Author Archives: TraceeCothran

Kansas farmers tried cutting water use, and guess what? They saved money.

by TraceeCothran Posted on March 8, 2018

In Sheridan County, farmers managed to slash irrigation by 20 percent without taking a punch in the wallet, according to a new economic analysis.

The wells in Sheridan County sip from the Ogallala Aquifer, an underground lake that stretches from South Dakota to Texas. It happens to be rapidly depleting.

“I’d rather irrigate 10 inches a year for 30 years than put on 30 inches for 10 years,” farmer Roch Meier told Kansas Agland. “I want it for my grandkids.”

Compared to neighbors who didn’t cut back, Sheridan farmers pumped up 23 percent less water. While they harvested 1.2 percent less than their neighbors, in the end, they had 4.3 percent higher profits.

Using less water, it turns out, just makes good business sense. It takes a lot of expensive electricity to lift tons of water up hundreds of feet through the ground. The farmers frequently checked soil moisture with electronic probes, as Circle of Blue reports. They obsessively watched weather forecasts to avoid irrigating before rain. Some switched from soy to sorghum, which requires less water. Some planted a little less corn.

If farmers in western Kansas sign on and cut water use just a bit more (25 to 35 percent), it might be enough to stabilize the aquifer.

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Kansas farmers tried cutting water use, and guess what? They saved money.

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Inflation Finally Starting to Hit Healthy Levels

by TraceeCothran Posted on March 31, 2017

Mother Jones

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It’s finally happened. The PCE measure of price inflation has breached the 2 percent barrier:

Over at the Wall Street Journal, Eric Morath comments: “That is a healthy signal for the economy, showing excess capacity and high unemployment that long held inflation near historically low levels have finally abated. Firmer inflation could give Fed policy makers leeway to consider additional interest-rate increases this year.”

That’s a refreshing change from the usual reaction of “ZOMG! Inflation is nearing 2 percent!” Nonetheless, like a broken record, I’ll point out that (a) core inflation is still under 2 percent and barely increasing at all, and (b) 2 percent is not a “target.” Not in the sense of something you should never exceed, anyway. It’s a target for average inflation, and the average since the end of the Great Recession has been 1.5 percent. More recently, the average over the past two years has been 0.8 percent. It’s going to be a while before we make up for so many years of too-low inflation.

Of course, it’s also true that the Fed’s target probably should be 3-4 percent, but that’s a post for another day.

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Inflation Finally Starting to Hit Healthy Levels

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Campaign Finance Documents Show Donald Trump’s Campaign Is in Disarray

by TraceeCothran Posted on June 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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Maybe Corey Lewandowski got out at the right time. While reporters scrambled on Monday to figure out why Trump let his campaign manager go, the campaign was preparing to release its latest campaign finance filing that looks, at least at first glance, to be devastating. It doesn’t look much better on second glance.

The first glance: Hillary Clinton’s campaign has more than 35 times the cash Trump’s does.

Here’s the second glance: Ted Cruz dropped out of the GOP primary on May 3, meaning that for the month of May, Trump was all but assured the nomination and the campaign should have been in prime fundraising mode. But it wasn’t. Even taking into account Trump’s long-stated claims that he had no interest in raising money from others (something he has reversed himself on)—filings the campaign made with the Federal Election Commission late Monday evening show that Trump simply couldn’t get any fundraising momentum going. He raised a grand total of $5.6 million from May 1 to May 31, $2.2 million of which was in the form of loans from Trump personally.

That’s very bad. It means Trump raised just $3.4 million from people other than himself. His vanquished opponent Cruz, whose campaign had melted away, raised $2.6 million over the same time period.

Trump’s fundraising has always been anemic and the campaign has always relied heavily on loans from the real estate magnate, but barely beating his defeated opponents isn’t a good look. Hillary Clinton’s campaign raised $26.3 million in May. It was only her third best fundraising month. But unlike the other top months, which came at the height of the primary against Bernie Sanders, Clinton wasn’t spending money as fast (or faster) than she could raise it. Clinton managed to bank the bulk of her May fundraising, which is how she now has $42.4 million on hand.

Trump, who spent more than he raised, has $1.2 million in cash on hand. True, Trump has always had very little cash on hand at the end of a reporting period. But this was because he was writing the checks and didn’t need to keep cash on hand. But now that Trump insists he won’t be self-financing, those low numbers are a problem. Even if Trump significantly increased his fundraising since May 31, he would have to be raising money at an almost unprecedented rate to catch up to Clinton.

It’s not just the low numbers that portend potential disaster for the GOP’s man. It’s the way he arrives at the low numbers that looks scary. There’s no real significant support from top donors—the bedrock of a strong monthly fundraising report. But the Trump campaign picked up just 133 donations that hit the maximum allowed amount of $2,700. Clinton had more donations of $2,700 on just May 17 (140) than Trump had all month, and almost 15 times as many for the entire month (1,981).

Elsewhere in Trump World things are looking just as bleak. While some of the super-PACs that have sprung up to back Trump have yet to file (and at least one major one won’t be filing any information at all until next month), the Great America PAC, which fashions itself as the only “real” Trump super-PAC, has just $501,000 in cash on hand. Compare that to the main pro-Clinton super-PAC, Priorities USA, which has nearly $52 million in cash on hand.

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Campaign Finance Documents Show Donald Trump’s Campaign Is in Disarray

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