USDA Improving?

From an FCW piece on the mandate for departments to establish a structure for "digital governance".

The Agriculture Department, for example, has been improving and standardizing the look and feel of all the department’s websites by hosting monthly webmaster meetings. The Labor Department is building a knowledge management program that integrates data from its 25 agencies and call centers, including answers to the most frequently asked questions, with the aim of building a cohesive customer experience.

Thanksgiving has made me cynical: how is "digital governance" different from "e-government" which was in turn different from  "IT management" which was in turn different from "ADP operations"?

Russian Grain

One of my worst predictions was that after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russian grain would flood the market as their agriculture improved, driving world prices down.  Generally speaking that's not happened.

There's a Russia Today advertising section included with one of my newspapers pretty regularly.  It seems it's put out by a Russian organization: Russia Beyond the Headlines, at rbth.ru  I'm not sure of who's behind the organization, but many of the articles seem pretty factual and objective.  Here's a recent one on the Russian grain situation.  Three paragraphs:

Russia has almost 300 million acres of arable land, about 50 million acres of which require time to recover after being out of service for some time. The minimum yield is about 1 ton per acre, which by European standards is next to nothing.
Therefore, even assuming minimum yields on all of the 300 million acres of arable lands, Russian land can produce 300 million tons of crops annually, with cereals accounting for two-thirds of the total. This means that Russia is capable of producing 200 million tons of grain annually.
With domestic consumption at around 80 million tons a year, Russia would have more than 100 million tons of spare grain that could be exported. To compare: Last season, the United States –  the global leader in grain exports –  exported 73 million tons of grain, with Argentina ranking second at 32 million tons. Australia and Ukraine each exported 24 million tons of grain, while Russia and Canada sold 20 million tons.

Mistake at the Post on Food

Annie Gowen commits an error in the third paragraph of her piece on declining federal aid for food banks:

Scorching drought and rising demand across the globe have pushed the price of U.S. food exports to record highs this year.

That is good news for American farmers. But it’s bad news for the hungry, especially on the eve of the holiday season.

The booming market means that the federal government does not need to buy as many excess crops from farmers, resulting in a precipitous drop in government donations to food banks.

I may be wrong, but it seems to me the days of the government donating surplus CCC inventory were gone long before recent price rises.

The Father of USDA

Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, son of Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut who was a Founding Father, was commissioner of patents 1836-45, and is sometimes called the father of USDA.  His life was diverse, being involved with western lands, Indian claims, Samuel Colt, and Samuel Morse and Aetna Insurance.  His 1842 report is available online, which is mostly agricultural (crop reports and statistics). One big concern was fencing and housing in the treeless prairies.  You can see in the report the seeds of NASS, of Extension, of ARS, of FAS, NRCS, and I don't know what else.

Living on Food Stamps

Periodically some public figure tries living on food stamps to prove a point.  The latest such is Mayor Corey Booker, as reported here.

I think these are stunts, not signifying a thing.  If you're going to eat an adequate diet on food stamps, you've got to cook.  If you have to cook, you need a stove, you need utensils, and you need a stock of staples going into your week (i.e., flour, sugar, cooking oil, salt, etc..).  The second prerequisite is buying in bulk.  Buy big and buy cheap.  Buy 10 pound bags of rice.  Buy the bargains at the sales. Make big batches and freeze (assuming your refrigerator works).

Unfortunately living poor means you're more liable to unexpected adversity, and expected adversity, so you need to dip into your stocks and deplete the money and food stamps needed to buy big.    

Worst Blog Post Pun of the Day

In its entirety:

No bowl movement…

… for Miami.

University Diaries (Margaret Soltan)

Reorganizing Government

This Politico opinion piece proposes reorganizing government.

"the federal government must invest but reform. The federal government largely remains a legacy government rooted in a different era. Existing federal agencies and programs are siloed and stove-piped in their structure and prescriptive and technocratic in their approach. The proliferation of redundant federal programs is particularly alarming.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/83995_Page2.html#ixzz2ChTGlcv7

Meanwhile somewhere I read a piece giving advice to all the new appointees to be in the executive branch.  One warning was: don't reorganize, it will sop up all your time and energy so you can't do anything else.

Having seen what has happened to Secretary Madigan's (and Espy and Glickman) effort to reorganize USDA I can only agree with the advice piece.  I remember telling Blake McGaughey, Mike Campbell, and some of their PA's there was a chance that Madigan's effort would bear fruit (this was in Ft Collins during the fall of 1991): maybe 50-50 odds.  I should have warned them I always had vision problems.

Wealthy Can Be Stupid

The NY Times has an article on what people with wealth and/or high incomes are doing in anticipation of changes in tax law for 2013.  I found this to be stupid:

Kristina Collins, a chiropractor in McLean, Va., said she and her husband planned to closely monitor the business income from their joint practice to avoid crossing the income threshold for higher taxes outlined by President Obama on earnings above $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples.

Ms. Collins said she felt torn by being near the cutoff line and disappointed that federal tax policy was providing a disincentive to keep expanding a business she founded in 1998.

“If we’re really close and it’s near the end-year, maybe we’ll just close down for a while and go on vacation,” she said.

There's little logic to the position unless she thinks, incorrectly, that the higher bracket applies to all earnings, not just the incremental gains over $250,000.  I hope they have a tax accountant who can advise them better. 

On Not Recording What Doesn't Happen

Sarah Kliff has a post on a study of what happens when women are refused an abortion.  We have data on what happens when a woman gets an abortion, but bureaucracies aren't very good in recording what happens in the absence of action.  My example in support of that generalization: FmHa and ASCS and FSA rarely had records on people who were refused service, that was one of the problems which led to the way the Pigford suit was resolved. 

A bureaucracy is geared to act, and to document the actions.  Rejections often aren't documented, unless in case of an appeal.

Leadership You Can Believe In

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution quotes and links to a piece on the President of Urugua, a former member of the Tupamaro guerrillas and the world's poorest president.  (Only a 1987 VW beetle--my first car was a beetle.)