British Bureaucrats Screw Up Farm Payments

To the best of my knowledge, FSA has done better than the Brits:

The handling of a £1.5bn computerised farm payments scheme by two senior civil servants is condemned by MPs today as "a masterclass in bad decision-making" which could land taxpayers with a £500m extra bill. A highly critical report from the Commons public accounts committee accuses Sir Brian Bender, then permanent secretary at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, of being "largely responsible" for the fiasco, which left tens of thousands of farmers without any cash from the European Union.

Some interesting points that pop up as sidenotes--apparently the EU has a small payment cutoff--like $100 or so, which the Brits didn't use, giving them lots of small claims to pay. And the EU is able to fine the British over their failures of administration. The British fired some of the people responsible, but had to pay compensation for not fully following the rules (sounds familiar). And most familiar of all--a top guy is criticized for not having the nerve to stand up to the leaders and give them the bad news.

Bremer the Bureaucrat

L. Paul Bremer has an op-ed in today's NY Times outlining the bureaucratic process by which the Iraqi Army was disbanded (countering the report in the Draper book on Bush that Bush's policy was to keep the Army going). It's full of clearances, reviews, revisions--makes me nostalgic for the USDA bureaucracy.

The problem is perhaps bifocal--it's easy for the essence of the matter to get lost in the minutia of the process, so Bush's bureaucrats may not have realized what they were doing, and Bush may have been ignorant. On the other hand, you have to pay attention to the details and process. If I understand, a big problem with recalling the army was the process. Everyone had deserted, so there was no skeleton to use to recall the troops, or at least it wasn't readily identifiable to the US (whose intelligence about the state of Iraq was a little short). So, because it would be hard to recall and because the Shia, whom Bush's father had screwed, wanted the disbanding, Bremer went along.

Farming and Immigrants

The Times has an article a a California farmer moving to Mexico because of problems getting sufficient labor. He's a big operator, lots of acres, lots of employees. This may be the odd case, or it may be part of a trend. I suppose there's not much difference in travel cost or time between shipping lettuce from California or Arizona and Mexico, particularly with the border becoming more open to trucking.

A couple things struck me--instead of paying $9 an hour he's now paying $12 a day. He claims to be following the same sanitary procedures as he would in the States, and I suspect it's to his self-interest to do so. The other thing--his workers don't work as productively (i.e., hard). I find that interesting. I think it's part of the advantage of emigrating, at least for work. You leave lots of distractions behind and you've put yourself at risk, so you work harder.

Tim Harford--We Need More Girls in the World

From Slate, on research:

Boys pollute the educational system, it seems, for a number of unmysterious reasons: They wear down teachers, disrupt classes, and ruin the atmosphere for everyone. And more boys are worse than fewer boys, not because they egg each other on but simply because more of them can cause more trouble in total.

It is all rather troubling, especially for the parents of little angels like my daughters. Evidently, it is impossible to satisfy the—apparently justified—parental demand to educate girls in single-sex schools and boys in mixed classes. (Not for the first time in my life, I conclude that the world doesn't have enough girls in it.)

Farm Bill in the Senate: Pay Limit and Disaster

From Jim Wiesemeyer via Agweb:

Where the House offered producers a one-shot option of a revenue-triggered disaster payment plan, the Senate may make the plan cover all farmers (replacing counter-cyclical payments) and will tighten up the payment limitation language in the House bill.

Milk and the Times

A NYTimes article says there's a worldwide shortage of milk (they start with New Zealand, which is a big exporter). Rising standards of living mean more demand for milk, rising prices of feed grains because of ethanol mean tighter supply. And of course milk supply is relatively inflexible--you can get a little bump by feeding a bit more and not culling your herd as tightly (at least you could in the old days), but basically you need to raise more calves to heifers, to cows.

Although the sort of dairy farming I grew up with is now gone, it's nice to hear some good news for the industry.

[Update--Marginal Revolution has an interesting discussion in comments. Although no farmers that I saw.]

Pigford Perspectives IV (Earmarks)

There's been lots of flak about Congressional earmarks over the last few years--the Dems beat the Reps over the head about the "bridge to nowhere" ($150 million in Alaska) as a symbol of their apostasy from their small government, tight budget principles. Now that the Dems are in the majority, they're catching grief as they struggle to reduce and/or put light on the process.

