On Enforcing Payment Limitation

GAO looked at how FSA is enforcing payment limitation rules.  The summary conclusion seems to be "improving, but with a ways to go".  I ran across this paragraph, which reminded me how Mike Campbell in the Sherman county FSA office in 1992/3 wanted us to make the process so simple it would put consultants out of business.  We failed to do it, and so have the people now in FSA (and Congress, especially Congress):

 Several FSA officials said that large farming operations receive assistance from consulting firms to help them comply with active personal management criteria. For example, a state office official said the documentation that consulting firms prepare for farming operations is consistently sufficient to support a determination of active personal management.

https://www.gao.gov/assets/720/710470.pdf

Happy Thanksgiving

My view of Obama's Promised Land, as portrayed back in the Grant administration.

A Good Reform on Shell Corporations?

 I saw a report today, which I've since lost, that House and Senate conferees have agreed on an important reform: requiring what we used to call in ASCS the "live bodies" who own a corporation to be identified.  Under current law if you want to hide the ownership of something, you set up a shell corporation to own it, and then set up more shell entities to own the shell corporation and so on. 

I hope the reform goes through, but there's lots of hurdles between a deal on Capitol Hill and having it in the law signed by the Presideb. We'll see.

[update--the politico article]

FSA Flip-Flops on Actively Engaged?

 Rural Blog has a post linking to a Progressive Farmer article on a change in payment limitation regulations published here. The article interprets it as a flip-flop, easing the requirements for payment limitation determinations.  I'm not sure that's right but  I'm 23+ years out of date on these technicalities, if not more, so I'll just quote the meat of the explanation:

After publication of the rule, stakeholders notified FSA of concerns regarding potential non-intended, adverse effects to farming operations comprised solely of family members. In streamlining the definitions for consistency, these revised definitions were inadvertently made applicable to farming operations solely owned by family members. This was not the intent of this rule change, and as revised, the definitions were more restrictive than they needed to be in order to provide intended consistency in the rule. Those more restrictive definitions were not intended to apply to farm operations comprised or owned solely of family members. Therefore, this document restores § 400.601 and the previous the definitions of “active personal management” and “significant contribution” in § 1400.3 that were applicable prior to publication of the final rule on August 24, 2020. The more restrictive definitions described in § 1400.601 apply only to farming operations comprised of non-family members that are subject to a limit in the number of farm managers seeking to qualify for actively engaged in farming based on a contribution of active personal management alone.

 There's a reference to a GAO study as well, which seems to be this.

National Records Act and Trump

 Jill Lepore has an article in the New Yorker on the Trump administration and official records. It's  pretty good.  For a while I was responsible for records management in ASCS.  This was pre-PC.  In those days "records management" was a component of "paperwork management", which also included "directives" and "forms".

Back then paperwork management had become rather formal, partially perhaps because of the Billie Sol Estes case.  But since then technology seems to have disrupted everything; at least it was well on the way to doing so when I retired.

Justice for Black Farmers Act--First Take

 Successful Farming has a piece discussing this bill, introduced by Sens. Booker, Warren, and Gillibrand. Warren's statement of support is here. The legislative language is here . (I'm not sure the bill has actually been introduced--the draft language doesn't have a number and I can't find it at Congress.gov.) Mother Jones has an article on it.

It includes several reforms and programs, most of which are focused on black farmers (defined as American-born).

The biggest ask is a program to give qualified applicants of up to 160 acres of farmland, representing from $400,000 to $800,000 in value (using Farm Bureau's average farmland value of $4,100) at no cost.

Other provisions seem to oust OGC from civil rights matters, to put additional layer(s) of authority and/or review over the existing civil rights structure and the FSA county committees, and call for an extensive research and statistical work by ERS and NASS. In addition to the provisions on black farmers there are changes relating to packers and stockyards, conservation, and local markets.

