Secrecy Is Needed--If You're Rebelling, or Forming a Government:

That's the lesson of our founders. As rebels, they signed a secrecy pact. (yesterday's National Archives document of the day); as constitution writers they worked in secrecy in 1787.

Hay Bales and a Blast from the Past

During the 50's we mostly had our hay baled in "square" bales.  Square in quotes because they weren't really square--they were close to being square in cross section but  about twice as long as they were wide.  Think bricks, but larger, and scratchier.

Extension talks about stacking bales as an almost lost skill.  Actually, it's the skill of arranging loose hay on a jay wagon so that it stays in place that's lost.  That's a skill I never mastered.

Dairy Management, Cheese, and a Lousy USDA Web Effort

The Times has an article pointing out the contradiction between USDA urging a low-fat diet and "Dairy Management's" promotion of cheese usage, particularly in the form of cheese pizzas, working with Dominos. Dairy Management turns out to be the umbrella organization for dairy research and promotion efforts, thus receiving the checkoff fees from dairy producers. Although the article notes the bulk of the money the organization spends ($140 million) comes from fees, it claims it also gets several million from USDA.  It calls it a "creation" of USDA. It doesn't go into the details of how research and promotion efforts are approved (via a referendum of producers) and funded. 

The article was, for a while, the most emailed article on the Times website. According to this Treehugger post Michael Pollan and Marion Nestle are outraged.  Given the article's tone and content, I'm not surprised.  Even knowing more of the background and growing up on a dairy farm I'm bothered by the conflict.  As an ex-bureaucrat, I'm more distressed by USDA's website for failing to provide good information. The Agricultural Marketing Service, which administers the research and promotion efforts for the various commodities, all of which are authorized by Congress, doesn't have a good, short explanation of such things in general, or dairy in particular.  Do a search for "Dairy Management" , using quotes, on the website and the first page gives you no hits for the promotion organization. 

The best response I could find on the site was a generic statement that  the programs are fully funded by the assessment fees, which might mean the federal money the article refers to must be that used for oversight. But trying to troll through the reports to Congress seemed to indicate USDA was reimbursed for its oversight expenses.  So the "several million dollars" the article refers to might be research money funneled through ARS, but who knows.  I'd hope after the people in the ivory tower (USDA Administration Building) get through scrambling around to respond there will be a big improvement in the USDA/AMS site.  I hope, but I'm skeptical.

On Evaluating Others

One of the problems of the federal bureaucracy, at least the part I knew, and I believe one of the problems of the teaching profession and, as outlined in Dilbert, the other bureaucracies of the world, is how to give honest evaluations.  Part of the problem is the lack of clear standards, usually because it's difficult in a bureaucracy to set such standards.  And part of the problem is our human tendency to avoid conflict.  Maybe I see that tendency so clearly because it's such a big part of my own psyche.

Anyway, all of the above is prologue to this blog post:  Historiann is a feminist professor in Colorado who's passing on an appeal for advice from another professor. Note the conflict between adherence to professional standards of excellence and avoidance of conflict with the student and her advisor.  (No, I won't go with "ze" and "hir", the feminist neutral pronouns.)  Easy for an outsider to judge this, not so easy if one's in the room.

Deja Vu All Over Again

There was a movie release in 1981 called "Rollover", in which the ticking bomb is the question:  will the Arab oil barons rollover their investments in US bonds. Sounds like current concern over whether China will keep buying US bonds.

Ineffective Bureaucrats at Apple

Apparently someone at Apple forgot about changing from daylight savings time to standard time and vice versa, so new I-phones misbehave when the switch occurs.  I can only imagine the glee with which conservatives would greet such a mistake by some government bureaucrats, but this episode won't lead anyone to doubt the efficacy of private enterprise.

Inside Versus Outside

Probably as long as we have had government, people have been critical of it.  And as long as we have had government, many such critics find it's different when you're working within government.  Here Ned Hodgman links to an interview of someone who moved into FDA, and learned that lesson.

Horses. Bears. and Bison

In the 19th century there was controversy over whether horses, when galloping, ever got all four feet off the ground.  One of the first time-lapse photographers proved they did.  (Foregoing based on aging memory).

