This Is Surprising: Pun in Stone 35000 Years Old

From a NYTimes book review:

In the caves of our Paleolithic ancestors, 35,000-year-old figurines have been found, each appearing to be a naked woman when viewed from one angle and an erect penis when viewed from another.

Political Appointees Versus Careerists

The chief flack at USDA is leaving to join Rahm Emanuel in Chicago.  She's been charged with discrimination according to this post.

At DHS there was tension between the careerists in charge of FOIA requests and the political appointees.

Without any knowledge of the particulars I'd suggest the following could be true:

• the political appointees are young.  Except at the highest levels, political staff appointees tend to be whippersnappers on the way up, looking to make their mark.  They've attached themselves to the bigwigs (i.e. Secretary and below), or rather they've successfully networked with the bigwigs. 
• the political appointees are inexperienced.  Likely they don't arrive with an extensive background in the rules of FOIA, or the agency or department.  Likely they don't arrive with a lot of experience managing people. 
• the political appointees are attuned to the expectations of the Secretary and the President.  That's their reference group; that's who they want to impress.
• the career employees are old.  The political appointees are dealing with the top of the career hierarchy, which usually means people who've risen within the ranks, meaning they're older.
• the career employees know the rules and the agency.
• the career employees have seen political appointees come and go, so they're likely to be skeptical of  them and their new ideas. By the same token, they're less impressed with the Secretary and the President than the appointees.
 

All in all, a formula for conflict.

Prohibit Contractors Who Are Delinquent on Taxes

Since I yesterday urged the firing of federal employees if they didn't have an agreement to pay back taxes, it's only fair I should today urge the blacklisting of any Federal contractor who hasn't paid their taxes. POGO has a summary of the problems

New USDA Website

USDA has redesigned their main website.  I had some criticisms in the comments, but my opinion is probably idiosyncratic.  [Updated:  here's the link to the comments.]

Most Terrifying Sentence of the Year

" Not only could Republicans win the majority, but it’s within the realm of possibility that they could gain a net of 13 seats, which would allow them to beat any Democratic filibuster in the next Congress."  From a Nate Silver rumination on the upcoming Senate elections.

Fire Bureaucrats for Terminal Stupidity

On the one hand, Michelle Singletary of the Post has a column entitled "Don't Be Afraid of the Taxman" (taxperson?)  On the other hand, the Post's Federal Eye discusses a move in the House by Republicans to fire any federal employee who owes back taxes.  Put the two together and I reach a position which may be surprising: fire federal employees (and DC councilmen, are you listening Marion Barry) who owe back taxes without getting a repayment agreement within 6 months.

A failure to get an agreement is prima facie evidence of terminal stupidity.

I'd hasten to add, I don't think the House Reps are going about it the right way, no hearings, no full consideration. But federal employees are civil servants and should meet a higher standard than ordinary mortals.

Those Overpaid Bureaucrats at CIA

Seem to be taking their knowledges, skills and abilities to find ( lower-paid ?) jobs in the private sector according to the Washington Post.

The Return of Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Thanks to Obama

25 years ago when we were also concerned about deficits, one of the instruments was Gramm-Rudman-Hollings,which provided for automatic cuts in expenditures if deficits exceeded a pre-determined level. 

President Obama makes a return of GRH an important part of his deficit program.  See Keith Hennessey's summary [See this Yglesias post for more discussion.]

GRH is burned in my memory, given the problems it caused us to administer it. If it returns, I wish FSA luck.

Erosion, NRCS, andConservation Compliance

NYTimes has an article on erosion, focused on Iowa erosion rates.  Hits the highlights: the rates of erosion, the impact of high crop prices, land coming out of the Conservation Reserve Program, strip cropping and contour farming as incompatible with big equipment,  renters possibly sacrificing the long range health of the land for short range profit, NRCS enforcement of conservation compliance rules, etc. It even includes the hit to NRCS administrative budget in the new Continuing Resolution. The only thing it didn't mention was the similiarity of the current situtation with that in 1973 (and Earl Butz, when the economic situation

What's not clear to me is how much of Iowa is considered to be highly erodible.  I remember visiting Sherman County, KS for Infoshare in 1991 and farmers were still bitching about the classification of most of their land as HE.

