"Actively Engaged" Versus "Primary Activity"

Who has it worse--IRS or FSA employees?

Kevin Drum blogs about the problems IRS employees have in determining what "primary activity" means in regards to organizations who try to claim § 501(c)(4) status.  I sympathize, but I believe the controversy and unclarity over what is "actively engaged in farming" for payment limitation purposes trumps the IRS problem.  Come back to me in 28 years and we'll see whether IRS is still grappling with unclear rules.

(BTW, I've not blogged on the new farm bill versions, but it does seem that the Senate version revives last year's clarifications of what counts as actively engaged.  Now if I could only remember what they are, I could save some research.)

Bryce Harper and Pete Reiser

Yes, I'm too young (not a set of words I often write) to remember Pete Reiser in person, but old enough to remember his legend 
a very talented player who kept running into fences and incurring injuries which ruined a promising career.  See this report on Bryce Harper's latest injury. Did I mention the Nats were playing Reiser's old team?

Uniforms, Bands, and Prison

The Post ran an article last week on the proliferation of military camouflage uniforms--our military now has 11 different patterns.  The writer says

"The duplication problem grows out of three qualities that are deeply rooted in Washington. Good intentions. Little patience. And a lust for new turf.
When a bureaucrat or lawmaker sees someone else doing a job poorly, those qualities stir an itch to take over the job."

 Meanwhile, Walter Pincus, who has written for the Post for years, has a vendetta against military bands.  He delights in counting the number of bands the US supports, summing the dollars spent, and comparing it against other public expenditures.

Finally, there was a piece on why a Jewish prisoner ate with the Aryan Brotherhood.

Seems to me there's a common thread here: people seek community, and in part they do so by opposition to others.  So the Marines insert their logo in very fine print on their uniforms, just to make sure no other service will use them.  So each service and command needs its own military band to establish its identity.  After all, the world would come to an end if the Air Force band played "Anchors Aweigh".  And in prison, everyone has to affiliate with one or the other gang, just for safety.

"Lust for new turf"?   Yes.  But even more important is preserving one's old turf.

Have I Recently Said Change Is Bad?

This week facing an "upgrade" from Windows 7 to 8 because of a need to replace my main PC (don't ask why, but a hint--if you start messing around with the innards of  a computer, refresh your memory of the owner's manual before you start)  This for someone who used to be an early adopter, but now is far behind the tech curve, not even a smartphone to my name. Also facing the impending loss of Google Reader. 

John Dvorak's Rule

Used to be, according to Dvorak who was a columnist for a PC mag (either PC or Byte), the PC you wanted cost $3,000.  That rule is long gone.

Astronauts Are Human Too

The guts of Joel Achenbach's latest post:

"And there was an astonishing pair of images, presented by a fellow from Boeing, Greg Gentry, who has duties involving the International Space Station (I didn’t quite catch his precise role). He showed the U.S. laboratory module at launch: A perfectly clean chamber, with all the equipment carefully stowed in cabinets — not a loose item to be seen. Then he showed that same module as it is actually used at the International Space Station: Extremely cluttered, with wires everywhere, gear all over the place. Frankly, it looks like a mess (though I’m sure the astronauts know exactly where everything is and why they’ve got it set up that way).
“We really didn’t anticipate the needs for stowage very well,” Gentry said.

The ancient lament: Not enough closet space!"

Wisdom from a Man

Via Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution, here's words of wisdom from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Liberrals in a Bind on Organic Checkoff?

Liberals, being mostly urban types, tend in my observation to have little sympathy for the various agricultural promotion programs.  And libertarians definitely think they're an encroachment on the freedom of the individual producer. 

So this line from todays Farm Policy'  may set up an interesting conflict:

"Mr. Lies also noted that, “Schrader said he also is working on an amendment with Rep. Reid Ribble, R-Wis., to establish a national checkoff program for organic producers.”

Why?  Because I think liberals are also more favorable to the organic movement.  Do they support a checkoff to promote organics or do they resist to promote freedom?

