

The Filibuster 35 Years Ago

Just finished slogging through Jimmy Carter's Presidential diary book. 10 years ago I might not have used "slog", but my interest in political history is waning a bit.  Towards the end of the book, in 1979, he comments in passing that Sen. Jake Garn, Republican of Utah, threatened to filibuster any legislation to permit registering women for the draft (Carter was pushing a stand-by draft registration, which eventually passed in a male-only form).  To the best of my memory that was the only mention of a filibuster in the book; there's no entry for "filibuster" in the index. 

Carter does have a complaint about his appointments being confirmed slowly.  There was a big expansion of the federal judiciary during his term, so he had 150 new vacancies to fill.  He mentions coordinating with Senators and being frustrated by their resistance to appointments of blacks and women.

Simple Solutions to the TSA Scanner Policy

I've two simple suggestions (alternatives) to offer for TSA to adopt.  They should either require passengers to go through their scanners, or through the pat-down process, or do one of the following:

• allow up to 5 percent of the passengers on a flight to go without scanning or pat-downs, provided they wear a bright yellow vest with a big question mark on it from the boarding gate, through the time they're on the plane, until they get off.  That way their fellow passengers can keep an eagle eye on them, ready to jump them if they make a suspicious move.
• allow a person to board a flight unscanned if they buy flight insurance indemnifying the airline against loss of plane and passengers against loss of life in case of a terrorist attack.  We've pretty much guarded against planes being taken over in flight to be used as weapons, so the big danger now is simply the downing of a plane. 

How Time Flies

"Twenty years ago this month, Tim Berners-Lee published his proposal for the World Wide Web."

I can't believe that.  

Pigford II Passes Senate

As reported by the Post here.  Also includes money to settle the long lasting lawsuit over BIA's handling of Indian trust funds.  I must say, given the way ASCS/FSA and BIA pass information on payments for land owned by BIA Indians, I've never been surprised at how screwed up the accounts got.  Some historian will write an interesting book on the subject because it's a place where Native American society and the market-oriented, individualistic society of the European settlers interfaces, interfaces poorly.

The Unmentionable in France

Dirk Beauregarde provides more information than some will want, on excretion in France and the UK.  Among the items:

"70% of French workers consider their toilets in the workplace « unfit for use », though 30% still use them – presumably out of necessity.
In French schools a staggering 68,3% of kids never use the loos, either for lack of paper or lack of soap."

Dairy Management Answers Back

The Post carries a letter today from the chief executive of Dairy Management, defending their position.  One point he affirms, which I thought I got from the AMS website but which wasn't clear, is:

"The Post objects that the program wastes "government authority" by being administered by the Agriculture Department. But even here, dairy farmers actually pay USDA for all its costs of administering the program. It costs taxpayers nothing, which is as it should be."

 Of course, the tobacco program ran into a public buzzsaw, which resulted in a "no net cost" program.  But that never inhibited tobacco's critics from blasting the government for "subsidizing tobacco".  Similarly, I fully expect the food movement to blast the government for subsidizing obesity by promoting cheese.

Transparency--Taking My Own Medicine

I've stated my opinion that government websites ought always to have a link to a page which would give the metrics on readership/usage, etc.  I just visited the blogger.com layout site in order to add an interactive poll to the site (I'm inspired by Ann Althouse, who is using polls regularly, albeit in her posts, not the the blog layout.)  When I did, I found blogger offers a gadget to show pageviews, so for consistency sake I felt impelled to add it to my blog. I did cheat a bit by putting it low down on the right hand column, so you'll have to scroll to get the figures, in case anyone is interested.

What Will Happen to Farm Programs?

Somehow Congress has to fund the government for the rest of the 2011 fiscal year.  The new Congress will have to appropriate money for the 2012 fiscal year.  And sometime there will be a new farm bill.  So there's lots of unknowns and I thought I'd try out offering a poll where any reader can predict the future.  The poll is in the right hand column, below the "My Blog List".  It's a little complicated--you should choose one or more program categories ("basic programs, like DFC/counter cyclical; conservation, etc.) and the amount by which they'll be cut.  My own prediction is for relatively small cuts in almost all categories.

McArdle on Chinese Farming

One visit to one farming community doesn't make an in-depth report, but McArdle's post is worth reading.  From the three crops a year, I assume it's southern China.

The Right Run Into the "War on Terror"

Dan Drezner, with whom I often agree, and Megan McArdle, with whom I sometimes agree, unite in opposing the new scanning/pat down procedures at some airports.  Kevin Drum passes on an apropo observation--this is the professional class being subjected to "government[al] humiliation".

Bottom line--people arrested for good cause, or not so good cause (i.e., driving while black) get subjected to such patdowns and none of us professional types have much problem with that.

I'm assuming the use of these scanners increasing the likelihood of detecting people with explosives in their underwear.  I'm also assuming we believe it's a good thing to keep people with explosives off airliners. People who object presumably have persuaded themselves there's no increased detection ability, or possibly they would never be so unlucky as to be on a plane with a fellow passenger who has explosives.  Or maybe they're just reacting with their emotions, and not their logic.

[Updated: Dave Weigel in Slate says the right has always resisted big government's intrusions based on protecting society; it's just 9/11 and the Bush administration which temporarily changed their tune.]

USDA Supporting Obesity?