I was reminded of that when I saw the pictures of a bear chasing a bison down a road, CNN via Treehugger.
When you're running for your life, or for your dinner, you get all four feet off the ground.

And a Merry Christmas to Federal Employees from the Tea Party

Via The Monkey Cage, here's a blog post outlining the logic for a government shutdown in December.

On Not Knowing the Negative

One frustration of an RSS reader (I assume it applies to all, not just Google) is you never know when the feed stops working.  Is it that the blogger got tired, switched to Facebook or Twitter, lost his ISP, or maybe died?  Or did the feed stop working?  Or, worst of fates for a blogger, does one never wonder about them.

Anyhow, I've discovered my Berry Deep France feed wasn't working, so belatedly found some of Dirk Beauregarde's posts, including this moving one on the death of his mother.

So, I Was Wrong

My prediction for Senate election results was totally wrong.  Now looks like 51 Dems plus 2 independents.

Props to Serb President

Listening to BBC TV news concerning a visit of apology by the Serbian president to the Srbenica (sp?) site where Croats were killed (think I got that right--wasn't listening closely).  Watched "Nanking" documentary last night, covering the "rape of Nanking" by Japanese military after its capture in 1937 war. It took the Japanese until 1995 to apologize. So the Serb gets credit for responding much much faster than the Japanese.

46 Buried. 25 Killed

Now that's a headline begging for a story to be written under it. It's a true headline according to this extension piece.
It's a reminder that the way things happen makes a difference.  If we had a coal mine accident which killed 25 people it would be a big, big story.  But we really have 46 accidents where farmers are buried in grain storage bins, killing 25.  There's no story there.

There's Transparency and There's Transparency Which Works

The Reston Hospital Center has tried to be more transparent, by measuring the response time in their ER and posting the expected wait time on the Internet. (It was 9 minutes when I checked in when drafting this.)

I don't know whether they're measuring the extent to which people are using this, but they should. It seems to me like something which would be useful, assuming you're a person who uses the ER as a substitute for a doctor.  Maybe I'm naive, but I'd guess there's not too many of those in Reston--it's rich enough most people will have health insurance and a doctor.

Of course there's also the issue of image building.  Even if no one uses this, it does give the image of an up-to-date institution, which one wants if you have to go to the hospital.  And it might have been easier to sell the idea of measuring ER response time to your ER staff if sold as a way to inform the customers, rather than as a way to make them more productive.  I'm assuming that if they can cut the response time, they've reengineered their business process to be more efficient.

IRS, FSA, and Adjusted Gross III

A followup to this post

FSA notice PL-216 has been issued with a set of questions and answers ( which demonstrate some of the complexities of synchronizing FSA and IRS data). I should have anticipated FSA and IRS would have such problems--for example, the issue of whether a power of attorney is acceptable by IRS. Also turns out my previous posts on the subject should have referred to notice PL-213, which told counties the letters to producers based on IRS info were being mailed from Kansas City.  I'm getting old.

The Unpopular Heathcare Package

That's an appraisal common to the chattering classes and the right.  Perhaps I'm comparing apples and oranges, but would we say: the unpopular pro-life position, or the unpopular pro-choice position?  My impression is that support for the health-care law is about equal to the support for those positions--around 40 percent.

Jobs for Whom?

So now there's a lot of defeated Democrats around, some of whom will be looking for jobs for the next 18 months to 2 years while they organize to get win the next election.  And some of whom are capable individuals.

So who will Obama add to his administration: Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin from SD or Blanche Lincoln to USDA?

How To Spin the Election

Brad Johnson at Grist puts a good face on the election--most of those who voted for cap and trade in the House won.  What he doesn't do, and should, is look at the percentage of winners among those who voted against cap and trade.  I'm assuming, since the Reps only had a couple seats lost, the percentage would be close to 100 percent. Sometimes it's best to just suck it up and say we lost.

The Understatement of the Month

From Matt Yglesias,discussing why Delaware's Senate race got more ink than Alaska's:

"And logistics count in life."

Voting Technology

Today for the first time I had a choice of technology when I voted: I could use the optical scanner or the touch-screen method.  When I was asked which, I was totally flummoxed.  As it turns out, I went with the paper route, which had no waiting line, whereas the touch screen had 5 or so people waiting.  Don't know why people would choose that method.

