Where's the NAEP for Government?

 NAEP stands for National Assessment of Educational Progress.  It's a set of tests to see what students know and can do in different fields; thus, it's indirectly an assessment of schools, which is the way it's mostly used.

Assessing teachers is hard.  We've all had good teachers and bad teachers, and some of the teachers who were good for us maybe weren't so good for other students in the class.  And maybe some of what we learned wasn't really what our parents or the local community wanted us to learn, and thought they were paying the teachers to learn.

So is assessing government bureaucracy hard.  Compared to education, there's probably even more disagreement over the value of various programs.  The GPRA of 1993 was an initial attempt to try to assess performance. I'm dubious of its value, but now Sen. Lieberman and others are trying to revise and update it. I'm still dubious.  To make this real, there should be an administration strategic plan and a Congressional strategic plan. Obviously what Obama wants the EPA to do is different than what Sen. McConnell et. al. want the EPA to do.  If the EPA does a plan that's the lowest common denominator of the two, it won't say much.  But even then, if Obama and McConnell were paying attention to the strategic plan, that would be a big improvement.  I suspect the reality is neither will pay much attention to it, meaning it's mostly an exercise in bureaucratic paper creation and shuffling.

Government Is Good

That's the title of an interesting website, not a blog, of a professor at Mount Holyoke College.  He has a bunch of articles arguing various points.  

Another Dairy Farmer Goes Out

In central New York. Their numbers keep dwindling.

Mankiw and Taxes, My Touching Faith in the Professor

Greg Mankiw has a column in the NYTimes on his marginal tax rate, as it stands, and if the Bush tax cuts for the over $250K bracket aren't extended. He makes a fairly convincing case that increasing his marginal tax rate would decrease his incentive for added production.  Apparently, in his case, he'd be less apt to accept additional speaking engagements.

But I've some questions: when he's on the road speaking, what is it he's not doing?

• Presumably he's not at Harvard mentoring his graduate students or teaching his undergrads.  (Maybe he will have fewer guest lecturers in Econ 101 and more of the real Mankiw?) Maybe he cuts his office hours?
• Or maybe he's not doing economic research, writing the next great paper which is going to win him a Nobel prize?
• Or maybe he's not home with his family, investing in their social capital and his happiness? (Granted, none of the activities he's not doing would show up in the GDP, but Professor Mankiw is still a sentient human being and he's probably contributing to the good of the society wherever he is and whatever he's doing.

On a broader scale, assuming we need the money for the government, isn't the issue whether it's better to reduce the incentives for someone such as Professor Mankiw, or for the struggling graduate student or the assistant professor without tenure? To some extent it would seem increasing the rates on higher levels of income is age-biased; it is more likely to hit the older, better established person. I'd assume, just as the most jobs are created by start-up businesses, most ideas are created by the young. That would lead me to support increasing the rates on the high brackets, if that's the only choice I'm given.

The Great American Tradition: Hypocrisy

So thinks Kevin Drum, who argues everyone wants to cut government spending, except on the things they like.

I agree.

Externalities: Not Costs But Benefits

The economists define an externality as something which isn't captured in the price of the good or service. I usually notice externalities as costs: the pollution which is a by-product of the internal combustion engine, for example.  But there can also be benefits.  In the case of BT corn (corn genetically modified to produce a natural toxin which kills corn borers), farmers who buy and use BT corn seed benefit their neighbors who don't.  Turns out it's like vaccinations--vaccinate enough susceptible people in a group, and the unvaccinated benefit because the disease can't establish itself.

Cap Gemini and USDA

GSA gave Cap Gemini a 7-year blanket purchase agreement for services for USDA, including FSA's MIDAS.

Sometime 35 years ago or so, CAP Gemini did work for ASCS.  At that time the idea was to get a view of the critical data ASCS managers needed and give it to them timely.  My impression from a friend who was trying to get work achieved was that management said something like: "data, what data? WE don't need no stinking data. Go away and don't bother us."

