Twelve Years Ago in FSA

Found an article in Government Executive from 1998 with a good overview of the bureaucratic structures and policies which led to conflict between FmHA and ASCS people after the reorganization.

Centralized Versus Decentralized: Unmanned Drones

Government Executive has a post on the management of drones.  Turns out management of air space is problematic--when you call in an airstrike, you want everyone else (all drones and planes) out of the way.  But years ago we refused to designate an overall manager of drones, so now there's problems in coordinating drone flights over Afghanistan.  As a country we tend to believe in decentralization, which definitely has advantages in encouraging innovation and flexibility.  But there's a time for centralization as well.  Wisdom consists in figuring out when and where to use each tactic.

Faking It

Freakonomics has a post, and a lot of comments, on the subject of "faking it" (pretending one is religious when you aren't, liberal when you're conservative, etc.) in order to enjoy the benefits of fitting in.

Bureaucrats Hall of Shame: Samuel Swarthout

According to a review of a new volume of Jackson papers:

"He [Jackson] also  refused to listen when Martin Van Buren warned against the appointment 
of Samuel Swartwout as Collector of Customs for the Port of New York, yet Swartwout became the first man to steal one million dollars from the U.S. Treasury (pp. 177-178).

Environmental Impact and Nostalgia

Chris Clayton passes on an academic argument that USDA should be doing an environmental impact statement for farm programs, with the implication that the green types may well sue based on the argument.  I'm no expert in such issues, but I remember back when the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, which requires the impact statements, was passed, and ASCS scrambled to figure out how to comply with it.  As I remember the lawyers of the day decided an impact statement was needed for the Agricultural Conservation Program (the cost-sharing for conservation practices program which has evolved and evolved since then). I guess they said there wasn't enough direct impact of the production adjustment programs on the environment.  As I remember the Directives Branch in which I worked got stuck with the assembly and typing job, since we had by then bought some IBM Magnetic Tape Selectric Typewriters.

MT/ST's were an early and primitive form of word processor.  Few people much younger than I will appreciate the advances technology has made in that area.  Why back in the day we not only walked in the snow uphill both ways to school 5 miles, but we were able to type copy very fast and with no errors, ever. Standards have purely gone to hell since then, and it's all the fault of computers.

A Reason for the Estate Tax

From a post at Overcoming Bias on a study of management of firms in a variety of countries:

Inherited family-owned firms who appoint a family member (especially the eldest son) as chief executive officer are very badly managed on average.

France and Homogeneity

Read a good book called something like: "Discovering France", which was an impressionistic history of France in the 18th and 19th century, with emphasis on the differences  in language and culture among the different regions.  One of the things you see in Mr. Beauregarde's blog is how extensively the state regulates the society and culture.  This post at Strange Maps touches on both themes: the underlying differences and the homogeneity.
 

Silence Is the Law in France

From Dirk Beauregarde: You aren’t even allowed to mow your lawn on a Sunday (unless you have an old manual mower).

Actively Engaged Definition

Via Farmgate, an Iowa State interpretation of FSA notices.

Russians and US Work Together

According to a vendor at the farm machinery show--their GPS uses both US and Russian satellites.