Vote for Murray Hill

If you're in the Maryland suburbs and Chris Van Hollen is your congressman, get a real representative.  (Dr. Soltan saves me the trouble of linking directly to the Post article.)

The Reality of Hens

The romanticism of keeping a few hens meets the realities in this short piece at Treehugger.

A Tale of Two Organizations

The NY Times today carries article on two organizations:

1. the Kansas City school system, which apparently has suffered from a total lack of leadership, so that now it has to close half its schools. "But a closer look at the school board’s recent history reveals a chaotic, almost nonfunctioning body that put off making tough choices and even routine improvements for generations."
2. Lehman Brothers, which is kaput. "According to the report, Lehman used what amounted to financial engineering to temporarily shuffle $50 billion of troubled assets off its books in the months before its collapse in September 2008 to conceal its dependence on leverage, or borrowed money."

This encapsulates some of my thinking about organizations: The free market is fine for things and services that can be measured and priced, but it is subject to manipulation, fraud, and deceit.  Government is for services which can't be measured and priced, often because benefits and/or costs would overlap the bounds of any market, but it is subject to inefficiency, fraud, and corruption.

Senate "Virility" Lost Long Time Ago

From the 1930 blog:

Editorial: The Senate, by its "absurd rules" giving a single Senator the power to block any pending legislation for as long as his physical strength holds out, has "robbed itself of parliamentary virility." In most recent example, Sen. Thomas of Oklahoma took the floor on midnight of Tuesday last week to move for investigation of the oil industry, and held it until Congress adjourned, blocking action on several important measures without accomplishing anything.

Persistence, or Just Showing Up

Who was it who said: "most of life is just showing up"?  Well Sen. Lincoln keeps showing up, and the latest bill passed by the Senate includes her disaster provisions (from Farm Policy):

“Also added to the bill is a $1.5 billion disaster aid package for the 2009 crop year being pushed by Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark. Farmers would be eligible if they suffered a crop disaster or are located in counties declared disaster areas that had at least one crop suffer a 5 percent yield or quality loss due to the disaster, the bill states. Payments would equal up to 90 percent of the farmers’ direct payments for 2009.”

House Ag and IT in USDA/FSA

House Ag committee held a hearing on the status of USDA and FSA IT, including GIS.  Only the opening statements of the witnesses are available online.  The USDA CIO and FSA Administrator testified.  Much of their statements sounded like 5, 10 or 15 years ago, addressing the same issues of outmoded equipment, stovepipe systems, decentralized chaos among the agencies.  The second session had the National Farmers Union, NASCOE, NAFEC, the National Association of Conservation Districts and the National States GIS council. 

I found the second session more interesting:  One question--why wasn't the Farm Loan organization (the old FmHA specialists) represented?  (To show how slowly things move in USDA, note I'm referring to an organization (FmHA) which disappeared 16 years ago.)  They certainly have IT concerns, although the Administrator seemed to say their systems were in the best shape of any.  A surprise--the NASCOE rep said GIS products were the single biggest workload item. An unlikely request--the National GIS rep asked for dedicated money for the NAIP (aerial photos/GIS) separate from FSA money, but was very complimentary of the Salt Lake City staff.  I wonder why that was--is it possible that because the Aerial Photography Field Office in Salt Lake is the only FSA office which produces real, tangible products (setting checks to producers aside), that it's easier for them to take a businesslike approach to its operations?

Al Kamen and Bureaucrats

Al Kamen in the Post reports on the end of Filegate (if you don't remember, you're lucky--a complete waste of brain cells).  Judge Lamberth calls it a bureaucratic snafu of no significance: "there's no there there."  (Lamberth is remembered unfondly by Dems as a Jesse Helms protege and a member of the panel which put Mr. Starr in as special prosecutor, so it's safe to say he's not usually favorable to Clinton.)

In the same column he has an interesting followup--in 2008 the Census Bureau reported we were exporting goods to Iran which were supposedly prohibited.  Now it turns out some of this was misreporting:  Census asked for a 2-letter country code and people thought that Ireland or Iraq might be coded: "IR", which is the Iran code.  ("IN" and "IQ" were right, in case you wondered.)  A reminder of the problems of collecting data.  One reason I suspect you see drop-down lists of states when you're filling out an address online is that people get confused: is "AK" for Arkansas; is "MS" for Minnesota? 

A Conflict in Mores

I'm assuming this condo is inhabited by many immigrants, based on this line in the quote from MSNBC:

"It's not uncommon for the residents at Vantage Hill Condominiums to leave their shoes outside to keep their homes clean..."

When the Salvation Army came through on a pickup run, those shoes were seen as donations to the Army.

American Food History

James McWilliams has an interesting post skimming the American past and our views of food. I think there could be another post on how eating new and different foods has been a mark of culture and class.  (Is it just coincidence that Tyler Cowen and Ezra Klein are both very much into food?)

Community Supported Agriculture--the Limits of Locavore

The Post had a brief mention (today or yesterday) of someone who had had a CSA agreement with a farmer.  Paid $750 but the farmer had problems, whether weather or management it isn't clear in my mind, and she ended up unhappy with the deal.  She's trying again this year with another farmer.

I think this points to one of the issues with the new-ag type ventures and, perhaps, one of the advantages of the much derided "production agriculture".  I'd make the leap and say it's similar to the problems with charter schools and public eduction.  Or, it's like the 1960's again when no one got fired for buying IBM.  I guess for you youngsters the almost modern reference would be no one got fired for buying Microsoft.

What am I talking about?  Call it the dominant paradigm, to dress the idea up in fancy jargon.  Production agriculture, the chain of big farms, big wholesalers, chain groceries is the dominant, the majority way most people in the US get most of their food.  The public school system is the way most children get their K-12 eduction. The IBM main frame used to define the word "computer", as Microsoft defines "personal computer".  Some people try to come up with a new and better idea.  Typically that involves lots of experimentation, lots of learning by failing, lots of people who con others or con themselves, lots of adversity. When DC opened up to charter schools, the Post had horror stories of abuses and failures for several years.

To simplify further, the dominant paradigm offers the consumer safety: what's being sold is known and you know you're very sure of getting it.  Venture outside that paradigm and you increase your chance of rewards but you also increase your risk of disappointment.