Suoer Bowl Ads

Watched the first half of the Super Bowl last night.  Turned it off when Mahomes was injured, knowing the Chiefs were done for.  Besides, I tuned out of all the ads because mostly they included people I didn't recognize.  I realize I'm almost totally disconnected from popular entertainment and celebrity culture. 

Proper Representation II

 When I was young "representation" wasn't an issue. Instead you had "mobility", the idea that immigrants climbed the ladder from poverty to middle class with some striking it rich.  Actually there were different ladders--Jews were noted boxers and basketball players before they became doctors and lawyers. Mobility was often about "firsts". We noted the "firsts"--the first Jewish SCOTUS justice, the first Polish cabinet secretary, even the first black cabinet secretary.

Emphasizing the firsts obscured our view of the many, or perhaps was just a way to avoid looking at the many.   But "firsts" are still important; they show what is possible, what isn't prohibited.  Similarly the extreme cases, like Muggsy Bogues, may be outliers but they too show what's possible.

Somehow this discussion ties into "intersectionality" to me.  But that's for another day.

AFIDA and Congress

 CRS has a paper on the issue of foreign ownership of agricultural land in preparation for the upcoming farm bill.  Two items of note--about half the acreage included in FSA's AFIDA data is forest land (apparently a lot of which is in Maine) and China doesn't show up in the discussion of the owners of the most land.

They mention possible problems in FSA's data, including a request to GAO to look at it.  I am sure there are problems. 

What Is Proper Representation?

The conventional wisdom now seems to be that groups, whether ethnic, racial, gender, ideological, deserve to have representation in every walk of life that matches their presence in society.  

For example, I've noted articles on the dwindling presence of American blacks in major league baseball; the absence of blacks in management positions in the NFL, the lack of conservative professors in higher education, etc

My first reaction is to go slowly--the first consideration is whether there are legal barriers to such representation. Those I presume are almost always wrong. 

A second consideration is that under-representation of one group necessarily means over-representation of other group(s).  For example, the over-representation of Asian students in top educational institutions (i.e., Harvard, Thomas Jefferson High School) is the other side of the under-representation of other minorities. 

A third consideration is the under-representation  of a group in one area means the over-representation in other area(s).  For example, the over-representation of blacks in pro football and basketball seems to be the counterpart to their under-representation in pro baseball.

A fourth consideration is trajectory through history.  For example, blacks seem to have created and still dominate areas of music (about which I know nothing), like hip hop and rap.  Jews seem to be prominent in Hollywood and the entertainment industry.

A final consideration (some would put it first) is whether the differential representation indicates a barrier to advancement of some kind. One rule of advancement is usually--it depends on who you know--meaning the greater the representation the easier it is to advance.

The Hole In FSA Management?

 FSA has something called Box Onespan, which appears to be an on-line signature manager. I'm guessing from messages on the FSA Employee group on Facebook that FSA continues to have a hole in its management. 

What hole?  Someone who worries about the day-to-day operation of the county office; someone who is the authority on the common tools used in the office, who worries about training and answering questions.  Instead there's an ad hoc network of county personnel sharing information and tips.

The hole existed, I think, when I worked there and likely still exists. The problem is management in DC is specialized so no one has a unified picture of how things come together in the county office.  

IIRC there were occasional efforts in ASCS/FSA to come up with such a picture: training classes for counter clerks, manuals for district directors, and sometime the area/regional directors in DC would have a take. 

[Updated to eliminate double negative in title]

ChatGPT and Congress

 Yesterday there was a report, which I may be garbling, that Google had given ChatGPT the same test questions they give to engineering job applicants, and the AI qualified as a level 3, apparently an entry level.  The starting salary for level 3 was given as about $180K, more than the starting salary for a new member of Congress, not to mention a member of considerable seniority. 

Not sure what that says about AI, Google, Congress, or the US. 

New EWG Report on Distribution of Farm Payments

 Various newspapers picked up the EWG report.

The lede for one: "The top 10% of recipients of federal farm payments raked in more than 79% of total subsidies over the last 25 years ",  

Here's the EWG report.

Elsewhere they note that the Trump administration changed the reporting of payments--I think FSA must be reporting payments to assignees, so likely using the payee data, not the payable. 

[Update: they note the change in reporting reveals which financial institutions get the most payments: " Surprisingly, the financial institution that received the most farm subsidies was the USDA. The USDA’s Farm Service Agency, or FSA, alone got almost $350 million in farm subsidies between 2019 and 2021, more than any other financial organization." Not a surprise to anyone who understands how the payments word.]]

The Importance of Making/Fixing Things

 A recent hole in the roof meant I had to move away from my keyboard and actually do some work, physical work repairing the damage to drywall.  

Since gardening has been inactive this winter, I've not been doing such work. I found it good to be active, to try to do something, and actually succeed, not perfectly but good enough for government work.  (Note the source says it used to mean quality work. In some ways government specifications still are more particular, and certainly more expensive, than "off the shelf" civilian products. (Note the origin of this expression, not at all related to its current use, meaning standard items, not bespoke.

That's a digression--my point is doing the work was rewarding.

Police Killed in Line of Duty

 Turns out there's a wikipedia page for US police killed in line of duty. Quite a contrast with a page for UK police killed.

For anyone too lazy to click, US killings of police run about 50 or above, the UK runs about 1 a year.

The context is the culture: US view police as maintaining order against crime in the midst of an armed populace, meaning a focus on conflict and violence, while the UK has a different history. In short, there's not an arms race in the UK, there is in US.

Failure To Commit, To Decide

 Ran across this tweet, which sounds interesting. 

Excited to share this new work with @beckyj1 in @ASR_Journal! We examine how local organizations sort people to ration scarce social benefits. We analyze the case of prioritization in the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program (1/12)https://t.co/AAlR8Z8AdN

— Simone Zhang (@simonezhang) January 30, 2023

 

Drawing on >1000 local waitlist prioritization policies and interviews with local housing officials, we find many local housing agencies don’t set explicit priorities to determine who accesses a voucher sooner. This is especially true in rural, conservative communities. (4/12)

— Simone Zhang (@simonezhang) January 30, 2023

 My guess is part of this is the costs of deciding priorities.  It requires a conscious decision, which many people find difficult. Being in a rural area raises the odds that the potential decider knows some of the people who will be affected by her decision, and the people affected know who made the decision so there's the risk of emotional confrontations. 

It's also possible that there's no one decider, which raises the possibility of conflict among the deciders.  The outcome can be similar to Congress; which Congress can dodge the decision by kicking the issue to the bureaucracy, local deciders can dodge the decision by leaving it up to first-come, first served. Both tactics give the advantage to those who have the ability and expertise to navigate the bureaucracy.