Spain in the U.S.

I'm aware that St. Augustine, Florida represents the earliest European city in the US (some qualifications to that), and the Southwest, which was originally Spanish, then Mexican, also had early settlements (not sure of the chronology) and that's all a correction to the idea that history begins at Plymouth Rock or Jamestown.

What I didn't realize was how far north the Spanish had come, and where they built forts--like 300 miles into North Carolina?

Which reminds me of Prof. Bailyn's most recent book, which looks at some of the lesser known strains of settlement on the East Coast.

What Farmers Get for an Ear of Corn

Don't know why I was surprised by this because I do know that a loaf of bread contains only 2 or 3 cents worth of wheat, and similar ratios of raw material to price of finished goods apply elsewhere in agriculture.  The cost of the food you buy in the supermarket is mostly the cost of the chain of processors and transporters which gets it to the market.

The One in Four Rule

One of my first jobs after I switched from Directives to Production Adjustment was a followup to an audit of the disaster program ASCS was running.  The auditor, probably GAO but possibly OIG, faulted us for the number of farmers who got disaster payments in more than one year out of five.  Some got payments in two years, some in three.  So we had to run a computer program to identify these farmers and have the counties re-review the justifications for the payments and question the yield.

I thought of that when I saw this article about the one in four rule for crop insurance.  The difference is that this rule requires farmers to plant the land in at least one out of four rules, presumably being eligible for prevented planting indemnities the other three.  To someone from NY this rule seems ridiculous--why bother if you can only get a crop one out of four years?  That's the quick, knee-jerk reaction.  Slower consideration, remembering the prairie pot-hole area and the dryness of the area in question (i.e. Dakotas, MN, etc.) is perhaps a tad more favorable to RMA.  But the bottomline is once again a lesson in how Congress works.  No matter that GAO has done studies claiming crop insurance encourages the planting of marginal acreage--the ND congressional delegation is raising a fuss.  ("delegation" sounds more impressive than the "three members of Congress from ND".)  This is the way Congress works, and one example of why government programs fall short of a goo-goo's (good government types) dream.

Pigford II Status--Nearing the End?

A quote from a status update on Pigford II:

"Sanders said that 17,800 of the Track "A" claimants had been successful and another 800 claims were still being reviewed to see if they were duplicates or multiple claims filed on the same farmland. The remaining claims were unsuccessful. Sanders said no Track "B" claims, for higher monetary damages, had been approved."

 I believe about 70,000 claims were originally filed under Pigford II, and about 33,000 were found to be unique.

Bureaucrat versus Civil Servant; Scheme verus Plan

The Brits and their former colonies tend to use "scheme" as a perfectly neutral synonym for plan. To American ears it rings false, because the word carries a connotation of deviousness and "plan" is preferred.

The Brits and their former colonies tend to use "bureaucrat" as a neutral descriptor for office worker.  To American ears bureaucrat is an epithet, and civil servant is the more neutral term.

Both differences show the American propensity for cynicism and populism.

Data Hubs

A couple days ago I mused about the pros and cons of data sharing versus centralized data.  Today my reading reintroduces me to the idea of "data hubs", not in the context of commercial software as in the Wikipedia article but in the context of ACA (Obamacare) implementation.  I imagine a video showing a circus performer/juggler, who juggles maybe 3 items, plus catching another, adding it to the juggling, then tossing out an item and catching another.

I think it still fits into my "sharing" category.

The People Who Do the Work

Too often the big shots and big talkers monopolize attention, leaving the people who do the work in the shadows. 

That's a lead-in to this interesting article.  I owe a hat tip to the American Historical Association for the link.  Now I never was a full-time sanitation worker, but I did do some similar work during a summer job at Chenango Valley State Park.

Phrase of Yesterday

"it's not unusual for Senate floor time to be valuable."

So says Jonathan Bernstein

Sharing Versus Centralized Data

The VA and DOD have been working off and on to setup one centralized healthcare record for military personnel.  It makes sense: someone starts as a GI under DOD's control and, after retirement or separation, moves to be under VA's control. 

In the hearing I linked to it seems that Congress still wants that one record to rule them all, while DOD and VA are leaning more to sharing data.  I assume the idea is that if the VA can pull data from DOD records and display them to VA personnel, that's good enough.

During my government career, I was involved in both "sharing" and "centralizing" efforts. We worked for some years on trying to transfer files of ASCS data to SCS computers, basically to enable policing of the sod/swamp provisions of the 86 farm bill.  And the effort which eventually became SCIMS was based on the idea of a central customer/client record serving all the service center agencies. 

Neither effort worked out, at least not during my career.  I'm not sure what lessons to derive from that fact.  I mention this history because doing such things as implementing Obamacare or immigration reform (E-Verify) raise similar issues of system design.  

If you can design the interfaces, it's probably easier and faster to do the sharing, perhaps particularly these days with the availability of syncing software.  The biggest advantage of centralized data is not just avoiding redundant data load; it's avoiding the problem of stale data.  For example, a death gets reported in system A, but never propagated to systems B...Z.   The problem with sharing/communication is that the unspoken and unidentified assumptions in system A may trip you up in the other systems.  The problem with centralized systems is you have to understand a whole lot more about all the business rules. And it's difficult to have modular development.

Acreage Reports and Performance (27 Years Ago and MIDAS)

I noticed in recent NASCOE documents a brief discussion of "performance" problems, apparently due to MIDAS.  Today I see ND FSA quoted in this article on problems with acreage reporting due to MIDAS performance problems. 

I'm not a good person, so there's a smirk on my face, for which I apologize to everyone involved--I'm sure they are doing their best.

As some consolation I'd recall our problems with the ASCS-578 process when we first automated on the System-36.  The initial program design had one entry screen for each parameter for a field or subdivision (i.e., "corn" would be on one screen, "grain" or "silage" would be on another).  Do I need to add that with the first 36's we didn't move from one screen to the next very quickly?  The net result was something which was unusable, though with the combination of ignorance and rigidity too often found in the South Building we (I) earnestly explained to the state specialists that counties had to use the software.

Here my memory fades--I think we officially used the initial design for 1985, backed off to a data load process for 1986, and perhaps came up with a revised process for 1987, though maybe it was 1988.  The new process was an improvement, if I say so myself, but many counties still found it unusable for realtime applications.

Bottomline: progress is made slowly, often  2 steps forward and one back.  And learn from mistakes, because as my example shows, they'll stick in your memory for the rest of your life.