A Cloud on FSA Computers

From today's Post--Obama doesn't have the votes in the Senate for the stimulus package, so Sens. Collins and Nelson (NE) are trying to fix it, by cuts:

Among the items that the Collins-Nelson initiative is targeting: $1.1 billion for comparative medical research, $350 million for Agriculture Department computers, $75 million to discourage smoking, $20 million in Interior Department funding, $400 million for HIV screening and $650 million for wildlife management.

[Updated} See this Government Executive piece as well.

Definition of a "Family Farm"

A post at Obamafoodorma on Chuck Hassebrouck's quest to serve in the USDA discusses the National Farmers Union and reads NFU out of the left, including:

Well, it's become a House Divided, as the definition of what, exactly, a family farm is has come under increasing debate. We're talking economies of scale here: A 10,000 acre "family-owned farm" is profoundly different in its capitalization and where it sells crops, in the use of genetically engineered crops, machines, animal confinement, and energy than is, say, a three/four-hundred-acre family farm. A 10,000 acre family farm, despite being "owned" on paper by a single family, is actually Big Ag, when you parse it. NFU, under Buis's leadership, has increasingly leaned towards protecting the interests of huge family farms (thus protecting the interests of Big Ag), toward commodity programs, and has foregone its progressive history.

IMO a family farm is defined as no more than 40 acres of cropland, owned by one family, and operated by one family, with minimal hired help and contracted services (like baling hay), located in upstate NY. More seriously, while a 10,000 acre farm is industrial agriculture, I could conceive it being a family farm, as in owned and operated by one nuclear family, or the families of two siblings.

Iraq Needed Bureaucrats

There was a C-Span broadcast yesterday of a hearing by an Iraq/Afghanistan contracting commission with the IG, Mr. Bowen and staff., tied to the book: "Hard Lessons". One of the interesting questions, perhaps from the former comptroller of the Pentagon, was about "absorptive capacity", whether Iraq had the bureaucratic infrastructure to absorb the $18 billion, or $25 billion, or whatever amounts were targeted for the country. Bowen said: "no", maybe $5 billion. Point--you need bureaucrats, you need a banking system (which Iraq didn't have, so they hauled cash around), in order to spend money.

But What About Battleaxe?

Good news for the animal lovers among us--British researchers find that cows with names give more milk. (Hat Tip: Freakonomics). It's the sort of warm idea which pleases everyone--images of farmers stroking the cow's nose, before sitting down to milk her. Actually, I suspect it's an artifact: dairies with lots of cows can't give names, dairies with few cows can. And the only way a small dairy can survive is to pick the most productive cows.

Then again, sometimes animals earn names. (I wonder whether the piglets in this story got named, other than the expletives I'm sure Stonehead surpressed in writing it.) Which all reminds me of a cow we had named "Battleaxe". As one might expect, she didn't have a pleasant personality, nor was she particularly productive, but dad endured her for a few years, years which saw him educate his son in profanity.

Football Players Are Too Big

Parts of last night's Superbowl were great. But I took a look at the rosters for each team--if I'm right there was only one lineman who weighed less than 300 pounds. That's a lot.

How about imposing a team weight limit--say set the cap at 95 percent of the weight of the average NFL team? Then you'd have judgment calls--do you keep your 350 pound nose tackle and cut your 280 pound middle linebacker or vice versa?

Just a thought. (The Ivy schools have a lightweight football league.)

Those Germans Loved Their Beer

Here's a map showing the saloons/bars in a German area of NYC (the eleventh ward) in 1885. It leaves me with a puzzle--according to the story Germans were good drinkers (i.e., orderly) in NYC, yet my mother, born of German parents in NYC (they moved to upstate NY farm shortly after) was death on alcohol.

Bureaucrats Are Not Liberals, or They Don't Listen to Radio

A small piece in today's Post mentions the reprogramming of a radio station--dropping its liberal programs. It was the last liberal commercial station in the DC area and its last ratings were too small to measure.

ACRE and Bureaucracy

An excerpt from a discussion of the ACRE program at DTN (subscription required):

I think the primary concern with ACRE is the administrative burden. Proving yields and keeping records straight at the FSA office could be a Herculean effort even for a 1,000 acre farm. And who wants to share all that proprietary information. And is there some ridiculous cross compliance between landowners? So if one little old lady bows out, your work is in vain?

Notice EQUIP with Tier 1, 2, 3 funding failed to launch for the same bureaucratic reasons. It just plain disappeared.

Maybe FSA finally did it, they developed a program so complex that even they don't understand it!

Comments:

• note that these days a 1,000 acre farm leaps to the tongue as an example of a small farm. Just a generation ago Jane Smiley wrote her novel of that title as an example of a large farm, a kingdom even (she based her plot on King Lear).
• several comments to the post, all interesting, a couple on the challenge to FSA. Some confusion evident, and these are farmers who presumably should be the best informed. That's the FSA educational problem (although Illinois extension is sharing the burden, apparently). [Updated link]
  
• an observation about the intra-state differences in climate in ND, which makes the program work better for some farmers than others.
  

Sec. 1619 in Kansas

Yes, we're in Kansas, via EWG.org, and the Salina paper has a long article on the problems the Sec. 1619 restriction causes for assessors.

Bypassing Bureaucratic Rules--NYPD

The Post's Book World carries a review of a book on the NY Police Department. In an example of entrepreneurship (yes, bureaucrats can be entrepreneurs just as capitalists can), it's set up a counter-intelligence shop:

Freed from the bureaucratic restraints of Washington, Cohen [ex-CIA man heading the shop] set about building his 600-person unit with astonishing speed and efficiency, infuriating former federal colleagues along the way. In no time, he had twice as many fluent Arabic speakers on his staff as in the entire Federal Bureau of Investigation. His agents speak some 50 languages and dialects in all, which matches the reported linguistic capabilities of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The book is: SECURING THE CITY Inside America's Best Counterterror Force -- the NYPD By Christopher Dickey.

But there's also this:

"Dickey might have dug a little deeper in addressing the persistent but vague allegations in Washington that the NYPD counterterrorism unit cuts legal corners and that some of its methods are unconstitutional. "They do stuff that would get us arrested," says one three-letter guy."