FSA and Crop Insurance

I can't resist stealing this from Farm Policy:

" Risk Management Agency Administrator Bill Murphy is pushing wireless records, GPS mapping technologies and smarter business practices to adapt.
“Agent commissions ballooned 35 percent between 2005-2008, thanks in part to the run up in commodity prices and a national shift toward revenue insurance policies, Murphy says. But given the budget constraints in the next farm bill, ‘Congress is not going to stand for paying $4 billion a year in administrative and overhead expenses,’ he adds. ‘That’s twice what the Farm Service Agency (FSA) spends to administer its programs. They don’t want it to happen again.’
“Murphy stresses the FSA isn’t seeking to replace the private crop insurance delivery system, but he says ‘other people in government’ may look at it when farm bill discussions begin in earnest. ‘We need to show we’re efficient and we’re lean,’ he tells agents.”

One of the final bitter lessons of my career was driving my employees and KC programmers to try to deliver CAT insurance efficiently, only to find our best efforts were ignored.  What Mr. Murphy seems to be saying is a government bureaucracy is more efficient than private industry.  Imagine that!

(To be fair, "private crop insurance" isn't a real private industry, but I'll take any crumb of comfort I can find.)

Most Surprising Sentence Today

From a description of a visit to MIT (yes, that's Massachusetts Institute of Technology): "During the conversation, I asked the MBA students if they knew where the library was and received many blank stares

Get Serious

Pushing their Young Guns book on The Newshour last night, the first two areas Rep. Cantor and his sidekick Kevin McCarthy mention to cut are Amtrak, and compensated time for union representation for federal employees.

Best and Worst of America

Side by side in today's Washington Post.  First its coverage of the Supreme Court hearing of the Rev. Phelps demonstration near the funeral of a soldier.  Second an article on the death of a food cart vendor in DC, who over 20 or so years developed an extensive network of friends among the people who bought from him.

Why the "best and worst"?  The activities of Rev. Phelps are disgusting and disgraceful.  They also, IMHO, should be legal if I understand the situation correctly, i.e., that while close to the funeral, the demonstrators weren't at the funeral.  Meanwhile, Carlos Guardado was making friends on K street, a site not known for its public-spirited and outgoing denizens.  Starting as an illegal immigrant, he became legal.  As a book by Harry Golden once said: "Only in America".  (Golden coined the "Vertical Negro Rule" and inspired Calvin Trillin to coin the Harry Golden rule:  "in present-day America it's very difficult, when commenting on events of the day, to invent something so bizarre that it might not actually come to pass while your piece is still on the presses." 

Damn Right I Do

Prefer to read negative stories about younger people, as this study says.  Of course, I prefer to read negative stories about evil people, Republicans, the rich... (but I repeat myself).

Court Strategies: Libs Are Hypocrites

Ezra Klein links to a Slate article on how the conservatives are manipulating things on the Supreme Court to get their preferred result.It sounds bad, but with my little nose I smell hypocrisy.  I recall reading in the past  articles, first on Thurgood Marshall and then on Justice Ginsburg, the theme of which was the craftsmanship and legal tactics involved in selecting the right cases, and making the right arguments, to lay the ground for overturning segregation and establishing women's rights.  So it seems to me what Chief Roberts and his fellow conservatives are doing is much the same, using sharp tactics to reach their strategic goal.  The difference is that liberals liked the goals of reversing Plessy v. Ferguson, but don't like the goal of reversing Miranda, or Roe v. Wade.

Waste: The Price You Pay for Choice

Waste, as in wasted food, is a subject reaching the news.  See this Treehugger post 

I have to believe that more waste occurs in the food distribution channels, including restaurants, than in the kitchens of America. 

In the spirit of Warren Buffett's education reform idea (fix the system by assigning pupils entirely at random, after banning all private schools and home schooling), my suggestion to avoid food waste:

When shopping for vegetables and fruit in the store, always choose the oldest and ugliest available. When ordering in the restaurant, always order the least popular entree.

Don't want to follow my choice rules? That's because they eliminate choice, eliminate freedom. Choice necessarily involves waste.

Cultural/Societal Differences Are Fascinating

China doesn't have a navy. Via Tom Ricks at Best Defense, a very interesting article on 10 myths about the (non-existent Chinese navy).  It reminds me, early in the Revolution the army or militia had some ships.  Matter of fact, the Army still has ships or boats, or something that floats.  (I think that's right--I remember being on guard duty at Ft. Belvoir and they had something nautical.)

