White House Wheat

This year the White House garden has some wheat growing, planted this spring.  It puzzles me, because I've always thought of spring wheat as growing further north, but I guess they know what they're doing.  They've planted it in rows, rather than broadcast.  Again, I don't know why, because motherearthnews  definitely talks of broadcasting.

If I'd ever grown wheat, I might mock them as ignorant city slickers, but I never did, so I can't and won't.

Planting the White House Garden?

Obamafoodorama reports on the planting of the White House garden.  We've had a cool, rather dry couple of months which has delayed everything, particularly the cherry blossoms. 

In our garden we got the peas and lettuce, etc.in fairly early, though not as early as Al, who always beats us.  His peas and lettuce have been showing for a couple weeks now, while I just saw ours this morning.

Mrs. Obama is planting wheat, planning to focus on whole grain foods when it's harvested in the summer. The garden is up to 1,500 square feet, and as they have in the past, they're using seedlings, not seeds so much, which probably explains why they're slower than we are, even though their garden is probably a half zone warmer. 

No mention in the posts about whether the kids are doing any weeding--I think it's safe to say they aren't.  I'm not a parent, but I suspect it's tough to get teenagers to do anything like that.

Obama Gets Praise from GAO

The Comptroller General cited the stimulus bill as providing lessons in administration:

But the most instructive experience, he said, was implementation of the 2009 Recovery Act, doling out federal stimulus money around the country under emergency conditions while minimizing waste. “That was an example of the folks at signing ceremony walking right to the control room, with boots on the ground from the president, the vice president, the secretaries and deputy secretaries,” Werfel said. “That urgency brought out the best in accountability and opportunities for collaboration. It had us doing business differently, without cutting corners. It compressed six months down to six weeks, driving through those competing stakeholders in real time,” he said.

 I think VP Biden was in charge.  He never struck me as a good administrator, but apparently a forceful personality at the top is enough.

White House Garden

Obamafoodorama has a report on the winter harvest--cabbage and broccoli.  Given their hoop houses and the relatively warm winter we've had, the garden should be productive.  (We've had some cold spells, with lows into the teens, but neither terribly low nor prolonged.)

Benghazi

A small part of the recent report on Benghazi is that top state department management was restrictive on resources.

the report that Mr. Pickering oversaw suggested that there was a culture of “husbanding resources” at senior levels of the State Department that contributed to the security deficiencies in Benghazi. Without identifying Mr. Kennedy or other senior officials, the report said that attitude “had the effect of conditioning a few State Department managers to favor restricting the use of resources as a general orientation.”

I'm sure the Republicans who have been lambasting the Obama administration over their handling of diplomatic security and the fatal attack on our diplomats will use this as further ammunition.  What right does management have to control spending by the people in the field?

The Decline of Cursive

Saw an article on the decline of cursive writing, the sort my aunt, who was also my 2nd grade teacher, tried to teach me. Apparently since people are typing, not writing handwritten letters, we've all forgotten how to do cursive.

That's confirmed today by my personal Christmas card from the Obamas.  Barack and Michelle sign in cursive; Malia and Sasha print their names.

Just another example of change, if not of declining standards

White House Garden Gets Full Time Gardener

That's the word from Obamafoodorama.  Over the course of 3.5 years the garden has evolved considerably.  If I remember correctly it started off as more of a family project, with the idea the daughters were going to get their hands dirty.  I haven't heard that in a while, about 3.4 years in fact. 

With the garden being in the public eye there's lots more emphasis now on how it looks, which means they do a lot of swapping transplants in.  Most real gardeners don't have that room, nor that concern.  Although I remember my aunt and uncle had a terribly obnoxiously neat and pruned garden, which went with the terribly clean and organized house.  But then my aunt was the youngest daughter in a house with German parents and a mother who apparently was a bit of an obsessive.  But I digress.

A full-time gardener seems overkill for the square footage involved, but I suspect he's got other duties.  As the concerns for how the garden looks grow, the garden itself becomes less realistic.  The first year garden a tourist could view and say to herself: "mine is just as good or better" or "I could go home and do that".  I don't think a tourist could say that now, and a first-time gardener might not realize how high the hurdle has been set.

There's more emphasis on the organic plants being used, though I'm not clear that they are claiming the garden itself is organic. I believe they could, since it's now been more than 3 years since the beginning and I haven't noted any reports or inorganic fertilizer or pesticides being used. 

