On Cutting Headquarters Staff: FSA and DOD

NASCOE wants the administration to examine and cut staff at headquarters and in the staff offices, rather than relying solely on cuts and closures of county offices.  Cut the big shots, not the peons is the motto.

I wish them luck, but this update on the effort to cut the big shots in the Pentagon doesn't offer much hope:

Seventeen general and flag officers were scheduled to be eliminated between May and September through Gates’ Efficiency Initiatives. But the DoD didn’t reduce its top brass at all. Instead, six generals were added from May to September, increasing the number of general and flag officers from 964 to 970. Moreover, from July 1, 2011—Panetta’s first day as Secretary of Defense—to September 30, the Pentagon added three four-star officers. Coincidentally, this is precisely the number of four-star officers Gates cut during his final year as SecDef, from June 2010 to the end of June 2011. Thus, in just three months, Panetta undid a year’s worth of Gates’ attempts to cut the Pentagon’s very top brass. It’s doubtful that Gates would consider Panetta’s current rate of adding a new four-star officer every month conducive to efficiency.

(One of these years when I get some energy, I'll do a comparison of the number of big shots in USDA under Kennedy and the number now.)

Cats Contribute to Scholarship

From an obit of a young scholar:

" Her cats, Gandalf and Thea, assisted greatly in the writing of her dissertation by destroying staplers, knocking over stacks of research, and disappearing at the whisper of a stranger’s entrance."

Obama Beats Romney Among Corn Growers

The Iowa corn growers (hat tip Des Moines Register) give Obama better marks on farm policy, much better marks than Romney.  I can't believe it means a thing. (When you count in the non-farm issues, somehow they give Romney a B, same as Obama, but less than Gingrich's A.

Bureaucrats Lose One. So Do Taxpayers

Obama has signed the repeal of mandatory withholding of 3 percent from federal, state, and local government payments to contractors.  The theory is that the withholding aids in the collection of taxes. Of course, that involves the theory that some contractors may be failing to pay their full taxes.

I know Republicans think all taxpayers are honest and IRS bureaucrats are always oppressive. I beg to disagree.  And I've evidence to back it up: when the IRS started requiring SSN's for dependent children, there was an unreported epidemic, some millions of dependents vanished. 

On a recent political self-test, my strongest value was fairness, and it's just not fair for some to pay taxes and others to evade. Shame on Obama and both parties in the Congress.

What's Ahead: Farm Bill

The Sustainable Ag Coalition almost always has good stuff on what's happening on the Hill. See their two-part series on the farm bill. I don't necessarily agree with their views, but the info is good.

The Virtues of Community

Going against the flow can be lonely.  A complaint from a locavore:

I live five miles outside a town of 850 people that could be more vibrant, more open to my ideas and goals as a farmer. I know that the customers who buy our eggs and lamb appreciate the work I do to make the food they eat, but I don't see them every day. (In fact, because I sell at an online farmers market, I rarely see any of my customers at all.) There are one or two other farmers in the area who grow things like we do, but we see them about every other month. Folks in my town are nice people, but they generally see nothing wrong with chemical farming or genetically modified seeds, as far as I can tell. Rarely does anyone think that farming without these technologies might be worth something extra. We stand by our values and practice sustainable agriculture, but pay the price of being seen as outsiders.

There can be a tendency to idealize the past. I grew up in an area of small farms and people who commuted to the city for work, but it wouldn't be  terribly warm and welcoming to newcomers.  I don't think the different ideas are as important as the actions and attitudes of the newcomers.  An extrovert who joins in community activities can be accepted regardless of any weird ideas he may have; someone who holds back won't be warmly integrated.

Forgotten Foresight or Accident of History?

James Fallows has a post triggered by the Republican debate, when Wolf Blitzer led off saying "Wolf" was his real name, then Willard Mitt Romney followed claiming "Mitt" was his real name. The discussion touches on the difficulty with modern databases, which usually force people into the WASP naming, pattern: first, middle, last name, with no tolerance for someone who wants to be known as "Mitt Romney", much less someone from a different heritage (Hispanic, Arab, Russian, whatever).

In that context I'd like to tip my hat to a long ago designer of ASCS data files, who included both the separate name fields, plus the 33 character, if I recall, name field, which at least for a time permitted us to accommodate Mitt Romney and to record his full legal name (or Bill Clinton and William Jefferson Clinton). 

On the other hand, the structure might have been simply a historical accident.  In the 60's county offices were sending an 80 character record (for the punch card) to Kansas City, which I believe included the 33 character name field. When it came time to design the master name and address record in the early 80s for use on the System/36, they added the separate name fields, one advantage of which is the ability to search and sort by last name.

So that's two alternative stories: at this point I don't know which is right.

Food Movement as Religion

That's the argument in this long post. An excerpt:

But I couldn’t help but feel I had just attended a religious revival. Lyman’s [the "Mad Vegetarian Cowboy"] talk had all the hallmarks of a revivalist sermon, minus any mention of God or Jesus. He had told of the sinful ways in his youth, his arrogance and his disregard for the wisdom of tradition. He recounted the crisis sparked by illness, a miraculous cure, and the epiphany that allowed him to see the error of his former ways. He then chronicled his path of righteousness. The lecture ended with what felt like an altar call, as Lyman exhorted listeners to renounce the sinful ways of the world and follow the narrow path of righteous eating.

I think it's stretching it a bit.  The food movement can make use, conscious or unconscious, of themes and patterns found in religion, but that doesn't make it a religion.  I would be interested though in how well food evangelism meshes/coexists with religious evangelism.

GW Bush: Lifesaver?

Any faithful readers will know I rarely say anything good of any Republican, except my parents and they're dead.  But I was struck by the good news on AIDS in the media earlier this week.

At the end of last year, there were about 34 million people with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. While that is a slight rise from previous years, experts say that’s due to people surviving longer. Last year, there were 1.8 million AIDS-related deaths, down from 1.9 million in 2009.

 Now my fellow liberals associate George W. Bush with the deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Depending on how you view his decisions that's true enough.  Estimates of civilian deaths in Iraq have been in the 100,000  range; that's cumulative over the years 2003-2008.

So when you compare the 1 year reduction in AIDS deaths, it's roughly equal to the deaths GW could be considered responsible for.  Clearly, though,  one should compare the declining death rate with the death rate which would have been experienced if there were no intervention.  By that measure, the effects of foreign aid over 1 year have greatly exceeded the tolls of war.

It's true enough that GW doesn't deserve sole credit for the interventions in Africa.  But under the influence of Bono he did take the lead, both in ensuring our contributions and in getting help from other countries. [Updated: here's a Bono op-ed in the Times on the gains.  I can buy everything he says, but thanking Jesse Helms is really, really, really hard to swallow.]

So maybe we should give thanks for GW?

What Lies Ahead

On Black Friday, let me be gloomy and forecast doom over the next few months and years:

• the Eurozone collapses as the EU continues to be a day late and a dollar short and refuses to take advice from Geithner and Obama
• Europe goes into recession, which leads us into a period of zero growth
• the developing nations see their growth slacken, as bubbles pop and exports to the US and Europe, now in recession, decline
• harvests in South America, Russia and the Ukraine, Australia, China and India are record or near record levels.
• commodity prices fall because demand from the developing world is depressed and supply has exploded.
• the farmland price bubble pops and many farmers find themselves overextended.
• with the US economy in a second recession, the deficit starts really to explode, making it impossible to pass a farm bill because the parties can't agree on anything.

Finished on somber Saturday.  (Not that I think the above will happen, but what do I know.)