Organic Farming in China

Once upon a time, when I was young, the only thing China had was "organic farming".  (Actually, I think the English lord (Howard?) who was an early advocate of organic farming studied Indian or Chinese agriculture.)  Now that some Chinese are rich, "organic" is becoming a fad, according to this Post article.  "Fad" is a little harsh, no doubt attitudes will evolve and people will become more realistic, much as Americans have done.  Maybe Whole Foods will open stores in China, following in the footsteps of KFC?

Metrics for Rallies

From the Post's Dr. Gridlock blog, discussing Metro's problems on Saturday:

"They were figuring on a crowd about the size of the one for the Glenn Beck rally on Aug. 28. That day, about 200,000 more trips were taken on Metrorail than on a typical summer Saturday."

"To say Metro was overwhelmed, that would be more like it. That was no where near enough equipment or personnel to help the people who showed up. Metrorail wound up providing about 475,000 more trips than on a typical Saturday. "

 I've been frustrated by the crowd estimating that goes on for the various events on the Mall.  It's always seemed to me that Metro ridership is a solid indicator with which to compare rallies.  Granted the attendance at different events will make more or less use of Metro and may or may not deter people from using it for their normal weekend activities.  But still the ridership is a solid number, not dependent on aerial photography and the prejudices of the counter.  

Unfair Description of Lincoln's Disaster Program?

Via Farm Policy, Dan Morgan writes about the budget impact of the disaster program using Section 32 funds that was pushed by Sen. Lincoln.  I'm querying this part:

"Nonetheless, farmers will be able to qualify for a check merely by certifying they had a 2009 loss of 5 percent on their rice, cotton, soybean or sweet potato crops last year. Those applying won’t need to supply new documentation to USDA, although their records could be subject to a spot check. Losses of 5 percent on a crop are within the range of normal year-to-year harvest variations, which is why previous disaster programs have generally required proof of losses of at least 20 percent."

I'm not sure the implication is right, though I can't find evidence to the contrary in a fast check of FSA. Usually a disaster program or crop insurance uses a yield, often known as an APH (standing for actual production history) which could be fairly representing an average of normal yields. But in the case of rice, cotton, and soybeans, it's possible the program uses the same yields as used for the big payment programs, which I think have been frozen for years, if not decades. Such yields, if I'm right, would represent much less than current normal production. 

[Note: just because I question the description, don't understand me to be defending the idea of the program. I'm not.]

How Does One Read This--Althouse?

My memory was that Althouse predicted Saturday's Stewart/Colbert rally would have some violence, but this doesn't quite say that:

There is a big rally in Washington this weekend that will draw many thousands of persons. Within that throng of presumed liberals and lefties, there will be all sorts of characters, with their diverse problems and motivations. You don't know who will act up, what foolishly overstated signs they will carry, and what provocations will lead someone with clouded judgment or poor impulse control to do something that will look awful on video. That will happen 3 days before the election, leaving very little time to explain. If that happens, you will want to eat all the words you've been saying about the stomper.

I  think she teeters on the edge of predicting something bad, or something that looks bad, but doesn't quite say it. It's a reminder of how we humans like to believe our friends are good and our opponents are bad, which isn't always the case.

White House Fall Garden

The White House had a fall harvest of their garden recently.  Obamafoodorama had posts, as did the White House blog: 

Armed with large baskets and wheelbarrows, they scoured the garden for peppers, broccoli, tomatoes, lettuce and other fall vegetables. The First Lady joined them, rolling up her sleeves, to dig up enormous sweet potatoes, including a near record-breaking four pounder, and to pick deep purple egg plants.  The children and the First Lady also admired the two pumpkins growing in the garden – just in time for Halloween.

The pictures I've seen look really good. I would nitpick that peppers and tomatoes aren't fall vegetables, what the writer should have said is they were harvesting the final round of tomatoes and peppers and the first round of broccoli and lettuce. I'd also note they're claiming a total of 1600 pounds of food over 2 years.  Last year they claimed 740 pounds, so this year's was 860, which doesn't represent much of an increase, considering the garden was enlarged and they got it planted timely this year.  Of course, the mixture of vegetables may have changed, and they may well have been more systematic on record keeping this year.

