Rep. Gingrich, Pay Attention

Here's a site which impresses me, at least on first glance. I particularly like the ability to blog about bills, though I suspect the design might not scale up to a national level. I don't know what other states have done. It's possible people in other states are ahead of this. Comparing state and local government operations, although this isn't governmentally sponsored, is something our media doesn't do well, but should

Identifying Government Employees

Government Executive reports on the progress towards having all government employees given background checks and given secure ID cards. (HSPD-12) (Goal was Oct 27, 2007 for < 15 year employees--no agency met the deadline.) The article cites Labor and Education for doing well, both using gradual rollouts.

Most Depressing News of the Day

Here
(Ralph Nader launches exploratory effort to run for President.)

Innovation in Government

Here's a Post story on the government's use of a wikipedia.

This sort of thing is needed. I remember the old SCOAP QandA's and the various bulletin board systems and mailing lists we used to have. There's limits on how much you can do with a straight up and down hierarchy--you need some other methods. A problem for us in ASCS was that technology opened up possibilities, and each innovator followed his or her own nose. Of course, when technology is changing fast, you don't want to standardize quickly.

And another problem was that this was all guerrilla stuff--top management was mostly only vaguely aware of what was going on, if that. It's possible now that wikipedia has given the "wiki" methodology enough visibility and prestige, and its experience has mapped out some parameters that this is truly a useful exercise. (Assuming that the relevant user community is all comfortable with computers, etc.)

Another Rural Program

Ran across this Federal Register document:

Household Water Well System Grant Program Announcement of
Application Deadlines and Funding

I'm no doubt being unfair by linking to it without any background--my guess is that it's funding one or two non-profits who loan money for drilling wells in God-forsaken places, but that's only a guess.

Noted in Passing--E-regulation

The No National Animal Identification System blog refers to a Federal Register document requesting public comments on a "naturally grown" label. (They don't like the proposal, nor does Sugar Mountain farm.) I took the opportunity to try out the regulations.gov process for submitting comments on regulations (said their label ought to be more like the FDA food label, rather than a certification of history).

The process worked reasonably well, though the "help" process is a little lame. I requested a report on the usage of the process--I'm betting they don't have one, but maybe I'm too cynical. We'll see.

Race, Class, and Organic

Tom Philpott notes, from his attendance at a California eco-farming conference:

And yet, sustainable-ag remains a passion limited largely to white, middle-class folks. Eco-Farm displayed a broad diversity of ages and sartorial styles. Ethnically, though, a kind of monoculture flourished. That fact was seldom mentioned; and only with a dose of self-flagellation. What was missing, though, was analysis. Why are so few non-whites drawn to small-scale farming? I never heard the question come up. Like the national food-justice movement, the California contingent has failed to open a broad and sustained conversation on food, class, and race. Indeed, the whole question was essentially relegated to a single informative session on urban farming. I think the vexations of food and class will have to be fully aired and addressed for the sustainable-food movement to move beyond niche status. But the lack of discussion at Eco-Farm doesn't mean there isn't plenty of powerful activism around food in low-income, minority-dominated areas in California. In the next days, I plan to visit and post about San Francisco's Alemany Farm and Oakland's People's Grocery.

Why doesn't it work for Latinos and African-Americans? Money. Eating local, eating organic is the sort of crunchy life-style choice that made by people who have it made. Not to say that it's only rich people, but it's people who aren't striving to make it, to put kids through college, to advance a rung up the ladder. In Thorsten Veblen's terms, it's another form of conspicuous consumption. It's the people who can afford to be skinny, to devote their life to art, who seem to gravitate to this.

John Phipps Counsels Moderation

John Phipps comments:

We're going to need another justification than "cheap food" to continue our subsidies with farm income for many growers at record levels. When disposable income stagnates with slow growth, our oft-repeated statistic about "less of their income" could shoot up significantly, revealing it is 90% about income and 10% about commodity prices.

Grain farmers are also going to have to contend with increasingly restive livestock producers.

I think payment limits and means-testing would be a strategic compromise to consider right now. Ya gotta know when to fold 'em.

Complexity in Politics

Shankar Vedantam has an article discussing research on state of the union addresses. They tend to be more complex in the first 3 years of a presidential term, and less so in the 4th year/re-election cycle. The argument is that the public likes its liquor straight and its politics simple, unmixed with qualifications or cautions. So when a president is running for office he/she keeps things simple, when governing he/she acknowledges more complexity.

It's interesting, though it fits my preconceptions a bit neatly.

Bud Light + Honda = Ivy League Economist

Maybe I should return to my alma mater--Bob Frank's Crib