Dependence on Foreign Imports

Alex Tabarrok seems to think this is funny, but coffee is serious business. I'm sure FSA would be able to implement a program to encourage the growing of coffee.

Was MIDAS Hit?

From a Federal Computer Week post on the budget resolution:

More directly, the Agriculture Department’s CIO office would get $40 million, which is $22 million less than in 2010 and $24 million less than the president wanted.

Michelle's School Lunches--a Chink in His Armor?

Just skimmed a piece about a school district banning lunches brought from home, which included a reference to kids tossing lunches mostly uneaten.  Made me wonder: if there's 10 million school children by next year who are unhappy with their lunches, does that mean there will be millions of parents who are unhappy with Obama? After all, her school lunch campaign is probably the one effort of the administration which is obvious and impacts the lives of Americans 5 days a week.  Here's a related post at Obamafoodorama.

Bureaucrat of the Day: Walt Whitman

Whitman was a clerk in DC during part of the Civil War (his day job--more famously he visited the wounded in hospitals). He was a copyist, or bureaucrat, a human copying machine and some of his output has now been discovered according to this Post piece.  The article ends:

“Honesty is the prevailing atmosphere,” Whitman, in previously discovered documents, said of his colleagues in the bureaucracy.
“I do not refer to swell officials, the men who wear the decorations, get fat salaries,” he said. “I refer to the average clerks, the obscure crowd, who, after all, run the government. They are on the square.”

Personal Lobbying and NASCOE

For some time I had kept a post in either Crooked Timber or Monkey Cage unread, because I wanted to link to it.  That's a way of saying I don't have the URL handy.  The post reported on some research into what tactics were most effective in swaying Congresspeople.  As I remember, email campaigns, even letter writing campaigns, were of little use.  At the other end of the continuum was personal lobbying by someone the Congresswoman knew.

I mention this because I just read the latest update from NASCOE, the association of FSA employees, which reported on their annual legislative session, meaning they bring in people to walk the halls of Congress and lobby the aides and members.  Included in the reports was a lament from one of the officers saying NASCOE used to have someone in every (rural) Congressional district who knew the Congressperson and could get through to them when it was time to lobby.  The lament was that retirements in recent years had depleted the ranks so they no longer have such contacts.

Now NASCOE isn't unique; I'd wager every big widespread Federal bureaucracy has employee groups with the same approach.  It's such influence which makes it hard to do things: for example, to reorganize NRCS and FSA because the rival employee groups tend to neutralize each other.  So the known present becomes the enemy of the possible future.

Good Legal Writing: Fish and Kagan

Here's the end of a Stanley Fish post discussing Justice Kagan's style:

Nothing flashy here. Just a steady unrolling of point after obvious point in a relatively tranquil and moderate prose punctuated by an occasional flaring of amiable wit — “not really,” “what ordinary people would appreciate the Court’s case law also recognizes.” (Sometimes even the Supreme Court rises to the level of common sense.) If I am right, what we are seeing here is the emergence of a powerfully understated style of argument, inexorable without being aggressive, comprehensive without claiming to be so, regnant even when it is on the losing side. I look forward to more of the same.

The Debt Limit and CCC Payments

John Phipps notes that farm program payments made through CCC (Commodity Credit Corporation) could be impacted by failure to raise the debt ceiling. 

That fits with my memory of the old days--our release of deficiency payments would be delayed until Congress got through with the debt limit. Of course, I could be misremembering; it might be the delay was in passing language giving CCC money.  CCC has statutory authority to borrow money from the Treasury for its operations.  So if CCC writes drafts on the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City up to its limit, it has to suspend payments until Congress appropriates money to reimburse the Treasury.  Complicated, I know, but that's what happens when you have both lawyers and accountants messing around in your business.

Carolyn Hax on Our Budget Problems

Carolyn Hax is the Post's advice columnist. Today's column starts with a query from a two-career, two child family, where the wife is feeling a bit overwhelmed. Her advice is appropriate, not only for the question, but also for the US Congress and political system in dealing with our budget problems:

". It’s so easy to focus on the individual items that make up your life: We need to do X for the kids, we need Y amount of money, Z is necessary for my job and I need this salary, etc. That’s because they’re small, incremental decisions, often conveniently black-and-white, so making them brings a sense of progress — all while leaving the bigger, scarier, grayer issues entirely unaddressed.

