Moving Online--SSA and FSA

The FCW has a post on the problems SSA is having in moving its individual statements of accounts online. Two paragraphs:

Although the SSA is developing a new Web portal for accessing the online statement, the portal development is in the initial development phase and has not been fully tested, she said.
In addition, the SSA does not have plans in place for informing the public about the new online statements, or for ensuring access for individuals without Internet access or English proficiency.

If I remember correctly (too lazy to check), FSA has individual statements online, though I suspect there's very little access to them.  FSA has/had a different problem than SSA; FSA didn't mail individual statements on a regular basis while SSA does.  But FSA doesn't have experience with delivering services over the Internet, as witness he poor job they're doing with it.I infer from my personal reaction to the website, which I keep putting off expressing here.

Seems to me, if I were SSA, I'd include the instructions to get online with my last mailed statement.  In others, if my statement gets mailed in March 2013, it includes a notice my data is now on line, along with whatever security measures they've adopted.  Interesting question: do people opt in or opt out of the online statement?  I'd say opt out, but that's me. 

Me, the Professor, and Facebook

Chris Blattman is a professor with an interesting blog on international development, mostly Africa. It's reassuring to find that he's as puzzled by Facebook as I am.

Is USDA Listening? Twitter and Disaster

 I've previously suggested using pictures, either from digital cameras and/or cellphones, to enrich/replace the process of reporting crops and crop damage.  Based on this I suggest using Twitter as well: From a FCW post on use of social media by DHS:

DHS should look to the National Weather Service for an effective model. NWS has programmed its computers to automatically read any tweets with the hashtag #wxreport. Amateur weather watchers use that tag to report tornadoes and other extreme weather. Because Global Positioning System chips automatically report a smart phone’s location, NWS can pinpoint an event on a real-time basis and get critical situational awareness.

Crop insurance needs to know hail damage, in particular.

Coming Innovation: Robotic Transport for Apartment Complexes?

Reston is a planned community, started in the 1960's.  Among the compromises from the original plan was a downgrading of density; the developers discovered that single-family houses sold better than townhouses, which sold better than condos.  Now as the town has aged, and as Metro approaches (arriving next year on the east side of town), there's more and more planning for redevelopment, tearing down old buildings and building new ones.  In the process density is going up, which should make Matt Yglesias happy, if he ever travels from his DC apartment out to the wilds of Virginia.

Here's a post discussing planning for one of the redevelopment projects.  What strikes me is the bit about "Transit-Oriented Development".  It ties in with an observation about the Hunter Woods Fellowship House (an apartment building for seniors) which is served by a Fairfax Connector bus, although it probably adds 5 minutes to the bus route.

Seems to me in the near future it would be easy enough to have a vehicle, electric powered, controlled robotically, callable on demand, which runs only a route connecting an apartment complex like Fellowship House or the proposed Fairway Apartments to an express bus route or metro station.  Because the route would be set, it should be a relatively easy challenge to do the robotics.  By having a short route, the waiting time at either end would be minimal. By linking it in with a smartphone app, it could be response. 

The Space: On Not Doing It Right the First Time

My rule is that you never get something difficult right the first time.  Usually you can't, or I can't, get something easy right the first time.

John Holbo at Crooked Timber has a post which discusses, among other things, how long it took Western humans to start using "spaces" in their writing.  (Languages which use pictographs obviously don't have the problem.)

For example: "overthecourseoftheninecenturiesfollowingromesfallthetaskofseparatingthewordsincontinuous
writtentextwhichforhalfamillenniumhadbeenafunctionoftheindividualreadersmindandvoicebec
ameinsteadalaborofprofessionalreadersandscribestheseparationofwordsandthussilentreadingor
iginatedinmanuscriptscopiedbyirishscribesintheseventhandeighthcenturies...'

I wonder whether the space didn't contribute to the growth of productivity?

