Super Committee and Political Theater

I have listened politely over the past couple of months to Washington-based insiders and pundits give their spin on the Super Committee plowing into uncharted territory.  

Here's my take on the situation:

Okay, there is this timeline of October 14th (passed), November 23rd, December 6th, and December 22nd.  There is the noisy chant about the super committee presenting a bill that must be voted on without any amendments.  Without the up-or-down vote on the super committee's bill there will be  "sequestration".  Well, so what?  The sequestration process is not an even-handed, across-the-board cut.  It is pre-defined surgery that hits the military budget hardest and protects (minimizes the impact) on the social entitlements.  By and large, sequestration plays into the hands of the the America-haters-- the Occupy Wall Street crowd.   

In fact, it is Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby played out live in the halls of Congress.  

The no-fight Rinos and the elite power brokers (country club Republicans)  seem to think they have the liberal progressives (Democrats and their fellow travelers) right where they want them--in a box and forced to make a decision.  Wrong again!  It's just American folklore revisited before our eyes!  The budget-busting progressives/liberals appear to be stuck to their tar baby (the sorry, collapsed economy) and begging not to be tossed into the sequestration briar patch.  

Well, hammering the military, tearing down America is exactly what the progressives appear to want.  The legislative machinery to do that is already in place in the sequestration mandate.  

Gosh, it's all theater that will be updated with a data-dump every Friday night for the next thirteen months. The American voter will suffer through the quasi-analysis by the bobble-head media.  It's a pretty sad state of affairs watching the economy go down hill and tossed over the edge of the cliff just to achieve political advantage.  

Where is the Phinehas in our country to stand up and take charge of this mess? (Numbers 25:11)

GPS & LightSquared - the Controversy

The country has a phenomenal navigation system, the GPS, that was developed by the military and has been available to the public for years.  Most of us have come to depend upon its reliable operation.  Now, there is a threat to accurate operation of the system by allowing a startup cellular phone system to transmit on a portion of the bandwidth reserved for the GPS system.

The agricultural community is alarmed at the threat posed by the operation of this new system.  Furthermore, professionals in the technical side of the business are equally upset at this change.

For the curious, it is worthwhile to examine the ownership and financial interests of this interloper into the GPS bandwidth.

• What's the economic incentive to enter this segment of the cellular market?  
• What Federal agency regulates the bandwidth, a publicly funded resource?  
• Why is the change in use given more weight than the intended use that was funded by taxpayers?
• What are the unintended consequences of forcing the existing industry to re-tool, if possible, to reduce the interference on the signal transmissions?

For some interested in the activities of the K Street lobbyists, this situation seems to demand a unified voice of opposition and inquiry into the manner in which this change in use moved through the bureaucratic maze.

Ciao!

Budget Zombie

The internet’s quick news summaries often have short teaser stories.  A few days ago ABC24 ran a brief story captioned “Gov’t claims ‘zombie’ program is reducing deficit”.  With Halloween just a few days away and the endless wrangling inside the Beltway, I was curious to read the article with the reference to "lurching along indefinitely".

The initial "zombie" story refereed to a budget gimmick and phantom savings linked to publications by the Concord Coalition and the citation of the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program (CLASS).  With the hook set, it led to even more surfing of the internet to refine these two leads.  

My first stop in the zombie-surf led me to the Concord Coalition.  Their website has explanations of “dynamic scoring” of the budget proposals and other related topics.  There is one particularly intriguing reference to legislation entitled “The Honest Budget Act”, which is sponsored by Senators Olympia Snowe and Jeff Sessions.  It does make one wonder if the existing budget process has a more catchy nick-name inside the Beltway. 

Finally, I hit pay-dirt in my second effort to find the description of a "zombie-program".  The word-picture arising from “lurching along indefinitely” is colorful and is used to describe Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program (CLASS).  

The most recent zombie story deals with the alleged gaming of the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) scoring rules. According to Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar in the AP story on October 14th, he described pulling the plug on CLASS with it’s $80-billion of faux-budget reduction.  Eliminating a lame program still has consequences because it forces other programs to take up the slack mandated by the current deficit reduction program of the 12-member super-committee.  Examining the budgetary gimmick led me to a series of articles written by Peter Suderman at the reason.com/blog.  

Mr. Suderman has been reporting (blogging) on the budget-zombie in a series of articles in Reason.com.

• On May 27, 2011, Suderman blogged about the CBO having scored the premium payments from CLASS as a $70-billion in deficit reduction.  Apparently, the rules for scoring a piece of legislation allows the analysts to ignore the future payout of “benefits” contemplated by the bill.
  
• On September 14, 2011, Suderman blogged about gaming the CBO’s scoring rules. The failure discuss the absence of financial feasibility seems troublesome, when analysts in other agencies had concluded it would take 230-million people paying into the program to make CLASS financial feasible.  The troublesome part is the U.S. workforce is a number smaller than 230-million.  Once again, the devil is in the details.  Mark Twain could probably have a field day with this set of facts and figures. 

• On October 10, 2011, Suderman blogged about the CLASS zombie and referred to other federal programs (Medicare and other “trust funds”) that are counted twice in the budget process.  The Washington Post also referred to the double-counting.