What's this have to do with Pigford? Maybe nothing. But I've often puzzled: blacks often charge discrimination and bias in contexts where the whites profess innocence: ("yes, racial hate is terrible, but that's not me...etc. etc.) If this were just an occasional event one might say simply that the whites are lying. But it happens often enough that maybe one should take the claims seriously and see if something else is going on, at least in part.

Back to earmarks: can the residents of New York or New Jersey, who pay much more in federal taxes than they get back, fairly charge Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV) or Sen. Stevens (R, AK) with bias and discrimination against them? If they did, the Senators would rouse themselves to say, we're just looking after the home folks.

When you look around the "earmarking" phenomena is quite prevalent. "Legacy admissions" to colleges (children of alumni) are one form; giving preferences to one's family and friends (MCI used to run an advertising campaign called "Friends and family") is another. It just seems natural when we have goodies to give out we start first with those we know and love, then switch to a more arbitrary standard (i.e., merit; first come, first served) to distribute the rest.

So I wonder--is some of Pigford, the symptoms of disparate conditions between black and white farmers, the result more of "looking after the home folks" than bias? The Farmer's Home office (now FSA) had so much loan money to allocate. It wouldn't surprise me if they looked out first for old classmates, fellow church members, etc. The result would be much the same for blacks as straight discrimination, and no doubt would feel to blacks as racial bias. Trying to figure out when it's bias and when it's "good ole boy" network would be frustrating.

Independence Day

No, I'm not late in celebrating the 4th. Today is the anniversary of the Treaty of Paris, in 1783, by which "the most serene and most potent Prince George the Third, by the grace of God, king of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, defender of the faith, duke of Brunswick and Lunebourg, arch- treasurer and prince elector of the Holy Roman Empire etc." recognized the United States. (Both as a "country" and as "free sovereign and independent states".) Via the National Archives historic document of the day.

It's interesting reading, particularly for a bureaucrat: "his Brittanic Majesty shall with all convenient speed, and without causing any destruction, or carrying away any Negroes or other property of the American inhabitants, withdraw all his armies, garrisons, and fleets from the said United States, and from every post, place, and harbor within the same; leaving in all fortifications, the American artilery that may be therein; and shall also order and cause all archives, records, deeds, and papers [emphasis added] belonging to any of the said states, or their citizens, which in the course of the war may have fallen into the hands of his officers, to be forthwith restored and delivered to the proper states and persons to whom they belong."

I'll pass speedily over the fact that slavery was recognized in our founding document to dwell on the fact that the founders recognized the absolute necessity of paperwork.

Home Schooling and Charter Schools as Nativism Buffer

Reading this from economist David Card on the impact of immigration (via Brad DeLong)

While the monetary value is hard to quantify, existing research suggests that people value neighborhoods and schools with better-educated, higher-income, and non-minority neighbors and schoolmates. Indeed, my reading is that these peer group externalities may be a first-order concern among many urban residents.

An anecdote: the local elementary school has felt the impact of a large population of non-English speaking students. It was one of the first Fairfax schools to be placed on probation. A neighbor, who's raised four kids, didn't like the atmosphere so started home-schooling her younger two. It's possible that the rise of home schooling, and to some extent charter schools, has helped moderate what we used to call "white flight". My neighbor's family stayed in the neighborhood, lending some needed stability. If the choice had been solely the local school or move, they might well have moved. Certainly that's what would have happened in the 1950's-1970's.

You Know You're Old When

MSNBC.com has an article on the worst computer viruses of the last 25 years.

Bias In FICO Scores?

The Post reports that the Federal Reserve has completed a study of possible bias in FICO scores (the most widely used score affecting eligibility for credit):

Critics have questioned the accuracy and fairness of credit-score models, charging that in some cases they are inherently biased against minority groups such as blacks and Hispanics.

After a research effort over several years that focused on three credit-scoring models -- including one created by Federal Reserve staff economists -- the central bank concluded that:

? Credit-score statistical models are not biased against any demographic group and are highly predictive of future payment performance. Lower scores correlate strongly with future delinquencies; higher scores are associated with good payment performance.

? Blacks and Hispanics, on average, "have lower credit scores than non-Hispanic whites and Asians."

