Finally. After several years of persistence, it looks like the movement to reform the agriculture direct payments system is finally gaining some momentum. It seems that nothing short of a potential budget crisis was enough of an incentive for Congress to seriously reconsider which federal programs are truly supported by the taxpayer. Seizing upon Congress’ brief lapse into austerity, last week Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) introduced the “Reducing the Deficit through Eliminating Agriculture Direct Payment Subsidies Act of 2011” or “REAPS.”
The direct payments program has been recognized as a vehicle for government waste for some time. Direct payments are subsidies given to landowners whose property has been historically used to grow crops such as wheat, corn, and rice. However, landowners are under no obligation to actually produce crops in order to receive the subsidy. In 2006, The Washington Post ran an article which claimed that the program pays $1.3 billion to people who don’t farm at all. These sentences in particular highlight the federal government’s squandering of taxpayer money:
Some of them collect hundreds of thousands of dollars without planting a seed. Mary Anna Hudson, 87, from the River Oaks neighborhood in Houston, has received $191,000 over the past decade. For Houston surgeon Jimmy Frank Howell, the total was $490,709.
Adding insult to injury, the article was written before the 2008 Farm Bill was passed. That bill actually increased the number of subsidies to farmers by nearly $300 billion.
With a preliminary estimate of nearly $28 billion in savings, REAP is definitely a step in the right direction. The bill still has a long way to go, but it’s good to see that Congress is finally attempting to rein in the agriculture handouts. Here’s hoping that Congress not only flirts with austerity but takes some real steps to cut wasteful programs.
Have a listen here.
Tough economic times are forcing symphony orchestras across the country to cut budgets and lay off staff, and in some cases shut down entirely. Labor Policy Counsel Vinnie Vernuccio, who coauthored a recent op-ed in the New York Daily News, finds that labor unions, by resisting necessary changes and limiting organizations’ ability to adapt to hard times, are doing more harm than good for the arts.
Tech:
Researcher Says That 8% of Android Apps Are Leaking Private Information:
“Android has had its fair share of malware problems. Whenever malware are detected, Google reacts swiftly and remove them. However, according to security researcher Neil Daswani, around 8% of the apps on the Android market are leaking private user data.”
Big tech names Dell, Torvalds among Google+ early adopters:
“Part of the buzz this week about Google+ is that Google is reportedly working to lure celebrities such as Lady Gaga to its new social network service with verified accounts. Not sure if tech big shots beyond Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg count as celebrities, but the list of the technology industry’s biggest names using Google+ is on the rise.”
Google Is Closing Google Labs:
“Google Labs has been one of the most interesting things about Google. We get to try out new and crazy ideas coming out from the Google engineers, that are not yet ready for full release.”:
Global Warming / Environment / Energy:
UN security council to consider climate change peacekeeping:
“A special meeting of the United Nations security council is due to consider whether to expand its mission to keep the peace in an era of climate change.”
Insurance / Gambling:
Best in Blogs: Should Insurance Provide Free Birth Control?:
“Should insurance provide free birth control? Is the calorie count on your restaurant menu correct? And how is Michele Bachmann dealing with the stories about her migraines? A look at some of the most interesting stories on the Wall Street Journal blogs.”
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The National Security Agency (NSA) is “the Enron of the U.S. intelligence community,” according to former NSA whistle-blower Thomas Drake. He cited widespread corruption and inefficiency in a cancelled $1.2 billion surveillance and data retention program.
The project, called Trailblazer, was several hundred million dollars over-budget and months off-schedule. After NSA Director Michael Hayden admitted this to Congress in 2005, the NSA cancelled Trailblazer in 2006. However, Mr. Drake reveals that the agency was guilty of much more than it let on.
Hayden had rejected a $3 million project called Thinthread (over $1 billion less expensive than Trailblazer) that offered to collect the same data as Trailblazer. Drake attributes such a seemingly irrational choice to the self-serving intelligence community culture, “Careers are built on projects and programs. The bigger, the better the career.”