Mankiw's Error of Perception

Greg Mankiw, Harvard economics prof, found The Social Network to be an enjoyable movie, but thought it unfairly portrayed Harvard undergrads as snobs, instead of the likable types he encounters. I hate  love to snark at Harvard, but there may not be a conflict. here: Harvard undergrads are so capable they can appear snobbish to the world outside and likable to those in authority over them, like a professor.

Black and Yglesias Are Wrong on McGovern

Matt Yglesias links to an a Jane Black piece from yesterday, implying George McGovern's chairing of a nutrition committee in 1977 which dissed red meat was a reason he lost his Senate seat in 1980.

This is a piece of wisdom from foodie movement literature--off hand I can't remember whether it was in Pollan or another writer.  Unfortunately, I believe it's wrong.

• I doubt the cattlemen ever were real strong supporters of McGovern's.  The wheat growers, maybe, because he supported farm programs, but not cattlemen.
• Searching the NY Times archive finds articles discussing the election outlook but none mentioning nutrition/red meat as an issue.  
• McGovern had won re-election in 1974 by 53 percent, so he wasn't exactly strongly entrenched.
• His opponent, James Abdnor, was a four-term congressman so had name recognition across South Dakota.
• NCPAC opposed McGovern, partially on abortion issues, partially because the conservatives loved to hate George.
• Finally, the head of the ticket in 1980 was Jimmy Carter, who was running against some aged ex-actor fellow.  As a result, 1980 was the worst year for a party in the US Senate since 1958, seeing McGovern, Frank Church, Warren Magnusson, Birch Bayh, John Culver, et. al. all go down to defeat.

See Wikipedia on the 1980 senate election in SD , the national senate election, and on McGovern.

This to me is an example of how easily whippersnappers who didn't live through events can adopt historical theories which suit their viewpoint, ignoring the complexity of reality while enjoying the ease of certitude.

[Updated: changed first sentence to be more fair to Black.]

Sentence of Oct 4

"the Tea Party activists on the right and the netroots activists on the left might be the political lobbies that do the most to preserve the integrity of the U.S. financial system."  Dan Drezner

Republican Senate Catch-22: Coburn Meet DeMint

Sen. Coburn of Oklahoma blocked the unanimous passage of five bills protecting various animals on the basis that ""The problems that are facing this country are so big and so massive that our attention ought to be focused on those large problems, not on five separate bills that have been proffered for special interest groups," Coburn said.

Meanwhile Sen. DeMint of South Carolina is blocking consideration of every bill with he doesn't agree.

Plain English

I remember when we had to certify each regulation published in the Federal Register was in "plain English".  This was back in the days of Jimmy Carter.  It was a pro forma requirement then; I don't expect much different from the new law.  It includes a requirement to change agency websites and to permit public input on compliance.  Problem is: while everyone complains about jargon, there's no one with the motivation to play policeman.  At best it will be providing another cudgel to be used by opponents of a program; they'll mock the regulations for not being clear. 

Good Bureaucracy Is Important for Development

Tim Harford posts on the ways in which past history impacts economic development, citing several research reports.  From his post:

Berger argues that the 7° 10’ line of latitude in Nigeria is important because different systems of taxation once prevailed on either side of it. To the south, officials relied on customs duties and other taxes on trade through Nigeria’s ports. North of the line, taxes were levied on people – which meant somebody had to arrange a census and keep proper accounts. The difference in bureaucratic capability has persisted for a century

$2,000 for a Meal?

The sports pages report an NFL rookie got stuck paying for dinner for 20 of his teammates (because he didn't do the usual rookie duties).  The bill was close to $50,000.  That's a bunch of food, and I suspect a bunch of pricey wine. Reminds me of an infamous dinner in London back before the crash: some financial types if I remember.

Mitch Daniels Is a Good Governor? But Not Digitally

Mitch Daniels, former director of OMB, current governor of Indiana, and possible Presidential candidate may have a good reputation in some circles, but apparently he didn't get Indiana moving in the IT area.

[Updated: David Brooks has picked him in the Times as the Republicans Presidential candidate in 2012 (see Althouse on this) but Cato only gave him a B for his governorship.]