Anyhow, they deserve credit, except I haven't seen any evidence the kids are doing any of the work. Unfortunately, the Obamas can't have it both ways: preserve their kids' privacy and yet have them serve as inspirational models for the nation.

The Mind-Body Split

It lives in the headline of this article:

"Obese teens may be lacking in brain size, not willpower"

The headline writer and the researcher miss the possibility that "willpower" resides in the smaller size of the region of the brain the article discusses.  In other words, the theory could be: the obese lack the willpower neurons.

No Guts, No Glory

I'm going to predict that the Republicans take 50 seats in the Senate, and end up flipping a Senator (Nelson or Lieberman) to take control. In that I agree with the Oakton High School in the Post's contest to pick the results of the election.  I'm picking, not with logic or my gut preference, but just because that would make for the most interesting political scene over the next few months.

Dirty Campaign, Not Up to the Standards of Our Forefathers

Via Cliopatria, here's a video which shows how far we have declined.

A Harvard Professor Misses the Point

Professor Mankiw of Harvard wrote a while back about the marginal tax rate he faces and its impact on his decisions on how to allocate his time.  Now he's linked to an article about Keith Richards, who seems to have been a famous rock singer back in the day (my familiarity ends with Elvis) who claims his group moves from country to country in order to minimize their taxes.  Ezra Klein comments on it here.

It seems to me neither Mankiw's original piece nor this example is on point. The classical theory is that the rich, faced with high marginal tax rates, will stop working so hard thereby decreasing the total wealth of the economy.

But in the case of Mr. Richards, there seems no indication that he and his group reduced their output of songs nor were they deterred by the confiscatory British tax rates back in the 1960's.  At most, they've expended effort to travel to take advantage of the lowest available rates.  That might be an argument for standardizing tax rates from nation to nation.

In the case of Mr. Mankiw, he seemed to say he was being dissuaded from giving more paid speeches, presumably spending his time on the research and teaching for which he's receiving a salary from Harvard.

I'd think the high tax rates might have more impact on people who are choosing their occupations--high tax rates might discourage choosing hedge fund operation and encourage teaching math in high school.  That's not a bad trade, IMHO. Or, as it did in the case of Britain in the 1960's and 70's, it could change the location in which work is pursued.  For the minority of people who really find their satisfaction in life from their work, certainly including Prof. Mankiw and Mr. Richards, I remain unconvinced their output is being much reduced by the disincentive of high tax rates.

This Is Sick

Assuming the post is correct, because the crime rate has been failing since the Clinton administration (or thereabouts--no causal relationship implied but Dems are happy to take credit) the supply of prisoners for private prisons is down.  So what should be done to renew the supply: crack down on illegal immigration, as in the Arizona law, which seems to have been pushed by the private prison lobby.

52 Dems in Senate?

That seems to be the current projection.  Of course, if the Republicans could persuade Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut to caucus with them, perhaps by giving Nelson the chair of Senate Ag, they could drop the number to 50/50. Then it just takes one upset in the last week, or one unexpected death among the Dems, to lose control of the Senate.

(Did I say I was feeling down today--switching to a new computer is depressing.)

Change of Address and Government Gab

The Government Gab blog has a post about changing one's address, which includes this sentence:

"The good news is that you can find all the government address change contact information you’ll ever need on USA.gov."

Unfortunately, it's not true.  The linked page has the links for USPS, IRS, and SSA, but nothing for FSA, Treasury, TSP, VA, Extension, Education, etc. etc.  Granted, for all the value the USA.gov page provides, you can achie

My Mother Always Said: Drink Your Milk

John Phipps quotes from research showing that milk was the secret weapon of the barbarians who sacked Rome (my distant cousins, I believe).

More Information Than the World Needs

Ozzy Osbourne's genome.  (Not that a geezer like me knows who he is, other than one of the weirdoes popular culture threw up after my youth.)

Pigsford, Keepseagle, and BP Oil Spill

I'm late in commenting on the resolution of the Keepseagle lawsuit (which roughly follows the Pigsford lawsuit, but with Native Americans as the aggrieved party). An agreement was signed last week. 

