Phrase of Yesterday

"it's not unusual for Senate floor time to be valuable."

So says Jonathan Bernstein

Sharing Versus Centralized Data

The VA and DOD have been working off and on to setup one centralized healthcare record for military personnel.  It makes sense: someone starts as a GI under DOD's control and, after retirement or separation, moves to be under VA's control. 

In the hearing I linked to it seems that Congress still wants that one record to rule them all, while DOD and VA are leaning more to sharing data.  I assume the idea is that if the VA can pull data from DOD records and display them to VA personnel, that's good enough.

During my government career, I was involved in both "sharing" and "centralizing" efforts. We worked for some years on trying to transfer files of ASCS data to SCS computers, basically to enable policing of the sod/swamp provisions of the 86 farm bill.  And the effort which eventually became SCIMS was based on the idea of a central customer/client record serving all the service center agencies. 

Neither effort worked out, at least not during my career.  I'm not sure what lessons to derive from that fact.  I mention this history because doing such things as implementing Obamacare or immigration reform (E-Verify) raise similar issues of system design.  

If you can design the interfaces, it's probably easier and faster to do the sharing, perhaps particularly these days with the availability of syncing software.  The biggest advantage of centralized data is not just avoiding redundant data load; it's avoiding the problem of stale data.  For example, a death gets reported in system A, but never propagated to systems B...Z.   The problem with sharing/communication is that the unspoken and unidentified assumptions in system A may trip you up in the other systems.  The problem with centralized systems is you have to understand a whole lot more about all the business rules. And it's difficult to have modular development.

Acreage Reports and Performance (27 Years Ago and MIDAS)

I noticed in recent NASCOE documents a brief discussion of "performance" problems, apparently due to MIDAS.  Today I see ND FSA quoted in this article on problems with acreage reporting due to MIDAS performance problems. 

I'm not a good person, so there's a smirk on my face, for which I apologize to everyone involved--I'm sure they are doing their best.

As some consolation I'd recall our problems with the ASCS-578 process when we first automated on the System-36.  The initial program design had one entry screen for each parameter for a field or subdivision (i.e., "corn" would be on one screen, "grain" or "silage" would be on another).  Do I need to add that with the first 36's we didn't move from one screen to the next very quickly?  The net result was something which was unusable, though with the combination of ignorance and rigidity too often found in the South Building we (I) earnestly explained to the state specialists that counties had to use the software.

Here my memory fades--I think we officially used the initial design for 1985, backed off to a data load process for 1986, and perhaps came up with a revised process for 1987, though maybe it was 1988.  The new process was an improvement, if I say so myself, but many counties still found it unusable for realtime applications.

Bottomline: progress is made slowly, often  2 steps forward and one back.  And learn from mistakes, because as my example shows, they'll stick in your memory for the rest of your life.

The Innovators' Dilemma and Quinoa

When I read the recent pieces on quinoa I was reminded of Clayton Christensen's book, The Innovator's Dilemma. 

The idea is what really happens with successful enterprises (he wrote about companies but I'm expanding to include farming) is that a web of linkages and expectations and fulfilled needs builds up which becomes hard to change.  Big companies like Eastman Kodak or Xerox focus more on everyday problems within that web and don't have the time or attention to give to innovations which might prove disruptive (as with Kodak's invention of the digital camera).  

The flip side of that is that an innovator, like a quinoa farmer, is out there on his own and is missing the web of supporting structures, in this cases marketing chains, transportation and warehousing etc.  Usually in technology the innovation is sort of peripheral, crude and not very efficient, so it's easy to disrespect.  What successful innovations have is some advantage in a niche market, and the potential to be refined and developed.  The money from niche sales enables the development up the ladder and into new markets.  (Think how Toyota started with a crude car, only to develop over the years into making luxury cars.)

The problem with quinoa may, as the blog post says, be the likelihood of volatile prices, because the market and government don't supply the things which stabilize prices, supply and demand in developed markets.   

The Difference a Few Miles Makes

Really, though, it's not where you live, it's the composition of the neighbors in the hood;  it's the difference of a bunch of dollars and/or education.  I'm talking about the latest health stats, as presented in this county by county map.  Here's a post on Herndon Patch about the study.


