I'm in the Elite

No, not that I have all but one of my teeth at age 66, though that's good. (Just got back from the dentist.)

No, I just found this factoid: "Well, Google Maps has 10396, not "millions of users" as you seem to
think." on the Google Maps troubleshooting group. I'm amazed it's so small though I suspect the true statement is something like: "of all the people who use Google Maps, only 10,396 have so far set up personal maps." I wonder how many users Google Earth has. What I've used Google Maps for is to track the places my ancestors lived. It seems a neat little application.

Maintenance

From a Post article today:

In 2003, the FBI used a $25 million grant to give bomb squads across the nation state-of-the-art computer kits, enabling them to instantly share information about suspected explosives, including weapons of mass destruction.

Four years later, half of the Washington area's squads can't communicate via the $12,000 kits, meant to be taken to the scene of potential catastrophes, because they didn't pick up the monthly wireless bills and maintenance costs initially paid by the FBI. Other squads across the country also have given up using them.

Given my tendency to generalize, I'd say there's a general rule at work here--called NIH, or "not invented here". This sounds as if it was a great idea, at least in 2003. But you give a kit to someone, it may not be used. That's particularly true if suspected WMD's don't show up very often. (I'd guess there's a strong correlation between the number of suspicious packages discovered in an area and whether the jurisdiction paid the maintenance/upgrade costs.) It's one reason for cost-sharing as a governmental/bureaucratic strategy--if someone gets excited enough about an idea to kick in some of their own money, they may stay excited enough to maintain the idea over the long run.

NIH is a problem with foreign aid, domestic aid, and probably children ("probably" since I don't have any). I remember playing more with stuff that I could create games (mostly war games) with than with the fancier toys I got. I wonder whether NIH is also more of a male thing?

Bias

Shankar Vedantam reports in the Post:

A new study by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and other institutions affiliated with Harvard University provides empirical evidence for the first time that when it comes to heart disease, bias is the central problem -- bias so deeply internalized that people are sincerely unaware that they hold it.

Physicians who were more racially biased were less likely to prescribe aggressive heart-attack treatment for black patients than for whites. The study was recently published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

The research finding cannot be automatically extrapolated to the NBA or other domains, but it does suggest a mechanism by which disparities emerge. No conscious bias was apparently present -- there was no connection between the explicit racial views of physicians and disparities in their diagnoses. It was only when researchers studied physicians' implicit attitudes -- by measuring how quickly they made positive or negative mental associations with blacks and whites -- that they found a mechanism to explain differences in medical judgment.

Since the Pigford/USDA bias issue last week, I seem to be running into bias and race. I think this is about right. In our rational calculating side, most people aren't biased on most things. But it's the snap stuff that trips us up. (Going back to the article, I think Jerome Groopman in his recent book reported on a study that showed that physicians typically interrupted their patients with x seconds--they were leaping to conclusions, most of the time correctly, but not always.)

"I Kicked Him in a Very Bad Place"

That's a line from an interview used in a Post obit of Irene M. Kirkaldy. That kick was part of a sequence leading to a Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation on interstate transportation in 1947. (Think Rosa Parks, but more northern and earlier, and a different constitutional provision.)

Is Government Necessary?

Via Greg Mankiw, there's trouble, trouble brewing in River City, whoops, Second Life (online game with an economy) Seems people are people, even when they're only avatars. And as the founding fathers said, if people were angels government is unneeded.

Kevin Drum and Steven Levitt Agree on Anti-Terrorism Logic

The Levitt/Dubner Freakonomics blog has just moved to the NYTimes server. Levitt's first post discussed ways possible terrorists could attack the U.S. cheaply. (First one, have 20 teams of snipers emulate the DC two, but truly at random.) He caught a lot of heat (surprise!). In his
response today he outlines two alternative interpretations, this is the second:

The alternative interpretation is that the terror risk just isn’t that high and we are greatly overspending on fighting it, or at least appearing to fight it. For most government officials, there is much more pressure to look like you are trying to stop terrorism than there is to actually stop it. The head of the TSA can’t be blamed if a plane gets shot down by a shoulder-launched missile, but he is in serious trouble if a tube of explosive toothpaste takes down a plane. Consequently, we put much more effort into the toothpaste even though it is probably a much less important threat.

Kevin Drum says the same, in the context of the Democrats and the bill on FISA:

Note the way the incentives work here. If you pass the bill, the results are ambiguous. Sure, a lot of people will be angry, but they'll probably get over it eventually (or so the thinking goes). But if you stall the bill and a terrorist strikes, you are firmly and completely screwed. Goodbye political career. So which choice do you think a risk-averse politicians is likely to make?

This same dynamic was at work before the war, too. If you favored the war and things went south, the resulting mess would be long-term and ambiguous. There would almost certainly be a way to weasel your way out of any trouble and stay in office. But if you opposed the war and then, after the invasion went ahead over your objections, the Army discovered a serious nuclear arms program or an advanced bioweapons lab — both considered distinct possibilities at the time — you'd be out of office at the next midterm. For risk-averse politicians, the choice was obvious.

Nobody wants to risk being proved wrong in a way that's so crystal clear there's simply no chance of talking your way out of it. It's this fear that gives national security hawks the upper hand in any terror-related debate. Still.

I have to agree--as far as I can see, the "terrorist cells" that have been captured weren't very scary. If you assume that our security can catch 90 percent of the threats, that means the threats generally aren't potent. If you assume a lower level of averted threats, where's the attacks?

