Snooping in Passport Files

Read somewhere that smart op-ed writers polish up their piece independent of the news, then wait for some event to happen that they can piggyback on, tweaking the piece slightly. As I said, smart.

But I'm not that smart, so the flap over passport files leaves me wishing I was.

From what little I know and have watched, it seems that the cable channels are misstating the facts when they mention "flags"--the State Department system was set up to flag when the files of certain persons were accessed, but it wasn't smart enough to know whether the access was inappropriate. I'm glad we've advanced that far, but sorry we haven't taken another step--set up the system to email the passport holder when someone accesses it. (That's one of my hobbyhorses.)

As for the immediate flap, I'd guess the instances are cases of curiosity gone astray. And it surprises me not at all that the accesses weren't reported up the line. It's just not the way things work. When State put in the system that would show accesses, I bet no one did a trial run to establish how the flags would be handled. At best, the high muckety-mucks were told--hey, remember that flap over Clinton's files in 92, well now we've got a new improved automated system that will flag such accesses. And the HMM's said: "great job", and went on to something more seemingly important.

Rules on Blogging, Per the Times [Updated]

I was raised to view the NYTimes as the authority, so I may adopt the philosophy in their article today on blogging:

Just post it already! The hurdle that stops many would-be bloggers is fear of clicking the “Publish” button. Xeni Jardin, who juggles blogging at the quirky alternative-news site BoingBoing.net with a career as a freelance journalist for NPR, Wired magazine and others, resists the urge to polish her blog prose the way she would a radio script. “Don’t bottle up your ideas forever believing you have to hit the same kind of mature, complete, perfect point as you would with a magazine or newspaper article,” she says. “Blogs are always in progress.” Boing Boing’s bloggers are known for going back to posts to update them, adding new information and striking out factual errors.

E-Government Isn't Gaining Support

This article says the USDA home page gets low satisfaction marks, compared to other government sites, which also are declining in their evaluation.

I'm not surprised, although the page has certainly improved over the years. I don't know all the problems. Partially, I suspect it's because USDA and its customers had a 100+ year history of how to relate and the Internet is very different. Or, more accurately, each USDA agency has its own customers and its own history and its own pattern for dealing with the customers. In some cases the dealing is partially mediated by state agencies (consider nutrition programs) or by private companies (consider crop insurance).

I'd bet (something, but not a lot) that USDA and most other government agencies don't have much feedback on what's working for them and what's not, at least not compared to sites that rely on advertising for finances.

And no one knows what potential uses are ignored. For example, look at what's available on-line for school lunch authorization. FNS seems to have just put their document package on-line. Is there a missed opportunity to have the forms fillable on line? (That's available from other agencies.) But how many school lunch recipients would really fill it in on-line--probably not many. But I'd guess the Secretary of Agriculture has no one looking at statistics to identify the best places to put his Internet assets.

I Find the Nation's Ehrenreich To Be Nutty

To undermine my liberal credentials, I find this Nation article by Barbara Ehrenreich to be deeply nutty--to wit, Hillary Clinton is part of a secretive conservative "Family" of religious people, almost a "cult" that has been and continues to be fascinated by Adolf Hitler. Ehrenbach ends:

" Obama has given a beautiful speech on race and his affiliation with the Trinity United Church of Christ. Now it's up to Clinton to explain--or, better yet, renounce--her long-standing connection with the fascist-leaning Family."

I hasten to admit that I've no facts with which to counter the article. It sounds similar to the conspiracy theories woven around Opus Dei. Call me naive, but I believe in no conspiracies, of either right or left.

Playing Games Again

I'm not expert, but I think the Congressional Budget Office just released their "scoring" of the farm bill. Here's the paragraph in which they delineate the major changes.

This estimate assumes H.R. 2419 would be modified to: have an effective date
of October 1, 2008, for most changes to nutrition programs (title IV),
authorize Value-Added Marketing Grants (section 6027) for five years instead
of six, make federal purchases of bio-based products (section 9002)
mandatory, require the target ratio of crop insurance premiums to indemnities
to equal 1.0 (title X), and apply the specified change in the percentage for
corporate estimated payments (section 13003) to the new, current-law
percentage.

I don't understand some of them, but clearly the first item says that nutrition (i.e., food stamp enhancements wouldn't take effect in FY 2008) and it pulls a "Bush" by cutting the authorization of grants by 1 year. (I say a "Bush" because that's how the Reps got a tax cut bill scored--make the tax cuts effective for 9 of the 10 year scoring period and "assume" that Congress would allow the tax law to revert back in the 10th. In this case "assume" does mean--make an "ass" of "u" and "me".)

Bureaucrat Blogger Bites the Dust

British blogging bureaucrat bites at Brown, bangs at boss, suffers backlash and suspension.

Let's Nationalize an Industry

My reputation as a liberal might be shaky, given some of my posts (those I've posted, and even more the ones I drafted but didn't complete). So let me redeem it by proposing a good old-fashioned nationalization. (For those too young to remember, "nationalization" is when the government takes over a corporation or an industry. Britain just nationalized Northern Rock (a bank) rather than let it go under.)