? Younger individuals of all demographic groups have lower credit scores on average than older people, in part because credit-scoring models focus on payment histories and length of credit accounts. Younger consumers generally have fewer accounts and shorter payment histories.

? The payment performances of some demographic groups differ from what their numerical scores might suggest. For example, according to the Fed, "blacks, single individuals, individuals residing in lower-income or predominantly minority census tracts show consistently higher incidences of bad performance than would be predicted" by their credit scores. On the other hand, "Asians, married individuals, foreign-born (particularly, recent immigrants), and those residing in higher-income census tracts consistently perform better than predicted" by their credit scores.

Some Medical Bureaucrats Can Help

I run a Google Alert for "bureaucrats". Here's a link to someone with a sense of humor, dealing with medical bureaucracy on a matter of life and death. People are amazing. And so is Quality Management.

Education States

The NY Times had a report on education statistics, including these numbers.

A couple things struck me--in 10 years there will be no majority group in school--whites will be a minority like everyone else. And about 40+ percent of kids qualify under the food lunch program. And 56 percent of college students are women.

Decline Is Everywhere

I almost linked to an article in the Herkimer NY paper about a meeting on the closing of the Herkimer office. But I'm tired of the stories, as important as they are for the people affected. Other things arouse emotion as well--including the timing of the 200th anniversary of the founding of the place, as described in this NYTimes article today. (They picked a date that happens to be Yom Kippur.)

But decline is also found among other organizations than FSA--this piece from the Jewish Forward describes the decline in Buffalo:

In the recent decades since advances in technology and competition from abroad sounded the death knell for the industries that provided employment for the Rust Belt states of the Northeast and the Midwest, states that have lost major parts of their population to the Sun Belt, once-thriving Jewish communities in those regions have seen thousands of members head south and west. The Northeast and Midwest, where 80 percent of American Jewry lived as recently as 1960, now is home to barely half of American Jews, according to the latest National Jewish Population Survey.

For JCCs, synagogues and other communal institutions, this drop in members and in income has meant drastic, often painful, belt-tightening measures: mergers, downsizings and property sales and closures.

“The local Jewish community,” a front-page article in The Buffalo News states, “is adjusting to dramatically reduced numbers.” That means less money for Jewish federation fundraising campaigns, fewer volunteers for synagogues and other organizations, and smaller enrollments in religious schools.

And just recently there was an article on the "Odd Fellows" a fraternal and charitable organization that's composed of old fogeys like me. It's the nature of society to have this ebb--not that it's any consolation to those being washed out by the tide.

Decline of Wonder Bread

LA Times has an article on Wonder Bread--it's closing its local plant. Californians prefer upscale, perhaps more healthy brands. Is there a convergence between French and Americans re: bread?

[The other question inquiring minds want to know: why the hell am I suddenly so interested in food?]

Pigford Perspectives II

Apparently the theory of the original lawsuit is the disproportionate decline in black farmers must be the result of racism. From the EWG's 2004 report:

"In part due to lack of equal access to USDA loans, the number of farms operated by African Americans has declined dramatically over the past 20 years, plummeting from 54,367 in 1982 to just 29,090 in 2002."[My emphasis added.]

I'm not aware of, and can't google up, any reports on the reasons for the decline so there's no way to know whether racism is 99 percent of the cause or some lesser proportion. [Side note: The academic and government researchers I ran across in my casual googling seem usually to ignore race in their analysis. That may be a real bias--seldom asking the question of whether there is a real difference based on race. Or it may just be my incompetence at searching. ]


Let's say the drop in farms is caused as follows:

50 percent due to lack of equal access to USDA credit. A followup question is what caused the lack of access. I'll leave that for other posts.

50 percent due to other causes, such as:

• general trend of declining farm numbers
• smaller farms (i.e., blacks may have had smaller farms to begin with, and smaller farms may have failed more often than large farms)
• less capital (a variant of the "smaller farms" argument)
• poorer land (i.e., when black farmers were acquiring land from 1865 to 1920, they may have been less able to buy the good land)
• less and poorer education (I'm assuming fewer black farmers went to college and perhaps those that did got a poorer education than their white counterparts--would you rather go to Texas A&M or Delta State?)
• bias among the bankers (of course, Farmers Home/FSA was supposed to be the lender of the last resort)
  
• bias among suppliers--the general agribusiness community (might particularly include co-ops, which have been important in farming. When did many white southern co-ops open their doors to blacks?)
  