So the bottom line is the garden is much more a public relations thing than an Obama family thing, not that there's anything wrong with that.  Perhaps it's an indication of how hard it is to maintain a normal existence in the White House.

USDA Improving?

From an FCW piece on the mandate for departments to establish a structure for "digital governance".

The Agriculture Department, for example, has been improving and standardizing the look and feel of all the department’s websites by hosting monthly webmaster meetings. The Labor Department is building a knowledge management program that integrates data from its 25 agencies and call centers, including answers to the most frequently asked questions, with the aim of building a cohesive customer experience.

Thanksgiving has made me cynical: how is "digital governance" different from "e-government" which was in turn different from  "IT management" which was in turn different from "ADP operations"?

The Distraction of Politics

Election day tomorrow.  I'm voting for Obama, Kaine (Senate) and Connelly (House).  Does it make a difference?  From the perspective of 71 years, and probably 64 or so following politics (don't ask why the early interest) I'd say it does and it doesn't. The bottom line is that the country is like a big ocean liner with lots of momentum and we tend to overestimate the influence of our elected officials.  It's rather like ASCS/FSA, very hard to make significant changes in the culture and organization.  

Early Voting: the Evolution of the Ground Game

I'm down in the records as a reliable Democratic vote.  (Read The Victory Lab for an interesting take on how well the experts can track and manipulate such data.)  So usually I get a call during Election Day to be sure I've voted, perhaps a call or two before to be sure I'm planning to vote.  This year for the first time I got a call nudging me to early vote.  Virginia's rules on early voting are more restrictive than other states, though there are enough exceptions that I could perhaps fit through one of them. The advantage of early voting for the campaign is they'll know when I've voted (that's a public record), so they can scratch me off their list and focus their efforts on others.

That logic and effort is sort of reflected in this Mark Halprin piece on Obama's ground game (hat tip Volokh Conspiracy) and this Molly Ball piece in Atlantic.

[Updated with the last link.]

No Enthusiasm, No Road Signs, in This Election

There was a post on Powerline a while back elevating the comments of people from Virginia.  The basic message was that the enthusiasm for Obama was way down, because they didn't see the number of signs they remembered from 2008. 

That's quite possible, but there's two points: a comparison of the number of signs between Sept 15, 2012 and Nov. 1, 2008 is automatically going to favor 2008, and, at least for Fairfax county, there's been a change in the lwa, as explained in this Reston Patch post.

Two Word Review of Little America

Mr. Chandrasekaran has written another book, Little America, on the war in Afghanistan, particularly since Obama was elected.  His first, Emerald City, was well-reviewed.

My review is simple: "oh sh*t", repeat at least once for each chapter.

[Updated: For a more considered reaction, see this from Foreign Policy ]

The Weather Gods Don't Like Obama

Apparently the heat and drought reduced our GDP growth this summer because of reduced agricultural production, just as our warm weather reduced it last winter because of lower usage of energy for heating.   Strange.

[Update: see Prof Roberts at Greed, Green, and Grain on the reduction in GDP.]

The "Makers" and the "Takers": White House Bees

There's no better evidence for the truth of Gov. Romney's position than this report from Obamafoodorama. 

It seems those "takers" in the White House have been exploiting the industrious little "makers" who inhabit the beehives on the grounds, exploiting with this predictable result:

"The beehive this year produced 175 pounds of honey, down from the very large 2011 harvest of 225 pounds. In 2009, the hive produced 143 pounds, and in 2010 it produced 184 pounds."

 In other words, the "makers" have lost their incentives so their production is dwindling away.

"Free the White House Bees"

Apparent Inconsistency: Rebecca Felton

Who was Rebecca Felton?  The first woman to serve in the US Senate.  Also "a prominent society woman; an advocate of prison reform, women's suffrage and educational modernization; and one of the few prominent women who spoke in favor of lynching."  She was from Georgia.

Mentioned in "American Tapestry, The Story of the Black, White, and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama" by Rachel Swarns, which I'm finding interesting.

How Soon We Forget

Watching the Newshour tonight Judy Woodruff suggests President Clinton faced less opposition than President Obama.  I disagree.  Clinton squeaked some stuff (taxes, gun control) through his first session with no Republican support; then he faced Newt and the Republicans.  The vehemence of the opposition to Clinton, with the suggestions of murder and drug dealing, Filegate, etc. matches the birther nonsense.

The Bidens' Net Worth

TaNehisi Coates had a post talking about meritocracy and the revolving door--big shots moving back and forth between government and private business, making money.  That spurred me to check Joe Biden's net worth, which, at least according to this, is less than mine, and less than zero.