Not so, says this study:

A careful examination of the linkages between farm policy, food prices, and obesity in the United States demonstrates that U.S. farm commodity subsidy policies have had very small effects on obesity. This finding is driven by three key factors. First, with a few exceptions, farm subsidies have relatively small and mixed impacts on prices of farm commodities in the United States. Second, the share of the cost of commodities in the cost of retail food products is small, and continues to shrink over time. Third, food consumption patterns do not change substantially in response to small changes in food prices.

I don't expect the food movement to change their views; it's very hard to correct errors.

Shifting Down a Gear--Government Management

Gov. Executive has a post on the Obama administration's management efforts.  I'm reminded of the hill near which I grew up where tractor trailors would downshift (and downshift and downshift) as they hit the grade and lost speed.  Here the issue is accountability, seeing what works and what doesn't.  It's easy to say the previous administration had lots of stuff that didn't work, not so easy to say, we've been here 2 years and some of our stuff didn't work, didn't provide value for money. It calls for a different gear.

I've seen comparisons of the health care industry and the airlines: in flying the culture has grown that pilots will report errors, because there's no stigma attached. In medicine doctors tend not to report errors, because an error can end a career, or at least raise your malpractice insurance premiums.  How do we get an atmosphere in government which allows for and reports errors, particularly with the opposition party salivating at the mouth over the prospect of holding hearings and issuing statements and running on the basis of mismanagement?

A Mysterious EWG Note

From the cotton page:

Crop totals are an estimate. In the data received by EWG for 2009, USDA does not differentiate Direct Payments or Counter-Cyclical Payments by crop as in previous years. EWG allocated the region's Direct Payments by crop for the 2009 calendar year using the proportion of that crop's Direct Payments in 2008. Number of recipients receiving Direct Payments for that crop were not estimated. Due to the way Counter Cyclical Payments are made - EWG was not able to allocate Counter Cyclical Payments to crops. Also included in the crop totals are the crop insurance premiums as reported by the USDA Risk Management Agency for that crop. The crop insurance premium is the amount of money that is calculated by USDA to make the program actuarially sound. Crop insurance premium subsidies are available at the county, state and national level.

 I don't know why the data in 2009 would differ in its coding from that in previous years.

The Importance of Bureaucracy

Via Tyler Cowan at Marginal Revolution, this interesting discussion of the gains in human development (i.e., education and health) in northern Africa, especially Tunisia.  (A blast from the past--I can remember when Habib Bourguiba was the very model of the modern post-colonial leader.)  A sentence from the post:

The French colonial legacy and its emphasis on building a strong public bureaucracy may also have played a role here.

The Grandfather Clause

Michael Kinsley has some wise words on the "grandfather clause" in budget politics. He suspects the Republicans will use it to ensure that budget cuts don't adversely affect anyone today. 

I have to note the clause is popular across the board.  After Reagan busted PATCO and as union power started to fade, there were lots of deals made with employers which included grandfather clauses.  Typically the current employees kept their benefits and salary levels, while new employees started lower with lesser benefits.  I believe that's how the UAW handled its negotiations with the automakers in the 1980's and 90's.  You can easily find other examples. 

It's a shrewd move: the current employees (or beneficiaries of a program in the case of budget fights) are the ones who have the political power; the future employees or beneficiaries may not even know their status.  When they do, as someone who might have to work longer before being eligible for social security, the issue is down the road and much harder to get excited about. 

But, as Kinsley observes, it's not fair, it's not just.

Egg Prices: the Spread Narrows

From a recent  Farm Policy:

The release added that, “Perhaps indicating the weakness in demand for cage free and organic free range eggs, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that retail organic free range eggs are being advertised this week at $2.64 per dozen, 33% less than one year ago ($4.00); cage free eggs are being advertised at $2.50 per dozen, down 14% from one year ago ($2.90); and traditional egg retail prices are up 8% compared to one year ago ($1.02).

The spreads are narrowing.  In hard times, it's hard to expect people to spend more for food.  That's particularly serious because switching to organic grain production, or cage free henhouses, requires a big investment in time for organic (3 years I think) or money for cage free. So you're asking farmers to make an investment, hoping the returns will not only cover their out-of-pocket costs when they get certified as organic or cage free, but will compensate them for the added risk.  

The (Dubious) Economics of Organic Turkeys

The Post had an article yesterday on a founder of Cisco who's using her money to subsidize an organic turkey farm in the hunt country of Virginia.  She sells a 22 pound bird for $230, sold half the 1,000 she raised last year, and lost money. The owner is a former 4-Her who vows to make her operation pay.

My first reaction was to mock her for not understanding economics, and for waste, something upon which the food movement frowns.  But perhaps a fairer assessment is this shows the weak infrastructure supporting organic meat and dairy farms and the high hurdles organic farmers have to vault in order to make a profit and survive.  How can anyone pay $10 a pound for turkey, when a reasonable bird is one dollar a pound?  The only way is to sell to someone like the Inn at Little Washington, which is a famous and highly rated restaurant, and very, very pricey.  It's the sort of place an ordinary bureaucrat might go once a decade for some special occasion if the bureaucrat was very into taste and class. You couldn't hope to sell turkeys for that at Whole Foods, or even a farmer's market.  (Remember, this is a geezer speaking, and I'm out of touch.)