Michael Kinsley and Budget Cuts

I agree with Michael Kinsley most of the time, but not on the issue of budget cuts. He says whenever budget cutting is in the air, there's a template for arguments--note, I like the template:

1. Expression of general support for deficit reduction. Reference to easy answers (there are none). Reference to burden (all must share).
2. Reference to babies and bathwater. Former should not be discarded with latter.
3. This program/agency/tax break is different. A bargain for the taxpayers. Pays for itself many times over. To eliminate or cut would be bad for children/our troops.
4. Cost is small (a) as percentage of total budget; (b) compared with budget of Pentagon; (c) compared with projected cost of health care.
5. Optional comparisons: to cost of just one jet fighter or 3.7 minutes of War on Terror
6. Names of famous people who support this program or tax cut, especially Colin Powell. Other good names: Madeleine Albright, Natalie Portman, George H.W. Bush (not W), Warren Buffett.
7. This is not about fair, responsible, across-the-board budget cutting. This is about the other side irresponsibly pursuing an ideological agenda, penalizing programs it doesn’t like.

(Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/51256.html#ixzz1GnjahBut) 
So, if I like the template, which points out the dynamic of budget cutting fights, what do I have a problem with?  Kinsley says most domestic programs are incremental: the more money we spend, the more outcome we are likely to get, whether it be roads, dams, orchestras, whatever.  But the military, he says, is different.  Security is binary; we either spend enough to be secure or we don't.  That's where I have a big problem. The truth is often that we define our security interests by our capability, as in Libya.  If we had more military might available, we probably would define our security interests as requiring the overthrow of Qaddafi, even if it meant "no drive zones". Since might is tight right now, we're a lot more hesitant. 

Garrison Keillor Beat You There

Barking Up the Wrong Tree has a post on the errors in people's self-assessments:

In general, people’s self-views hold only a tenuous to modest relationship with their actual behavior and performance. The correlation between self-ratings of skill and actual performance in many domains is moderate to meager—indeed, at times, other people’s predictions of a person’s outcomes prove more accurate than that person’s self-predictions. In addition, people overrate themselves. On average, people say that they are ‘‘above average’’ in skill (a conclusion that defies statistical possibility), over- estimate the likelihood that they will engage in desirable behaviors and achieve favorable outcomes, furnish overly optimistic estimates of when they will complete future projects, and reach judgments with too much confidence. Several psychological processes conspire to produce flawed self-assessments.

SAIC and USDA

SAIC picked up another IT contract with USDA.  This one's for RMA support, the previous one was for FSA and MIDAS.

[Updated: I may be wrong--it seems SRA may have gotten the MIDAS contract.]

MIDAS Presentation

NASCOE has a MIDAS presentation up on its website. (If, like me, you don't have Microsoft Office, you may have to download the Microsoft Powerpoint Viewer. MIDAS is the FSA project, partly funded by stimulus funds, to redo their processes and software.) My initial reaction on viewing it is: been there, done that.  A couple points:

• one slide has a disingenuous claim that it's not about closing county offices.  I heard that in 1992 with Infoshare, and it made equally as little sense then.  To make the case to OMB and Congress to get the money, you have to argue people will be more productive once the new systems are installed. Because it's a fair assumption FSA won't be serving more farmers in the future than it is now, that means fewer employees to provide better services to the same universe of farmers.  Fewer employees spread among the same number of offices doesn't make sense.  (Now there could be other changes which would alter the logic, but such changes are unlikely.)
• the people working on this project don't have the burden we had from 1991 to the early 2000's--the effort to include FSA, NRCS, and RD in one effort.  From a quick review of the slides, they aren't even doing the farm loan (old FmHA side), just farm programs. That makes the job much much easier.  Of course, it perpetuates the silos of the different agencies, but since USDA has repeatedly failed at the cross-agency effort, narrowing the scope probably makes sense.

Principals, Teachers, and Google Management

The Times has a piece on Google's efforts to deduce principles of good management.  Interesting.  One bit:

The traps can show up in areas like hiring. Managers often want to hire people who seem just like them. So Google compiles elaborate dossiers on candidates from the interview process, and hiring decisions are made by a group. “We do everything to minimize the authority and power of the manager in making a hiring decision,” Mr. Bock explains.

 One of the problems in establishing a fair system for evaluating teachers is ensuring the principals who are in charge of evaluations are good managers, and fair.  Which raises the question of who hires teachers in today's schools?  I assume the principals.  Maybe they shouldn't in the light of the above?

(And maybe government managers, like me, shouldn't have been deciding on whom to hire.)

Ezra Klein and Public Employees

Klein argues that public employees haven't had their pay rise much in the past two decades.  That may be true, but public employees saw a big jump in the value of their jobs in the past 3 years. When I started working for the Federal government I knew the rewards for my efforts were reasonable salary, good health insurance, good retirement benefits, and job security, discounting any psychic returns of serving the public (JFK's "ask not...").  I was giving up the possibility of great pay and fast advancement.

My point is there was a trade-off.  You watch these whipper-snappers like Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Ken Lay and now Mr. Zuckerberg come along and make their billions, the whiz-kids and quants on Wall Street making their big bonuses, and you know you traded the chance to make that money in favor of security, etc.  The Great Recession means those go-go careers are a whole lot riskier than they appeared to be in the past, thus my security is more valuable.

A Counter-Cyclical Argument for Direct Payments

House Ag committee writes to House Budget justifying the continuing need for farm programs, including the direct payments, on the basis of the cyclical nature of the agricultural economy. Chris Clayton reports:

The agriculture economy is highly cyclical. When record-high prices fall - which they inevitably will do - having sound farm policy in place is vital not just for producers but for the entire national economy. In addition, it is important to note that while high prices have lead to a 51 percent increase in gross cash income in agriculture over the past nine years; this has been met by an increase in cash expenses of 57 percent. In sum, recent high prices have not made the family enterprises that make up our farm sector any less vulnerable -indeed it has just raised the stakes in what is still an exceptionally risky business.

Thoughts on Earthquakes and Government

Charles Kenny has a very good Foreign Policy article discussing the interrelationship of death rates, government regulation, enforcement and corruption, wealth, and cost-benefit ratios with respect to earthquakes. He notes 10 million children die before the age of 5 each year.

It's Always More Complicated Than You Think: Farrowing Pens

The title of the post reflects one of my firm beliefs.  For example, someone visiting our farm would see a herd (small) of black and white cows. I would look at the same animals and see individuals, simply because I had a history with them.

PETA and the Humane Society have campaigned against farrowing pens.  Musings from a Stonehead has a post presenting the other side of the story. Of course, if Walt Jeffries of Sugar Mountain Farm reads the post, he may have a third point of view.

25 Years Since Microsoft's IPO

That is, Bill Gates has been the richest person in the world for only about the last 20 years, until Mr. Slim took his place. Time flies.