• poorer location (a variant of the poorer land, but this would consider things like access to railroads and roads to get crops to market, attractiveness to labor, etc.)

After listing all the causes, I'm not willing to rate the USDA/FSA problems as 50 percent of the cause. Are you?

On Reading RightWing Blogs

I do occasionally read right wing blogs. Take this excerpt:

"The central element ... is land ownership. There's nothing more primordially American, more conducive to the spirit of self-reliance and pride that fuels this country's origin myths, than cultivating one's own piece of land. Today more than ever."

A sentiment to warm the cockles of the heart of every libertarian (that's if libertarians actually had a heart).

Unfortunately, the omitted words are "in making urban ag sustainable, according to the Food Project," and the piece is from the green/lefty GRistmill.

My Fantasy Life

As befits a bureaucrat, my fantasy life is dull, dull, dull. One of the livelier parts is imagining returning to college (mostly to get free access to some interesting journal articles that aren't publicly available. Never have, never will.

But I might just follow Professor DeLong and his class on American economic history. Here's his lecture notes for the first class. One interesting point--he cites corn as having a 40 to 1 yield ratio, compared to wheat's 5 to 1. (At least back in 1800 or so.) Sounds questionable to me, but I never had to deal with either.

French Bread

Dirk Beauregard tells us lots about the current state of French bread, bakeries, and its price (rising).

The View from Europe

This is late, but here's an excerpt from a post on the blog of the EU's secretary of agriculture (that's how I interpret her role). It relates to a visit in February that she made to DC. (Her blog is interesting--she responds to the questions/comments of some of the farmers who write in.)

"I’ve just come back from almost three days in a freezing cold Washington DC.
It was an extremely educational visit – hopefully for my hosts as much as for me.
But it was also a reality check.
We have talked at length in Brussels about the importance of farm subsidy reform in the US for the future prospects of the Doha trade round.
We have looked to the new US Farm Bill proposals to give a clear signal that reform is on the horizon.
My discussions in Washington showed that the Farm Bill will be written very much with domestic concerns in mind.
DOHA does not seem to be high on the agenda in farm bill discussions.
This is a very different approach to ours, where we reform first and then look to lock these reforms into a WTO agreement.
I was also struck by the fact that many of the forces that today shape European agriculture policy – consumer interest, environmental considerations, budgetary pressure, development policy - seems strangely absent from the American debate. It’s farming interest – and increasingly also energy (biofuels) that is shaping policy. Could you imagine that in Europe?
I like the straight talking you hear on Capitol Hill. But it brings home to me clearly how different the political process in Washington is to that I know so well in Brussels.
Of course there were bright spots.
Crucially, my visit was an important exercise in confidence-building.
Deal-making is so much easier if the people facing each other across the table know and like one another.

"One Stop Shopping"

I remember, vaguely, when the Farm and Home Center was built on Upper front Street in Broome County. This piece discusses the closing of the FSA office (no mention of the NRCS office's fate). The statistics are interesting--farms and acreage up, but program participation down. I suspect that's common throughout the area. The urbanites are buying land in the sticks for their hobby farms (lots and lots of vineyards around the Finger Lakes, there was one--Taylor--in 1959). "Hobby" is a bit pejorative, but it's the closest term I've run into.

European Subsidy Payments

Our friends in the EU (both "Old Europe" and "New Europe") have the same controversies over payments to corporations and large payments as we do. See here for their equivalent of the EWG payment database. ($20,000 per acre payment!!) One of the problems of going to a historical basis for payments is the development of discrepancies between acreages. (There's always a trade-off.)

French Education

I've noted Dirk Beauregard's blog before. This post describes the day before the French schools reopen.

Challenging Everyone in School

Patrick Welsh is a teacher of English in the Alexandria (or is it Arlington) high school who writes periodic pieces on the state of the public schools. He had one yesterday, discussing the problems kids have who are caught between the very gifted and the ones being targeted to meet the Virgina Standards of Learning (No Child Left Behind), as in:

"...TAG as in Talented and Gifted. And who is and who isn't -- or at least who's designated such and who isn't -- has been one of the most contentious issues in Alexandria since the school system raised the bar for the TAG program two years ago. The new rules have cut out about two-thirds of the students who once qualified: At George Mason, the size of the fourth-grade program went from 17 to six last year."