Support Beef, Vote Obama?

Who knew the President was a steak man?  I thought he was one of those effete liberal crunchies?  Guess that impression was wrong.

I Think It's a Bubble

According to Illinois extension, farmland prices have gone from $3000 to $7000 per acre since 2000. 

Ode to the "Greedy Bastards"

Anyone want to write poetry--there's room to convert this Jonathan Bernstein post on "Greedy Bastards and Democracy" into poetry?  I think much, maybe all, of agribusiness and the food community would qualify as greedy bastards of some size or another.

White House Wheat

This year the White House garden has some wheat growing, planted this spring.  It puzzles me, because I've always thought of spring wheat as growing further north, but I guess they know what they're doing.  They've planted it in rows, rather than broadcast.  Again, I don't know why, because motherearthnews  definitely talks of broadcasting.

If I'd ever grown wheat, I might mock them as ignorant city slickers, but I never did, so I can't and won't.

USDA Is Number 2!

But unlike Hertz, in the old days, they don't want to try harder.

Government Executive says USDA has the second biggest gap in the job satisfaction scores between its leadership (SES types) and the rank and file.

The assumption is that the leadership is out of touch, but it's possible the leadership knows what a great job the department is doing while the rank and file is too busy doing it to know.

It's possible.....isn't it?

Naw

An NPR Anniversary Evaluation

Government Executive has a piece on Gore's National Program Review/Reinventing Government project, assessing how it looks 10 years later.

NYTimes on Pigford, Garcia, etc.

The Times has a front page article, their big story for the day, on the course of the various discrimination class action suits against USDA/FSA.  The writer apparently talked to a number of career employees, and found a number of cases of fraud.  The politicians and the lawyers come across unfavorably.

What's a Small Family Farmer These Days?

According to ND's new senator:
"“We have small farmers, small family farmers who must spend $1 million before they can even take a crop out of the ground. That is an average farmer in my State. That is how much it costs to engage in farming."

Faith in Congress and Computers

We had such faith in our institutions and the computer 45 years ago.  Technology Review reprints a piece from 1968 in which a political science prof predicted the future:

One can readily foresee a congressman sitting at a console in his office poring over computer print-outs into the late evening hours or over the weekend and cutting through the paper arguments and justifications of executive programs with penetrating lines of questions. The possibility of abuse also exists, but the weight of past congressional experience suggests that most congressmen will use such new investigative power wisely. In situations that invite adversary argument, alternative positions and points of view will be more thoroughly developed and cogently presented.

[updated to add title and link]

Best Sentence I Read Today

"Never take driving lessons on a stick shift from someone you're breaking up with". 

So writes Justice Sotomayor--as part of the divorce she got the car, with the stick, so her soon-to-be-ex was teaching her.

I recommend the book, though I've not finished it.

Douthat: Sci-Fi Optimism and Worldly Pessimism

Ross Douthat at the Times passes on Boston and terrorists in favor of musing about extra terrestial worlds.

He finds optimism in the 1950's science fiction--we confidently expected to visit other worlds and other galaxies--which has faded today and hopes that some of that optimism can be refound.

I was a reader of the old-time science fiction: Clarke, Heinlein, Pohl, Asimov, et. al.  I loved it.  And I agree we were optimistic then, at least if we didn't blow ourselves up (see "A Canticle for Leibowitz).  Remembering those times though  I think we were more pessimistic about the fate of the "Third World", as we used to call the recently freed colonies, at least we were by the middle 60's when the first flush of enthusiasm about decolonization had passed.  The feeling led into the gloom and doom of the running out of resources crowd, the fear that we'd never feed the booming population, etc. 

So the passage of 50 years has produced surprises: we've not been to the moon for many years, humans have never visited Mars.  On the other hand the progress made by developing nations is still startling to me. 

Old Timers Are Forgetful: George Will

George Wills is one of several whom identify as close contemporaries (i.e., born within a year or two of me).  We tell kids not to put on the Internet anything which they'll regret later, but the same could be said to geezers like me and Wills.

