Failure

From Nextgov:

Justice has been trying to develop a departmentwide case management system for the past 28 years. In 1982, it awarded a $9.6 million contract to Inslaw Inc., a small Washington company, to deploy a case management system called Promis at 22 U.S. attorneys offices. The contract became embroiled in a series of controversies, including allegations by the company that Justice appropriated its software without payment and provided it to Israeli intelligence agencies. Justice then withheld payment to Inslaw, which filed for bankruptcy in 1985.

It's another chapter in failed IT projects. ASCS/FSA at least did one reasonably successful project. (At least us DC bureaucrats thought it was, some county office people thought we had our heads in a dark place.)

Pardon a Geezer

From Amazon, a terabyte hard drive:

List Price:	$2,064.00
Price:	$89.99 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Details
You Save:	$1,974.01 (96%)

[Updated: Not sure where they got the start price for the drive, but it's cheaper than a 7.5 meg drive was back in 1994.]

1930 Again

It seems I'll probably end up posting regularly on the 1930 news (the summary of Wall Street Journal reportage). This time:

Editorial criticizing Dept. of Agriculture's forecast that wheat prices will be lower over the next 7 years. Suspicious this fits into Farm Board plan to reduce wheat acreage; says this is doomed to fail since foreign growers will take up slack and farmers will convert to other crops, with resulting pressure on those. Compares plan to “taking a part of the load from one end of the wagon and piling it on the other end.” No alternative plan suggested.

It's a reminder of the predecessors to the New Deal--in this case Hoover experimented with price supports without a production adjustment/supply management program in place. One item on my to-do list is to write on "supply management" for wikipedia.

McNamara 4; Palin 2

That's the score on the Washington Post op-ed page: 4 pieces on Robert McNamara and 2 on Gov. Palin.

It's an interesting contrast. They represent the extremes of the governmental types, even human types: McNamara the ultimate rationalist and Palin the opposite.

The End of Peanut Program

The peanut quota program had lasted for maybe 40 years was phased out in the early 2000's in favor of treatment like wheat and feed grain. I've blogged before on the effect of ending the tobacco program. From Farm Policy today comes an update on peanuts from Mississippi:

Elton Robinson reported yesterday at the Southeast Farm Press Online that, “One of the biggest benefits to growing peanuts in Mississippi has been the relative lack of disease pressure compared to other more established growing regions of the Southeast.

“That honeymoon period appears to be ending, according to Mike Howell, area Extension agronomist at Mississippi State University, who has peanut responsibilities for the state.

“Eight years ago, fewer than 4,000 acres of peanuts were planted in Mississippi. But when the 2002 farm bill did away with the quota system for peanuts, acreage started to climb.”

Yesterday’s article noted that, “The state averaged a little over 2 tons per acre in 2008, which places them near the top in average yield in the United States. Howell attributes that to ‘relatively low disease pressure. Until last year, we had been able to get by without spraying a lot of fungicide.’

“‘But it looks like the honeymoon period is over,’ Howell said. ‘We’re starting to see some diseases creep in on us. Up until now, we haven’t had the acreage to allow the inoculum to build up.’

So, as with tobacco, the government program had frozen the area of production. End the program and new areas and new farmers come into production. (It's probably relevant that Mississippi has an extremely low acreage of cotton this year--presumably some farmers switched from cotton to peanuts.)

A Really Surprising Sentence

From a surprising MSNBC article on AIDS in Haiti in which the news is very surprising because it's mostly good:

"More Haitians know about modes of transmission than high school students in the U.S.," Pape said.

Wisdom for the Day

From Dan Drezner, at the end of an interesting comparison of Iran and Honduras (both places where the right has assumed power over the left...):

"Bear in mind, however, that life never holds everything else constant."

Docking Tails and Hurting Animals [Updated]

Sometimes you have to practice tough love, whether it's with animals or humans. And we always have to learn. This post at Stonybrookfarm reminds me of both imperatives.

[Added: And here's a Slate piece of a few days ago on ringing free-range pigs and spaying. Some of the same issues.]

Our Founding Mother

Back in the early 1960's Harvard U Press published paperback editions of the letters of John and Abigail Adams as part of their Adams papers effort. Since I was into history, I was introduced early to Abigail, who later became an icon of the feminist movement and a beacon to women's history: "Remember the ladies, John". Laura Linney did her justice in the recent HBO series.

But just surfing through her letters, and reading the occasional description of her as keeping the home fires burning, raising the large family etc. didn't give me the picture of her as an investor as did a piece this morning by Woody Holton in the Post. He's a U of Richmond professor who has a bio coming out, but he extracts a series of rules for wise economy/investment from her life and presents them well. (Including a rule on how to outwit a Founding Father.)

Have a "Happy Fourth"

I'm passing on those words, which I received as I left our community (organic)garden after watering our beds (we had a wet two months, followed by 2-3 weeks of dry, so it's time to start watering), from a fellow long-time gardener. He happens to be African-American (immigrant from Africa some time back) with whom I exchange hellos when we cross paths. His garden is an obnoxiously neat and organized one, with raised beds and great soil. He grows the usual variety of vegetables, although he always has a great bed of carrots into the winter.

He was weeding as I passed and offered those seasonal greetings. I replied, and went on (I'm too shy to initiate many conversations). I wonder whether he finds more meaning in the Fourth than I do. I don't think I've used those words on my own initiative: "merry Christmas", "good Thanksgiving", yes, but not a "happy Fourth".

In the spirit of enjoying the Fourth, read this Washington Post article containing the responses of a number of immigrants to the question: "what do you like about America".