He closes thus:

"Shep Walker, a T.C. graduate about to enter the College of William and Mary, says the problem is that "gifted-and-talented programs get filled with white kids who have pushy parents, leaving a lot of black and Hispanic kids out in the cold and creating de facto segregation in the classes."

In its defense, Alexandria's school administration was probably trying to fix that situation. But the solution isn't to mark fewer students as gifted and talented. It's to challenge all our kids, all the time."

While that's a laudable sentiment, I don't think it works in the real world or the real classroom. I think the reality is that any teacher faced with 25 students, or even any manager faced with 12 employees, is going to find that teaching (managing) some of them is more rewarding than the others. (I think the reward is a matter of personalities hitting it off, not necessarily of bias.) So some are going to think Mr. Welsh is a great teacher, some are going to say he's okay.

A great school system will manage to provide everyone with great teaching once or twice in their 12 years of schooling, as different teachers connect with different students. For the rest, we'll muddle through.

The Housing Bubble and Immigration

The popping of speculative bubbles needs nothing but a surplus of irrational exuberance, but there may be an interesting cross-over effect with immigration. The NY Times today talks about a national decline in the price of the average house. The Post today discusses declines in the DC area. Interestingly, Manassas Park, which I just highlighted as having turned majority minority with an impact on its politicians, is expected to have the steepest drop in home values in the area.

I don't think it's accidental. Politicians and government leaders tighten the screws on immigration, making it harder to get in. That cuts the demand for both temporary and permanent housing for the immigrants. (Which has often been met by group housing, which is a centuries-old pattern--look at Jacob Riis at the turn of the 1900's and his book "How the Other Half Lives".) And, we know in a free market, a cut in demand will cause a cut in price.

Tacos

Kevin Drum has had several posts on tacos--which have attracted lots of comments. His commenter has dug up a 1952 NYTimes article describing them, but Mexican food (or the American simulation thereof) didn't become popular until the 1970's.

McDonalds

McDonalds now sells more in Europe than in the U.S., per this NY Times article on how they're adapting to European tastes and upscaling. And I remember in the 1950's when they opened in the Binghamton area.

Pigford Perspectives I

I'd have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to deny the existence of discrimination in FmHA/FSA offices. But, I'd also have to be a coward to avoid discussing the Pigford lawsuit. That said, I'm also stupid, because it's obviously a complex issue and very much of a hot potato and I don't plan to spend a lot of time researching it. Just wing a few posts until I get tired.

First point: obviously people are polarized over the issue. The email (via Mulch), apparently circulating among some FSA employees, says the prospect of reopening the lawsuit makes her wish she weren't an employee of an agency.

That statement may be a statement by someone prejudiced against all minorities. That's the assumption made by Ken Cook, Barack Obama, John Boyd, and others. Their assumption may be true.

But, if you read the whole thing (and I give EWG credit for including the whole thing), a more reasonable assumption is that this is a bureaucrat who's complaining about the possibility of useless work being imposed by Congress. She passes on Ms. Cooksie's comment about the provision being "awful" and frets about being buried under workload, and being asked to provide information they don't have.

Now certainly it is the job of bureaucrats, when Congress speaks, to snap to and salute, just like their military counterparts do. It's not their job to worry about whether taxpayers money is being spent wisely, is it?

Pigford Sites

Among the Internet sites that relate to the Pigford lawsuit are the following:

PBS has background material on the history of black farmers here.

The settlement in the class action suit called for an arbitrator to make decisions with a separate, independent court-appointed monitor to look over the arbitrator's shoulder (no decision power as I understand). Here's the Office of Monitor's website

Here's the National Black Farmer's Association website, with a record of their actions and USDA's response (in more detail than I've provided).

The lawsuit was settled several years ago. In 2004 the time had run and there was a spurt of publicity about it:

The Washington Post did an article

The Environmental Working Group did a study with the black farmers association 2004 report
Carol Estes did a piece stating the side from the black farmer point of view.