I haven't followed it in enough detail to know the answers on the issues of class action and funding.

• if I recall,  for Pigsford, the initial lawsuit didn't pass the threshold to achieve class action status.  If I remember, Congress had to pass legislation allowing the suit to be treated as a class action. Apparently Keepseagle didn't have that problem.
• also my memory says there was some reason the Pigsford settlements (the first one) had to be funded by Congress instead of using the existing Department of Justice fund. The Keepseagle ageement is using the DOJ fund, which means claimants won't have to depend on Congress to act.

The Post had a piece on the Keepseagle complainants.  No one in my position can talk about discrimination.  I did note, however, one of the complainants couldn't get a farm loan at 4 percent from FSA but was able to get an 8 percent loan from a bank.  This ties to something I may have written before: the original intent of the farm loan program was to help those for whom help wasn't available through normal commercial channels.  That is, if the local banker would make you a loan, then you should go there and not to the government.  Whether or not that theory is still in effect I don't know.  And it's quite possible it might be the policy on paper, but the reality is the well-connected are able to get FSA loans regardless.  And the situation may well vary from county to county and state to state.

Some Academics Are Not Sensible

See this review from Treehugger of the latest vertical farming missive. Just because someone has a PhD doesn't mean they have common sense.

FSA and the Amish

I was on a task force with the CED of Lancaster County some 35+ years ago.  At that time she didn't do much business with the Amish farmers, who were mostly dairy farmers and didn't believe in participating in government programs.  Thus it surprised me to read this post on the FSA blog, describing the outreach of the FSA farmer loan program in Cerro Gordo county, Iowa to the Amish farmers there.  I'm not clear whether the difference between a loan program and a production adjustment program makes a difference in acceptability, or whether it's just the passage of time which has changed their attitude.

More Tolerance for Promiscuity Today?

That's the claim of Prof. Hanson of GMU:

" Norms and practices have clearly moved in the direction of increased tolerance for promiscuity over the last century, though of course they aren’t remotely near an extreme free love scenario."  

I'm not sure what country and class the good professor has in mind, but he may be misled by popular history.  For example, my understanding is the British upper classes, as represented say by the Victorians (think of Churchill's parents), were very promiscuous; once you had an heir and a spare in the bank, wives were home free whereas the husbands were always free.

Elsewhere prostitution was more prominent in urban areas in the 19th and first half of the 20th century.  And notoriously, one-third or more of the first children of the Puritans of New England were born "prematurely".

Old News--Dems Get No Love for Farm Bill

That's in a recent Farm Policy--the idea was that the Dems would pass a farm bill which would please farmers, thus enabling blue dog Democrats to be reelected in 2010. But current polls show many of the Democratic representatives on House Ag to be in trouble, or walking dead.  What will happen on House Ag as the Republicans take control and the Tea Partiers talk about cutting government? Will the backscratching between farmers supporting food stamps and urban reps supporting farm programs continue, or will the coalition dissolve into short-sighted turf protection.  I don't like the idea of the Dems losing the majority, but it at least promises to make life interesting.

Work for FSA--Michael Roberts Predicts Disaster

Roberts has a take on the corn situation, and observes it's likely the good weather we've had in the Corn Belt the last 15 years won't hold.  That means more disaster work for FSA.

Those DAmn FSA Bureaucrats Force Money Into My Pocket

That's the position of a Republican candidate for Congress in Indiana. Even if it were true, which it's not, there's always the "conscience fund" at the Treasury, which accepts donations.

IRS, FSA , and Adjusted Gross II

Still dealing with PC problems, but I need to get back to this subject. Here's the Iowa State's pdf paper
and a paragraph from it:

In the fall of 2010, FSA offices received a list of people who the IRS claimed did not send in their CCC 927 forms to Fresno. Those farmers then began receiving official notices of the delinquency in the mail. It is believed that the problem involves the unfamiliarity of the IRS with the CCC forms. The IRS has been notified of the issue and is being further advised as to the nature of Form CCC 927 and how it is to be processed.

