Corn prices are the highest in a decade, but the Department of Agriculture continues to send subsidies totalling $1.6 billion to corn farmers who are benefitting from the ethanol boom, according to Dan Morgan in the Washington Post.

Following the death of a dozen civilians in Iraq at the hands of Blackwater employees, the truth is starting to come out – but will the U.S. government acknowledge that the system is broken? (more…)

We’re all in favor of pressure brought by the press.  And these words, from an Iraq war veteran in a damning Washington Post article authored by Sudarsan Raghavan and Tom Ricks (see the story here), make it clear that the press is doing its job.  In the end, if the media takes up this challenge, more informed pressure can be brought to bear on the Bush administration, which must urgently address the problem of private contractors in Iraq – if only to protect the latest version of its strategy. (more…)

The Inspector General of the Department of Transportation has issued a report analyzing the problem of extended in-plane delays and stranded passengers, but the report makes no recommendations about how to ease the problem.  Jeff Bailey’s report in the New York Times is here.  We find it odd that the Secretary of Transportation has time to influence decisions at the EPA but is not out front on an issue directly within her baileywick. 

When I lived in Moscow in the late 1980s, the foundation where I worked as a program officer had an office with Swedish furniture and a small kitchen with a buffet window that slid up and down like an awning.  For Moscow in those grey days, this place was positively chic. (more…)

Last year, the Department of Homeland Security created a second deputy secretary for management position.  Apparently, the workload was too great, which is possible considering that DHS has been hemorrhaging top staff since it was created.  Even after the work was split between two positions, it wasn’t enough to keep Deputy Secretary Michael P. Jackson on the job.  The Washington Post said Jackson cited "financial reasons" for his departure.  Somehow, they can never quite get the guy to say "Gosh, I just can’t make it on $168,000 per year and government health insurance and a guaranteed pension."  The Post’s blurb is here.

Health care costs in the U.S. are high in part because expensive procedures are used even when they don’t work.  So grading health care means assessing clinical practice, not just the details of  insurance models and single-payer systems.  Shannon Brownlee writes in The Washington Monthly about the one agency in the federal government devoted to the effectiveness of medical procedures, the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality.  See her story — with a proposal for a revamped agency to take on this challenge — here.

Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus of the Washington Post retrace the path of a B-52 bomber with six armed nuclear missiles that recently went undetected by Air Force authorities for 36 hours as it traveled across the United States.  The threat is not new: past internal inspections note "diminished attention" to even the most basic standards of nuclear weapons storage and monitoring, as a report obtained by the Federation of American Scientists makes clear.  See the full story here.

Iraqi officials have been pressuring U.S. authorities to rein in Blackwater and other U.S. contractors in Iraq for many months, according to a story by Sudarsan Raghavan and Steve Fainard in the Washington Post.  One Iraqi official suggested that families of Iraqi citizens killed by American private contractors should seek redress in American courts.  See the full story here.

Got a federal program you think is a waste of money?  Or one you think has helped you or your family?  You can see what kind of marks the federal government gives its own programs at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/expectmore/.  The program is a result of the Office of Management and Budget’s rating program, PART.  [with thanks to the Washington Post’s Stephen Barr]