Farmers: Why Vote for Obama?

Perhaps two reasons: to punish Republicans in the House for not moving the farm bill and because Obama seems more favorable to immigration of farm workers than the Republicans.

Not that I'm predicting any Obama victories because of this, though Harry Truman won in part because of farmer opposition to the Republican farm policy proposals.

What Difference Does a Person Make

This FCW post reports the Obama administration has 22 "rockstar innovators" coming in to help transform the government.  I wish them luck, I really do. 

But...

There's always a but. My guess is only 5-10 percent of them will have the desired impact.  They may know software and they may know people, but they probably don't know government. 

Point number one: in 90 days they're dead meat if Obama doesn't win reelection. There may be one or two who know someone in Romney's camp with sufficient pull to stay on, assuming they want to but that's all.  And everyone in the bureaucracy knows they're dead meat if Obama's polls continue to fall, so how much cooperation will they get?

Point number two: to be effective the innovator needs to hook up with someone in the bureaucracy who has some clout and is open minded about sharing credit with the innovator.  After all the innovator isn't the secretary's person, he's the president's; he's from the Innovator initiative and he's here to help. ("He" because there appear to be only 2 women in the list.) 

Point number three: during the next 90 days the bureaucracy is going to move slowly simply because of the impending election.  It takes a unique blend of chutzpah and dedication to push full steam ahead on something when it's much more interesting to spend the day checking realclearpolitics and hashing over Obama's chances in Florida or Ohio.

My bottomline--one or two of the innovators may land in the right place where their skills and personality fits with someone already there, and together they may make significant changes.  That's better than not having any changes in the next 6 months, but it's not a silver bullet.

Identity Proofing

From Regulations 

Identity proofing can be accomplished for 
customers in two ways: (1) By visiting a local registration authority 
at a USDA Service Center, or (2) through a new on-line identity 
proofing service. The new on-line identity proofing service will 
provide registrants with a more efficient mechanism to have their 
identity proofed. The on-line identity proofing requires responses to 
at least four randomly selected identity questions that are verified by 
a third party identity proofing service in an automated interface. Once 
an account is activated, customers may use the associated user ID and 
password that they created to access USDA resources that are protected 
by eAuth.

 Estimate of Burden: Public reporting burden for this collection of 
information is estimated to take eight (8) minutes to complete the self 
registration process for a Level 1 Access account. A Level 2 Access 
account registration is estimated to be completed in one hour 40 
minutes when travelling to a USDA Service Center to visit a local 
registration authority (expected to be approximately 30% of the 
registrants), or 50 minutes when using the on-line identity proofing 
service (expected to be approximately 70% of the registrants).
    Respondents: Individual USDA Customers.
    Estimated Number of Respondents: 114,841 Level 1 and 14,860 Level 2 
for an estimated total of 129,701 respondents.
    Estimated Number of Responses per Respondent: 1.
    Estimated Total Annual Burden on Respondents: 31,077 hours. 

This is from USDA's Information Collection Notice.    Some comments:  I assume USDA/OCIO will do the same sort of thing as Treasury has done with their Treasury Direct customers: ask things like what the customer's address, phone number, date of birth, years in house, etc. etc. are--that's the "third party identity proofing service" referred to.  The theory is that such data is publicly available and has been collected by the credit rating people, and other entities, so if I give answers which match that set of data, I must be me.  It makes sense to me.

I wonder how OCIO came up with the time estimates in the document.  When I did this sort of thing with Treasury it was more like 5 minutes than 50--maybe the third party service they use is less efficient than the Treasury's?  I'm assuming, perhaps wrongly, the identity proofing is only for Level 2, seems like bureaucratic overkill to require it for Level 1.

 I'm most fascinated though by the estimated number of respondents. Only 15K Level 2's, which are the people who want to do real business with FSA* online??  Elsewhere I've noted, I think, the big plans USDA/FSA has for moving to online business; I think this figure is inconsistent with those plans being successful.  Trying to construe them as favorably as possible, if I had been writing this document I would have used only the new FSA customers I anticipated over the period of the collection.  I'd assume there's some period OMB says to use for this, though usually you're talking about an annual collection, not an open-ended one.  

Finally I wonder if USDA/OCIO has run this process through a user review, as pushed by Prof. Sunstein.  If the good professor had been bureaucratically sharp, he would have changed the OMB guidance for these documents to specify the extent they were tested with users.

* I don't know that other USDA agencies use the e-Auth process.