 Since semi-conservative columnist Robert Samuelson is also in the paper bemoaning ":

government has promised more than it can realistically deliver and, as a result, repeatedly disappoints by providing less than people expect or jeopardizing what they already have. But government can’t easily correct its excesses, because Americans depend on it for so much that any effort to change the status arouses a firestorm of opposition that virtually ensures defeat.

[I was astonished to have Samuelson say that Rep. Ryan would "gut defense"; my impression which may be wrong is that he didn't touch defense beyond Sec. Gates' proposals.  But anyway, when we look at the big picture, as Ms Hax exhorts us to, through Ezra Klein's eyes, we find the current law will end the deficit.  (What he doesn't say is government spending increases as a percent of GDP--the point is that tax provisions on the books would raise enough, assuming the PPACA provisions are implemented.)

Unforeseen Consequences: Ebooks

The rise of ebooks may mean the decline of donations of used books to library book sales.

How Politics Works--Kaplan, the Post, and Reps

The Washington Post has a good article on their Kaplan subsidiary, which started out as a test preparation business, was purchased by the Post to diversity their business, became a for-profit education business making big money off low-income students who take government loans. Ir captures some ways our political system works:

You take a worthy cause which appeals to most, especially the left--helping people get more education, particularly people who have been in the workforce and want to improve themselves and people who couldn't go to college right out of high school.  This taps into the idealism of the left.

You implement it using a method which appeals to the right: a competitive market in for-profit educational institutions and which rewards the entrepreneur.This taps into the greed of the right.

The combination of factors  means this happens when a Republican comes to power:

"One of its [GWBush's administration] key players was Sally Stroup, assistant secretary for postsecondary education, who had been a lobbyist for the biggest for-profit education company, Apollo Group. Soon the agency eased regulations, allowing companies to reward recruiters based in part on the number of students enrolled, or as one government report later called it, “asses in classes.” Like others, Kaplan made enrollment incentives one element of employees’ compensation. Stroup did not respond to request for comment.

Congress also made a change that helped spur enrollment. In 2006, Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) — then House majority leader and a major ally of for-profit education companies — pushed through legislation that lifted federal loan restrictions for online-only schools.

Our political parties also can act as checks; the story goes on:

With the election of Democrat Barack Obama to the presidency, a new team landed at the Education Department, one that took a skeptical view of the for-profit sector.

And then the magic of the market comes into play: speculators who had successfully "shorted" the housing bubble saw another opportunity to gain:

Investors were hoping the government would tighten the spigot, a move that would jolt the entire for-profit education sector while leading to a big payday for the shorts. Today, investors have sold short — in essence, bet against — shares equal to about one-tenth of The Post Co.’s outstanding stock, about 3.8 percent of Apollo’s and 31.3 percent of Corinthian’s, according to investment Web site.

Sentence of the Day for Farmers

From Farm Policy:
The top five earnings years for farmers in the last 35 years have occurred in the last decade.

Meanwhile, Rep. Ryan is proposing a 20 percent cut in farm programs, beginning with the 2012 farm bill and implemented as the Ag committees want.

Fight Global Warming: Legalize Pot?

 A headline on a post at Treehugger says 1 percent of US electricity goes to grow pot!  So I'm waiting for the green movement to push legalization of pot as a way to move growing pot outside and save electricity for higher purposes, like maybe tanning salons.

Rep. Paul and Rep. Dave

Thirty years ago a Republican congressman from the upper Midwest had risen to prominence through his wonkish demeanor and mastery of the ins and outs of the Federal budget. The Republican leadership of that time gave him full power over the budget, which led to major changes in the federal government.

Today another Republican congressman from the upper Midwest has risen to prominence through his wonkish demeanor and mastery of the ins and outs of the Federal budget.  The current Republican leadership (of the House, not the President this time) have given him full power over the budget.

Will Rep. Paul Ryan succeed in making major changes to the federal government?  Will he, like ex-Rep. Dave Stockman, the director of OMB, have to be "taken to the woodshed" for going off the reservation and admitting his magic asterisk was bull?

