Good Sentence on the Nature of Our Politicians

"For starters, it means that the entire political system is filtering strongly for a very peculiar personality type"

From Matt Yglesias, here.

Security Clearances and Math

Somehow the math doesn't add up.  There was an article in the Post this morning, then I found this blog post.

 "The number of persons who held security clearances for access to classified information last year exceeded 4.2 million — far more than previously estimated — according to a new intelligence community report to Congress (pdf)."

OPM says there are 2.756 million federal employees, and a total of 4.403 million legislative, executive and military branch employees.  I never had a security clearance, either in the Army or in USDA, but the figures imply that the average person in government does.  Why, for goodness sake?  I can see the law enforcement branches, but not much else.

I hope the figures are wrong.  I hope what's going on is that the data bases of security clearances aren't being purged very well when people leave the government.  Or is it the case that: once cleared, always cleared, and leaving government doesn't cancel the clearance. 

Defeat for Research and Promotion Plans

One legacy of the New Deal (perhaps even of Herbert Hoover) was the creation of government-sponsored, farmer approved cartels called research and promotion plans.  Basically a referendum of farmers approves a plan to assess a fee on sales to be used by an organization to promote the commodity.  Some raisin producers have taken USDA to court, made it to the Supreme Court, and won--at least that's how I interpret this post at SCOTUS blog.  (In the case of raisins, there's requirements for the handlers to hold reserves, and the issue is whether the people suing were handlers or producers and whether the reserve requirement was a "takings" under the Constitution.

I wonder if athletes will try again to challenge the cartels run by the NCAA and the pro leagues?

"Personal Data"

Some senators get upset by EPA releasing personal data tied to CAFO's. 

I continue to be perplexed--I think it was the DC Circuit Court said in 1994 ASCS had to give payment data to EWG, including names and addresses. I think the logic was the data wasn't personal.  But now we're saying it is personal, which is the position ASCS had taken since the Privacy Act was passed.

The Joys of Dairying

Threecollie at Northview Dairy reminds me of one of the joys which I really, really miss--milking a wet cow.  

It's one of things aspiring farmers should experience before investing too much of their hopes and money into a dairyman's life.

More Administrative Procedure Act Weeds

I mentioned an amendment to the farm bill from House Judiciary, requiring compliance with the Administrative Procedure Act.

Today I followed up an a USDA notice in the Federal Register, not something I usually do, and found they're withdrawing a 1971 statement on APA compliance.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is proposing to rescind the Statement of Policy titled “Public Participation in Rule Making,” published in the Federal Register on July 24, 1971 (36 FR 13804) that requires agencies in USDA to follow the Administrative Procedure Act's (APA) notice-and-comment rulemaking procedures even in situations where the APA does not require it. The Statement of Policy implemented a 1969 recommendation by the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), which urged Congress to amend the APA to remove the exemption from the notice-and-comment requirement for rulemakings relating to “public property, loans, grants, benefits, or contracts,” adding that agencies should follow the notice-and-comment procedures pending amendment of the APA.

They've several justifications for withdrawal: loan programs are governed by OMB rules, some notices of proposed rulemaking don't attract significant comments, Congress never adopted the 1969 recommendation of the ACUS, information on rules is much more readily available in today's environment than it was in 1971. 

I know the Dems revived the ACUS. I wonder what they've done, if anything, to bring the rulemaking/public participation process into the 21st century.

What the Government Can Do With My Phone Records

As a Verizon subscriber, the government has my phone records or rather the records of what my number was doing: what numbers called my number, what numbers my number called, etc.

Even though I'm a longtime supporter of ACLU, it doesn't particularly bother me.  I do wish, however, that NSA and FCC would put their heads together and stop all the automated calls I get.  My number is on the Do Not Call registry, but it doesn't stop the machines calling my machine.  Surely NSA has all the data FCC would need to identify the callers and stop the calls?  IMHO those calls are a more serious threat to the safety and sanity of the country than Al Qaeda is.

Into the Bureaucratic Weeds with the Farm Bill

From Farm Policy:

"A news release yesterday from Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R., Va.) noted in part that, “[Chairman Goodlatte] introduced an amendment that would ensure regulations imposed under the FARRM Act are subject to promulgation under the Administrative Procedure Act and the Congressional Review Act, which falls under the jurisdiction of the House Judiciary Committee.  The version of the bill reported by the House Agriculture Committee last month waived this requirement. Congressman Goodlatte’s amendment passed the House Judiciary Committee by voice vote with bipartisan support.”

 I've not followed this closely.  Farm Policy goes on to explain this action on the part of House Judiciary is part of the infighting over the dairy provisions in the House Ag farm bill.  Chairman Goodlatte wants USDA to do some studies.  But from the description, it sounds more general, perhaps applying to all provisions of the farm bill. 

In my memory the farm bill always contained an exemption from the APA for production adjustment programs.  The usual reason was that Congress never got the legislation completed in time, so we were always behind the eight ball in getting the program in the field.  By waiving APA requirements Congress could ask us to act quickly and keep their constituents happy.  Now as I write my memory is being tickled with the idea that maybe one of the attorneys in OGC did push us to comply once or twice, but by putting out an interim rule instead of doing the proposed rule/public comment/ final rule process. 

I may also be wrong on this, but I think the APA always technically applied to the farm bill, but in the 70's ASCS ignored it.  It was only with the 1983 PIK program with its contracts that we got really serious about involving the lawyers and dotting every i.

Federal Program Inventory

Performance.govhttp://goals.performance.gov/federalprograminventory has a new inventory of federal programs.  I'm not sure why it exists, or how it differs from the Catalog of  Federal Domestic Assistance Programs maintained since I was a new bureaucrat by GSA.  The administration is cutting redundant data centers; are they creating redundant catalogs?

The End of the "Healthy Immigrant" Paradox?

The Times Saturday had a report on the results of a new German census which cuts the German population.  Germany had thought they had a handle on their population because of their mandatory registration system, but the first census in many years showed different.

According to the article what happened is that immigrants registered themselves in a place, which was added to the cut.  But when immigrants decided to leave Germany, they often didn't report their leaving to the authorities, meaning the total population was inflated.  What's more, because those shadow people were never reported as having died, it came to seem that immigrants were healthier than native Germans--the "healthy immigrant" paradox.

What's interesting is that scholars have worked on the "healthy immigrant effect" in this and other countries, offering varying reasons for the phenomenon.  Google the term and see.  So I wonder whether there's similar problems with the data being used to assess the effect in the U.S.?