Cage Hens

US egg producers and the Humane Society are proposing a deal: if Congress will pass national standards, they can live with 144 square inches per hen, instead of 67. See this post on the Rural Blog.

The deal represents the sort of interest group bargaining we often see: in essence the big guys are working against the little guys.

[Note: I'm using Blogger's new editor, which I'm not sure I like--change is bad.   I keep forgetting labels before I post.]

Changing the Payment Process at Treasury

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution links to a Felix Salmon post discussing, in part, the problems Treasury faces on August 2/3, including this sentence:

"At that point — and no earlier — there would be enormous pressure on the White House to pull out the 14th Amendment and declare the debt ceiling unconstitutional, if only for practical reasons: doing so would be a lot easier than trying to reprogram the computers which are set to send out $49 billion of Social Security checks on August 3."

I know (almost) nothing about this, but when has lack of knowledge ever kept a self-respecting blogger from writing? I've two thoughts:

On the one hand, since the government hasn't done this (prioritizing payments) before, yes, the process is likely to be difficult and full of glitches. On the other hand, at least in the old manualish days, people had to certify the payment document before transmitting to Treasury for payment.  Then, moving ahead to the tape days (i.e., 1960-80's), SSA would have provided reels of 7 or 9 track mag tape containing the payment data to Treasury.  Back then, they could have just  stuck the reels in storage and waited to mount them and run the program until the debt limit was lifted.



I'd expect there's the automated equivalent of that still in place.  In others words, at some point SSA stops updating their payment file with the deaths, new retirees, corrections, and transmits the whole file to Treasury for payment of Aug 2 pensions.  I wouldn't think on the Treasury side their systems would know much about the data, except to record the payee, amount and date of payment--etc. But their system doesn't know or care whether they're printing Aug 2 checks on Aug 2, or on Sept. 2.

The Sexist Food Movement?

Sharon Astyk sends us to Harvard Magazine and a piece on restaurant food (bad) and home cooking (good). Much of it is channeling Mollie Katzen who's an adviser to Harvard cafeterias.  On page 2 I find this:

“I have friends in their forties who grew up right at the height of Mom never being in the kitchen,” says Katzen, who co-wrote Eat, Drink, and Weigh Less (2006) with Willett. “They didn’t see their mothers in the kitchen in any meaningful way—it wasn’t an integral part of life in the home. So they were opening a lot of cans, or buying fast food. In my [baby-boom] generation, our mothers lived in the kitchen; that’s where they parked themselves during the day and held court. In my family, at dinnertime, the kids would all help with the final steps: setting the table, helping Mom get the food on the table, helping clear afterwards. It was a team activity, part of what we did together as a family. My guess is that an equally, if not more, common way to gather around food now is to sit around the TV and watch Top Chef.”

 I'm a male chauvinist, due to my age, but it seems very anti-feminist to me.

Most Important for Liberals: Obama Wins in 2012

Amidst all the hullabaloo about debt ceilings and grand bargains, the one thing liberals should be most concerned about is: can Obama win in 2012? Republicans have notoriously said their goal is to make Obama a one-term President.  That's honest.  By the same token, the goal for liberals should be to make Obama a two-term President.

A one-term Presidency means the probable loss of most of the liberals gains of the past 2 1/2 years (though it'd be interesting to speculate on which are most vulnerable). It means the Supreme Court gets more conservative justices and fewer liberals.  It means years on the defensive, being hypocrites as the Dems in the Senate use the threat of filibuster in a delaying action against President Romney. It means the reopening of the debt limit deal to add further tax cuts and further spending cuts.


A two-term Presidency means protecting the liberal gains, and with the opportunity to make more gains. It means the possibility of new liberal blood on the Supreme Court.  It means the reopening of the debt limit deal to tweak the tax system (think of the changes to the welfare reform that Clinton got through in subsequent years). 

I Am a Federal Employee

Actually, I'm not, used to be, but not now.  Here's a site for people who want to rise in defense of federal employees, or at least get things off their chest.