A Puff Piece for NRCS and FSA

This piece in the Huntingdon, IN paper puffs the NRCS and FSA conservation programs.

George Bush, Life Saver

A piece in the NYTimes today, showing the AIDS program GW got through Congress saved a million lives. (Didn't do well on prevention of HIV, but scored in getting treatments to the infected.) A credit to be kept in mind when trying to strike a balance sheet on our ex-President. And a reminder government can make a difference.

Dan McGlynn Makes the Headlines, or Foodies Don't Read

Obama Foodorama tears USDA up, mentioning poor Dan by name (disclosure: a former co-worker). Seems Monday was the last day for comments on the interim payment limitation regulations, Dan's name was on the document to receive comments (he's acting division chief until the Dems get their people in place), he was on vacation Thursday and Friday, and his mailbox got full.

The anger was understandable (at least, if one assumes the comments would be important in any decisions. That's not an assumption I would make, however.)

The Foodorama outburst is interesting as just another instance of the old IT rule: "When in doubt, read the [manual] instructions." The regulations.gov posting of the interim rule says: "You may submit comments by any of the following methods: E-mail: Dan.McGlynn@wdc.usda.gov. Fax: (202) 690-2130. Mail: Dan McGlynn, Acting Director, Production, Emergencies and Compliance Division, FSA, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Stop 0517, Room 4754, 1400 Independence Ave., SW., Washington, DC 20250-0517. Hand Delivery or Courier: Deliver comments to the above address. Federal eRulemaking Portal: Go to http:// www.regulations.gov. Follow the online instructions for submitting comments [emphasis added].

So it was possible for people to submit their comments, even though FSA's IT people didn't anticipate the volume of comments coming to Dan's inbox. I retain my dark suspicions of the regulations.gov website and process--I suspect it was a Bush admin add-on which never got integrated into the regulations process in the agencies, as in FSA. (Just as the Obama admin will have some ideas which get added on and not integrated into the bureaucratic process.)

American Farmers More Regimented than Brits?

By now I expect most counties have implemented their 911 program, including the assigning of street names and house numbers to farm residences. But in Britain, apparently, they resist the numbering. At least, that's my inference from this BBC story:

A new campaign is urging people in rural Denbighshire to display the names and numbers of their homes properly in order to help the emergency services. When responding to 999 calls officers and paramedics say they are often hampered because many farms and houses do not have names or numbers on them.

Just Another Transition in the Bureaucracy

Politics and bureaucracy combine as the state directors of FSA and RD, some at least, transition, as here in MN. I'd say this is fairly typical--civilized changeover, people with some political connection and connection to the bureaucracy. (Though I do remember one political appointee in DC who got drunk, maybe at the Christmas party after the election which his party lost, and hurled his furniture out the window.)

Sugar, a Program Reformers Can't Stand

One of the farm programs which gets lots of criticism is the sugar program. It protects domestic sugarcane and sugar beet growers by supporting the price of sugar and limiting the allowable imports. The program dates way back, and has survived attempts to reform it. Today FSA published the final regulations for the program through 2012.

Highway Safety

From MSNBC, a report highway deaths are the lowest since 1961 (when population was probably 170,000,000 and I suspect we drove less per person:

The recession and $4 per gallon gas meant people drove less to save more. Experts also cited record high seat belt use, tighter enforcement of drunken driving laws and the work of advocacy groups that encourage safer driving habits.

Safety is the interplay of many factors, most of which are ignored in the piece. As an ex-bureaucrat, I'd point to the fact government bureaucrats contributed to the following:

safer roads (I've only to mention NY rte 369 as an example)
safer cars (particularly seat belts and air bags)
safer drivers (better licensing rules)

The biggest contribution may have been simply educational, collecting statistics and doing crash tests. It's a long time since Robert McNamara's Ford Motors tried and failed to sell safety to the consumer.

Of course, I don't want to go overboard on crediting bureaucrats; the fact remains that at least 85 percent of American drivers are above average.

Once upon a time:

From Charles Reich's memories of his 1950's law work:

[What] I remember best was proofreading. Stock and bond certificates had to be perfect. Much of their text was printed in tiny type. Often the printing was on a tight schedule and had to be completed at Ad Press late at night.

The proofreader's job was a serious responsibility. No one was too high up for this task. Mr. Swatland seemed to relish doing this himself before any document left the office, no matter how many other lawyers had already given their approval. For the associates, proofreading was a two-person job, with one reading aloud every syllable, capital letter and punctuation mark, so that the reading sounded like a special language: "This Debenture, two initial caps, com," and so forth.

I remember this as well. When you don't have word processing equipment that channels your writing into patterns and formats, when you have to deal with carbon paper for copies and white out for corrections, when you don't have a spellchecker, and when you have to retype each version from scratch, proofing becomes a priority.

Government Stimulus Works

A NYTimes piece on Gov. Bobby Jindal's Louisiana, Jindal being a spokesman for the idea that government stimulus spending is ineffective, in today's papers. It notes the unemployment rate in LA is below the national average. A tribute to Jindal's economic philosophy? No, a reflection of the Federal dollars flowing to LA post-Katrina.

$200 for a Bat?

We're not in the 20th century anymore. (That was a price I noted for a softball bat in a advertising circular--I assume the bat's aluminum, not the wood of my childhood.)