The Delta Press did a piece from another side here

In 2007 the House reopened the discussion and EWG did several pieces here in July 2007
and in their EWG July Update on farm bill

Here is the testimony of John Boyd

This is the website of the FSA bureaucrats who work on farm loans: National Association of Credit Specialists

Straw in the Wind of Immigration

The Post yesterday had an article on Manassas Park, which is where my wife lived most of her youth. (A Levittown type community outside Manassas, VA, originally for WWII vets and families.) Recently an article said that in 6 years it had jumped from 33 percent minority to 50 percent minority, ranking third in the country for political subdivisions changing rapidly.

Anyway:

The Manassas Park City Council criticized "a small faction of citizens" this week for what it called "irresponsible and offensive" statements about local immigration policies, approving an official position that sets the small suburb apart from neighbors seeking to step up enforcement against illegal immigration.

The position statement, unanimously approved Tuesday night, declared: "The City believes most residents in Manassas Park are legally present and moved to this area to create a better life for their respective families." It added that the city of 11,600, bordered by Manassas and Prince William County, "will continue to work aggressively with federal and state agencies to address all criminal activity."

What's interesting is that these are Republican politicians! What's happening? The handwriting is on the wall--anyone who wants a political career in Manassas Park had better not be hostile to immigrants, who are the majority. (That's independent of judgments over what policy is best.)

Believing What We Want--Food Miles

[Updated: Rich Pirog wrote me a nice note, essentially saying he's still checking, and giving this reference: ]

Someone asked Tom Philpott at Gristmill about the sourcing of a factoid apparently often used in the "slow food" or local food movement--that on average food on our table moves 1200 miles. To his credit, he did some research and found it wasn't a 1969 DOD study. Instead, he tracks down Rich Pirog at Iowa State who says it's a 1969 Department of Energy study:

"Rich did a comprehensive look at food-mile studies for his 2001 paper "Food, Fuel, Freeways: An Iowa perspective on how far food travels, food usage, and greenhouse gas emissions."

The only study he knows about that comprehensively estimates food miles nationwide is the 1969 DoE effort. Reader Steven, if you're still with me, the citation for it is: U.S. Department of Energy. 1969. "U.S. Agriculture: Potential Vulnerabilities." Stanford Research, Institute, Menlo Park, CA."

Unfortunately, DOE wasn't formed until the 1970's--Jimmy Carter in 1977. (Actually, it makes more sense to have been a DOD study--at that time there were still worries about nuclear warfare and the farther food traveled, the more vulnerable we might be.)

It's a Diverse America

Whenever my mind starts making assumptions, along come things like this (a Blog for Rural America Post on a 23,000 acre "farm" in Louisiana) to remind me of the differences among us.

Rights of Government Bureaucrats

Relative to the controversy over FSA employees using government PC's and Internet for their own purposes, Slate has this piece explaining the rules for the military. The New York Times recently published an op-ed by 7 enlisted personnel on Iraq. We don't know how they did what they did--whether they used personal PC's during off-duty hours or what. The Slate piece focuses on rights to publish opinions.

What Is Happiness? Slow Food?

A commenter [who's fooling whom--the commenter] on my post on local food writes with evident longing of experiencing the small shops in Europe. It raises the question--what's happiness?

Certainly the idea of strolling the streets of France (something my wife remembers fondly), stopping in at the chocolate shop, or the bakery, or the pastry shop is fine. Maybe I'll experience the reality one day.

Some argue that Europeans are happier than we, having consciously decided to opt for a society that is slower, works fewer hours, enjoys life more, and has a smaller gap between rich and
poor. That may be true. But from my age, I suspect there's also a bit of "the grass is greener on the other side of the fence". There's no paradise on earth.

Not really related, but here's a NYTimes article on the overlap among religions in their concern for the way food animals are reared and slaughtered. And a Post article on "terroir"--the idea that where food is grown makes a difference.

Another Politician Heard From

Mulch reports another politician has written Secretary Johanns about the Pigford emails.

Washington Monthly and Rating Colleges

I like the Washington Monthly's rating scale for colleges. And this year it has a good piece on community colleges, particularly one in Washington. See here. (My liking is entirely independent of the fact that my alma mater ranks higher on their scale than on the U.S. News one.)

It's too bad the education cartel doesn't release data on student achievement. I'm tempted to tweak some of the libertarian/conservative economists I read about that fact.