The other day he had a nice column taking off from the PBS broadcast of "The Central Park Five", which tracks the history of how five minority youths were wrongly convicted of raping a white woman in Central Park.  He writes: "Journalism, like almost every other profession relevant to this case, did not earn any honors. Until now."

Fine.  Good for George.  But today, Mr. Steve Dutky of Takoma Park throws Wills' words of 1989 back in his face: "In his May 1, 1989, op-ed column, “They went ‘wilding,’ ” George F. Will called “The Central Park Five” boys “evil.” He went on to write: “Punishment in this case will be interminably delayed and ludicrously light. The boys know that; that is one reason they were singing rap songs in their jail cells.” The nastiness of this column has stuck with me these 24 years."

He suggests Wills should apologize.  I agree.

Furloughs for FSA?

That's discussed in this Government Executive piece.

Driverless Bus Drones?

Had a thought today--suppose you put drone software and Google driverless car software in a bus?  So the idea is, the bus follows a standard route, which cuts the complexity of the job the software has to do.  The Google software works to get the bus around the route, but is set to put the bus in "safe" mode if there's any problem (i.e., a problem on the bus, a road situation it can't handle).  Meanwhile the "drone" software enables a remote operator  to monitor the bus and to step in to resolve problems. 

Digital Public Library Goes Live

The Digital Public Library of America (dp.la) is going live this week, today in fact.  Remember Google Books--this is more ambitious.  From the announcement, it will be: "

• First, an easy-to-use portal where anyone can access America’s collections and search through them using novel and powerful techniques, including by place and time.
• Second, a sophisticated technical platform that will make those millions of items available in ways so that others can build creative and transformative applications upon them, such as smartphone apps that magically reveal the history around you.
• Third, along with like-minded institutions and individuals the DPLA will seek innovative means to make more cultural and scientific content openly available, and it will advocate for a strong public option for reading and research in the twenty-first century."

One thing which bugs me is all the information which is not easily available, even though it's public. For example, trying to access the Congressional Record for years before roughly 1990 is difficult.

A Great Epitaph for Lady Sale

Via The Best Defense, a 10 best list of books on Afghanistan .  The entry for Lady Sale's book says:

Lady Sale was possibly the only Brit to come out of the first Afghan war with her reputation enhanced. She arrived with an unmarried daughter, seeds from her Agra garden and a grand piano. She survived the retreat from Kabul, with a musket ball in her shoulder and in due course led a jailbreak of her fellow hostages. Her tombstone reads: "Here lies all that could die of Lady Sale."

Big Apple Men Are Gentlemen

According to the NYTimes, a study of subway manners showed that more men stand than women, indicating that  New York city men are gentlemen.

What We Don't Know About the Globe

Joel Achenbach explains the vanishing island in the Pacific, and throws in the fact the Navy still has seven ships exploring the oceans, simply because we don't know where all the islands and sea mounts are.

Some People Are Too Talented

From the bio posted here of Gregory Mankiw

Mankiw is best known at Harvard for his work in economics and for his immensely popular Introduction to Economics class — or Ec 10. His parallel profession as one of the world’s leading interpreters and conductors of Beethoven’s oeuvre is less well known in Cambridge. A child prodigy, Mankiw studied piano at the Universität für Musik in Trenton, N.J., not far from where he grew up. While earning a B.A. at Princeton University and Ph.D. at MIT, the ambitious conductor concurrently earned his M.M. in orchestral conducting from Carnegie-Mellon. At the Pierre Monteux School for Conductors, he garnered special recognition for his micro attention to detail and macro approach to sound.
Before joining the faculty at Harvard, Mankiw studied with the esteemed Fritz Frockenstem in the Orchestral Conducting Division of the London School of Economics. Museconominsts and arts critics used the word “revolutionary” to describe the 1980s world tour during which Maestro Mankiw performed with every major orchestra including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, London Symphony and the Dresden Staatskappelle. Stateside, he has led orchestras in Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New York and at the Metropolitan Opera.