The Amish and the Ig Nobels

The Ig Nobel prizes were awarded last, including one for this study :

In the late sixties the Canadian psychologist Laurence J. Peter advanced an apparently paradoxical principle, named since then after him, which can be summarized as follows: {\it 'Every new member in a hierarchical organization climbs the hierarchy until he/she reaches his/her level of maximum incompetence'}. Despite its apparent unreasonableness, such a principle would realistically act in any organization where the mechanism of promotion rewards the best members and where the mechanism at their new level in the hierarchical structure does not depend on the competence they had at the previous level, usually because the tasks of the levels are very different to each other. Here we show, by means of agent based simulations, that if the latter two features actually hold in a given model of an organization with a hierarchical structure, then not only is the Peter principle unavoidable, but also it yields in turn a significant reduction of the global efficiency of the organization. Within a game theory-like approach, we explore different promotion strategies and we find, counterintuitively, that in order to avoid such an effect the best ways for improving the efficiency of a given organization are either to promote each time an agent at random or to promote randomly the best and the worst members in terms of competence.

Where do the Amish come in?  As I understand the above, they identified this truth back in the 17th century.  The usual pattern in churches is for bishops (authority figures) to be selected by management, or maybe elected by a church body.  That leads to the Peter principle: a top programmer becomes the manager of programmers, a top analyst becomes a manager of analysts; even though neither knows anything about management.  The Amish use a different principle: they let God decide.  Or, to the secular-minded among us, they select bishops by lot.  They're one of the fastest growing religions, so it's proof the system works.

Pigford and Rep. Steve King

Rep. Steve King issues a press release alleging massive fraud in the Pigford settlement. Chris Clayton at DTN calls it a red herring.  [Updated: another article describing both a press conference and some USDA reaction.]

Though I've voiced some qualms about Pigford (see the "Pigford" tab), I think Chris has the  better argument. I note in this post that Boyd talked of 20,000 farmers each in Alabama and Mississippi. I do think Chris errs in his apparent assumption that both husband and wife are eligible to file individual claims because I don't think they could file separate loan applications.

The bottom line to me is that Mr. Boyd has inflated the number of potential claimants and is fostering the false impression that every claimant will receive money.  Neither is true. Neither exaggerating the numbers of one's interest group and the benefits they might derive from proposed legislation is unknown inside the Beltway--if we believed the American Farm Bureau Federation we'd have many more farmers than the census reveals. I'm sure Rep. King wouldn't accuse them of fraud.

Based on the claims reviewed and rejected from the first Pigford settlement (which Mr. Clayton discusses in some detail), it seems there's a reasonable process to weed out claims which don't meet the evidentiary standards.

What Geezers Remember Isn't the Truth--Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter qualifies as a geezer  John Sides shows he misremembers.  Carter claimed his "lust in the heart" interview in Playboy cost him 15 points in the polls and nearly cost him the election.  Sides says: not true--available polls show a fairly smooth descent from his peak at the convention.

So, a reminder to one's self: be very afraid when you remember something.

Canada and the U.S. Differences

I skim the blog at ourfuture.org, but usually find its posts much too long and lacking focus, as well as being too liberal for my tastes.  But Sara Robinson recently returned to the U.S. from 7 years living in Canada and has a nice post about the differences she's found, particularly the synergy between the foodies (left) and farmers (right) in the Pacific Northwest.

Surprise Paragraph of the Day

Keith Hennessey caught my notice when  a number of bloggers praised his explanation of the economic bureaucracy in the White House, having been GWBush's CEA chief towards the end of the administration.  He's usually critical of the Dems, but today he has an interesting analysis of Obama's comments on housing, somewhat critical, but ending with this:

I’m impressed by the depth of the President’s understanding and his thought process.  I disagree with his Administration’s policies in many cases, and that includes his housing policies, but I think he gave a good answer yesterday in this Albuquerque backyard conversation.

 I'm barely resisting the opportunity to snark about GWB--use your imagination.

Our Founding Fathers and the Intrusive Federal Government

We all know the Founding Fathers didn't like government and wanted as little of it as possible.  Right?

It's completely ridiculous for the government to worry about things like energy efficient light bulbs and toilets. Right?

If you agree, you might look at this document from the National Archives. As they say:

List A includes dwellings situated on two acres or less and valued at more than $100. You will find the name of the occupant, the name of the owner, dimensions of the dwelling and any outbuildings, the type of construction, the number of windows and lights, and the value of the dwelling.

No, it's not from 2009, but 210 years earlier.