NY Times Is Wrong on Farm History

I quarrel with this from the NYTimes editorial page:

For the past 75 years, America’s system of farm subsidies has unfortunately driven farming toward such concentration, and there’s no sign that the next farm bill will change that. The difference this time is that American farming is poised on the brink of true industrialization, creating a landscape driven by energy production and what is now called “biorefining.” What we may be witnessing is the beginning of the tragic moment in which the ownership of America’s farmland passes from the farmer to the industrial giants of energy and agricultural production.

This is like saying that government policy has created industrial dining, with nationwide chains like McDonalds, etc. Wrong! Economic forces, notably returns to scale and the importance of capital to farming, and the basic thrust of modern life have caused the growth of large-scale agriculture. Research has helped, but the farm bills have basically slowed and tempered the evolution. If the AAA had never been enacted, we would not today be a nation of Amish farmers.

One Nation under God

Some of my ancestors refused to swear an oath to the United States because its Constitution did not recognize God, and therefore swearing would be sinful. Hence I'm a bit bemused at the utter conviction with which some believe that the U.S. is truly a Christian nation, as here:

Last month, the U.S. Senate was opened for the first time ever with a Hindu prayer. Although the event generated little outrage on Capitol Hill, Representative Bill Sali (R-Idaho) is one member of Congress who believes the prayer should have never been allowed.

"We have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a Muslim member of the House of Representatives now, Keith Ellison from Minnesota. Those are changes -- and they are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers," asserts Sali.

Sali says America was built on Christian principles that were derived from scripture. He also says the only way the United States has been allowed to exist in a world that is so hostile to Christian principles is through "the protective hand of God."

"You know, the Lord can cause the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike," says the Idaho Republican.

According to Congressman Sali, the only way the U.S. can continue to survive is under that protective hand of God. He states when a Hindu prayer is offered, "that's a different god" and that it "creates problems for the longevity of this country."

More on Pigford--Use of Government Equipment

This article in Government Executive and this AP article give the current state of play on the issue I referred to yesterday.

Sidestepping the policy issues, the question of proper use of government equipment is interesting. When I was hired, you weren't supposed to use your telephone for personal calls. On your lunch hour you called from the pay phone. Over time that policy was relaxed--you could make and receive personal calls, provided you didn't abuse the privilege.

I'd guess that a similar evolution might have occurred with employees, their PC's and their Internet connection. Limited personal use may or may not be technically legal, but only abuse (like looking at porn) is going to attract punishment.

But the issue being cited here is the possible violation of laws against using appropriated funds to lobby Congress. The USDA has an explanation of what's allowed or not allowed here. Basically, big shots can lobby Congress, small shots can't.

However, I'm reminded of a similar flap early in my USDA career. Might have been the end of LBJ or the beginning of Nixon. The issue there was someone, perhaps the head of a state office, talked to Congress without talking to DC first. The flap resulted in a directive to everyone in the agency saying: you can't talk to Congress unless it's cleared by the office of congressional relations. A few days later they came back and said: of course, everyone has a first Amendment right to petition Congress and we didn't mean to infringe that. You just have to do it on your own time. (It's similar, in some respects, to Karl Rove having to have a separate RNC email account and Congress people having to leave their offices to solicit contributions.)

Without being a lawyer, that seems to be the key issue here. Was the email being written and distributed using government time and government money? Or not?

Tragic Teenager--What's the Meaning of This?

Courtland Milloy writes about a DC teenager:

Any kid from a crime-ridden neighborhood would deserve such a break, but Danny especially so. In 2003, at age 12, he and then-D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey were featured in an anti-violence public service video. Five of Danny's relatives had been shot and killed.

"Enough is enough," was the rallying cry. Flash-forward to April. Danny had teamed up with D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) to announce the kickoff of yet another violence-awareness program, this one featuring anti-gun posters on the sides of buses. By then, however, Danny had lost six more relatives to gun violence, a total of 11: his father, a grandfather, two uncles, two nieces and five cousins.

I suspect everyone will read into this what they wish. The futility of public outcry, the depravity of the area in which he lives, the low value put on life, the free access to guns even though they're outlawed in DC, perhaps even a question of how many people Danny's relatives have killed over the years. Regardless of all that, Danny himself deserves better, everyone deserves better.

But what strikes me, with an admittedly aging and quirky mind, is his connectedness. It seems that all these relatives live in DC (that's my assumption anyway). That seems odd to me, but yet it fits with other articles and books I've read about the inner city: people seem often to have loads of relatives and friends. It's almost tribal society, as in parts of Iraq or Afghanistan--you know a lot of people and it's important to know them--who does what, what will p**s someone off, who can help, who will hurt. It seems a far cry from some areas of suburbia, where people don't know their neighbor. Is this connectedness a part of the pathology?

Republican Stands Tall for Crop Insurance

Ever since the 1970's, Congress has been messing around--torn between two imperatives:

1. You must help your constituents when they are hurt by a natural disaster.
2. A viable crop insurance program has no place for political action.

Several times Congress (mostly Republicans, but that may just be my partisan bias at work) has loudly claimed that new legislation has got it right--farmers will have crop insurance and Congress won't pass ad hoc disaster programs. But regularly, when drought or flood or hurricane strike, and enough areas are affected, Congress passes a program. And if the new program requires reversing past commitments and undermining crop insurance, so be it.