[Updated:  I should have added, both Representatives were good at getting favorable press coverage; the media loved the wonks.]

Diversity Hidden in Plain Sight

"When the New York Times recently did a piece on me, Ezra Klein, Brian Beutler, and Dave Weigel exactly zero people complained about the massive over-representation of people of Latin American ancestry that reflected. People saw it as a profile of four white dudes. Which is what it was. But my dad’s family is from Cuba, Ezra’s dad’s family is from Brazil, and Brian’s mom’s family is from Chile."

Ethical Geezers--Are We a Minority?

Lots of stuff in the blogosphere on Rep Ryan's proposals.  One thing he does is to exempt people over 55 from the effects of his change on Medicare.  That may be wise politically, but it's not right.  I prefer the approach in the original Ryan-Rivlin plan, where geezers would choose between the current plan and the new plan (supported premiums/vouchers). Best would be a plan which is phased in and which applies to everyone.  No special breaks for geezers, even though we do vote.

Globalization--a Well-Traveled Baby

From Chris Blattman's blog, announcing the arrival of his daughter (plus stories on her name)

"Considering she made it to Cote d’Ivoire, Burundi, Uganda, Vietnam, Thailand, France, England and Canada while in the womb, we figure a name of many meanings (and easy pronunciation) fits perfectly.

A Lone Voice in the Wilderness

I must be one of the very few Americans who saw merit in the 1099 provision.  Sadly, Congress has now repealed it, so tax evasion continues.

How Bureaucrats Act

On the military theme, this Post article shows even Army lifers don't get and follow the message.  A brigade commander refused to follow the counterinsurgency doctrine associated with Gen. Petraeus and instead used the "search and destroy" doctrine associated, in my mind at least, with Gen. Westmoreland and Vietnam.

And Joel Achenbach of the Post, who has a book out on the BP well disaster, writes of learning, or relearning:

One thing I learned doing my book reasearch is that people don’t actually read reports. They don’t read their emails and they are not always in the loop. The one fella over here doesn’t know what the fella over there knows. If I were in charge of things, I’d make sure that any really critical piece of information was posted in the elevators and bathrooms.

You have to remember that people don’t behave the way they are supposed to behave. More generally, executives and managers and decision-makers need to remember that the military truism about battle plans (they don’t survive contact with the enemy) is true of most things in life. A plan is a good thing to have, to be sure, but you have to accept the fact that it will be abandoned in crunch time (and later mocked in the media).

A Haircut and Morality: Vietnam and Daily Life

Got my hair cut today.  Two old self-proclaimed Nam vets were bloviating (I've a strong memory of sitting around the tent and talking about the old f--ts who talked big at the VFW or Legion post; we agreed we'd never do that.)  One was boasting about the number of water buffaloes "they'd" shot.

Then I read this great post at The Best Defense. Mr. Ricks has a quotation from a contributor to a book on My Lai: Evil doesn't come like Darth Vader dressed in black, hissing. Evil comes as a little bird whispering in your ear: 'Think about your career. I'm not sure what's going on. We'll muddle through for the next couple of hours. We'll get over the hill, and we'll go on. I mean, after all, I can't call people in and admit that I can't control, I can't do some other thing.' In my judgment, the evil comes from that point of view.

After hearing the vets, I might just quarrel with the quote: evil really comes as a narrower and narrower focus on the nearby, so there's no awareness of a moral issue at all.  As in, was it right to kill someone's property and means of livelihood; did it advance the idea of winning the" hearts and minds." 

Ryan's View

Apparently, according to Chris Clayton, Rep. Ryan's budget plan would require a cut in farm programs by reforms in the 2012 farm bill.

In his plan, "The Path to Prosperity," Ryan stated that farmers appear to be doing well, and could manage if Congress were to "reduce the fixed payments that go to farmers irrespective of price levels." Further, agriculture needs "reform the open-ended nature of the government’s support for crop insurance."

A Convocation of Swineherds

We never raised pigs on the farm, so why I follow three blogs of hog farmers, which somehow sounds better than swineherds, I don't know. I'd like to eavesdrop on a meeting of Walt Jeffries, Bob Comios, and the Stonehead  where they compared notes and had a frank exchange of views, as the diplomats say. 