There's an "Oversight Board" focused on current and future USDA/FSA operations and an "Equity Commission" focused on historical and structural issues to do a report within 2 years, and a Civil Rights Ombudsman.

I'm still trying to understand everything in this.  Some things which struck me:

• while I don't see anything about the composition of the Oversight Board, the Equity Commission is specified in detail--black farmers, NGO members, and HBCU faculty.
• there's a discrepancy--the title is for "Black Farmers" but some of the language is "socially disadvantaged".
• Alcorn State's Policy Center is written into the bill.  It's headed by Eloris Spight, who seems to have moved from the HR side at NRC to policy before moving to the education world in 2014.

For now, that's what I have. 

The Right and Geography

 In this month someone on the right has:

•  mistaken the country of Georgia for the state of Georgia (tweeting that Georgia only had 3 million people so the number of votes reported for the state showed fraud
• mistaken the state of Washington and the city of Washington, DC (similar tweet to the first)
• mistaken Minnesota ("MN") for Michigan ("MI") as part of a lawsuit submission.
• at Fox, labeled Michigan's Upper Peninsula as Canada.

One might conclude there's a lack of education in geography and/or that speed makes for sloppy work. 

Drones and the Military

 The Armenia-Azerbaijan hostilities have involved extensive and effective use of drones by the Azerbaijanis which caused the Post to see the future of warfare. in this article.

I doubt that DOD will move quickly to adapt weapons and tactics for scenarios where the adversary is using drones against us--it's not a situation we've run into much up to now, so the military bureaucracy is unlikely to have focused on the threat.

I'm reminded of some discussions of the evolution of the submarine and torpedo, where you had "torpedo boats", then "torpedo boat destroyers" which evolve into the WWI-WWII hierarchy of weapons. 

The Problems With Executive Action

 Dylan Mathews has a post at Vox: "10 enormously consequential things Biden can do without the Senate".

He writes: "Pushing the limits of executive authority is sure to provoke legal challenges that the Biden administration could lose, especially with a 6-3 Republican Supreme Court. But even if only half of the options below are implemented and affirmed by the courts, the practical effects would still be hugely significant."

I guess my conservative side is showing.  I know the frustrations of facing a deadlocked Congress, a body which cannot decide what laws to pass. But there are problems in going down this road. 

• successful executive actions can be reversed when a new Republican president comes into office.  We can't assume that Democrats will always control the executive, or that the Republicans will come to accede to Dem actions.   Reversals can mean a frustrated and ineffective bureaucracy: one which will know their work is temporary and built on shifting sands.
• using the executive actions increases the power of SCOTUS, meaning it will become more political and fights over filling vacancies even more heated.

I prefer the longer range option of building support in the country which results in electing majorities in Congress which can pass permanent legislation.  That strategy is the one which Dems used for Obamacare.  In the end, it's better to piecemeal our way to permanent reforms than to become wedded to visions of perfect solutions for which the clock will strike midnight.

Hypothetically--This Is a Messed Up Program

 I graduated from college long before college loan program came into existence, so I've no first-hand experience with it. However, my impression is that it's been a political football as the parties alternate in power.  The Democrats push loans issued directly by the Education Department while the Republicans believe in loans from banks/financial institutions with a federal guarantee. As the program has gone on,  people have made changes to the provisions, including forgiveness of payments under certain conditions.  So you end up with the sort of mish-mash this person finds herself in.  If you follow the thread of responses to her, itbecomes even more confusing than indicated here. 

If, hypothetically, you took out a heap of Stafford and Perkins loans, and then consolidated them, and then the consolidation loans were sold like 5 times, and you qualify for various federal repayment plans but not for the pandemic relief - are those federal or private loans?

— Melissa Johnson, PhD (@Lady_Historian) November 18, 2020

One fallacy of my education in government, as my school called "political science" is that Congress makes decisions and the executive branch administers them.  In reality for some areas it's an ebb and flow of changes making it very hard for the poor bureaucrat to administer.