The Proud Citizens of Mahomet, IL

One wonders if there's any pressure to change the name. One of their own was in the Lehrer News honor roll last night.

Improper Use of Government PC's--Northern Ireland

Bureaucrats in Northern Ireland got themselves into trouble by using government PC's to edit wikpedia. See this article

Using Government Computers

I've not followed up on the Pigford flap of 2 weeks ago. Based on links a reader graciously sent me, it seems that the rules for PC/internet usage generally follow those for the phone: personal use permitted on a limited basis, provided you use your common sense (work comes first, use during personal time, don't run businesses or distract co-workers).

So, is the woman in VA in trouble? Maybe, maybe not. Seems to depend on how close she came to lobbying Congress. My reading would say that, if she had gotten an email expressing a political opinion (for or against the war, etc.) she would be in her rights to send it on to a friend. Multiple addresses and more direct criticism of Congress would be questionable.

Will be interesting to see what the "independent investigator" appointed by Administrator Lasseter comes up with, and whether Congress buys it.

The Revenue Option

The House version of the farm bill has an option for producers to choose between the current program structure, where payments are triggered by, and computed based on, the amount by which national prices for the crop is less than the target price for the crop. That is, if wheat has a $4 target price, and farmers get $3.75, there's a $.25 per bushel payment. (Lots and lots of specifics ignored in this summary.)

The option would say, if wheat has a $4 target price and the national yield target is 25 bushels (being unrealistic to make for easy computation), the expected revenue per acre is $100. So if the national prices for wheat and the national actual yield are such as to make the actual revenue $10, there's a $10 per acre payment. See these links for more specific discussion:
Brad Lubben at U of Nebraska.
and U Of Illinois extension

I can think of lots of complications, particularly as the bill is written to make this a one-time option. But then, since I've left USDA, FSA has had experience with one-time options, so maybe I'm wrong about the complexity.

Another View of Local Food

It's always instructive to see what's going on in other countries. We (Americans, humans?) so often think that we are the embodiment of wisdom. Anyhow, I question Bill McKibben and his dedication to local food (thought I did--it may be one of my unfinished draft posts). But here's how some Frenchmen do it (along with some nice pictures, once you get past the introductory logo).

As long as I'm on the French, my impression is that in both Britain and France people tend to go to the store very often, even daily. It's the epitome of local food--the bread is baked, the meat is butchered daily, the refrigerators are small, so you practice "just-in-time cookery". Very different from suburban and country patterns here, where you make one big shopping trip a week to stock up, have big refrigerators, etc.

Bureaucrat as [Biased] Umpire II

In contrast to the Will piece on Froemming (see prior post) the New York Times reports an academic study (somewhat similar to the previous one on NBA referees) which shows umps biased in favor of their own race.

"Specifically, an umpire will — with all other matters such as game score and pitcher quality accounted for — call a pitch a strike about 1 percent more often if he and the pitcher are of the same race."

Apparently the bias would seldom affect the game, particularly as umpires are less biased when the situation is tightest (and not biased at all when the new electronic device that checks their accuracy is running).

Bureaucrat as Umpire

George Will writes of the glory of the umpire, focusing on Bruce Froemming, the ump with the longest career:

"Consider Sept. 2, 1972, when Froemming was behind the plate and the Cubs' Milt Pappas was one strike from doing what only 15 pitchers have done -- pitch a perfect game, 27 up, 27 down. With two outs in the ninth, Pappas got an 0-2 count on the 27th batter. Froemming called the next three pitches balls. An agitated Pappas started walking toward Froemming, who said to the Cubs' catcher: "Tell him if he gets here, just keep walking" -- to the showers.

Pappas's next pitch was low and outside. Although he did get his no-hitter, the greater glory -- a perfect game -- was lost. Another kind of glory -- the integrity of rules [emphasis added]-- was achieved."

That's one cardinal virtue (and vice) of the bureaucrat, upholding the integrity of the rules.