This describes the latest version of this political two step, brought to you by John Thune, stalwart Republican Senator from South Dakota:

According to a statement from Thune's office, without the clarifying legislation, many livestock and forage producers who suffered losses would be deemed ineligible for assistance. That estimate was echoed by the Sioux Falls, S.D., Argus Leader which earlier said the original provision would cause as many as 90 percent of South Dakota's 17,000 livestock producers to be ineligible for disaster assistance. This is because USDA's Office of General Counsel determined that the supplemental appropriations bill contains language stipulating that for producers to be eligible for assistance under the livestock indemnity program, they must have participated in either the non-insured crop disaster assistance program (NAP) or a federal crop insurance pilot program.

Facts and figures. According to USDA, nationwide participation in NAP during 2005 and 2006 was less than 13 percent. Thune says the reason the low NAP participation rate that payments for losses generally amount to only $1 or $2 per acre. "It is not sound policy to exclude livestock and forage producers from disaster assistance because they chose not to participate in what many consider an ineffective program," said Thune.

Pigford Dispute

The ins and outs of employee ethics, reality, racial politics, history are all on display in the "Pigford" case (short title for a suit by black farmers against USDA charging racial discrimination in FSA programs, particularly the farm loan programs originally under the old Farmers Home Administration.

This Shreveport Times article is only the start of a wave. (Actually, Ken Cook had it yesterday but I was slow to post it.)

My Intelligent Reader(s?)

Someone, who shall be nameless, read my mind in the post Aug. 6 about proving one's intelligence. I was indeed thinking of episodes dealing with IT people in ASCS/FSA. Perhaps I'll muster the energy to get back to the topic. In the interim, I hasten to add that many of my best friends were in IT.

Remembering the Past--Eugene Robinson

One of the penalties of getting old is you're forced to have some perspective on some issues. In today's Post, Eugene Robinson opines about the threat to privacy from all of the surveillance that we are under--he ends by saying:

The text messages we send back and forth on our cellphones are similarly long-lived. And if your mobile phone communicates with the Global Positioning System, it sends information about precisely where you are. What was that again about having to work late at the office?

Who needs GPS anyway? Think of all the security cameras that record your movements every day. Use an automated teller machine, fill the gas tank, drop into a convenience store, visit the mall or walk into the lobby of an office building and chances are you've been caught on videotape.

What if someone had predicted 50 years ago that someday all this once-private information would be captured and stored? Psychiatrists would have issued a quick and definitive diagnosis: paranoia.

Of course, 50 years ago some of us were still using party lines, so the eavesdropping was not potential, but actual; not a faceless bureaucrat, but your nosy neighbor; not of who you called and when, but what you actually said. Sometimes modern technology doesn't destroy privacy, it provides it.

Barchester Towers

My wife and I started the Barchester Towers DVD (a BBC series made in 1982, based on Anthony Trollope's series of the same name). I had forgotten how funny it was. In "The Warden"--the first book and first hours of the series--Trollope manages to slam the established church, the law, the mass media of his time, and overly earnest and theoretical reformers--quite a satirical four for one performance.

And for those Harry Potter fans out there, you'll see the first incarnation of Professor Snape, whose greatest and final performance is still in the future, as a young Mr. Rickman brings Obadiah Slope to life.

How To Prove Your Intelligence

There's two ways to prove one's intelligence:

• Point out all the problems with a position or proposal, all the reasons it won't work and nothing should be done.
• Figure out how to do something, particularly something that someone else says can't be done. Do so even if it requires a Rube Goldbergian contraption.

I'm particularly fond of the second strategy myself.

My Two Selves

This article by Shankar Vedantam outlines research on our two selves. He leads off with the paradoxes, including that of Sen. Vitter with prostitutes at the same time he was pushing bills on abstinence.

Studies have found that, for some reason, an enormous mental gulf separates "cold" emotional states from "hot" emotional states. When we are not hungry or thirsty or sexually aroused, we find it difficult to understand what effects those factors can have on our behavior. Similarly, when we are excited or angry, it is difficult to think about the consequences of our behavior -- outcomes that are glaringly obvious when we are in a cold emotional state.

Rings true for me. Even though my addictions in life have dwindled, get between me and my Starbucks and I'm pure emotion. I often think the same applies for sports and politics--we become irrationally attached to our team, our positions, and can't apply reason. I know the Redskins won't reach the Super Bowl this year, but I'll still believe. I know George W. is a worthy person (but I immediately ask: "worthy of what?") I hope I'm mostly "cold" on this blog.

Bureaucracies and Their Customers

Who polices the police? Or, more broadly, how does a big bureaucracy keep all its operatives on the same page?

The short answer: they don't, at least not in a nation as big as the U.S. An example, which I ran into while working at USDA, is the US Postal Service (and which I was reminded of while reading the NASCOE negotiation notes). USPS has written directives for its local post offices, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the local postmaster in Podunk, Iowa (why do we pick on Iowa?) has read, understands, and follows it.

When you bring two big bureaucracies together, like USPS and the Farm Service Agency, you reveal discrepancies. If FSA and USPS in DC reach an understanding of what directive A means, FSA tells its field offices to do X, Y, and Z based on that understanding. But when the field office operative reaches the local postmaster, he or she may have a different understanding. Result: confusion and inefficiency.

