How Bureaucracies Work--The Case of the "Wall"

Stewart Baker at Volokh Conspiracy has a long post, excerpted from his book, describing some of the background of the "wall", the barrier between criminal investigations and intelligence investigations in the late 1990's  up to 9/11.

The right blamed Jamie Gorelick, Reno's deputy AG, but it seems to have been a more bureaucratic story than that.  The wall was installed, but was permeable, because FBI agents shared information even though they had different missions (criminal versus intelligence).  In other words, their bureaucratic loyalties outweighed paper edicts.  But through a sequence of events, Judge Lamberth, Jesse Helms nominee to the appellate court and the head of the FISA court, essentially ended the career of a promising FBI agent who had signed an affidavit, falsely asserting the wall had been observed.  That got the attention of the FBI agents.  And it meant, as Baker tells it, that the last best chance to uncover the 9/11 plot failed because the agents in position of authority feared for their careers more than they feared the consequences of failure.

NO Pay Database?

That's the word from the Post on a Friday Obama memo:

A memo Obama is set to sign Friday instructs the Treasury Department, Office of Management and Budget and General Services Administration to establish a government-wide database to ensure agencies no longer send government checks to dead people, delinquent or jailed contractors and other debarred or suspended firms, said officials familiar with the memo and not authorized to speak on the record. About 20,000 separate payments totaling $182 million were sent to dead people in the last three years, according to OMB.

If we were implementing this back in FSA in the 1990's (back in the day, my children, back in the day), we'd probably like to submit a file containing a tax id number(s) to someone, who would return a code saying whether the id was eligible for payment, and if not, why not.  That would hide the database and give everyone one interface routine to write to. The timing of the interface is going to be a problem, I'd suspect. FSA is probably one of the few agencies which would have several hundred thousand payments being processed at the same time; that is, unless they bounce payrolls against the database.

Non Organic Means to Organic Ends?

Here's a report from Iowa State on experiments growing corn with perennial ground cover.

After the first two years of the study, researchers have already discovered a system that allows for removal of up to 95 percent of the corn stover, increases the amount of carbon kept in the soil, increases water use efficiency in corn and also maintains corn yield.

Someone familiar with the arguments of organic advocates will see a lot of overlap in the experiment, yet the experimenters are not trying to be "organic" by USDA standards.  It's obvious they're open to chemical treatments and presumably genetically modified organisms so their inputs can differ from organic ones.  But the goal is close to the organic goal, conserving soil, building carbon, etc. 

Seems to me this sort of thing is likely to become more prevalent than strictly organic farming. We'll see.

If Google Says So It Must Be Right

On explaining why they don't recognize feeds in Google Chrome:

"Given that most people are not familiar with and don't consume RSS feeds, we thought that RSS support would be a better fit as an extension, at least to begin with."

I guess it's just another example of how nerds don't talk to humans.  Nerds come up with these great ideas, the usefulness of which is self-evident, at least to the inventor.  They forget someone has to explain to the rest of us the benefits and get us over the learning curve, all of which can be a drag.  I'm saying "us", but at least with regards to RSS feeds, I'm an explainer and an adopter, not an "us".

Subsidized Agriculture Is Inefficient?

Kevin Drum has a post on healthcare costs and productivity, citing some studies.  As usual, he's good.  But what interested me was a chart comparing the annual increases in productivity for different industries in the  10 years. 1995-2005  There were surprises: I would have thought IT would have been the best. It's good, increasing productivity roughly 6 percent a year, but it's only second to durable goods, which is roughly 7 percent.  That may be one reason for the rust belt--we're just getting more productive.

What was the third ranking industry: agriculture, at a bit over 5 percent increase per year. Presumably a lot of that is attributable to the use of GMO seeds and increased yields.  If I remember correctly, I read a history of US agriculture in the 20th century which cited the argument that government programs essentially provided the capital to invest in improved productivity.  Don't remember if the history confirmed the idea, but it would work in recently--farmers who have to cut corners would choose less expensive seed, those with the cash from subsidy payments could pay the more higher seed bill.

Good Article on the Media

Via Ezra Klein, a good article on the media, which ends thus:

"This is complicated! You’ve got the Church of the Savvy, The Quest for Innocence, the View from Nowhere, Regression to a Phony Mean, He Said, She Said, the Sphere of Deviance. These form the real ideology of our political press. But we have to study them to understand them well."

We Needed a Program for the Topographically Disadvantaged

I just realized my parents were in the category of the topographically disadvantaged--much of our farm was side hill, very steep, too steep to be farmed by horses or tractors, and the soil was too thin to be good pasture.  While justice will come too late for my parents, it surely is not too late to pass some legislation to give equal justice to the topographically disadvantaged as we already have for the geographically disadvantaged.

A New Politically Correct Category?

Looking at USDA regs, I find "geographically disadvantaged farmers" in the title of one regulation.  No doubt something passed by mentally challenged legislators.

Indispensable Bureaucrats

Kenneth Feinberg will run the BP claims account and Michael Bromwich will oversee the reorganized Minerals Management Service.

In the old days we had political elders who'd step in in emergencies.  In Britain they called on the "great and the good".  These days we seem to have experienced bureaucrats who act as troubleshooters. No longer faceless, but known and trusted.

Not Mice, But Bees Are What Elephants Fear

According to this Post article, elephants fear bees.