New Rules on Improper Payments

FSA has taken flak for issuing improper payments, including to deceased producers, although estates of deceased producers are eligible to receive payment but not forever.

But there's a new executive order which will make these more transparent, which may or may not apply to FSA programs:

During the next six months, the Treasury secretary, attorney general and OMB director must publish online information about improper payments for high-priority or high-cost programs. The data is to include agencies' current and historical error rates for incorrect disbursements; the known causes of the mistakes; the amount of money that has been recovered; and the entities that have received the highest amount of outstanding improper payments as long as those entities aren't being considered for referral to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.

Miller Apologizes

Undersecretary Miller apologizes:

"It is not the county FSA program technician's fault you're not getting payments. It is not the people in the state FSA office's fault you're not getting payments," he said. "It is my fault, and I apologize."
Efforts are under way to modernize the agency's computers, Miller said. But the effort will take several years and cost at least $500 million. In the meantime, the current system has to remain functional although its personnel and information technology services are stretched beyond the breaking point.

Miller's referring to MIDAS, which got money through the Recovery Act which, last I checked, FSA has not reported on. (Last update 4/30/2009)   FSA did award money for coordination, according to this. As a cynic, I suspect Torres is an SBA 8(a) firm (as Fu was in the mid-1990's when Info Share was the toast of the day, and later Soza was, when Greg Carnill was leading the effort and business process reengineering was the the fad of the day.) 

The Disease Benefits of CAFO's

An article of faith among foodies is that CAFO's are a cesspool of disease, incubators for death.  Maybe so, but this extension piece claims hogs in CAFO's have less lungworm, kidney worm, trichinella,  toxoplasma, swine dysentery, atrophic rhinitis, actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae, brucellosis, classical swine fever (hog cholera) and pseudorabies

More Testing Needed?

In the controversy over when to have mammographs, there's costs. 

Ezra Klein has my thought published before I got around to it: if testing at 40 is good, then why not test at 30, and twice a year rather than yearly?  Surely the point is that there's a continuum, for any person, and for the community generally. That is, testing identifies cancers which would not be otherwise identified until too late to treat effectively and permits their effective treatment.  At some point on the continuum most everyone agrees testing is warranted and at another point it's not.  Same sort of thing men face with prostate cancer, though I gather from the first link there might be a more straight-forward link between a positive test and treatment.

On the Mystery of the Male Anatomy

I enjoy Joel Acehenbach's writing in the Post, and he points to a post on the Scientific American blog explaining the whys and wherefores of the male genitalia.

I Predicted This--ARRA Transparency as Omen of the Future

As I said here, despite problems with data, Obama's effort to provide transparency on stimulus spending is important, not just for itself, but in laying down the tracks for future efforts:  From Nextgov:

"Technology that states have deployed to report how they spent federal stimulus funds is likely to permanently change information exchange across the public and private sector, despite controversy over figures on the number of jobs created and saved, said New York officials, academics and federal leaders."

Damn Bureaucrats Can't Get Things Right

This time it's not the government, it's Fox News bureaucrats.

I'm sure it's not a conspiracy by liberal spies to undermine the good reputation of the network.  It's just Murphy's law at work.  And Murphy was and is nonpartisan.

Disaster and Obama

Farm Policy for today notes an effort in the Delta states to do disaster payments. If I remember somewhere sometime the Obama administration was proposing a multi-year fund to handle disasters.  They were trying to avoid emergency appropriations bills.  Don't remember if agriculture was included or, like other of their proposals, it never went anywhere.

Housing Sales Revive?

Just judging by my cluster--my next door neighbor's house is now under contract, after having been on the market maybe 30-45 days.  That's much better than a year ago.  Don't know if they got their asking price ($277,000), but if they did the owner made a profit.  I think the bank repossessed it around Jan. 2008, someone in the city picked it up for about $180,000, rented it for a year to college students, then spent a lot of money fixing it up.  So he perhaps made $50-60,000 on his investment.

Prices in the area seem, according to zillow, to be bimodal--a bunch of houses below $200K and some now selling for $275K.

Update on White House Garden

Obamafoodorama tries to keep it real, saying the White House garden (nor the beehive) won't be feeding the Indian PM at the state dinner.

The Kitchen Garden is currently wintering over, and not producing enough vegetables to feed hundreds of guests a multi-course vegetable-based State Dinner; the photo of the garden, above, was taken yesterday afternoon. It's a little barren. There's still some lettuces, some spinach, and a variety of herbs growing, but that's pretty much it at the moment.

I think they could be growing more--turnips and rutabagas, kale and collards, but I give the site props for honesty.