https://5calls.org/issue/elon-doge-federal-workforce-mass-firing/
More calls to my Senators today, trying to get them to intervene in the mass firing that Musk and the Project 2025 people are engaging in.
At least Budd managed to get his voicemail inbox unclogged, so congrats to his staff for that.
«The big question for markets is whether Germany can reform the “debt brake” that limits its structural budget deficit to just 0.35% of output.
Europe’s largest economy contracted for a second straight year in 2024, with critics blaming the debt brake for years of underinvestment.»
https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2025/02/23.html?utm_source=sp_ma
«As I keep saying, the job of running a nightclub is managing plumbing disasters. Everything else is a sideline.»
Good to know, in case I decide to chuck it all and open a bar.
Another wee test post.
It might all be in the excerpt.
Which means I get to write the post twice. Sigh.
I.e., the “small family farm”.
Every time I post something about farms, somebody pops up with “my cousin runs a farm, and…”. Yes, there are a lot of racists. And, yes, #notAllFarmers, as Sarah Taber says at https://www.patreon.com/posts/why-do-farmers-122478451 (behind a paywall, but, c’mon, $2/month!). But. The “poor family farmer” that Willie Nelson and all the Band Aid people love so much doesn’t really exist any more. Even the “intermediate” folks with household income of only $62k are sitting on about three quarters of a million dollars in *non-farm* assets (i.e., other than the land and farm equipment).
I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush, but I’m guessing when someone comes up with a farmer who’s actually facing real difficulty and not just throwing a fit on Instagram, it’ll be the exception that proves the rule. And we shouldn’t be making policy based on exceptional cases. (Exceptional cases can be handled with exceptions to the policy, they don’t have to get left behind. And I’m not talking about exceptions for Trump’s people.)
Farm typology:
«The ERS farm typology groups relatively similar farms. The complete typology has eight groups, which are defined by the farm’s gross cash income, the primary occupation of the principal operator, and whether the farm is a family farm (see Updating the ERS Farm Typology, EIB-110, April 2013). The collapsed farm typology combines the seven farm typology groups into three groups:
Residence farms: Farms with less than $350,000 in gross cash farm income and where the principal operator is either retired from farming or has a primary occupation other than farming.
Intermediate farms: Farms with less than $350,000 in gross cash farm income and a principal operator whose primary occupation is farming.
Commercial farms: Farms with $350,000 or more gross cash farm income and nonfamily farms.»
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-household-well-being/glossary
Source: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/farm-household-income-and-characteristics
(This opens fine with LibreOffice. I added a little highlighting and changed column width a smidge. Heck, I’ll just attach the original file.
)
You can also find some older info here: https://web.archive.org/web/20210318081753/https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/farm-household-income-and-characteristics/ in case your friend and mine, Donald Trump (or, more likely, one of the Project 2025 people making fish soup while he plays with whatever distraction they’ve arranged for him today), has deleted this info from the ERS web site by the time you read these words.
Republicans haaaaaaaate the ERS. That’s why the last time Trump was in office (pause for incredulity), it got moved to Wichita or some such.
Interesting little tidbit. Civil contempt of court jail time is not pardonable by the President.
«If the Trump administration continues to evade court orders, Bagenstos says judges have a number of tools at their disposal. They could issue more specific orders directed toward individuals responsible for violations, or even hold them in civil contempt of court, which can include jail time, and which cannot be undone with a presidential pardon.»
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/23/trump-nih-health-medical-research
«This week, Durbin will join U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) to introduce a bill that would sunset Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in two years.»
Um… *what*? The law that lets us speak our minds online without the small, independent website we post on getting the pants sued off them?
How is that going to work, exactly?
«…it’s also pretty clear that the elected President is in the backseat of this car if he’s in the car at all.»
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/new-doge-musk-email-goes-seriously-sideways
Trump voters: is this what y’all voted for?
«NPR’s analysis found that, of its verifiable work completed so far, DOGE has cut just $2 billion in spending — less than three hundredths of a percent of last fiscal year’s federal spending.
“Think of Congress and its budget as the debt-ridden dad on the way to buy a $250,000 Ferrari on the credit card, and DOGE is the $2 off gas card he used along the way,” Riedl said. “It’s great that he saved $2 on gas, but I think his wife may be more concerned about the $250,000 car.”»
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/19/nx-s1-5302705/doge-overstates-savings-federal-contracts
(From a conservative analyst, so of course she portrays government spending as an expensive sports car. «Jessica Riedl, a senior fellow at the center-right Manhattan Institute who studies ways to cut extraneous government spending…»)
As always, follow the zeros. She has the zeros right.
Courtesy of https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bbp2b224lro3bfnzcqwwnkfo/post/3litzbc52pk2z
Here, Read This 