Yglesias Buries the Lede

"Burying the lede" seems to be the phrase for not recognizing and promoting the real story.  Matt Yglesias is posting on the value of frozen vegetables, not as good as fresh but still good and very convenient, and says:

"Part of my recent weight loss strategy (down a bit over 60 pounds since the beginning of March)" x

Bill Signing Ceremonies

Bill signing ceremonies are one of the rituals of our democracy.  I remember one ceremony for a bill GWB signed, forget which one, but the picture was above the fold on the front page of the Times. Showed the audience arranged in a big crescent, facing the President and maybe a handful of bigwigs: Cheney, et.al.  Best I could tell everyone in the room was a white male of a certain age, or above.

This post on the White House blog shows Obama signing the small business bill yesterday.  Some nice diversity on the dais watching the signature, but below the dais seem to be a group of white males of a certain age, almost all of whom are displaying their shirt cuffs, simply because they're holding their cellphone/cameras above their head to capture the historic moment.

Tobacco Growing in Canada

Via Freakonomics, an article, part of a series, on tobacco growing in Canada.  It seems there's an underground trade in tobacco, grown in Canada and sold to contraband manufacturers, who sell the cigarettes tax-free on First Nation (i.e., "native Americans") land.


"We" (i.e., I) usually think of tobacco as a Southern crop, grown in the Carolinas and Kentucky.  Not so, Wisconsin and Connecticut have been/still are growers of certain varieties and it turns out Ontario also grows tobacco.  And, like the U.S. but a little slower, Canada had a buyout of tobacco growers who had tobacco quotas. Three paragraphs:

"The federal government offered a controversial buyout of Ontario tobacco growers in 2009. Though most took the payments — designed to usher them out of the business — more than 200 have returned to producing tobacco through a loophole that allows them to rent their land and hire themselves out to licence holders, often their non-farming children.

The new system replaces one where farmers held tobacco quotas worth hundreds of thousands of dollars each and the Flucured Tobacco Marketing Board kept close tabs on production. With the previous regime, farmers would lose that valuable quota if caught selling tobacco on the black market, a powerful deterrent, noted Mr. Stewart. Having the new licence cancelled carries no such financial consequences.

And

"These guys [the farmers who earn big cash money] are pretty crafty," the farmer said. "You think when you talk to them they're honest and they're salt of the earth and they're good people. Not at all."

Edward VII and Coronation Dinners

Watched the Brit TV series "Berkeley Square", which is sort of an Upstairs, Downstairs with the focus on three nursemaids/nannies in different households on the exclusive Berkeley Square.  A feature of Episode IV was a coronation dinner (Edward VII), where the posh set served the poorer classes. Difficult to find anything on it, a NYTimes article here on the coronation mentions the dinners.  There's a photo for sale here showing the setup.

This sentence: " Born in 1841, he built up a huge potato enterprise and supplied all the potatoes eaten at a dinner for the poor of London to mark King Edward VII's coronation."  This from a cached Worthing piece: " To mark those three previous coronations, Worthing’s civic fathers settled for a lunch or tea party for the young, poor and the elderly (on one occasion, all three together), with a small procession of local organisations as a kind of bonus. Not many were impressed." And another picture.


I didn't know Edward suffered appendicitis right before the scheduled date for his coronation, and the successful surgery put that operation on the map. His illness delayed the coronation, but not the dinner for the poor.

A Bit on Reston

Q: What is the biggest change you have seen in Reston during your time here?
A: Without question it would be the number of jobs.  In the beginning Reston was slated for one job per household, which would mean 22,000 jobs.  Now there are close to three jobs per household.

From an interview with a guy who's been in Reston longer than I.  Robert Simon thought Reston should be a place where people lived and worked, a source neither of jobs for outside commuters nor of commuters for outside jobs.  That vision was flawed, perhaps because he didn't allow for the impact of Dulles airport and the access road to the Beltway.  That allowed the development of the parallel toll road and made the area attractive for businesses with lots of air traffic. Another omission was the development of the military-industrial complex.  And finally, he missed the development of the government-contractor complex.  Both complexes meant big outfits developed which needed easy access to both federal offices mostly in DC and to the nation.  So jobs developed along the Dulles corridor.

Freudian Slips in Pledge to America

Brad DeLong quoting another site on the people pictured in the Republican Pledge to America. (The title of the post says it all.)