In my hurried reading earlier, I was confused by this.   Rereading and reading between the lines here's what I understand:

• some farmers participating in the program sent their CCC-927 forms, authorizing IRS to tell FSA whether their AGI was above the limit, to IRS in Fresno
• since this was the first time for the process, some IRS people in Fresno didn't know what the forms were and what to do with them (probably particularly in the case of misaddressed forms)
• some farmers who were supposed to send in their forms didn't
• FSA presumably gave IRS a list of tax ID's of program participants who should have supplied CCC-927's.
• IRS matched the list from FSA against their list of CCC-927's received.  They gave FSA a list of ID's for which they hadn't recorded a CCC-927, either because it got lost, was misprocessed, or was never sent.
• FSA broke the list down by county and sent it out.  (Maybe I missed it, but I would have expected a PL notice to have gone out as well. So for this and the next steps, I'm relying on Iowa State.)
• The FSA county offices notified their program participants that no CCC-927 was recorded, meaning eligibility for payments was in question.

That's as far as I'd go without seeing FSA procedure.  These sorts of matching efforts between bureaucracies are difficult to work through. If the producer knows she mailed the form, she's going to be mad, and scared about maybe losing her payments, or at least going through a lot of hassle.  If he didn't mail the form, he's maybe going to lie and say he did, because who's to know.  Either way the poor person at the counter in the county office is going to take some heat.  Eventually, after some time, the systems will get worked out and expectations established, but not this fall.

Dems Are Wrong

They're planning to push a $250 payment to seniors to make up for the absence of a COLA for social security (and, I'd assume, Civil Service retirees).  I understand the politics, but it's not right.  If the COLA formula is right, you adhere to it, regardless of the answer it gives you.  If it's wrong, you fix it.  If you want retirees always to get a little boost, make the formula more complicated (I love complications) and take it from prior or future years.  But the total disbursed shouldn't be subject to political motives.

Tax Cuts and the Stimulus

An article this week on the $100+ billion dollar Obama tax cut, which no one ever heard of.  I regard myself as well-informed, and I may have been vaguely aware of the cut back when it was passed, but it soon slipped my mind.  As it happens, the stimulus package included the cut.  It seems as if it's part of the packaging problem Obama has had. He loses on two counts:

• because the tax cut was included in a bigger legislative package, it didn't and doesn't get the publicity it would ordinarily rate
• because people equate "stimulus" with "spending", Obama's seen as a bigger spender than he should be.  That's given the ordinary usage of American politics, which says spending is only when the government writes the check, not when tax breaks are given out.

Resume Speed and Mayor Fenty

We're back home, although still with PC problems, so there will be a slow resumption of blogging.  One thing I noted in the Post was Mayor Fenty's last hurrah, or at least his last opening/reopening of a DC library.  I was sort of casually aware he'd been active in the area, but the Post piece gave him lots of credit, both for facilities and for his support of the libraries.  The best bit of news in the piece was the fact that circulation of books etc. from the libraries is up 125 percent.  As Mrs. McNamara and assorted first ladies have said, reading is fundamental.

IRS, FSA, and Adjusted Gross Income

Some problems in the process, apparently.

[Updated: Rereading the post at the link, I'm confused, and I'm losing faith in the underlying article. Will try to return to the subject soon.]

Get Coffee from Your Local Bureaucracy

Megan McArdle views Starbucks as a model bureaucracy.

Slow Posting

Between computer problems and travel over the weekend, blogging is apt to be light.

The Cost of Farm Programs

Is down and likely will continue down, given last Friday's crop report (cutting corn production and carryover, with cotton still at a buck).  See this graph (average of about $12 billion for the last four years).  Cato back in 2002 predicted the 2002 farm bill would cost at least $170 billion over 10 years.  So much for predicting the future. (Which isn't to say that the various programs can't be challenged and shouldn't be reformed or dropped, just that foreseeing the future is difficult.

Prognostications of the Future

Kagan and Kristol foresaw the future in a book published 10 years ago. Via Tom Ricks The Best Defense, here's a look back.

[Needless to say, they were about 95 percent wrong, and totally missed bin Laden.  But then, no good liberal would ever pay attention to any book which got the future right--what would be the fun in that.]