More on Pigford--Use of Government Equipment

This article in Government Executive and this AP article give the current state of play on the issue I referred to yesterday.

Sidestepping the policy issues, the question of proper use of government equipment is interesting. When I was hired, you weren't supposed to use your telephone for personal calls. On your lunch hour you called from the pay phone. Over time that policy was relaxed--you could make and receive personal calls, provided you didn't abuse the privilege.

I'd guess that a similar evolution might have occurred with employees, their PC's and their Internet connection. Limited personal use may or may not be technically legal, but only abuse (like looking at porn) is going to attract punishment.

But the issue being cited here is the possible violation of laws against using appropriated funds to lobby Congress. The USDA has an explanation of what's allowed or not allowed here. Basically, big shots can lobby Congress, small shots can't.

However, I'm reminded of a similar flap early in my USDA career. Might have been the end of LBJ or the beginning of Nixon. The issue there was someone, perhaps the head of a state office, talked to Congress without talking to DC first. The flap resulted in a directive to everyone in the agency saying: you can't talk to Congress unless it's cleared by the office of congressional relations. A few days later they came back and said: of course, everyone has a first Amendment right to petition Congress and we didn't mean to infringe that. You just have to do it on your own time. (It's similar, in some respects, to Karl Rove having to have a separate RNC email account and Congress people having to leave their offices to solicit contributions.)

Without being a lawyer, that seems to be the key issue here. Was the email being written and distributed using government time and government money? Or not?

Tragic Teenager--What's the Meaning of This?

Courtland Milloy writes about a DC teenager:

Any kid from a crime-ridden neighborhood would deserve such a break, but Danny especially so. In 2003, at age 12, he and then-D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey were featured in an anti-violence public service video. Five of Danny's relatives had been shot and killed.

"Enough is enough," was the rallying cry. Flash-forward to April. Danny had teamed up with D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) to announce the kickoff of yet another violence-awareness program, this one featuring anti-gun posters on the sides of buses. By then, however, Danny had lost six more relatives to gun violence, a total of 11: his father, a grandfather, two uncles, two nieces and five cousins.

I suspect everyone will read into this what they wish. The futility of public outcry, the depravity of the area in which he lives, the low value put on life, the free access to guns even though they're outlawed in DC, perhaps even a question of how many people Danny's relatives have killed over the years. Regardless of all that, Danny himself deserves better, everyone deserves better.

But what strikes me, with an admittedly aging and quirky mind, is his connectedness. It seems that all these relatives live in DC (that's my assumption anyway). That seems odd to me, but yet it fits with other articles and books I've read about the inner city: people seem often to have loads of relatives and friends. It's almost tribal society, as in parts of Iraq or Afghanistan--you know a lot of people and it's important to know them--who does what, what will p**s someone off, who can help, who will hurt. It seems a far cry from some areas of suburbia, where people don't know their neighbor. Is this connectedness a part of the pathology?

Republican Stands Tall for Crop Insurance

Ever since the 1970's, Congress has been messing around--torn between two imperatives:

1. You must help your constituents when they are hurt by a natural disaster.
2. A viable crop insurance program has no place for political action.

Several times Congress (mostly Republicans, but that may just be my partisan bias at work) has loudly claimed that new legislation has got it right--farmers will have crop insurance and Congress won't pass ad hoc disaster programs. But regularly, when drought or flood or hurricane strike, and enough areas are affected, Congress passes a program. And if the new program requires reversing past commitments and undermining crop insurance, so be it.

This describes the latest version of this political two step, brought to you by John Thune, stalwart Republican Senator from South Dakota:

According to a statement from Thune's office, without the clarifying legislation, many livestock and forage producers who suffered losses would be deemed ineligible for assistance. That estimate was echoed by the Sioux Falls, S.D., Argus Leader which earlier said the original provision would cause as many as 90 percent of South Dakota's 17,000 livestock producers to be ineligible for disaster assistance. This is because USDA's Office of General Counsel determined that the supplemental appropriations bill contains language stipulating that for producers to be eligible for assistance under the livestock indemnity program, they must have participated in either the non-insured crop disaster assistance program (NAP) or a federal crop insurance pilot program.

Facts and figures. According to USDA, nationwide participation in NAP during 2005 and 2006 was less than 13 percent. Thune says the reason the low NAP participation rate that payments for losses generally amount to only $1 or $2 per acre. "It is not sound policy to exclude livestock and forage producers from disaster assistance because they chose not to participate in what many consider an ineffective program," said Thune.