 Strangely, his wikipedia entry doesn't reflect all this.


I'm sure Harvard and Boston will give a big turnout for the event (Arts Fair).

Disappointing Obama Bureaucrats

I saw somewhere that the HHS Secretary expressed surprise at the difficulty of implementing Obamacare.  And there was an op-ed somewhere suggesting VA Secretary Shinseki should be ousted because of the backlog in VA claims.  (See this related article.)

Based on what I know, or rather read, which may be wrong, I'm not impressed with either secretary--one of the primary jobs of a managing bureaucrat is to foresee the future and plan ahead.e.

The VA is always a downstream agency; it gets DOD's output. So it shouldn't have been hard to look at DOD operations since 2002 and foresee a rising workload over the years.

How Do Trains Stay on the Track?

Jason Kottke posts a Richard Feynman video in which he explains that question, after he tells us why trains can go with solid axles and no differential.

What I now want to know is when was the method invented?  And why didn't Conestoga wagons need a differential (I assume because the wheels could slip?)

[Updated:  turns out the conical shape also contributes to the sway of a railway car.  See this wikipedia article on "hunting oscillation" ,which is a generic name for the phenomena.  And this article goes into more detail than the Feynman video.  It also briefly mentions an alternative to the coned wheel--canting the track.  Not quite clear on how that works--a canted racetrack presumably uses gravity to counterbalance centrifugal forces.  Is that the effect of a canted rail track, or does it also reduce the difference in distance traveled by outside and inside wheels?  Still nothing on when coned wheels were invented.]

Chopper Pilot as Bureaucrat

Tom Ricks' The Best Defense has a post entitled "A Military Genre: a List of the Hard-Won Wisdom of Combat Helicopter Pilots.

You might say there's no way a pilot and a bureaucrat have anything in common, and you'd be almost right.  But don't you think these bits apply?

"6. Decisions made by someone above you in the chain-of-command will seldom be in your best interest.

10. If everything is as clear as a bell, and everything is going exactly as planned, you're about to be surprised. 

14. If the rear echelon troops are really happy, the front line troops probably do not have what they need.

34. Nobody cares what you did yesterday or what you are going to do tomorrow. What is important is what you are doing -- NOW -- to solve our problem.  "

Some of the other items are specific applications of Murphy's Law.

Why Farming Is Dangerous

That was my first reaction when I saw the photos by The Cotton Wife.  They're cute kids and I'm sure the parents are careful, but one price farmers pay for the lifestyle and occupation they love is an increased risk to the people they love.

Where's All the Bureaucrats

Government Executive has a piece including tables showing the 10 most common occupations in government, the Federal government, state and local government.

I was surprised by the lack of classical bureaucrats and by the presence of secretaries:





See the piece for the more detailed breakdown.

Management Expertise in the Private Sector

Let's see: Apple has a $2 billion cost overrun on a headquarters building (now estimated to be a mere $5 billion)

Technology Review reports on a study showing 1 in 6 IT projects have a 200 percent cost overrun.

Drones and FEMA

Seems to me FEMA should immediately create its own air force of drones, first to survey the aftermath of hurricanes, flooding, etc to assess the extent and nature of damage and to track the arrival or non-arrival of aid vehicles; second to provide emergency cell phone service in cases where cell phone towers have been damaged and/or where additional service is needed.

Planting the White House Garden?

Obamafoodorama reports on the planting of the White House garden.  We've had a cool, rather dry couple of months which has delayed everything, particularly the cherry blossoms. 

In our garden we got the peas and lettuce, etc.in fairly early, though not as early as Al, who always beats us.  His peas and lettuce have been showing for a couple weeks now, while I just saw ours this morning.

Mrs. Obama is planting wheat, planning to focus on whole grain foods when it's harvested in the summer. The garden is up to 1,500 square feet, and as they have in the past, they're using seedlings, not seeds so much, which probably explains why they're slower than we are, even though their garden is probably a half zone warmer. 