Mixed Signals on FSA Office Closings

The House seems to be giving mixed signals on closing USDA offices. On the one hand, this provision is included in the appropriations bill (search through Thomas):

Provided further, That none of the funds made available by this Act may be used to pay the salary or expenses of any officer or employee of the Department of Agriculture to close or relocate any county or field office of the Farm Service Agency (other than a county or field office that had zero employees as of February 7, 2007), or to develop, submit, consider, or approve any plan for any such closure or relocation before the expiration of the six month period following the date of the enactment of an omnibus authorization law to provide for the continuation of agricultural programs for fiscal years after 2007 [NOTE: I take this to mean either a new farm bill or a 1-year extension of current farm programs--they're trying to cover the bases]: Provided further, That after the expiration of the six month period following the date of the enactment of an omnibus authorization law to provide for the continuation of agricultural programs for fiscal years after 2007 none of the funds made available by this Act may be used to pay the salaries or expenses of any officer or employee of the Department of Agriculture to close any local or county office of the Farm Service Agency unless the Secretary of Agriculture, not later than 30 days after the date on which the Secretary proposed the closure, holds a public meeting about the proposed closure in the county in which the local or county office is located, and, after the public meeting but not later than 120 days before the date on which the Secretary approves the closure, notifies the Committee on Agriculture and the Committee on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry and the Committee on Appropriations of the Senate, and the members of Congress from the State in which the local or county office is located of the proposed closure. [This is the procedure that USDA seems to have been following until this, so presumably the idea is, Congress does a new farm bill, we wait 6 months to close offices. If the farm bill causes lots of work, there's an opportunity to reconsider. If it doesn't, then the Reps can say they tried.]

But from the Report on the bill (this isn't binding on USDA, but it explains intent):

Further, we are concerned about the restrictive FSA office closure language included in the bill. In many cases, the USDA has completed required steps to close certain offices under provisions set forth in fiscal year 2006, and again in the Continuing Resolution that agencies are operating under this fiscal year. Members are urged to consider these facts: there are 58 FSA offices that have no staff; 139 offices that have one employee; 338 that have two employees; and 515 offices that have three employees.

It is also worth noting that the funding level included in the bill for FSA salaries and expenses is $102 million below the President's budget request. As a result, the Democrat majority has significantly cut the appropriation below the request while prohibiting the FSA from closing unneeded offices. There are many States that, while not necessarily happy with proposals to close some offices, are willing to work with the FSA to close offices that should no longer be open. The minority worked with Chairwoman DeLauro to modify the language in the bill in order to continue making progress on this issue. Ranking Member Kingston offered an amendment that would allow FSA to close those offices that have zero employees, and the amendment was adopted by the full committee. People often ask why government can't run more efficiently. Closing FSA offices provides a good example. It's hard to run an agency with 435 managers second-guessing all decisions.

I interpret the Report language as saying--we recognize that Representatives want to protect their offices, but: be real--we can't keep all the offices open.

As a final note, there's no specific restriction on closing NRCS offices (except for generic restrictions elsewhere about not closing offices unless you notify Congress). So, if I'm reading it right, in New York where both FSA and NRCS offices are scheduled for closing, the one will be delayed, but the other could go through right away.

Your political system at work.

Katrina Cottages

It's intriguing that Lowes has developed a series of plans for "Katrina cottages". They'll sell the plans, you get the land and permits, and they'll sell the materials. See here for the smallest cottage plan. When I think that my great grandfather and family lived in a house smaller than this (as did all our ancestors, down to relatively recent times, it's amazing.

How Do You Make a Bureaucrat Honest?

That's the challenge in China. So they ( news story) created a computer game:

The Disciplinary Commission of the Communist Party in the well-off city of Ningbo in the province of Zhejiang financed the development of the game which stands at the vanguard of its campaign against corruption.

The hero is an 'honest and upright civil servant' who kills corrupt officials, their children and bikini-clad lovers with weapons, torture and even magic.

The children appear as monsters with names like 'son of corrupt official' or 'daughter of corrupt official.'

With each dead dirty civil servant, the player wins points that improve his or her abilities in areas like moral character and ethics.

The aim of the game is an 'honest paradise free from corruption.'

What Happens After a Farm Program Ends? II

I blogged the other day about what might happen if farm programs were ended. Today's NYTimes has an article on what happened in New Zealand to the dairy farmers when their subsidies were ended.

It's mostly positive, though between the lines you see that there was consolidation--more large farms, fewer small (opponents of US farm programs say that the program helps large farmers, but the free market may be more helpful) and there would have been a lot of bankruptcies when the program ended if the banks hadn't given relief.

Because New Zealand dairy is mostly export, it's hard to do a real comparison. Nor does the article discuss any fluctuations in the 20+ years since the program was ended. My guess is that NZ may, in part, be "free-riding" on the dairy programs in the rest of the world--there would be more volatility in price if the world dairy market was entirely free, and volatility in price leads to humans hurting.

Aerial Photos from the Past

I'm guessing, but this story from the Post mentions aerial photos from 1937 (link to comparison shots) as part of a national agricultural surveying effort. Whether that related to the Agricultural Adjustment Administration I don't know, but in general this reminds us that data created by one bureaucracy can become useful in unexpected ways.

The contrast between the mostly farms of 1937 and the development now (this is well inside the Beltway) is striking.

Two Views on Terrorism

Mitt Romney wants to redo the DHS to focus on intelligence and attack prevention, rather than recovery from attacks.

