Why Washington Employment in FSA Grows

From a recent GAO report on FSA enforcement of the adjusted gross income limits:

" For example, GAO found errors in 19 of the 22 tax return files it reviewed from FSA offices in two states; one of these errors led to a potentially improper payment of $40,000. FSA headquarters does not monitor state offices' reviews of tax returns to ensure that the offices are applying program guidance consistently and making accurate eligibility determinations, even though federal standards for internal control direct agencies to monitor and assess the quality of performance over time. Also, 2008 Farm Bill provisions requiring a distinction between farm and nonfarm income make it difficult for agency officials to verify if participants' incomes exceed the limits without making errors. Because the statutory limits for farm and nonfarm income differ, to verify such income, FSA officials must comb through sometimes long and complex tax returns to classify and calculate income--a difficult task for those who are not accountants or tax preparers. Recent bills in the House and Senate have proposed using total adjusted gross income instead of farm and nonfarm income, which would reduce the need for FSA to review tax returns."  [emphasis added]

People like to talk about the top-heavy Washington bureaucracy of various agencies, including FSA (yes, I'm looking at you NASCOE).  It's good to mock the proliferation of well-paid bigshots at both departmental and agency levels. But one should also remember that no one outside the agency is ready to trust field (in this case, state office) people to do things 100 percent right and to accept the mistakes if they don't.

I'd praise GAO for recommending simplifying the rules.  I'd also note the indications that some accountants and attorneys actually lie to FSA!  I'm shocked, shocked I say.

Civil Service College

Via Marginal Revolution, here's the "programme" of Singapore's Civil Service College for "Officers" (which I think is their term for front line employees, FSA's equivalent of the county offices.  One item is a 16-hour course in "Responsiveness In Frontline Customer Service: Making Customer Satisfaction A Daily Pleasure".

I've noticed a cultural difference between the other former members of the British Empire and the U.S. in regards to government employees: in the US we call them "bureaucrats" with a pejorative edge; in the other countries, they're "civil servants" or "bureaucrats" used as a neutral term. It may trace to differences in how we established independence (a la David Hackett Fischer's book on the US and New Zealand): we had a revolution against British authority, the face of which was bureaucrat/civil servants.  While Canada, Australia, Singapore, India generally had a more amicable parting of the ways with the "mother country", in which the local people just took over the bureaucracy.

I Think We Look Pretty Good

To this Indian student who writes about his impressions of the U.S.  Hat tip: Marginal Revolution

At least, "pretty good' is my overall impression of his impressions--impressive, isn't it?

My Best Line of the Day

In commenting on a Wonkblog post about whether Americans knew where Damascus and Syria were, I wrote: "Surely the question is not whether Americans know where Damascus is, but whether our targeters know where the Chinese and Russian embassies are."

I thought it was good, but then I realized Ezra Klein is so young he probably was in grade school when we hit the Chinese Embassy during the Kosovo action.   

No one should be that young.

Tip of the Hat

To Diana Nyad.  When I heard two days ago she was trying to swim between  Cuba and the US again, for the umpteenth time, I said she should give up, she's too old.

Turns out she wasn't and I was wrong.

FSA and Drones

Via Marginal Revolution, here's a piece on how archeologists are using drones in their work.

Causes me to ask: when is FSA going to drones?  Last I knew FSA had a set of aerial photographs which were scaled and ortho-corrected (which I think means adjusted for changes in elevation) with which one could measure the area of a field, and a yearly set of slides taken from small planes to help identify which crop was in which field.  I'm sure that's changed as they've implemented their GIS system, but I'm not sure how.  On the theory the agency still needs to spot-check the accuracy of what they're being told by the farmer, I'd assume there's still some aerial slides being taken.  Drones might be a better approach (except for all the rules and regulations about their use, which presumably archeologists in Peru don't need to worry about).

My Feelings on Syria--the Obama Doctrine

I'm as ambivalent about Syria as I am on most things, but I'd urge my representatives in Congress to support limited military action in response to the use of chemical weapons.

Seems to me we want to raise the costs of the use of such weapons anyway we can, both now and for the future.  I'd even recommend a corollary to the "Obama doctrine:" anytime and anywhere we determine that chemical weapons have been used, the perpetrators of such use may be struck by our military forces. (Did you know there was an "Obama Doctrine"--I didn't until I checked wikipedia.)

Having said that, I'm assuming our military has identified targets, the destruction of which will thread all the needles of the obstacles critics have raised:  minimum harm to civilians, maximum harm to those involved in the use of the weapons, least degradation of Assad's command and control over such weapons, most painful to Assad, etc.

[posted prematurely]  

Failed Historian's Favorite Sentence

"The truth is that what goes on in the pages of the American Educational Research Journal stays in the pages of the American Education Research Journal."

That's from an interesting article by Sam Wineburg on history, historians, and making an impact in the real world.  His point, to save lazy people from clicking through, is that there's no set of interpreters who take the results of academic research in peer-reviewed journals and make it attractive to the general public, or even the teachers in schools.''

[Update--to clarify, I'm the "failed historian" in the title.]

Different Roles for Different Folks

That's the theme of a good post on the Washington post site by Jonathan Bernstein.  The point is that political activists and political officeholders have different roles in our government.  Some raise hell; others are the decider.

Weather in Hell: Cooling?

Today the Post runs an article written by Jane Black, whom I ordinarily consider to be one of the food movement, which treats a big(!) industrial (!) Minnesota farmer who grows genetically engineered crops(!).  And it's favorable(!), or at least understanding.  In part it's because he's tried other crops and other niches, in part because he cares for his soil, and mostly because the Minnesota Sustainable Ag organization praises him.

One thing I wish she'd addressed: she describes him as "precisely" applying fertilizer, but without specifying how the reader doesn't know whether it's part of "precision agriculture" (which can be defined as replacing the footsteps of the farmer with the memory of the computer).