No mention in the posts about whether the kids are doing any weeding--I think it's safe to say they aren't.  I'm not a parent, but I suspect it's tough to get teenagers to do anything like that.

Digital Library for All

Robert DArnton in the New York Review of Books writes about the launch of the Digital Public Library of America whose modest aim is to "make the holdings of America’s research libraries, archives, and museums available to all Americans—and eventually to everyone in the world—online and free of charge."

He traces the roots of the project back in American history, to our utopianism and pragmatism, the Enlightenment faith in reason and improvement and the practicality of trying to make things better step by step, ideas very appealing to me.

Nurse Anesthetists

Was checking the Bureau of Labor Statistics site and stumbled on this:

"Twenty-four newly defined occupations are included in this release. Computer network support specialists was the largest, with employment of 167,980 in May 2012. The highest paid new occupation was nurse anesthetists, with an annual mean wage of $154,390."

We hear a lot about the jobs which are lost to technology.  (I stumbled on one 19th century article noting that  binders and shockers (for wheat), considered skilled labor, were no longer needed given the development of machine reapers. )  And I'm struck by the salary for the anesthetists.

Drones and Farming

Via Marginal Revolution, here's a Daily Beast piece on drones in farming.  Unlimited possibilities, particularly with precision farming.  Meanwhile Conor Friedersdorf has an article on how drones should be limited in the interests of privacy.

Crunch[ie] Dairy the Demeter Way

This article at Treehugger describes a German dairy farm (mostly) which adheres to Demeter standards.  Amusing throughout, particularly this bit:

Our guide explains that the hollow horns remaining after a cow's passing are filled with manure, and buried underground through the winter. The composting manure gathers cosmic rays in the cold season, and in spring the mixture is dug up and the manure crumbled into the mixing tanks.A special process of mixing creates a vortex that distributes the cosmic energy in the correct manner (the view from the platform is reported to put the mixer in the right mindset during the hour-long mixing process, but more importantly the elevation obviates the need for pumps, which might disturb the cosmic energy)

 And here I always thought my German relatives/ancestors were practical, hard-headed types.

An oddity: it sounds as if the cows are never slaughtered, but yet they raise chickens for eggs and meat.

History Repeats: Kenya, Cellphones and I-Cow

Been doing some reading (and a little writing) in the history of USDA, extension, etc.  The theme I see there is that USDA worked for the most literate, most progressive farmers.  That's why I'm struck by this article in CSMonitor on I-Cow in Kenya; an app helps Kenyan dairy farmers manage their herds. 

Kahumbu’s iCow may not be the latest sensation on Wall Street, but experts say it is just the latest example of an innovative high-tech entrepreneurial culture that has started to take hold in Kenya. Following in the footsteps of major commercial successes such as MPESA – a mobile-phone banking application that now rivals Western Union – other Kenyan software developers are setting up shop in Nairobi, creating high-tech solutions for an African market that has long been ignored; universities and private companies are setting up labs and business incubators; and government officials are plotting strategies to transform Kenya into a high-tech hub for the continent.

I'd like to celebrate the progress being made, but we should also have a thought for those who will be left behind in the race to the top, to modernity.

The End of WASP Hegemony

I remember when I was in the Army talking about the old geezers (i.e. 50-60 year olds) who spent their time at the VFW or American legion posts talking about the old days--we agreed we'd never be them. The Times had an article on the current struggles of the American Legion.

And the National Council of Churches has downsized severely.

Bottomline: the old WASP institutions which dominated the nation when I was young are fading, like Gen. MacArthur's old soldiers.

The Modern Face of Dairy

$170,000 for a 3-year old Jersey cow.  The "Winner-take-all" society expands its reach to the world of dairy.  And as a footnote, the owners used to farm a 900 acre farm in upstate New York.  Guess it was too small to survive. Hat Tip Northview Dairy, who recently visited NYC. (and didn't like it).