My checkbook only has three elements “in”, “out”, and “current balance”.  It would be helpful for the politicians to quit wandering in the tall grass and adopt a similar guideline for balancing the books. 

California's water and the EPA

In the 11-October-2011 digital edition of The Western Farm Press provides the agricultural community with a concise summary of a recently issued report by the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA's report is part of the regulatory requirements of the Clean Water Act.  

The Western Farm Press also provides a link to the supporting material at the EPA’s web site: :http://www.epa.gov/region09/water/tmdl/california.html.  

For the curious, there is also an opportunity to dive into related web sites related to environmental regulation:  

• State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) 

The state's website segregates the topics into groups, like groundwater, wastewater, agriculture, and more.  Besides the three that I cited there are a total of 26 topics on the quick-links at the top of the page. 

Ciao!

Farm Management Training Tool - GIS on the Farm

Interesting tools available for farm management, consulting, and rural appraisal activities include free software from a variety of providers. [Yes, I said "free".]

On the Android platform, there is OruxMap, a "free" application that can be used to create a variety of tracks and points for uploading onto GIS software platforms.  When searching for OruxMap, it is recommended that you download the English version because the author is in Spain.  It is a handy program to upload onto EveryTrail to illustrate location and rate of travel.  If you screen print, it provides quick documentation for individuals needing to document hourly billing.

The 800-pound gorilla is ESRI's ArcGIS.  In my opinion, it is largely geared to the corporate and public agency users.  The tech support has really upgraded in the last few years. With a high-speed connection, the tech support staff can reach out to your desktop and demonstrate how to do a particular manipulation of the imagery or data.

ScanControl also has recently released an application for the iPad.  The company has a number of tools that are currently used in the farm management of vineyards.   The company has an active training program to acquaint users with applied GIS programs.

Pending legislation - HR 1161 - C.A.R.E. ACT

For businesses in the wine-making industry and related service providers, this bill could dramatically impact the business economics for wineries, particularly small wineries.  It is interesting to examine the choice of names for a proposed bill and compare the stated purpose with the groups supporting the legislation.  In this case, HR 1161, the C.A.R.E. Act, is a noble acronym that for the "Community Alcohol Regulatory Effectiveness Act of 2011" and is an amendment to the legislation approved in 1913, "Webb-Kenyon Act".

Gosh, everyone wants "effective" regulation. It is curious to see beer and spirit distribution associations aligned for more regulation.  The alignment with the Neo-Prohibitionists even adds to the drama.  If this is a "support" item for the distribution business, then the obvious question is identifying the group taking the "oppose" position.  Members of the Senate and House have taken positions on this legislation.

It sure looks to me like the distributors have a economic interest in preserving the existing distribution network.  The distributors have existing warehouses, a sales-book of available product, marketing effort associated with keeping their hands on the flow of product from the winery to the consumer.  Right now, it appears the distribution community fights a brush war in each state.  With this legislation, they can confine the legal arguments to over-turn state-level regulation.  A representative of the wine industry summarized the situation:  "This bill would allow them [supporters] to work the state legislatures to pass anti-competitve bills and we [wine producers] would have no legal recourse to overturn them."

 

In my opinion, the C.A.R.E. Act will most likely have an adverse impact on the small wine-maker, which are the folks that rely heavily on direct sales to the consumer.

In recent history, HR 1161 is mostly a rehash of HR 5034 from the prior session of Congress.

Questionable legislation needs to be exposed to the glaring light of day. It would be helpful for the general economic health of small agricultural businesses to have a united front opposing legislation like HR 1161.

For reference, I have gathered documents that include the actual bill and commentaries by a number of interested parties.

USDA Specialty Crop Block Grants

The USDA released the list of Specialty Crop Block Grants for Fiscal Year 2011.  It is a state-by-state summary of the programs and the amount of funding for each grant.  It is a comprehensive list that provides insight into spending by the Federal government. 

Ciao!

Food Safety - Webinar

The Plex Online webinar provides an opportunity for introducing plant managers with the development and operation of a "Food Safety Plan".  Certainly, recent events in Colorado involving listeria bacteria in cantaloupes is fresh in every consumer's mind.  The popular press has mentioned the difficulty of tracing the resale of melons to other fresh market retailers or handling by fresh-cut processors.

The webinar addresses topics that need to be on the checklist when looking at a processing plant or a farm.   Since the main speaker for the webinar has recent experience at the FDA, the opportunity to consider regulatory over-sight will also be helpful for grasping the changing business environment.

Webinar and other online education

The daily video feed from ThinkBigWorkSmall hits on the residential market sector and particularly on the residential mortgage broker.  Many times Brian and Frank are leading the charge on issues impacting the real estate lending industry. 

 Just looking at the method or medium for distributing information, a related website, Real Estate Marbles, has several tools and training aids for setting up a blog.  The talking head is in a window in one corner and the rest of the screen is a "how to" screen showing each step. For example, here's a tutorial for setting up a blog on Real Estate Marbles.

If you miss something, just stop the video clip and restart the segment.  That's something you cannot do with a live instructor!

Ciao!