Arthur Brisbane Misses the Point

The New York Times has a new omsbudsman, Arthur Brisbane. In his piece today, he argues:

"This [a new integration of web and print operations] suggests to me a companion move The Times should make, one that would help secure a tighter bond with its audience: publishing The Times’s journalism policies in a searchable format and in a visible location on NYTimes.com. That would enable readers to see more clearly into the news operation."

Brisbane points out Times' policies are scattered in different places and are hard for the reader to find. It's all very well, but I believe he misses the main point. I, as a reader of the Times, both print and web, could give a damn about their policies. I care  more about the results.  Indeed, it's the reporters and editors of the Times who need to know and follow the policies; it's the people newly recruited to be reporters and editors of the Times who need to be trained in the policies and know where they can find them; it's the managing editors of the Times who need to see the policies in one place so they can direct the newspaper and web site to follow the policies; so finally it is the people of the Times who need to have the policies consolidated and easy to find.

I'd argue much the same is true for any bureaucracy: you can't serve your clients and customers effectively if you don't know what you're doing; clarity, like charity, begins at home.  The nice thing is once you have clarity at home you can be clear to others.

Bringing British Cuture and Cuisine to the French

Dirk Beauregarde reports that Marks and Spencer is opening a store in Paris, trying to alleviate the serious French deficiencies in food and fashion.

The Deficiencies of Non-Bureaucratic Organizations

Accusing terrorists of being bureaucratic is not a common move.  But this post at the Monkey Cage suggests that's what they need, more bureaucracy.  If I follow the argument, a terrorist group which is united on a common goal could safely coordinate its actions by the typical "cell" organization common to subversive movements.  But when some in the movement have their own ideas, or become motivated by money or the search for prestige the organization becomes less effective, because the cell structure limits the flow of information back to the leaders of the organization and makes it hard for them to allocate money to the best places. So what terrorist cells gain in security, they give up in efficiency.

Do We Import Farm Produce, or Farmers?

That's the question the food movement should be asking based on this Hmong high tunnel project in MA. It's  true that immigrants are more likely to work hard for lower returns, thus fitting the niche for locavore agriculture.

India Isn't Really So Populous

Look at the map in this Roving Bandit post, showing the population of the various Indian states, but don't scroll below the map.  You'll conclude, if you're like me, Indian states aren't really populous.  Then scroll.

Our Weak Federal Government--States Control Fed Employees

In any rationally constructed bureaucracy, the leadership of the organization can control the hiring and firing of the people who do the organization's work.
Right?  Anyone disagree?

So we're all in agreement the Social Security Administration is not a rationally constructed bureaucracy.  As the FederalComputer Week reports:

"Under a joint federal-state funding relationship, SSA pays the full salaries of state employees who do initial processing of disability claims under the federal Disability Determination Services program."

 Because they're state employees, not Feds, some 19 states have furloughed these people, meaning SSA can't timely service these claims.

The Food Movement's Dilemma

 I think it's fair to say the food movement is mostly left, sometimes libertarian, but still mostly left.  As such I'd expect them to be responsive to this post at Understanding Government, noting an article on hunger in America.

But I'd also expect them to appreciate this guy's efforts, serving as a middleman between his neighbors who grow food and make artisanal products and the residents of the DC area:

A longtime foodie and serial entrepreneur, Kostelac is convinced that his old neighbors in yuppie Washington will pay premium prices for produce and meat from the small farmers who are his new neighbors. Now, in this refuge from his failures in the city, he sees opportunity — in the leaves of the grapevine that wraps around his front gate, the morel mushrooms that sprout beneath a shade tree and the wild raspberries that grow faster than ones he planted — that he might have overlooked before.

 So,  the dilemma is: what does the food movement support? Do they want to raise taxes to provide more food stamps to low-income people so they can pay some of the "premium prices" ($3.25 for a bunch of basil, $29.25 a pound for brisket)? Do they want to spend money to subsidize Mr. Kostelac's neighbors so they can reduce their prices?

A cynic, and I'm occasionally one, might say if everyone is eating organic basil in their pesto, what's the point--where does one turn in the effort to prove one's taste is superior?