Drake described Trailblazer as “a feeding frenzy” for numerous contractors to simply take taxpayer money and provide few results. Although accountability is not a trait the government has in spades, offices with classified budgets like the NSA present an especially tough challenge for whistle-blowers like Mr. Drake. He described the NSA’s budget as “unauditable … It was very difficult to determine where most of the money was going except at a very general level.” As a result, NSA officials and their contractors found it easy to line their pockets with taxpayer money.
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As Heather MacDonald notes, California state universities still are wasting plenty of money despite dishonestly claiming to have cut spending “to the bone”:
California’s budget crisis has reduced the University of California to near-penury, claim its spokesmen. “Our campuses and the UC Office of the President already have cut to the bone,” the university system’s vice president for budget and capital resources warned earlier this month . . . Well, not exactly to the bone. Even as UC campuses jettison entire degree programs . . . one fiefdom has remained virtually sacrosanct: the diversity machine.
Not only have diversity sinecures been protected from budget cuts, their numbers are actually growing. The University of California at San Diego, for example, is creating a new full-time “vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion.” This position would augment UC San Diego’s already massive diversity apparatus, which includes the Chancellor’s Diversity Office, the associate vice chancellor for faculty equity, the assistant vice chancellor for diversity, the faculty equity advisors, the graduate diversity coordinators, the staff diversity liaison, the undergraduate student diversity liaison, the graduate student diversity liaison, the chief diversity officer, the director of development for diversity initiatives, the Office of Academic Diversity and Equal Opportunity, the Committee on Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Issues, the Committee on the Status of Women, the Campus Council on Climate, Culture and Inclusion, the Diversity Council, and the directors of the Cross-Cultural Center, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center, and the Women’s Center.
At the federal level, Obama earlier refused to accept deficit-reduction deals that would reduce the rate of increase in federal education spending, which has risen steadily under both the Bush and Obama administrations. Much federal education spending is wasted, like the $130,000 in stimulus money that was recently spent for a book that demonized white people and encouraged teachers to treat students differently based on their race.
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The proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger is drawing the usual antitrust scrutiny. Fearful competitors say the $39 billion deal will make the market less competitive. Or so they say. Over at the Daily Caller, I point out that actions speak louder than words:
[I]f Sprint is willing to devote resources to fighting the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, then it probably thinks the new post-merger company will be more competitive, not less. That cuts directly against their main argument – that the merger reduces competition.
Put yourself in Sprint’s shoes for a minute. If your competitors are making what you think is a foolish business decision, you’re not going to try to stop them. If anything, you’ll actively encourage them.
Instead, Sprint’s opposition is proof positive that it thinks the competition is about to get more formidable, not less.
Antitrust authorities, blind to that obvious fact, stand a real risk of stunting the competitive process. They should ignore competitors’ pleas for special government favors and let the merger succeed — or fail — on its own terms. Real competition happens in the market. Not in Washington.
Read the whole article here.
Over at the Scientific American magazine blogs, science writer Christie Wilcox takes on some of the mythology surrounding organic foods, including the belief (Myth #1) that organic farms don’t use pesticides and (Myth #3) that organic farming is better for the environment. I’ve been covering a lot of the same territory over the years (here and here, for example), but it’s nice to see this in a more “mainstream” publication.
A couple of highlights:
What makes organic farming different, then? It’s not the use of pesticides, it’s the origin of the pesticides used. Organic pesticides are those that are derived from natural sources and processed lightly if at all before use. This is different than the current pesticides used by conventional agriculture, which are generally synthetic. It has been assumed for years that pesticides that occur naturally (in certain plants, for example) are somehow better for us and the environment than those that have been created by man. As more research is done into their toxicity, however, this simply isn’t true, either. Many natural pesticides have been found to be potential – or serious – health risks. … Not only are organic pesticides not safe, they might actually be worse than the ones used by the conventional agriculture industry.