Economists Reinvent the Wheel

Brad DeLong is an interesting guy, a former Clinton bureaucrat, an economics professor, and prolific blogger. He posts a handout for an economic history class to be given this fall. There's lots of formulas and logic, but I'll excerpt the two key pieces:

The Puzzle:

"In the context of Economics 113—American Economic History—we have a
definite puzzle: it was Britain that was ahead in technology and was where
technology was moving ahead the fastest in the first half of the nineteenth
century, and yet it was America that appears to have had the fastest perperson
economic growth. According to eh.net, British growth in real GDP
per capita averaged 0.50% per year in the first half of the nineteenth
century; American real GDP per capita growth averaged 0.86% per year
from 1790-1850.1"

The Conclusion:

The westward expansion—the Erie Canal, the steamboats, expulsion of
Indians from the near midwest and the inland southeast, et cetera—thus
looks absolutely key to the form that economic growth took in pre-Civil
War America.

(The reasoning involves looking at capital, natural resources, level of technology, and labor.)

Seems to be that was Turner's "frontier hypothesis" of American history.

Office closing--miscellaneous articles

Office closing--on Long Island--take the ferry to Connecticut is one alternative.
Closing ten offices in NE approved by Johanns--apparently he has no further political ambitions in his home state. And 16 in Georgia.

I'm still not seeing news of closing of NRCS offices at anywhere near the same rate as FSA. I don't know why--whether they aren't doing as much or it's not as controversial. The FSA mythology had the soil conservationist driving around to his clients so it might well be that office closings don't rate the notice. Why should I care whether the conservationist drives 20 miles or 40 miles to my farm?

Now You See It, Now You Don't

Via Marginal Revolution, here's an amazing set of pictures.
See also here.

Disaster Waivers

Much of the regulation on government is well-intentioned (maybe even all of it) and has a purpose. We can argue about whether the regulation is wise or effective. But as I thought after Katrina, and said in this very blog, there ought to be two sets of regulations--one that applies in ordinary times, another for emergencies.

Government Executive reports:

The Homeland Security Department inspector general is urging the Federal Emergency Management Agency to streamline information sharing to help law enforcement agencies locate missing children, registered sex offenders and fugitive felons during disasters.

A report released by the IG this week showed that after Hurricane Katrina, law enforcement agencies struggled to get information from FEMA that would have helped them track down missing children and criminals. Among those missing after the storm were 5,000 children, more than 2,000 sex offenders and a number of fugitive felons.

Slatalla and IT Systems

The Times' Michelle Slatalla tried to implement an IT system in her family (3 daughters, husband). Her attempt was prompted by conflict over a scarce resource (a car). So she tried to use the Google calendar software to establish coordinated calendars for each family member, with a master calendar. It failed. Her story is a reminder that humans, not IT, are in the drivers seat. Or, to change the metaphor, you need to win the hearts and minds of the people.

On the other hand, if there were an interface between the Google calendar and the car's ignition, such that the car could only be started by the driver who had reserved the time on the calendar, your IT system would have the people by the short and curlies, as the Brits say.

Actually, her story may be a parable of the dangers of overreaching--she apparently has fallen back to a calendar for the car and a spreadsheet for gas, which may have worked.

Farmers and the Internet

A paper on farmers, PC's, and the Internet is here. Broadband is spreading but still has a ways to go.

I remember Sherman County, Kansas (Colorado border) where we were doing an "Info-Share" project in 1991-2. Some farmers had PC's, but it was easy to overestimate. So many farmers are so old, and it's well established that us oldtimers don't like change. Judging by the fuss over closing county offices, it's clear that the Internet has yet to replace the need for warm blooded help from your local friendly bureaucrat.

(Buried in the depths are figures on the extent to which farmers in various states use the Internet to do business with USDA, or other websites. Amazon is doing lots better than USDA.)

Bureaucrats Causing the Civil War

I'm reading a frustrating book by William Freehling, on the road to the Civil War. (It's frustrating because of his writing, not the content.) But he offers a theory on the causes of the war that's new to me: bureaucrats. He argues that Southern political leaders knew Lincoln might be elected, as he was. And if he was elected, he had extensive patronage powers (remember the "spoils" system?)--appointing postmasters and customs collectors, etc. And they knew that these bureaucratic posts would attract people willing to serve, even in the South. Thus Lincoln (who indeed spent much of his time after being elected and in the early months of his administration dealing with office seekers) could create a Southern Republican Party, through use of patronage. That would quickly erode the appearance of southern unity around slavery.

It's an interesting theory, as well as a reminder that Presidents used to have much more power over bureaucrats than they do today, even though our esteemed [sic] current President has been accused of politicizing his administration.