This is from Princeton's blurb for a new book:

Many popular ideas about terrorists and why they seek to harm us are fueled by falsehoods and misinformation. Leading politicians and scholars have argued that poverty and lack of education breed terrorism, despite the wealth of evidence showing that most terrorists come from middle-class, and often college-educated, backgrounds. In What Makes a Terrorist, Alan Krueger argues that if we are to correctly assess the root causes of terrorism and successfully address the threat, we must think more like economists do.

Krueger is an influential economist who has applied rigorous statistical analysis to a range of tough issues, from the minimum wage and education to the occurrence of hate crimes. In this book, he explains why our tactics in the fight against terrorism must be based on more than anecdote and speculation. Krueger closely examines the factors that motivate individuals to participate in terrorism, drawing inferences from terrorists' own backgrounds and the economic, social, and political conditions in the societies from which they come. He describes which countries are the most likely breeding grounds for terrorists, and which ones are most likely to be their targets. Krueger addresses the economic and psychological consequences of terrorism. He puts the terrorist threat squarely into perspective, revealing how our nation's sizeable economy is diverse and resilient enough to withstand the comparatively limited effects of most terrorist strikes. And he calls on the media to be more responsible in reporting on terrorism.

The egghead seems to me to have much the better argument. The US may be attacked by terrorists once for every 10 attacks on EU nations and 1 in 10,000 attacks in Iraq. While some attacks may be scary, and some damaging, we have much more to fear from mother nature. Our general policy should be to do intelligence and defense reasonably well, but respond to disaster very well.

Changing Times

Things I could not have imagined at some point in my past (relevant time specified in parens):

• Chinese plagiarizing and imitating Harry Potter (1999)
• Afghans watching TV (2003)
• Israel supporting Fatah (1990)
  

Red State/Blue State

A new version of the red state/blue state map is now out--much more realistic in that it ignores state boundaries, so the color is proportional to the number of votes. Via Brad Delong

Another Eating Local Venture

This article describes a NC venture. Because the article is limited in focus, it misses some bits of information. It doesn't say whether the nonprofit organization is paying market rental to the parents. (Presumably the parents are still getting tobacco buyout payments.) It repeats unchallenged this statement:

“It’s one of the big problems for farmers that they don’t have health insurance and retirement plans,” Alice Brooke Wilson said. “That’s why farms get sold.

In fact, farmers are covered by Social Security and Medicare, assuming they've been conscientious about paying in.

The five people are not taking a salary. Actually four people, because one has left during the 3 years it's been in operation.

All in all, the mixture of idealism and naivete means to me that this is more likely a niche than a great new frontier. Of course, the nice thing about a free society is that you can have lots of such efforts, a handful of which may hit upon the right formula.

Eating Local

"Eating local", meaning buying food from local farmers, often through community supported agriculture (see USDA link) is getting trendy. (Of course, that's a way to put it down.) The idea is that the farmer profits by getting more of the food dollar, the environment gains because there's less energy used to move the food around the world, nutrition gains because there's less nutrient loss in processing and the consumer gains because the food tastes better.

I've no real quarrel with any of this, but I suspect it works better in the restaurant environment, as this article on the gains being made in the Washington suburgs shows. Why? Because the basic tradeoff (and there's always tradeoffs, as Robert Heinlein once wrote--there's no free lunch) is time for the benefits. It takes time to travel to the farm or farmer market, select the food, and come home and cook. It takes time to gain the expertise to make good meals from what's seasonally available. So it makes sense for the affluent to eat local at their restaurant, and to choose among restaurants based on that criteria.

FDR Wasn't Always a Liberal

Bureaucracy

Bureaucrats versus Founding Fathers--Classic Quote

I highly recommend "Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution", by Charles Rappleye. The Browns of Providence RI were a prominent family of merchants--John traded in slaves and was a Congressman. Moses became a Quaker and an abolitionist and wrote a law regulating the slave trade which his brother was convicted of violating.

But from the bureaucratic standpoint, this quote, relating to the US Navy buying a ship from John Brown, shows the constraints that bureaucrats are always subject to:

pp313-4 "In ordering the purchase, Navy Secretary Benjamin Stoddert, a merchant in civilian life, agreed to John's price, but warned his agent, "Mr. Brown, who seems to be a complete master of the art of bargain-making, will probably ask more. You must do the best you can with him, and let the public be screwed as little as possible."

What Happens When A Farm Program Ends

The report is that Virginia tobacco acreage has increased a bit, after falling after the end of the program. Of course, this means nothing. But just a few Sunday afternoon guesses at what would happen if farm programs were ended:

• land values would fall very drastically
• retired farmers and widows would have to reduce their standard of living
• farms would consolidate, as those farmers with the capital take advantage of the lower land values to rent/buy more land
• there would be some shifts in who produced what. But I'd guess that the pursuit of flexibility since 1996 has lessened the amount of shifting. Some land would go out of cotton and rice to other crops (perhaps marijuana?--I'm only following in the footsteps of those economists who focus on economic rationality)
• if ag land values fall, then there might be more suburban sprawl, or maybe just lower housing prices
• there'd be more volatility in farming, and perhaps more interest in mechanisms to reduce volatility (i.e., vertical integration, contract farming)

Notably, I'm skeptical of Oxfam and others who argue that ending the programs would cause prices to rise, at least, not in the sense of rising and staying on a new plateau. I'd guess the increased volatility would mean temporary price increases, and then decreases.

All of this is wasted electrons, because the farm program isn't going to end any time soon.

House Passes Farm Bill

What does passage mean? (It was interesting, watching Sec. Johanns at the National Press Club on one C-SPan channel while the final votes on the farm bill were happening on the other.)

