The High and the Low

A couple weeks ago the Post profiled a couple at the low end of the financial scale. Earlier in the week they profiled a woman moving to North Dakota for a job (and a $7500 house). Today they profile a divorcee trying to survive on $300K. (Here's a link to the series which includes black lumbermen in AL and a firm helping to ease firings.) They attract lots of comments, as you might expect.

OO and FSA and ARRA

Was browsing the USDA's Recovery Act reports on infrastructure expenditure. I have to compliment the Office of Operations (or whatever their name is now). Back in the day I had mixed feelings about their abilities, but they've got a pretty good report out on the renovation of the 5th wing of the South Building. I think a taxpayer would have benefited by a bit more background--when the building was constructed, what's exactly wrong with it, but all in all, they did good.

ARS is so-so, RD looks good, OIG is poor (an Excel worksheet that's not very informative in my eyes).

And FSA? FSA is absolutely terrible. The link for "more" leads to a page which was last updated on April 28, 2009. I know they've had 3 administrators in the last 6 months (one acting, then Doug Caruso, then Mr. Coppess). I used their "Ask FSA" function to ask about the status. We'll see if they live up to their promises (of course, I didn't ask their support department, I asked Mr. Coppess when he was going to get it updated):

"The reference number for your question is '090815-000001'.You should receive a response by email from our support department within the next business day.If you need to add information to or cancel your question, you can do so by updating it through the questions sub area of the 'My Stuff' section of this site."

I must be feeling mean today, because I'm tempted to carry things up the line if I don't see action. One of the things that a bureaucracy needs is countervailing pressure. In other words some retired geezer with nothing better to do than fuss and nitpick.

Field Manuals Via Wikipedia

The NY Times has an article on the Army using wikipedia software to rewrite some field manuals.

(One of the biggest surprises of my brief and involuntary Army career was the extent to which the Army had manuals, though for me mostly technical manuals on generators, etc.)

I'm torn:

• on the one hand I like the concept. Wikipedia mostly has good to excellent quality in their articles, so it is possible. I like the idea of spreading the workload and getting the input from diverse sources. (Note my prior post on the burden FSA field offices when their directives are dispersed.)
• on the other hand, having participated in the open government experiments of OSTP, I'm dubious over the practicality. After all, Wikipedia has been around for years and survived some rough times. They've had a learning curve, and still have issues. I'm suspicious a high-level bureaucrat will see wikipedia software as a silver bullet and will kill the project when it turns out to be a long hard slog up the hill.
  

The Dog Days of August, Not for FSA Offices

We're in the dog days, and I can see it in my RSS feeds. Where some days I've had 500 or so, these days it's mostly below 200. So while the US may not be quite France, which totally shuts down in August, people are taking vacations.

But not so for FSA workers. Those busy bees in the South Building put out 6 notices today and 12 yesterday. That's a heavy workload, both for the directives people in DC and especially for the county people, who have to sit down and digest the meaning and significance of the words.

(I remember a group studying ASCS directives back in 1973 or 4, I think it was. We heard lots from the county people, griping about the number of notices. They particularly griped about permanent instructions in notices. If you have 3 or 4 directives on a subject, the clerk (that was the approved terminology back then) would have to thread between them to come up with a consolidated understanding of the subject. Multiply one clerk by 2800 county offices (the count then) and you have lots of waste, not to mention potential errors. I wonder whether the situation has improved any.)

Understanding America, II

I'm most of the way through the book. Two points that occurred to me, which may be related:

• there's no mention so far of Baker vs Carr, which was the big Supreme Court decision enforcing "one man, one vote". (Actually, it seems to have said the Supreme Court would have a say in reapportionment of legislative districts, with subsequent decisions actually saying one man, one vote.) Chief Justice thought these cases the most important set of decisions of his term. The significance was that both in the House of Representatives and in the State legislatures rural areas had a disproportionate representation. If memory serves, in some States the ratio was as bad as 1 to 10 (i.e, a rural voter had the same representation as 10 urban voters).
  
