Sentence for Today

"Profligacy turned out to be one of my core skills"

From John Phipps discussing life transitions as he ages.

Slow Ideas and Extension

That's the title of an article in the New Yorker by Atul Gawande--he considers the differeences between good ideas which spread fast (like anesthesia) and those which spread slowly (like aseptic methods).  He uses the distinction in discussing a project to change the way Indian medical personnel handle newborn babies in one state.  He cites the persistence of drug company salesmen, who visit doctors again and again, trying to set up a relationship of trust in order to persuade them to use a new drug.  In his project, their representative visits a local hospital again and again, before finally getting the nurses to change their methods.

Gawande makes a reference to the role of agricultural extension in teaching farmers new methods in the 20th century.  I did my first tweet (@facelessbureaucrat) to point out to him that Seaman Knapp, the father of extension, believed teaching was not the key; having a local farmer demonstrate the methods on his own farm was much more effective.  I doubt I'll do much on Twitter, though it might be an outlet for my nitpicking, as in the one to Gawande.

I do wonder how much demonstrating extension does these days.

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