Paperwork Reduction Act

OMBwatch and Nextgov both have pieces on the request for comments on how to improve the operation of the Paperwork REduction Act.  I hope to comment, but then I hope to do a lot of things.

Having the Right Incentives

It's important, whether for CEO's of financial companies or CIA bureaucrats.  Brookings reveals the CIA screwed their incentives during the Bush presidency. Via Understanding Government from Washington Monthly.

A Mere Surmise, Sir

A quote from the new Coen Brothers film, A Serious Man. Mixes Schrodinger's cat and the Book of Job into a comedy which I enjoyed. 

I also recommend Rob Roy,  a 1995 film starring Liam Neeson and Jessica Lange based, to my surprise, on a real Scottish character.  Watched it on DVD last night.  It's unforgivable there's no special features.

French Food, McDonalds and Globalization

I think someone at the Times has been reading Dirk Beauregarde, who had this post on the gradual Galloisization of McDonalds.Today Nadim Audi writes the same story,but with the hook of a McDonalds in the Louvre (now we know what the Mona Lisa's smile means).

Who knew there was  "le goût de l’Amérique"?  For those whose high school french is even worse than mine, it's "the taste of America".

Environmental Flub

IMHO the climate action people should bite the bullet and admit a failure.  I don't see how you claim "hundreds of thousands" of people demonstrating world-wide, when the supporting detail cites 300-500 demonstrators in the biggest European and North American cities. I realize expecting the truth from the organizers of any demonstration, for any cause, reveals me as hopelessly naive.  But so be it.  I'm just as dubious of the Rolling Thunder claims as the 350.org claims.

Flash: Breaking News from the Post's Ezra Klein

The men of Congress are paragons of physical fitness. It's only the women who seem like they might have difficulty sustaining full-court press. Link

The Post on CAFO's

Yesterday the Post had an article describing a state-of-the-art CAFO, in the context of H1N1 flu and the dangers of pig-human transmission.  I suspect some may quarrel with sentences such as:"CAFOs such as Schott's are inherently safer than backyard pig farms, where the animals mingle with people and birds fly overhead."

As I think I've said before, a CAFO is to older farming as an airplane is to a car.  It's a safer mode of transportation, but a whole lot scarier and, when it fails, does a whole lot more damage.

Read the whole piece.

Identity and Surveillance

The Post has an article today on the adoption of mobile fingerprint readers, equipment originally designed for the military.Local police departments are using them to good effect in various scenarios. Meanwhile the NYTimes reports on the use and possible misuse of CCTV in Britain. Anyone who follows PBS Mystery will know how automatic it is for Brit detectives to check the closed circuit TV tapes.  But apparently, as with many innovations, once it's built it's used.  The Brits have a case where the school authorities used the tapes to try to determine whether a family actually lived in the district they claimed to.  Result: some upset

While some, like the ACLU, see such things as violating our right to privacy.  I'm reminded, however, in the small towns we used to live in there was no such privacy--everyone knew everyone without the need  of a fingerprint reader and everyone watched everyone, without use of CCTV.

Transparency in Government--Taxes

Via Kevin Drum here's a discussion of our past history in revealing tax information. I might be persuadable of the advantages of making all tax data accessible on-line (see the last part of the document).

The Second Most Dangerous Place in Washington

The first most dangerous place in DC is supposedly the space between a microphone and Sen. Chuck Schumer.  If so, the second most dangerous place is the space between a new program and an ambitious bureaucrat.  An example, from Farm Policy reporting on a discussion of how carbon offsets might work:

“But the government and companies buying offsets will want proof that the carbon is being properly held in the soil.”

Yesterdays article noted that, “These verifiers confirm project eligibility, ownership of environmental attributes and ongoing project performance and inspect data such as meter readings, fuel purchases and records.

“Gustafson says crop insurance adjustors would be a good fit for this kind of work.
“‘The crop insurance agents are very good and prepared to do many of those tasks,’ he says. ‘They already work directly with producers and they monitor farm activity and programs like this to make sure that they are complying with farm program requirements, as well as specifications for the crop insurance policies.’”

I have to admit I thought FSA could do this work.