• the end of "blue laws". Don't rely on wikipedia--it's not a good summary. These were laws restricting the times stores could open (like only Thursday night and never on Sunday). I'd also include the "fair trade" laws, which required merchants not to discount their merchandise.

These two changes, IMHO, were not only interrelated, because the rural people were more concerned with restricting the aggressive advance of commercialization and the undermining of local stores by competition from the big city, later to be Walmart and Target, but also accelerated lots of the other changes in the culture we've seen since my childhood.

I'm prompted to write this because Dirk Beauregard, at the end of his post on the Miracle Weekend in France, observes that new French laws will legitimize Sunday openings.

The World We'll Miss

Just got an email with some attachments showing old newspaper pages. The relevant articles were social notes (for genealogy, someone getting married--that sort of thing). But what was interesting was the other material on the page--the ads and the fact that in the 1930's, in a smallish PA town newspaper, they were carrying a piece on the fighting in Manchuria.

I'm constantly awed by what is available on the Internet through Google, but what isn't available and what we lose is the social context of the material.

White House Tomatoes

At last, confirmation the White House garden produced some nice tomatoes. There's no discussion, Marian Burros in today's NYTimes is strictly concerned with the soil in the garden, (they've lowered the lead in the soil from 93 to 14ppm) but the accompanying photos show maybe 10 nice tomatoes as part of the harvest, plus Sam Kass is shown in the garden. Judging by the photo they may be planting some fall vegetable transplants, like some more lettuce. The chard (I think) in the background looks good. I guess the White House doesn't have problems with deer or with two-legged samplers--I'm sure the Secret Service is earning its pay in that regard.

It's good to see USDA outdoing the boss (Obama) in some respect--at least in transparency as regards garden harvests.

Julia Childs and the Blogger

My wife and I saw the movie yesterday and enjoyed it. For anyone who hasn't, see the movie then read this LA Times piece by the guy who asked Julia for her reaction to Julie's blog.
The critics have often dissed the Amy Adams character, saying she's self-centered and whines. That's true in the movie, but as a fellow blogger I couldn't complain, I identified with her.

Ezra Klein offers a perceptive comment:

"Grand Rapids, Mich.: What is your take on "Julie and Julia"? I thought the movie was fun, and enjoyed the scenes with Julia Child and her husband (their relationship was interesting). But I found Julie's side of the story to be less interesting and, at times, poorly constructed.

Ezra Klein: Nora Ephron did Julie Powell a disservice. Powell's story is banal in a respectable way: She's underemployed, bored, and young, and she discovers a passion. That doesn't normally merit a movie. But since it did in this case, Ephron had to give the character a conflict. And that conflict was that she was a self-absorbed child.

Take all the stuff about Julia Child "teaching" Powell so much. Child taught her nothing except how to make food. it was Powell who woke up at 5:30am to cook. Powell who kept to a grueling schedule. Powell who kept the blog updated. Powell who developed an appealing writing voice. Powell who didn't stop cooking when she was tired or busy. But in the movie, Powell just gives all credit to Julia, and the movie is constructed to make that plausible. The pity is that it isn't plausible, and it doesn't need to be. The parallel between Child and Powell isn't that they both cook. It's that they found passions. And while it's very good at explaining why Child loved French cuisine, it's too interested in explaining why Powell loved Child to explain why Powell loved writing."

Crop Reports, ACRE and FSA

Already a projection the new USDA crop estimates for corn and soybeans will cause a last minute rush at FSA offices to sign up for the ACRE program.

But later I read the projections lessen the odds of ACRE kicking into effect. It's all very confusing and makes me glad I've resolved not to waste minutes of my remaining life in trying to figure it out. Good luck to those who have to.

NAIS and Cattle Rustlers

ABC news did a piece on cattle rustling in Oklahoma. They didn't mention NAIS, but implicitly it made the case for it.