Urban Farming, Its Ironies

I don't know the history of the garden, but in Ben Affleck's The Town some key scenes take place in the Charlestown community garden (can't find a link to the garden on line, but Google gives some possibilities and the picture link shows it's rather lush.  Cynic that I am I'll be interested in the director's commentary on the garden.

The food movement loves to embrace urban farming.  That's fine, if there's a vacant lot, if you don't have park money the best use you can make of it is to open a community garden.  It's good for the community and good for the environment.

However, and you knew there was a however coming, the environmental benefits of the urban setting come from density.  New York City is one of the best places to live to have the smallest impact on the environment, simply because it's efficient to live and work in dense places.  (Recently there's been challenges to the benefits of telework because it might be more efficient to heat and light offices for 1,000 people than 1,000 homes each with its own officeworker working from home, even considering the costs of commuting.)

The market tells us it's not efficient to have permanent farms in the heart of the city.  I'm enough of a conservative to believe it.

The Limits of Planning: Reston and Jobs

"Q: What is the biggest change you have seen in Reston during your time here?
A: Without question it would be the number of jobs.  In the beginning Reston was slated for one job per household, which would mean 22,000 jobs.  Now there are close to three jobs per household."

From an interview with a guy who's been in Reston longer than I.  Robert Simon wanted Reston to be a place where you worked and lived, but you can see it's not the way it's developed. With the coming of Metro to Wiehle Avenue I suspect the jobs/household ratio will shift further.

Ezra Klein Is Right: No Government Waste

"There's no such thing as government waste." from a good post by Ezra Klein

The point is, of course, that while probably 70 percent of Americans think farm program payments are an example of waste, the nation through its elected representatives and senators has determined otherwise.  And that's just an example.  Personally I think there's lots of "waste" in DOD, but the nation doesn't agree with my wisdom.

Kudos for Sibelius

The NYTimes today had a chart grading the first 6 months of the PPACA healthcare reform.  Regardless of one's opinion of the act, it's worth noting and appreciating the fact that HHS has done a good job the first six months in getting regulations written and other practical steps needed to implement.  We all can agree if the act is poorly implemented it will be a bad thing.  Some of us think it will be a good thing if well implemented.

One item where the authors give poor marks is the effectiveness of state governments, though that seems to reflect the opposition of Republican governors to the act.  (Which leads me back to the theme of the weakness of the federal government.)

History and Food, a Dissenting View

John Phipps recommends this article by a historian who challenges some foodie myths; I concur. It's good, although she paints with too broad a brush.  It's true that the rural residents in past realms didn't eat well, just look at the diet of black Americans in the ante-bellum South.  "High on the hog" implies a "low on the hog". But it's true some areas in some times ate well.  Colonial Pennsylvanians were significantly taller on average than the British troops who opposed them in the Revolution.  That's nit-picking, though.  The article is worth reading by anyone interested in food.

What Costs the Most, Labor to Make a Car or Wheat to Make Bread

According to this: "First, labor only accounts for only about 7 percent of the cost of a car." Interview with Steven Rattner quoted at Ezra Klein.

That surprising fact reminds me of a similar observation:: "A $2.59 loaf of white bread contains 14 cents worth of wheat."  That won't prevent bakers from raising prices based on higher wheat prices.

I Tip Well, Because I Had Food Service Experience

As such, I fit the result of a study described here.

What are the proverbs about walking a mile in the other person's shoes?  Not that I ever got tips, but serving food in a college dormitory is an educational experience.

This Must Be Wrong, Though Tyler Cowan Cites It

Marginal revolution refers to this paper (it's not free, so I'm not getting it):

This paper investigates the institutional causes of China’s Great Famine. It presents two empirical findings: 1) in 1959, when the famine began, food production was almost three times more than population subsistence needs; and 2) regions with higher per capita food production that year suffered higher famine mortality rates, a surprising reversal of a typically negative correlation. A simple model based on historical institutional details shows that these patterns are consistent with the policy outcomes in a centrally planned economy in which the government is unable to easily collect and respond to new information in the presence of an aggregate shock to production.

I can't believe the first sentence: a country of some 500-600 million people had food sufficient for 1.5 billion? No way, no how. [Update: according to Wikipedia, food production in 59-60 was 70 percent of pre-famine levels.]

