Editing Mistakes and Crop Insurance Fraud Used as a Weapon

In the political infighting over the farm bill, with supporters of farm programs attacking SNAP (food stamps) the SNAP people are fighting back by citing crop insurance fraud.  There's an article in the NY Times this morning on the subject--obviously the SNAP proponents have dug up some ammunition, including the recent NC case and a GAO report.  That's all good. 

What's not so good is this correction:

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the annual spending for the food stamp program and the amount of fraud involved. The budget is $75 billion a year, not $760 billion. The amount of fraud is around $750 million, not $760 million. The article also contained another error: Federal data shows that the rate of food stamp fraud, which has declined sharply in recent years, now accounts for .01 percent of the $75 billion program, or about $750 million a year; not 1 percent.

 Apparently the Times has fired so many fact checkers that they've no one left who knows the difference between 1 percent and .01 percent.  They were right the first time and their correction is wrong.

We Were More Cultured in the Old Days

Erik Loomis posts the lists of best selling books in 1969 here.  Roth, Nabokov and Vonnegut were on the fiction list; serious stuff on the non-fiction list.

Hot News in the Confederacy

Happened to have cause to look up the Southern Illustrated News, which turns out to be the Confederacy's answer to Harpers'.  Amazing how much attention was devoted to fashion.  An excerpt:

The Latest Style of Parisian Belle.

            At the French spas, during the past summer, the ladies have worn their skirts nearly as short as the Bloomer surtout, while Hessian boots, laced from the knee about half way down, and with tassels swinging from the tops, have been the sole substitutes for the Bloomer unmentionables.  Add to these articles of costume a broad belt at the waist, with a buckle in front about fourteen inches in circumference, together with a jaunty hat, without strings, something like the chapeau of the stage highwayman, and worn rakishly aslant on the head, and you will have some idea, fair reader, of the gentlemanly appearance of a Paris belle at a fashionable watering-lace during the late flirting season.  Stay, we have omitted one item—an eagle's feather stuck erect in the hat in the  Rob Roy Macgregor fashion.  The correspondent of an English newspaper, after describing this outrageous "rig" (which, by the way, is rendered still more conspicuous by its glaring and strongly contrasted colors), says that the impudent bravado with which it is worn is more offensive to decency than the dress itself!  Such is the mode, in the court circle of France under the eyes of a matron Empress.  Whether she set the fashion or not, we cannot say; but as she some time ago assumed the masculine hat and cane, it is quite likely that the Hessian boots, short petticoats, belt and chieftain's feather are specialties introduced by the gay and festive, though middle-aged and somewhat faded, Eugenie.

This was late in the war--November 26, 1864 to be exact.

Welcome to This Century, the US Navy

According to this PCMag item, the Navy is finally, finally going to stop using all caps for its messages.  But the last two paragraphs don't give me confidence:

"At this point, the Navy still has systems that can't handle messages with upper and lowercase letters. "In these instances, the C2OIX system will be able to convert the text to upper case before making final delivery," McCarty said.
That problem is expected to be fixed by 2015, the Navy said."

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.