Pigford Dispute

The ins and outs of employee ethics, reality, racial politics, history are all on display in the "Pigford" case (short title for a suit by black farmers against USDA charging racial discrimination in FSA programs, particularly the farm loan programs originally under the old Farmers Home Administration.

This Shreveport Times article is only the start of a wave. (Actually, Ken Cook had it yesterday but I was slow to post it.)

My Intelligent Reader(s?)

Someone, who shall be nameless, read my mind in the post Aug. 6 about proving one's intelligence. I was indeed thinking of episodes dealing with IT people in ASCS/FSA. Perhaps I'll muster the energy to get back to the topic. In the interim, I hasten to add that many of my best friends were in IT.

Remembering the Past--Eugene Robinson

One of the penalties of getting old is you're forced to have some perspective on some issues. In today's Post, Eugene Robinson opines about the threat to privacy from all of the surveillance that we are under--he ends by saying:

The text messages we send back and forth on our cellphones are similarly long-lived. And if your mobile phone communicates with the Global Positioning System, it sends information about precisely where you are. What was that again about having to work late at the office?

Who needs GPS anyway? Think of all the security cameras that record your movements every day. Use an automated teller machine, fill the gas tank, drop into a convenience store, visit the mall or walk into the lobby of an office building and chances are you've been caught on videotape.

What if someone had predicted 50 years ago that someday all this once-private information would be captured and stored? Psychiatrists would have issued a quick and definitive diagnosis: paranoia.

Of course, 50 years ago some of us were still using party lines, so the eavesdropping was not potential, but actual; not a faceless bureaucrat, but your nosy neighbor; not of who you called and when, but what you actually said. Sometimes modern technology doesn't destroy privacy, it provides it.

Barchester Towers

My wife and I started the Barchester Towers DVD (a BBC series made in 1982, based on Anthony Trollope's series of the same name). I had forgotten how funny it was. In "The Warden"--the first book and first hours of the series--Trollope manages to slam the established church, the law, the mass media of his time, and overly earnest and theoretical reformers--quite a satirical four for one performance.

And for those Harry Potter fans out there, you'll see the first incarnation of Professor Snape, whose greatest and final performance is still in the future, as a young Mr. Rickman brings Obadiah Slope to life.

How To Prove Your Intelligence

There's two ways to prove one's intelligence:

• Point out all the problems with a position or proposal, all the reasons it won't work and nothing should be done.
• Figure out how to do something, particularly something that someone else says can't be done. Do so even if it requires a Rube Goldbergian contraption.

I'm particularly fond of the second strategy myself.

My Two Selves

This article by Shankar Vedantam outlines research on our two selves. He leads off with the paradoxes, including that of Sen. Vitter with prostitutes at the same time he was pushing bills on abstinence.

Studies have found that, for some reason, an enormous mental gulf separates "cold" emotional states from "hot" emotional states. When we are not hungry or thirsty or sexually aroused, we find it difficult to understand what effects those factors can have on our behavior. Similarly, when we are excited or angry, it is difficult to think about the consequences of our behavior -- outcomes that are glaringly obvious when we are in a cold emotional state.

Rings true for me. Even though my addictions in life have dwindled, get between me and my Starbucks and I'm pure emotion. I often think the same applies for sports and politics--we become irrationally attached to our team, our positions, and can't apply reason. I know the Redskins won't reach the Super Bowl this year, but I'll still believe. I know George W. is a worthy person (but I immediately ask: "worthy of what?") I hope I'm mostly "cold" on this blog.

Bureaucracies and Their Customers

Who polices the police? Or, more broadly, how does a big bureaucracy keep all its operatives on the same page?

The short answer: they don't, at least not in a nation as big as the U.S. An example, which I ran into while working at USDA, is the US Postal Service (and which I was reminded of while reading the NASCOE negotiation notes). USPS has written directives for its local post offices, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the local postmaster in Podunk, Iowa (why do we pick on Iowa?) has read, understands, and follows it.

When you bring two big bureaucracies together, like USPS and the Farm Service Agency, you reveal discrepancies. If FSA and USPS in DC reach an understanding of what directive A means, FSA tells its field offices to do X, Y, and Z based on that understanding. But when the field office operative reaches the local postmaster, he or she may have a different understanding. Result: confusion and inefficiency.