Firing Federal Employees

This FCW post covers a USAToday study showing:

By researching the Office of Personnel Management’s database, the newspaper found that the job security rate for all federal workers was 99.43 percent last year and nearly 100 percent for those on the job more than a few years.

 I'm sympathetic to the idea firing employees is too hard.  On the other hand, there's some unknown fraction of the people who leave their jobs voluntarily who really don't. I'd love to see a study which compared job leaving rates among similar jobs in the federal and state governments and private enterprise. I don't know what it would show--maybe federal managers are skilled in making life uncomfortable for employees they want to get rid of.  Or maybe it would show managers are skilled in making employees to turkey farms, where they do no damage, except to the taxpayer.  Or maybe it would show managers are masochists who just suffer with their unsatisfactory employees.

From the Field: FSA, NRCS and State

Chris Clayton at DTN reports one Iowa farmer's experience: with EQIP:

The Natural Resources Conservation Service sent Bailey to the Farm Service Agency to see if the land had a conservation plan. FSA sent Bailey back to NRCS to create a conservation plan. Eventually, the conservation plan was established. Because it was a livestock operation, Bailey needed to apply manure, so he also had to create a manure management plan. Bailey had to learn a phosphorus application program. He then also had to file a manure management plan with the county.[And Iowa State Agriculture required a livestock premises ID.]

Reminds me of the Kentucky state executive director in 1993 and Infoshare/Service Center Initiative.

The farmer suggests:

"If we had a way in the Midwest to document how many pounds of nitrogen were going down the Des Moines and the Raccoon rivers, and could report that back to each individual farmer, he would quickly convert that back into dollars. That feedback response would be more powerful than a regulatory or an incentive-based approach. Part of the problem we have got in causing change to happen is providing timely feedback to the operator. That information becomes very powerful to correct and change the problems with the application on our landscape."

The Difference a Week Makes

John Phipps reports his operation switched to earlier maturity corn seed, so that his corn has already pollinated.  It may have been a great decision, given the heat wave in the middle of the country and the widespread concerns it will adversely impact pollination.

These sorts of decisions, and their accompanying risks, form the foundation for farmers feeling they deserve a safety net.

Penetration of Internet in the Wealthiest County

From the Herndon Patch post on the Fairfax County Schools moving more to textbooks online:

FCPS discovered through the pilot that 92 percent of middle school students have computer access at home, .3 percent have no access and 73 percent say they can have access whenever they want it. For high school, the results are 88 percent with access at home, 1.5 percent have no access and 82 percent have access whenever they want it.

I assume there are a few Luddites in this county, but most of the missing 8 percent are children of immigrants who basically rely on the library system.

Education Innovation: University Diaries and Khan Academy

I'm torn.  Margaret Soltan at University Diaries is an English professor who trashes the use of Powerpoint and generally the use of laptops in class.  She makes a good case.  Then I read this article at Wired.com, hattip Marginal Revolution, on the Khan Academy and that points the other way.  (Khan Academy is a set of videos, each focused on one point (as in a theorem in math).  What's a person to think?

FSA and the Debt Ceiling: Contract Provision

I don't know which government obligations have similar provisions, and I'm not a lawyer, but I suspect FSA is not bound to pay direct payments if there's no deal on the debt ceiling because of this provision (paragraph 3 P of the CCC-509 appendix):

Payments are subject to the availability of funds, compliance with all applicable laws and statutory changes and to limits on payments as may be provided for in the program regulations and it is specifically understood that any payments under this Appendix and the programs to which it applies are subject to statutory and regulatory changes including those that occur after the signing of the contract.

There's also a provision in paragraph 10 to reflect modifications by Congress--the bottom line is the contract isn't binding.  Congress is the 700 pound gorilla, although practical politics is the surety farmers have that Congress won't simply rip up the contract.

In theory then, if the Obama administration has to prioritize payments, these payment should be the tail-end Charlie.

Sen Hatch the Conservative

Sarah Binder at The Monkey Cage has a post on Senator Hatch who faces a primary challenge next year from a tea party candidate.  In my memory he was a right wing conservative.  I identified him as such when he was first elected to the Senate, and he was.  He was much to the right of the center of gravity of the Republicans in the Senate.  Now it seems he is much to the left of the center of gravity, not because he's changed particularly, but because the Republicans have moved rightwards.  More accurately, as old Republicans have been defeated or retired, the new Republicans who have been elected are much more conservative.

Good Old Rummy

Ex-Secretary Rumsfeld got patted down going through security on the way to Mrs. Ford's funeral.  He seems to have taken it in good humor, saying people with 2 titanium hips and 1 titanium shoulder have to expect to take more time.

That bothers me, because I just completed the jerry-built structures needed to use my PC while standing.  There's lots of research saying that too much sitting lowers your life expectancy, and I've had some minor, I think, problems with circulation in my legs and feet which trigger my hypochondria.  So I got out my hammer and saw and built a platform which I used for the first time yesterday. 

Rummy notoriously did his office work standing at a desk, notoriously because when asked to approve "enhanced interrogation techniques" which included requiring the subject to stand, he asked why that was questionable.

But Rumsfeld's a better man than I, I've been standing for about an hour today and I'm not going to last for another, much less the 8-10 more he could put in.  And if it means titanium hips are in my future?  At least I'll have some future.

A Case of Counting Your Chickens

Brad DeLong has a series he calls "[X=historical figure] Liveblogs World War II [date]. Today's is Hitler, in July 1942 planning to reconfigure his armed forces after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Pigs Train Their Human

Given the example of Walt Jeffries and his peach-eating pigs, we're reminded that the relationship of humans and animals is a dance, just as the relationship of humans and humans is a dance.