Blogging on bureaucracy, organizations, USDA, agriculture programs, American history, the food movement, and other interests. Often contrarian, usually optimistic, sometimes didactic, occasionally funny, rarely wrong, always a nitpicker.
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
How To Measure Bureaucratic Output?
Count the words. That's my initial reaction after doing a little surfing among the various documents on open government, released by the White House, OMB, USDA, and other departments. I don't know that the flow of words emanating from DC contributes to open government, at least if defined as citizen understanding of government. But maybe I'm feeling oppressed by the third day of record-setting heat in Reston. We'll see.
Pigford Now
Vilsack has a statement, which says nothing much. The bottom line is, the agreement between the claimants and the government expired on March 31, 2010, but the reality is the claimants really have no choice. They have to wait and see whether Congress will come up with the additional money. And then whether they can qualify for anything under new rules. Meanwhile, FSA will kick everything to DOJ, according to this notice.
All Okay in School Lunches, Says OK Extension
I don't know the truth, but this is a voice not usually heard:
Deana Hildebrand, Oklahoma State University Cooperative Extension nutrition specialist, said in 2009 the School Nutrition Association (SNA) surveyed more than 1,200 school districts nationwide and found nearly every school district offers students fresh fruits and vegetables, low-fat dairy products, whole grains and salads.Of course, "offering" is to "eating" as planning is to doing.
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Chinese and English Prices
Brad DeLong posts a comparison of the costs in 1700 of various items in Canton China and in London, England. Milk, lead, mutton, bread, and charcoal were more expensive in China than England, most everything else was cheaper, even much cheaper. Charcoal was 5 times more expensive; tea 25 times less expensive. It's an interesting comparison. I'm particularly interested in the charcoal--presumably 2000+ years of civilization meant most trees were gone. And Canton is far enough south that wheat, dairy, and sheep weren't big. But it's also surprising that China comes out so well in the comparison. It's a reminder that until relatively recently (1700) that country seemed to provide more people a better life than did the leading Western country.
Chances of Becoming a Farmer Equal to Chances of Making NBA?
That's what John Phipps says, in a post on the advice he gives to young people who are interested in farming (that is, the big ag, industrial, individual owner-style farming). John compares farming with medicine, quoting a recent NYTimes article on the shift from individual or at least doctor-owned practices, to salaried practitioners.
The Truth About Sen. Coburn
He's got a pretty and talented daughter (an opera singer) and occasionally he commits truth, as in this report. No, I don't know whether Pelosi is a nice person or not, but I'll buy both these statements:
"Just because somebody disagrees with you doesn't mean they're not a good person," he added. He then discussed his own experience of being vilified before asking the crowd not to "catch yourself being biased by Fox News that somebody's no good."
"The people in Washington are good," he said. "They just don't know what they don't know."
Bureaucratic Realities: People and Commutes
Walter Pincus has a piece in the Post, passing on an article by an insider on how mundane bureaucratic realities undermined the reorganization of the intelligence community:
In my experience, moves and reorganizations eat up lots of time, simply because they disrupt people's comfort zones. Who sits where (particularly back in the old days before smoking was banned--I spent hours trying to get compatible groupings of smokers and non-smokers. Never had a move more than a few hundred yards, but commuting was and is critical, particularly if not on Metro (subway).
And efforts to create a new organization spanning old agencies are difficult because you need to create the administrative support (space, equipment, funds, HR, accounting, etc.) without having a support organization. I realize that's the sort of thing which occupies the mind of a bureaucrat but is not the slightest interest to anyone else.
Neary [the insider] writes of initial false steps that hurt the organization, using an example that only bureaucrats understand. Under the legislation, the ODNI was not to share location with headquarters of any other community element, an effort to make sure it was not at Langley. So the ODNI went to Bolling Air Force Base, to the new building of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The first DNI, John D. Negroponte, wanted CIA people as staff members. But, writes Neary, since CIA types tended to live near Langley, the ODNI lost at least 10 percent of its staff. They didn't want to make the long commute.
At Bolling, many DIA employees living near the air base took jobs originally meant for those CIA staffers. Then, two years later, the ODNI was permanently located in the Virginia suburbs, beyond Langley, and the DIA workers found that they faced a commute longer than the CIA staffers who didn't want to travel to Bolling. "The merry-go-round ensured the staff never found its feet," Neary said.
In my experience, moves and reorganizations eat up lots of time, simply because they disrupt people's comfort zones. Who sits where (particularly back in the old days before smoking was banned--I spent hours trying to get compatible groupings of smokers and non-smokers. Never had a move more than a few hundred yards, but commuting was and is critical, particularly if not on Metro (subway).
And efforts to create a new organization spanning old agencies are difficult because you need to create the administrative support (space, equipment, funds, HR, accounting, etc.) without having a support organization. I realize that's the sort of thing which occupies the mind of a bureaucrat but is not the slightest interest to anyone else.
Monday, April 05, 2010
Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows
The greens foodies regularly bash the plutocrats of agribusiness who push processed foods down our throats. But they don't think much of corn-based ethanol, which means they wake up in bed with:
“But when Illinois and Missouri members of Congress opened a new effort recently to extend the tax breaks, a phalanx of opponents quickly mobilized. They include the Grocery Manufacturers of America, the American Meat Institute, the National Council of Chain Restaurants, environmental organizations and pro-taxpayer groups.”From Farmpolicy on ethanol
Sunday, April 04, 2010
Praise for Bureaucratic Reorganization
Stuart Baker at Volokh Conspiracy posts about TSA's new approach in screening international airline passengers. And he sneaks in a compliment to the reorganization which created DHS:
"This new system is also a sign that the creation of DHS is in fact paying dividends. If we still had three separate cabinet departments doing customs, border immigration, and air security, there is no possibility that TSA would be borrowing from and cooperating with border agencies to use their techniques and perhaps their IT systems to screen passengers."He prefers the approach using a person's individual data to estimate probabilities rather than using more general characteristics, like nationality.
Looming Conflict for Greens
Greens generally don't like genetically modified organisms when they show up as seeds, particularly if a big company like Monsanto owns them. There's the issue of tinkering with nature, which is a no-no, and the issue of monopoly power. But greens face a conflict as GMO's show up in the bioenergy field, as discussed in this extension post.And the graph included shows farmers use of GMO seeds is continuing to increase, belying the idea these seeds are expensive and ineffective.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)