Our Weak Federal Government

From a Post story today comes another reminder of why I firmly believe our Federal government is weak. The story is about the problems states face in implementing the health care law.  Lots of people in 50 states plus the territories have to do lots of different things.  That's because HHS won't deal directly with health care providers or the public, all the dealing is done via the medium of the states and their departments. 

I say "they won't deal directly" but that's only partially true.  Go to healthcare.gov and you'll find explanations of the new rules.  But, and it's an important but, prominent in the upper left of the page is a box: "Pick Your State", because the stuff which really matters is dependent on the decisions made by governors and state legislatures, and implemented, or not, by the state healthcare bureaucracy.

By compare, in a bureaucracy like FSA, the federal bureaucracy is dealing directly with farmers, through the medium of county offices.  Granted, that simple statement hides a bunch of complexity, but if you're going to have fast and efficient implementation of decisions, that's the way you go.  As a nation, however, we think it's better to waste time and money in favor of giving more power to state and local levels.  We feel that will improve the quality of the decisions being implemented.  

Over at the NYTimes Tom Friedman has a column on the differences between China and the U.S., noting they're able to build impressive things in a short time, while we take years and years to do things, like build at Ground Zero.  Or India, another democracy, which is having problems building the infrastructure for the Commonwealth Games, as compared to China's preparations for the Olympics. 

A Funny Site? Not for a Farmer

For some reason, Professor Soltan at University Diaries thinks this is a funny site, at least that's my inference.

The Cotton Wife Is in the Money Now

I love her pictures, even though they load slow......ly. Her husband is picking cotton now, and this shows the process. (Just an aside: compare what's shown with historical photos of people, usually black, in the fields picking cotton.) I observe that the price of cotton is now up, close to $1, which is about a historical high, the result of bad floods in China which is the biggest producer.  That's a change from the years and years when the price was in the $.55-.60 neighborhood, so we can assume that the Cotton Wife and her cute redheaded kids (usually featured in her photos) will enjoy a good Christmas.

Symptoms of Growing Old

When you and your wife go from sharing a pitcher of beer, to drinking a beer each and splitting a third, to skipping the third.

When you go from drinking a pot of coffee of leaded  to a partial pot, to a partial pot that's half decaf, half the good stuff.

When you go from Starbucks vente bold to Starbucks half and half.

Who Says Educational Standards Have Gone to Hell?

At Tufts, Dan Drezner is teaching Thucydides.  He has an interesting post, including a long quote from the historian, from which I'll excerpt two sentences:

"Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any."

Tea Party Candidate: Country Was Better Off Under Democrat

From a story on the Republican candidate for Senate in Alaska, who received farm program payments in Kansas during part of the 1990's:

"DeSoto [Miller's spokesman] said that it was standard practice for farmers to receive the subsidies in Kansas and that the nation was in a much better financial situation at the time that Miller received the funds.

“This was back in the 90’s, the situation the country was in was far different than now,” he said."

In all fairness to Miller, DeSoto is right.  Miller bought a quarter section while he was in the Army and must have leased it on shares to the farm operator, thereby qualifying for payments (probably deficiency payments). The operator would have enrolled the farm, although Miller would have had to sign the contract to receive the payments.  

And of course DeSoto is absolutely right, the country was in much better shape under Clinton than it was under Bush.



As for the other story linked to, on Mudflats, (saying Miller got payments on some Alaska land, which the spokesman denied), that story links to the Environmental Working Group's farm subsidy database. Even in Alaska there may be multiple Joe Millers.   There's a discrepancy; the spokesman says Miller owned Alaska land since 1999, but the EWG data shows payments since 1995, some barley direct and DFC payments (which might or might not mean barley was being grown in those years), some marketing loan payments (which would require barley to be grown) and some agricultural conservation program (long term agreement) payments.  If the Joe Miller in the EWG is the same as the candidate and he bought the land in 1999, he possibly would have gotten an obligation under the ACP LTA when he bought, although a new owner might have the opportunity to terminate an agreement.

Innovation and Bureaucraccy in the USAF

Tom Ricks has an interesting post and comments on the issue of whether remote-controlled drone aircraft need to be piloted by officers, or by enlisted men. As someone who likes innovation, usually, and retains a prejudice against officers from my draftee days, I lean towards answering "Yes".  Some commenters however offer some real-life experiences showing we're still low in the learning curve in dealing with drones.