And this:
Even if the organic food you’re eating is from a farm which uses little to no pesticides at all, there is another problem: getting rid of pesticides doesn’t mean you’re food that is free from harmful things. Between 1990 and 2001, over 10,000 people fell ill due to foods contaminated with pathogens like E. coli, and many have organic foods to blame. That’s because organic foods tend to have higher levels of potential pathogens. One study, for example, found E. coli in produce from almost 10% of organic farms samples, but only 2% of conventional ones. The same study also found Salmonella only in samples from organic farms, though at a low prevalence rate. The reason for the higher pathogen prevalence is likely due to the use of manure instead of artificial fertilizers, as many pathogens are spread through fecal contamination.
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Tech:
Two-screen laptops: complete overkill, or completely logical:
“If you haven’t seen the photos of this laptop with two screens doing the round of the Web, take a look below. ”
Global Warming / Environment / Energy:
Start-up Electric Car Company Green Vehicles Folds, Costs City $500,000:
“Consider today’s collapse of electric car company Green Vehicles an object lesson in why it’s a bad idea for cities to invest in the risky business of start-up car companies–perhaps especially start-up electric car companies. The city of Salinas, California learned that lesson today as Green Vehicles shut its doors, costing the city more than $500,000.”
Insurance / Gambling:
Opposing US Politicians Seek Online Gambling Clarification:
“Two representatives from the opposite spectrum of the US political landscape have jointly written to the US Attorney General, asking for clarification on internet gambling laws in the country. Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid and US Senator Jon Kyl demanded that AG Eric Holder explain the department’s position on federal laws that govern online gambling in the United States. Both men, the Democrat Reid and the Republican Kyl, serve as Senate leaders.”
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Last Thursday, before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau architect Elizabeth Warren insisted that her priority was not to ban certain products, but just require better disclosure. While she refused to renounce the power the mammoth Dodd-Frank financial legislation signed into law almost a year ago gives the bureau to ban products deemed “abusive” as well as deceptive, she indicated that limiting choices should through bans or interest rate caps be a last resort.
“There’s a lot of space between banning a product and making a product clearer to consumers,” she said at the hearing as quoted by The Hill. “Let’s get out there and try some real disclosure … I believe in markets.”
But Richard Cordray, who was just nominated for the top spot at the bureau that many thought Warren would get, doesn’t subscribe to this belief. As Ohio’s attorney general, his philosophy was ban first, ask questions later. He seemed to never meet a price control, interest rate cap, or product ban he didn’t like. The former Jeopardy! champion would constantly express the belief that less intelligent beings should not be burdened with deciding what product is best for them in the marketplace.
He was a driving force in Ohio’s efforts in putting price controls interest on small, short-term loans. Ohio instituted one of the lowest interest caps in the country, driving legitimate small lenders out of the state, and Cordray would have gone even further. He championed outlawing basic fees that small-loan providers had been able to charge in the state since the ’50s.
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Back in the old days, government jobs didn’t pay very well compared to private sector jobs. But they’ve always offered better job security. For people who value not having to worry about being laid off, it can be a fair tradeoff.
Today, federal jobs tend to pay much better than comparable private sector jobs. There are other perks such as early retirement, and exceedingly generous pension and health benefits. And job security? That remains as high as ever. USA Today reports:
Death — rather than poor performance, misconduct or layoffs — is the primary threat to job security at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Small Business Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Management and Budget and a dozen other federal operations.
The federal government fired 0.55% of its workers in the budget year that ended Sept. 30 — 11,668 employees in its 2.1 million workforce. Research shows that the private sector fires about 3% of workers annually for poor performance, says John Palguta, former research chief at the federal Merit Systems Protection Board, which handles federal firing disputes.
For those interested in learning more, I recommend my colleague Iain Murray’s new book, Stealing You Blind.
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