Ads I Hate

For some reason I don't like the ads on the Weather Channel, these two categories in particular:

1. the law firms trolling for those who suffer from asbestos or various medicines so they can mount a class action suit.  Not sure why they bug me; maybe I remember in the old days when it was both illegal and unseemly for lawyers and other professionals to advertise.
2. the medical device makers, particularly the motorized wheelchair ones.  Here my puritan soul is aggrieved: you should make do with crutches or walkers, not sit on your butt in a device my tax dollars help pay for.

My burst of aggravation was triggered by this NBC news piece on no. 2, and maybe the fact spring is late this year.

Boost Administrative Capacity?--Never Happen

From a Wonkblog post interview on the social security disability insurance program :

" The disability programs could always be run better, and one shortcoming of the “This American Life” story is that there was little discussion of the nuts and bolts of this. For example, it would be wise to make more investments in the administrative capacity of the Social Security Administration so that they could do more reviews, check up on people with continuing disabilities and see if they’re still eligible." [emphasis added]

I daresay we will never see mainstream media urging more dollars for greater administrative capacity on the part of the government. [Yes, I'm feeling cynical today.]

Trucks: Different Cultures, Different Countries

A cousin observed she didn't see many trucks in Ireland (apropos of the recent snow storm). Just for the hell of it I checked: 

In 2009 we had 134,880,000 cars, and 110,561,000 trucks in the US (US Census), or 45 percent of our vehicles were trucks.  In Britain there were 28,813,000 cars and 3,767,000 trucks, or 11.5 percent were trucks.

I Love People Who Act Like Bigshots

Politico reports on a Congressman's kerfuffle with the Park Service. 

One of My Pet Ideas Is the Weakness of Government

I'll throw out an example:  A map of English counties (before 1974 reorg?)

A map of French departments (colors indicate population density)

If I understand correctly, the French department and the English county are the first administrative subdivision below the country (yes, I realize England isn't a country, but the same would apply if I showed a map of British counties). Compare these, with their relatively equal proportions, with a map of the US at the same level of administration:

Iraq: Were We Lied To?

The trigger for this is a recent discussion over on Ta-Nehesi Coates blog looking back at the decision to invade Iraq.  Most of the comments trend liberal, which is usually okay because that's what I am.  But some of them assert the administration lied us into the war, which troubles me.

Yes, there was exaggeration and probably the occasional lie, but I don't believe there were many conscious lies.  What was going on was people believed what they wanted to believe was true; they deluded themselves and then they deluded the rest of us.

I won't support my position by rehashing the events in 2002/3; that's tedious.  I would point to a parallel I see in more recent events:

It seems apparent that the Romney campaign and many media figures on the right fully believed that Romney was going to win the election.  They told us so repeatedly.  In my surfing I'd hit Fox News and see Pat Caddell et. al. confidently predicting victory.  After election day I don't recall anyone saying: "I knew all along Romney was doomed to defeat, but I lied to our audience just to keep spirits up."   Now there's no reason for a pundit to make a prediction he knows to be false and which will be proved to be false within a week or a month. That wouldn't be rational. [ed.--who says people are rational?]

So I can only conclude they were self-deluded, just as I think GWB and Cheney et.al. were back in 2003.

Maybe the Best Place to Work Shouldn't Be?

Government Executive has a piece on the 12 best small federal agencies to work at.  Topping the list is:

In 2012, the Office of Navajo and Hopi Indian Relocation topped the very small agency list with a Best Places to Work job satisfaction and commitment score of 90.1 on a scale of 100. Its mission is to assist Hopi and Navajo Indians impacted by the relocation that Congress mandated in 1974 for members of the tribes who were living on each other’s land.

 Now I applaud their accomplishment in being the best place to work in the government.  But the thought does pass through my mind: there's 39 years between the Congressional mandate and now.  While I understand relocating people is a long process, shouldn't it have been finished maybe 10 years ago?

30 Gigs of Email?

I can't believe that, but apparently Ezra Klein has almost 30 gigs, because that's all Google would sell him space for.  See this Drum commentary, which quotes Klein.