What does it mean? For a bureaucrat, not too much. Theoretically, when both House and Senate had passed bills, you knew the boundaries of the world you had to plan for. That's because the conferees are supposed to compromise the differences between the two bills and are not supposed to create new provisions. But the reality was a bit different. The new could always happen in conference.

I can't even write that a change in payment limitation provisions is now certain. Likely, I'd say but the cotton and rice states have some powerful voices in the Senate.

Why Most Terrorists Are Incompetent

That's the title of a piece in Slate by Tim Harford. The focus is really on the background of terrorists, which turns out, according to one study, to be well educated, particularly in comparison to the milieu from which they come. The British doctors involved in the last attempts are an example. All of which accentuates the question--why is someone who is smart enough to get an MD incompetent as a terrorist?

My answer is --first, you never get it right the first time ("Harshaw's law"). Second, the brits seem to have been operating without close guidance from more experienced terrorists. (The Palestinian suicide bombers had a whole infrastructure in place. Even though the bomber was a first (and last) timer, the organization was not. Third, terrorism is probably harder than it seems from the outside.

Watching NPR's Honor Roll

The Lehrer News Hour regularly runs its "honor roll" of military members who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's hard not to watch, even though I keep remembering the bad weeks of the Vietnam war, when over a hundred would be killed. I can't help but compare the treatment in the two different times.

But...

You look at the screen. I'm struck by the variety in ages. At least in memory Vietnam was a young man's war, the riflemen were young draftees and young recruits. This war affects a broader range of ages. Which is harder to take--the young kid who signed up just out of high school with his or her whole life ahead, or the 35 year old sergeant who probably leaves a widow and children behind?

You look at the places. It's all too easy to romanticize, but the names of the towns and small cities could roll off the tongue. Several years ago CBS News used to run a regular feature, called "Everyone has a story". The reporter/writer would turn his back on a map of the US and toss a dart over his shoulder. Then go to the place closest to where the dart landed. The method meant that he was always visiting rural and small town America, the same areas where many of today's military seem to come from.

And you look at the names. I get the stereotypical liberal satisfaction when I see the diversity of the names--everyone should die for their country. But, perhaps because of my background, I grow sad when I see the Jr's and the III's following the names. Those simple letters speak of a pride in family, which I can understand, and the possibility of an end to a line.

More Bad Publicity on Payment Limitation

John Phipps at Agweb refers to two articles, here and here in the Springfield Journal-Register on cases where big payments were made to people who seem not to be actively engaged in farming. I was tickled by this quote:

"The book, the Bible that has all the rules, is 3 1/2 inches thick," Wold [an attorney] said. "We had a team of lawyers who couldn't understand it and had to hire an expert. There are very few people who understand it. The farmers are supposed to implicitly know all these details."

The truth, or rather the fantasy, is that the farmer isn't supposed to need to know any of the details. The theory is that the farmer does his or her thing, making the business decisions that make sense, and then accurately reports how he or she is operating for the year. The bureaucrat then decides what that translates to under the rules. It's like the tax code--you're not supposed to set up a home office so you can deduct part of your housing costs as building expenses.

Of course this theory is a fantasy--once you attach monetary rewards and penalties to action, people change the way they act. And now those poor souls in the USDA South Building may have to write a new bible, and a few may retire to become consultants on understanding the rules in the bible.

Sen. Roberts on Farm Bill

As chair of the House Ag committee, then-Rep. Pat Roberts (R-KS) pushed the "Freedom to Farm" component of the 1996 farm bill. It was sold as a transition to a free-market agriculture, with transitional fixed payments replacing the "deficiency payments" that were tied to market price levels. (You can tell from my tone, I wasn't impressed back then.)

The 2002 farm bill kept the "fixed" payments and reinstated "counter-cyclical" payments (albeit changing the basis for payment entirely to historical production).

This is what Sen. Roberts says now:

As a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, I look forward to the upcoming debate over the future of American farm policy. Next year [sic--the good Senator seems to be a bit late in updating his web site], the 2002 Farm Security and Rural Investment Act (P.L. 107-171) will expire. I voted against the current farm bill when it was approved by Congress in 2002. At the time, I registered my concern that the bill was full of empty promises, would lower assistance to Kansas producers and would not work during times of crop loses and slightly higher prices. Unfortunately, many of my strongest reservations with this legislation have occurred.

Apollo 11 and Graphics

The National Archives puts up a daily document from the files. This one from last week brought back nostalgia, showing the primitive state of graphic equipment (actually probably a mixture of type and cut and paste, that's real "cut and paste", as in using scissors to piece together a flight plan for Apollo 11.

Farm Bill Commentary

Most commentary on the farm bill passing the House divides into two categories: inside baseball and the uninformed. That may be a bit harsh, but it reflects the reality--those who are affected by the provisions, as farmers, bureaucrats, and some commentators, have an incentive to spend the time to understand the subject; those without the incentive have to learn just enough to fake it.

An assemblage:

Iowa professor on payment limitation.

LA Times editorial

Wash Post editorial

Ag web summary
(note the spouse change on pay limit--perhaps what the Iowa prof is hot about--for laymen, the issue is whether a spouse has a separate limitation, i.e., is a separate "person" for payment limitation purposes--an issue of perpetual controversy.)

Paying the Dead

This article in the Post notes that USDA paid farmers' estates, often without checking for compliance with rules, or paid entities like partnerships that included estates as members. Compliance was checked in 60 percent of the cases, but not in 40 percent, meaning some gross mistakes.