Members of Congress Receiving Farm Payments

EWG has released their list of current members of Congress who are directly or indirectly receiving farm program payments. The majority own shares in some sort of legal entity(ies); few get payments directly.

Past Sins Recalled

Katrina Vanden Heuvel in the Post on having standards for pundits:

Fox News trumped even that, trotting out retired Marine Col. Oliver North, the former Reagan security staffer who orchestrated the secret war in Nicaragua, to indict President Obama for — you can’t make this stuff up — failing to get a congressional resolution in support of the mission in Libya.

Predicting the Future, Achenbach Is Prescient

See his last paragraph quoted here.

Nitpicky Morning

First Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution writes "cache" when he means "cachet" and then Jonathan Adler at Volokh Conspiracy writes "principle limit" when he means "principal".  Standards is gone all to hell.

How Do Economists CAPTCHA This Data?

Guy Gugliotta has an article in the Times on the use of Captchas to interpret scanned text through a special software program.  Apparently when you see 2 words in the Captcha, one is a true word which the software knows, the other is scanned text which the software isn't sure of.  So if you get the true word right, you're a human and the software will consider your answer to the other.  Very interesting. They claim 500,000 hours of brain effort are being spent on replying to Captchas, so their software converts that to useful work.

It raises the question to me: how are economists capturing these gains to utility (or however they'd word it)?  It's unpaid work, but it's very useful, converting the poorly scanned texts of old NY Times and 19th century books into readable, accurate English. Come to that, how do they account for the improved research which historians can now do using Google Books and Google Scholar?

My Loss of Faith in Japan

The Japanese are great engineers, right?  And their society is unified.  And in the face of disaster they cooperate, they don't loot, they work together.

But my faith is severely undermined by this factoid, from a Times piece on the supply of electricity:

In theory, the Tokyo area could import electricity from the south. But a historical rivalry between Tokyo and the city of Osaka led the two areas to develop grids using different frequencies — Osaka’s is 60 cycles and Tokyo’s is 50 cycles — so sharing is inefficient.

 Darn right it would be inefficient.  That's even worse than the division of the US into separate grids, where the Texas grid doesn't really connect with the others so the idea for wind power on the High Plains doesn't work well.  It reminds me of the difference in railroad track gauges which we used to have.  (The Erie Railroad had a wider gauge than others; Southern roads varied.  The idea was to create a monopoly, a niche. It's rather like the difference between Apple and Microsoft: Gates went with open architecture and the advantages of networking; Jobs went with closed architecture and the advantages of specialization.  For years it looked as if Gates had the better argument, but now we're starting to doubt.)

Best Sentence of Mar 29

Comes from Tom Rick's The Best Defense, a pilot explaining the deficiencies of the F-22 for ground support.

"The Raptor also lacks the armor and the price tag required for fecklessly dueling Grunts who own automatic weapons and hate pilots who make more money and look better than they do."

The Farmland Bubble

Yes, 4 percent appreciation a month equates to "bubble".

From Farm Policy:

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Williams and Marcia Zarley Taylor reported on Friday at DTN (link requires subscription) that, “Midwest farmland is appreciating so fast that even professional appraisers are humbled by the pace. A good-quality parcel of farmland sold for $11,500 per acre around Bloomington, Ill., earlier this month. That’s up $3,000 to $3,500 from a year earlier, said Charles Knudson, an appraiser with 1st Farm Credit Services.
“In September, Knudson appraised a central-Illinois property at $8,100 per acre for an interested buyer, but it sold at auction in February for $10,150 per acre. He’s now appraising farmland at 4-percent-per-month gains, a rate that landowners once savored on an annual basis.”

 And see Robert Shiller's discussion at Slate.

The Rabbit, the Carrot, and a Tail of Locavores

Via Marginal Revolution a fascinating story on carrots.

Now carrots should be one of the quintessential locavore vegetables.  They're easily grown, provided you don't have heavy clay soil and keep the weeds down, they can overwinter in the ground if the frost doesn't go too deep (protect them with leaves), they're nutritious, and furry critters like them.  As I remember, we used to store them in our cold cellar (actually the pump room off our regular cellar).  So under locavore theory it should be possible to raise and sell locally grown carrots in most of the U.S. The food movement also attacks the big industrial farms producing grain and cotton which they claim is founded on the basis of government subsidies. By implication, fruit and vegetable growers are smaller and unsubsidized.