I'm prompted by this article, on loss of individual data. The reality is you won't have 100 percent compliance with any rule about protecting personal data, whether by government agencies or corporations. It just won't happen until the hard drive manufacturers and database vendors get together and use Moore's law (increasing efficiency of electronics) to deliver hardware/software packages that automatically encrypt all data. That is, until data protection becomes automatic and not something people have to decide to do.

So, what the government should do is nationalize Lifelock.com, and its competitors. See this post. Much of what lifelock.com does is to build on existing government stuff--FTC.gov mostly. Assuming the service works, I'd have the government provide the coverage to everyone. If it's the government's job to provide for national security, cushion the blows of unemployment, provide a currency, etc. etc., I'd also make it responsible for guaranteeing against financial loss due to identity thief of SSN, name and address.

Why The Problems in Financial Markets--A Modest Proposal

Kevin Drum admitted he didn't fully understand what was going on in the financial markets. The commenters on his post tried to explain, and several did a very good job. I was particularly impressed by martin, Ethan Stock James S. MacLean and the very long one by The New York City Math Teacher.

To paraphrase some character in Dickens (Micawber, maybe?): 21 house buyers and 20 houses--result is housing boom and prosperity for all; 19 house buyers and 20 houses--result is housing crash and recession.

So, a modest proposal (tip of hat to Dean Swift). Congress passes legislation granting green cards to everyone currently in the country. That permits a bunch more people to buy houses, which revives the housing market and relieves most of the pressure on financial markets.

Definition of a Farmer--Collin Peterson

Rep. Peterson wants to change the definition of a "farmer" according to this piece:

DTN Political Correspondent Jerry Hagstrom reported yesterday that, “House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn., said this week he wants the new farm bill to raise the dollar value in sales a farmer needs to be included in the Census of Agriculture, and he wants to save money by ending crop subsidies to landowners and farmers with fewer than 20 acres that qualify for government payments.

It would be logical to index the baseline (currently $1,000) for inflation. And it's hard to see someone who sells under $1,000 as a "farmer". We naturally think of a "farmer" as someone who works full-time at that occupation. There are "actors" who mostly work as waiters in NY or other interim occupations. And there are "writers" who earn nothing by their writing (although I think IRS requires you earn something to claim a business office deducation). But a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher is mostly a full-time job.

While it's a nice concept, I doubt Rep. Peterson will get very far. The nature of political argument is that you always use the statistic that seems to support your case. That might be one of the laws of politics.

Crab Antics in India

The NY Times has an interesting article on a man (an economist who's studied remittances by immigrants) who made it from a small village in India to the World Bank, and is returning to his home village (the native language has no script) for a visit. To quote:

Back in Sindhekela for the first time in three years, Mr. Ratha went from being a migration expert to mere migrant again, with the attendant tensions. He was annoyed that the money he sent his father for medical treatment went to a relative’s wedding. His father was annoyed that Mr. Ratha refused to honor his caste by wearing a sacred thread.

Father and son had long wrangled over the house that Mr. Ratha had built as a gift. The son is proud of the big master bedroom. His father finds its size off-putting and sleeps on a living room cot.

Mr. Ratha gave the village high school a new classroom, which he intended as a science hall. The state never sent the equipment, and the room houses some aging computers of uncertain utility.

Mr. Ratha, who named the building for his long-deceased mother, professes no donor’s remorse. “The building has served a great purpose,” he said.

He does worry that his generosity may have hurt his half-brother, Tarun, who spent the money on gadgets and a motorcycle and did not finish high school. At 23, he is unemployed and the family blames remittance dependency. “I think it has affected his drive in a negative way,” Mr. Ratha said.

At the same time, his sister Rina said that without his support she would not have earned her degrees or married an architect. “Whatever I am, I am because of him,” she said of Mr. Ratha.

The headmaster wanted another classroom. A neighbor needed medical care. Mr. Ratha needed no reminder that his 9-year-old’s tuition at a Washington private school, $26,000, would support 65 villagers for a year.

Still, he was surprised at the recent progress that Sindhekela had made. The road had been widened and partly paved. Three cellphone towers rose overhead, and the children all wore shoes. In a village once thick with beggars, he saw only one.

There were a variety of possible explanations, including an irrigation project that expanded local harvests. It was no surprise that Mr. Ratha emphasized another: India’s vast internal migration, which was luring villagers to distant cities and bringing rupees home.

You see the familiar discrepancy between what the locals want and what the rational outsider (i.e., bureaucrat) wants--as with the half-brother the locals often want immediate gratification.

The thing that struck me--the reactions to his remittances share features with those an anthropologist saw on a Caribbean island (wrote a book called "Crab Antics") and which have been reported in the inner city by Jason DeParle and others. That is, one's relatives, friends, and neighbors always have expectations of any success. It's like a tax and friends are more efficient collectors than the official tax collector. As such it may discourage initiative.