Here's the GAO report highlights (why the Post didn't provide it, I'm not clear).

When you dig into the details, and I start remembering, I think I share some blame. In the old days, before computers in county offices, after all payments were issued for a year, we'd run a series of mainframe matches on the deficiency payment files and give county offices data on possible problems. I'm pretty sure at that time that we matched social security numbers against the Social Security Admin's death file (at least, a bell tinkles in the growing obscurity of my memory).

As we automated, we started building more and more checks into the county software and relying less and less on the after-the-fact checks. And, frankly, the after-the-fact checks became less of a priority, meaning the best people weren't given the job of designing and programing them. So I tend to think the match with SSA fell through the cracks. We didn't add it for the county software. We may have discussed it for the new database being designed for NRCS/FSA usage, but that took so long to develop that personnel changed and the idea was probably lost.

This illustrates one problem of massive databases, whether they're proposed for national security, immigration, or whatever--they need maintenance because time is an everflowing river. And if you don't imagine what may happen, like people dying, you can't design for it.

The French as Bureaucrats

Dirk Beauregard (a Brit who's lived 20 years in France) has a great post, not only for an insight into French culture, and history, but into the vices and virtues of bureaucrats.

Pity the Poor Bureaucrat

Assume for the moment that the payment limitation rules in the current House bill pass and become law. (See pages 15 on of the Managers amendment.) Why should we pity the bureaucrats who have to administer them?

• First of all, I don't think there's many people in DC in FSA who were there for the last major change of payment limitation in 1985--in 22 years most people have moved on.
  
• Second, the provisions of the bill are longer, and probably more complex, than the 1985 Act.
  
• Third, farmers have gotten used to much higher levels of payments than they were in 1985. It took a couple years for some farmers to figure out how much money they were leaving on the table beginning in 1983-5. If you see that you're leaving $10,000, then it starts making sense to call friends and strangers, anyone who may know what's going on and have an insight into what you should do or have the leverage to affect the way the rules are written.
  
• Fourth, we're in a more legalistic environment today than in 1985, both in terms of rulemaking and in the application of the rules to individual farmers.
  
• Finally, 1985 was pre-Internet, which makes all the difference.

What will happen? On one side there's the problem of automating the rules (I start with that because it's closer to my heart--I always tried to steer clear of payment limitation). That's major--if FSA is to get payments made correctly based on the paperwork submitted, there will be some major changes to files and software.

On the other side, the rulemaking process will be under intense scrutiny from everyone--the Hill, the press, the farmers, and the interest groups suspicious that FSA will be too friendly to farmers. In the midst of this, the poor bureaucrat has to write regulations and directives, set up training sessions for field offices, provide good information to everyone. The likelihood is, based on 1985 experience, management will change its mind a few times, meaning that the poor bureaucrat will end up misinforming farmers, press, field offices and get everyone mad.

In 1985 there were fewer channels of communication that operated slower than today. Now we have the Internet, which has shown its ability to spread rumors and misinformation. So if everything runs merely twice as fast today, the poor bureaucrats in FSA have to be twice as good as their 1985 predecessors.

Pity, have pity.

A Look Back to 1985

Now that the House Ag committee has passed its version of a new farm bill, including changes in the payment limitation provisions that date back to 1985, it's interesting to look back to the reporting following that act. From the NYTimes archives, a long excerpt [from a 1986 article
link added]:

The law [1985 farm bill] set out to restore United States competitiveness in international commodities markets by lowering prices, while shielding farmers from the blow through higher income subsidy rates.

That means many producers who in past years have received less from the Government than the $50,000 limit now are approaching that ceiling, giving them an incentive to look for ways around it.

And large producers who have not bothered with Federal price support programs in the past now feel economically forced to participate.

''Their attitude is, $50,000 will buy you a cup of coffee,'' said John Gordley, former agriculture aide to the Senate majority leader, Bob Dole, Republican of Kansas. Mr. Gordon is now a private public relations consultant. Definition of 'Person' Studied

Larger farmers and their lawyers have studied every line of Agriculture Department rules regarding payment limits and found numerous ways to multiply their subsidies. Most focus on the definition of what constitutes a ''person.''

The rules say corporations, partnerships, trusts and other legal entities can qualify as ''persons,'' in addition to an individual farmer, as long as the entity has a legitimate interest in the land or crop, exercises management responsibility and is liable for costs and losses as well as being entitled to profits.

Thus one Arkansas farmer, the chairman of the local committee of the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service, was able to get $150,000 from the Government in 1985 by spinning off two corporations from his original farm, one owned by himself and his brother, the other by the farmer and his mother.

The reorganization was approved by the local committee and at the state level. Investigators in the department's Office of Inspector General rejected the claim, saying it was merely a paper change and no real change in the farming operation had occurred, but not until the farmer had been overpaid $188,000 over two years.

Music Is Important, But This?

Via John Phipps, this factoid--DOD has more people in its bands than the State Department has in its Foreign Service.

Update on payment limitation:

The House Agriculture Committee on Wednesday adopted by a voice vote an amendment that would end the three-entity rule and establish a more restrictive means test for receiving farm program payments. The move is an apparent attempt to reach a compromise between those who want much more restrictive payment limits, as do many Midwestern and Coastal lawmakers, and those, like many Southern legislators, who want to preserve the status quo.