But, as it turns out, two companies grow 80 percent of the carrots in the U.S.  And recent growth in their sales has been, not through flogging organic, naturally grown carrots, but by producing packaged "baby carrots", all clean and ready to eat.  (Disclosure: I buy them regularly.)

Bolthouse Farms sells nearly a billion pounds of carrots a year -- the carrots Farhang kept hearing about -- under a number of different brand names and supermarket labels. Only Grimmway Farms, a few minutes down the road in Bakersfield, California, sells more, just barely. Together, the two companies control more than 80% of the carrot market in the United States

A Doctrine, A Doctrine, Where Is the Doctrine?

Much of the commentariat is asking Obama to declare a "doctrine": a rule which describes when he will use military force and when he won't.  I suspect if he were a Republican in the same circumstances I too would be calling for the President to enunciate some rules.  As he's not, thank goodness, I'm more in favor of the "Pragmatic Rule": if it works, do it; if you can get away with it, do it; if you fail, the decision was wrong.

It's hard for any politician to declare the "pragmatic rule", but they follow it more closely than they do the "Golden Rule".  While most Americans would like us to be idealists, to be the city on the hill, I think even more vote based on the "Pragmatic Rule".  We'll see, both whether Obama's Libyan/Middle East policy works and whether voters reward or punich on that basis.

Government Reform

The White House's "Government Reform for Competitiveness and Innovation Initiative" has, I guess, learned some lessons from the first initiative Obama had to gather input, which was quickly overrun by birthers and assorted crackpots.  This time around they're limiting input to Feds, and this is the beginning of the terms and conditions:

As Federal employees, we want to hear your insights about government reforms that can promote competition and innovation. This invitation is limited to Federal employees.
We hope to receive many diverse ideas and opinions about what works and what we can improve. All contributions will be posted without identifying information. This is designed as a community-moderated event in order to retain focus on the designated topic and to ensure that the event remains appropriate for an audience of all ages. Accordingly, we ask all participants to agree to the following Terms of Participation:
• You agree to post only ideas related to making government more effective and efficient. Our goal is to produce ideas that will improve the way that government operates.
• Because Americans of all ages will be able to view these ideas online, we ask all those who elect to participate to conduct themselves in a civil manner - to refrain from posting threats, obscenity, other material that would violate the law if published here, abusive or racist language, and sexually explicit material.
• This is a forum for federal employees to submit substantive ideas on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of government. This is not a forum for airing grievances against co-workers, supervisors, or anyone else in your organization. We reserve the right to take down any such inappropriate submissions or any other submissions that may compromise the privacy of federal employees or other individuals.
• Do not submit identifying information.

Sorry to say as a taxpayer I'm not really impressed with the ideas submitted.  And it's too bad 2 years into the administration they haven't figured out how to obtain good input.  Maybe they should hold a competition: give cash prizes for the input designs which produce the highest ratio of good input to trash.

Pollan and Fossil Fuels

Pollan claims, according to Tom Philpott's summary on an interview, that we won't have the fossil fuels to keep our current "industrialized agriculture"  going in 30 years or so.  I'm not clear what he means.  If he's assuming "peak oil" so the price of diesel and inputs to fertilizer plants go up, that's likely. My impression, though, is that large diesels are at least as efficient as small diesels, so unless Pollan sees a reversion from tractors to horses/mules/oxen I don't see the problem.  To the extent we replace fossil fuels in our transport, we'll also be able to replace them in agriculture for motive power.  If we go to electric vehicles with the electricity supplied by nuclear, by sunlight, by wind power, by fuel cells, by whatever, we can go to electric tractors. (I'm not sure whether electric motors or diesels generate more torque.) 

Yes, the phasing out of oil might raise the prices for fuel on the farm and possibly the cost of fuel, but I fail to understand how it would force a change in the mode of agriculture.

Social Security Deserves Praise for Missing Goals

Social Security administration hit some performance goals and missed others, according to this Federal Computer Week post. They deserve praise on two counts: first for publicly reporting and publicizing their results which I haven't noticed other agencies doing, second for setting goals ambitious enough they might not make them.  It's good to aim high, even if you fail.