How Does Your Garden Grow?

See this picture from Obama Foodorama of the White House garden. I observe they've sort of cheated by going with seedlings, rather than seeds.

What I really want to know is what are those white stones? pellets? scattered around. I can't think of anything that looks like that.

I'd also say, someone really likes their dill.

Right and Left Extremes

The right is blogging about a report from DHS, analyzing the likelihood of greater terrorism from the extreme right.

But through Steve Benen at Washington Monthly and then Greg Sargent, here's the URL for DHS analysis of some threats from the extreme left. Of note from the summary:

"It focuses on the more prominent leftwing groups within
the animal rights, environmental, and anarchist extremist movements that promote or
have conducted criminal or terrorist activities...."

It's interesting, sometimes the extreme libertarian view on the right meets the extreme anarchist view on the left. Our image of a linear continuum is an easy assumption, but often misleading.

Being Unfair to the Right

Rep. Brad Miller has the audacity and poor taste to quote Cato and Stephen Moore from back when--on the Community Reinvestment Act and subprime loans.:

The conservative Cato Institute published an article in the fall of 2000 that said CRA should stand for Community Redundancy Act. The article argued that “progress predicated on technology, financial innovation and competition — not CRA — has broadened the U.S. financial marketplace,” including lending in neighborhoods that had once been redlined. If a lender discriminated against a low-income neighborhood, “the profit motive would lead another lender to move in and fill the void.”

Proof that increased lending in low-­income neighborhoods was not the result of requirements of the CRA, the Cato article said, was that much of the lending was by “institutions outside CRA’s jurisdiction.”

I appeared with Stephen Moore on CNBC on Oct. 25, 2007. Moore is a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board and founded the Club for Growth. Moore said that legislation I introduced to protect homeowners from predatory mortgage lending would have a “negative effect on homeownership.” “Ultimately,” Moore said, “for all the talk of how evil the subprime lenders are, let’s not forget, you know, 94 percent of these subprime loans are paid on time. And subprime lenders have actually increased the rate of homeownership in America.”

I wonder--the Internet makes it easier to catch people of all stripes in inconsistencies and flip-flops over time. Will that eventually make us more careful in forming and voicing opinions?

No, I didn't think so.

New Technology

The Times blog has a post about a new cellphone/credit card system--the phone has a chip that communicates to a credit card reader. I believe recently I've also read of a cellphone/ID system, with user ids and passwords securely stored in the phone. So soon all of one's identity can be stored securely in one small device.

The only thing lacking will be a mental link--i.e. for us geezers who have senior moments, we need a device smart enough to sense when we're panicking about being unable to find it.

Newspapers and Legal Notices

So, if the newspapers go under, what will be the requirement for legal notices? (For the past year, I think notices of foreclosures have been the mainstay of the Washington Post.)

Seems to me we could do a lot better with such notices, just as we could with the Federal Register, by using current technology.

Gardening Boom?

Secretary Vilsack says here (interview while helping plant) the Obama garden may have spurred seed sales and others have speculated that the recession will cause people to save money gardening.

This may be so, but I can't see it at my community garden. The rules call for visible activity by the first week of May and usually there's only a couple plots idle by then. Right now there's a number idle. It may be the spring has been cool. Or maybe just a statistical anomaly. Or maybe Obama has all my fellow gardeners working overtime so they're too tired to dig.

Schafer on FSA Computers

According to this long interview post-Jan 20 with the former Secretary of Agriculture, FSA computers are his top concern. "An ongoing effort to get funding FSA computer revamping is just one of the issues of unfinished business when Schafer cleaned out his office Jan. 16. Security for the inauguration was using USDA offices because they’re directly on the National Mall."

I think the article errs on one point--last I knew the Secret Service doesn't protect cabinet secretaries. Which isn't to say they don't have security personnel, they do and Newt Gingrich fussed about it 15 years ago.

NASCOE Update

The National Association of State and County Employees (NASCOE) is the employee organization for FSA. The President has a report of her meeting with Vilsack and various DC (temporary) bigshots. Most of it (all of it, actually) is inside baseball stuff, the general status of various programs and improvements, issues on the proper classification of different positions, etc.

One item of interest to me: " Plans for future of IT include a central application server which a county office user will access using a thin client. This will make the system easier to manage and upgrade. Data will be stored on a central database. " I guess, assuming broadband in all counties, the location of data has become irrelevant. Even today, we can move graphic information (GIS images) around the web fast enough to service people. Of course, by 2013 FSA ought to be getting its acreage data by download from the planters and combines which are guided by GPS.

Another thing I noted: absolutely no mention of any need to work with NRCS on computer implementation. (So much for Secretary Madigan's Info Share initiative, I guess. (That's geezer inside baseball.))

Change Is Hard for the Post

The Washington Post recently changed their weekend format, doing away with their separate Book World, moving some reviews into their weekend opinion Outlook, etc. This weekend they had a glitch, which I failed to notice yesterday, but which was evident today. Briefly put, they printed their Sunday editorials, letters to the editor, and op-eds on Saturday, and then again today. I assume both sets of pages were in the computer and the wrong one got included in the press run. Such is the nature of change and computers.

Our Inefficient Government

Nextgov has a post which shows the inefficiency of the Federal government:

The Obama administration directed agencies in February to solicit input from employees on improving government transparency, but some didn't receive the message until after the comment period ended in March, according to several workers and consultants who provided feedback.

What happens, is each department and most agencies within each department, has it's own communication system. So a message from Obama to the lowliest Federal worker has to work its way through several message chains. (In the old days, the Civil Service Commission would issue its regulations in the Federal Personnel Manual, USDA's Office of Personnel would issue its regulations, then ASCS would issue its regulations.)

So there's no way Obama can directly contact bureaucrats in the agencies. That makes for inefficiency, but it also makes for a peculiarly American safeguard of liberties. By making government confused and fractionated, we soothe our fears of some great tyranny; at least, most of us soothe those fears, but there's still the people whose fears are live (we mostly consider those as the wingnuts of left and right).