In addition to eliminating the three-entity rule, the amendment would prohibit payments to ag producers making more than $1 million in adjusted gross income annually. Farmers making between $500,000 and $1 million would be able to collect payments only if two-thirds or more of their income comes from farming and ranching investments. The current means test for farm program payments is $2.5 million.

Culture and Immigration

An odd confluence of articles this week in the Washington Post, and then a post by Marc Fisher on his blog:

Raw Fisher, reporting on an academic study showing race and class differences in attitudes towards immigration

An article on wedding styles among immigrants--some immigrants get married following the customs of their ancestral home and religion, but with modifications to adjust to the U.S. environment.

A Marc Fisher article, reporting on recent developments in the Virginia suburbs--first Prince William, then Loudon counties passed resolutions "cracking down" on illegal immigrants.

Finally, Marc held a discussion for local residents--open line. You'd think that the topic would be illegal immigration, but DC education probably attracted more attention. (The new head of DC schools is Korean-American.) That's probably because more Post readers fit the profile of those who are less concerned about illegal immigration--in other words, we aren't competing against them for jobs.

Farm Bureau Supports FSA

From a news article:

Kevin Paap, president of Minnesota Farm Bureau Federation, who just returned from a trip to Washington, said Farm Bureau has some concerns with payment limits and means testing.

On the other hand, the organization supports switching the administration of farm bill programs to the Farm Service Agency from the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

It makes sense to have those folks who are good at doing administrative stuff do that while having the folks who are good at technical assistance doing that, he said.

I suspect the outcome will depend more on accident and networking, than on logical arguments. You can (at least I can) hear the low level of interest Mr. Papp has in the issue. In the absence of great public concern, and with lobbyists on both sides of the issue, some one person who may feel strongly could sway the outcome. For example, should the Vice President decide to honor his father, who worked for NRCS, that could make a difference.

Farm Bill Cliff Hanger

For the handful of people who care about a piece of legislation, like the farm bill, its progress can be almost as suspenseful as a Harry Potter novel. [I wrote the sentence suspecting I was the first one to put "farm bill" and "Harry Potter" in the same sentence. But I googled, and found 40,000 cases where they're on the same web page. Darn.] All the farm blogs are providing updates on the progress, and we haven't even seen the Senate yet.

NRCS and FSA II

Both sides are going at it, trying to get support for their position on who should hand out the checks for conservation programs. The National Association of Conservation Districts has an "Action Alert" while the National Association of State and County Office Employees has provided a letter to be sent to representatives and is talking to the press. (I have to say, if Congress used the respective web sites to judge which group was more efficient, I'm afraid NACD would win. A Google on "NASCOE" produces this as the first entry: "AllWebCo Website Templates and Pre-Made Websites. Very reasonable prices and a complete setup." (Searching on the full term produces the right result, but it's still incompatible with the Firefox browser.))

NASCOE claims that they have statistics on their side--the percentage of total money spent on administration is much less for FSA programs than NRCS. That factoid sends me off musing about charitable organizations, where oversight groups tend to focus on that percentage. It's not a great measure, but it's about all we have.

The showdown comes this afternoon (and Wed and Thurs).

Cream Puffs and Twinkies

I blogged on the Twinkie Deconstructed book the other day. I've had maybe one Twinkie in my life but I fondly remember my mother's cream puffs. Mom wasn't a good cook but she did do a lot of good baking. Her cream puffs were great--light, with real whipped cream filling.

I'm no baker, and the book is back to the library, so my comparison is top of the head. Mom's cream puff has to taste better than any Twinkie, that is, at least on the evening of the afternoon she made them. Her batches probably ran 8-10, so we never finished them all. (Good Calvinists avoid gluttony.) So we'd finish them the next night. By then the whipped cream had lost its air, the crust of the cream puff was getting stale, and the whole thing was just a sad memory of the glory of the night before.

Thinking about what went into the cream puff--the whipped cream was probably whipping cream from local dairy farms--Crowley's or Dairylea (i.e., "Dairymen's League--the co-op) pasteurized and processed. But it contained vanilla extract, as do Twinkies and perhaps a little powdered sugar. (Vanilla and sugar are two of the chapters in the book tracing the route traveled.) The cream puff itself had flour, milk (ours), sugar, and baking powder. (Baking powder is one of the ingredients from mines--the author get good mileage from following that ingredient from its origin in mines to the shelf.)

So mom's puffs were, in part, the product of industry and manufacturing processes and don't fit comfortably into the concepts of the "slow food" movement. Twinkies, as the book's author makes clear, is that they have to stay fresh on the grocery shelves for weeks, not just last 6 hours in mom's kitchen. That difference requires a lot more science, a lot more additives, more globalizations and a lot more industrial processes. (I've started Bill McKibben's new book and have Barbara Kinsolving's one on hold at the library--I'll be interested to see how strictly they hold to local food.)

FSA's Far-Flung Web of Offices Gets Smaller

From the headline: "Feds plan to close a Farm Service Agency office in Mexico." Among the other six offices being closed are the one for the county in which I grew up. I can understand why--my uncle's (former grandfather's) old farm has houses on it. (One in particular very nice--with a great view looking southwest. As you move west from the Catskills, each range of hills is just a few feet lower than the one before, so the view to the south and west is impressive.) The "big" dairy farmer across the valley from ours has lost its barns and outbuildings and just has a few horses in the pasture. ("Big" was defined in my day as 50+ milking cows being pastured. Now when I visit my sister near Syracuse, the big dairy farms around Tully have several hundred and no pasture.