Fairfax County, where I live, had a male life expectancy of 75.6 in 1985. Prince William, just south of here, had 71.3.  DC had a life expectancy of 64.3.  Over 25 years things changed.  DC improved by 9.4, Fairfax 6.1, Prince William 7.4.  Loudoun county, just to the west of Fairfax, and DC were the two jurisdictions which stand out as having the greatest increase.  Why--Loudoun has gone from mostly rural to rich suburbia in the 25 years; DC has changed its demographics almost as drastically--picking up a lot of yuppies and dinks (as we used to call them) and seeing lower income blacks move out.  DC has also cut its homicide rate drastically.


It's an interesting map to play with.  What's happening in Kentucky?  The bluegrass state has seen a statewide increase in physical activity in the last 10 years, it really stands out on the national map.  I don't think Mrs. Obama has been there more than other states. More seriously, there doesn't seem to be a correlation, at least by eyeball, between changes in physical activity and changes in hypertension or obesity, and Kentucky was very low on activity in 2001, so there may be something odd with the data, not reality.  And using just eyeballs, it looks as if the crime wave documented in the TV series "Justified" has some basis in reality?

Enlightenment in AnteBellum Georgia?

The Internet makes a lot of stuff available, much of it not valuable but some quite interesting.  One of the interesting bits I just stumbled on is the fact that Georgia distributed land to its citizens through a series of lotteries.   Here's a list of the people entitled to "draw" in one of the lotteries:

• Bachelor, 18 years or over, 3-year residence in Georgia, citizen United States – 1 draw
• Soldier of Indian War, residence in Georgia during or since military service – 1 draw
• Invalid or indigent veteran of Revolutionary War or War of 1812 – 2 draws
• Invalid or indigent veteran of Revolutionary War or War of 1812 who was a fortunate drawer in either previous land lottery – 1 draw
• Married man with wife or minor son under 18 years or unmarried daughter, 3-year residence in Georgia, citizen United States – 2 draws
• Widow, 3-year residence in Georgia – 1 draw 
• Widow, husband killed in Revolutionary War, War of 1812 or Indian War, 3-year residence in Georgia – 2 draws 
• Family of one or two orphans under 21 years, father dead, mother living, 3-year residence in Georgia – 1 draw
• Family of three or more orphans under 21 years, father and mother both dead, 3-year residence in Georgia – 2 draws
• Family of one or two orphans under 21 years, father and mother both dead, 3-year residence in Georgia, 1 draw
• Orphan under 21 years, father killed in the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, or Indian War, 3-year residence in Georgia – 2 draws
• Invalid or indigent officer or soldier in the Revolutionary Army who had been fortunate drawer in either previous lottery – 1 draw

I'm not quite sure how these worked together--for example would a "widow" get one draw on her own, and one draw for her family?  If so, that would be equal to the married man's 2 draws.

Anyhow, it strikes me as surprisingly liberated for 1820, at least gender-wise.  Of course the land being distributed was that taken from the Native Americans, so it wasn't really enlightened.

Paragraph of the Day

From a NYTimes article pegged to Russian circuses offering patrons a chance to have pictures of their kids sitting by carnivores, for a fee:

In the 19th century, the author Mikhail Lermontov was so amazed by this quality of fatalism [in Russian society] he created a character in the novel “A Hero of Our Time” who played Russian roulette with a single-shot pistol.

Dead Customers--Warning to Government List Managers

I stumbled on this while reading an FSA notice:

"The Death Master File Report identifies customers who were updated as deceased in Business Partner during the initial migration. This was a one -time process run from the Death Master File (DMF) from the Social Security Administration (SSA) and approximately 1.7 million customers were updated as deceased. County Offices will not receive work list items for customers on this list as all customers were updated with a date of death and the death was automatically confirmed."

What it says is FSA's master name and address file, probably about 6-8 million names, wasn't being maintained for deaths, so when FSA matched the file against SSA's records, 1.7 records fell out.   I suspect this is a hazard for all lists maintained by big organizations: there's no immediate apparent cost to keeping a record on file and there's an obvious cost removing it.  It takes time to remove a record or flag it as dead, and there's always the chance of error.  So it's easier, cheaper, and safer not to touch the file.

Problem is, leaving the dead on file leads to mistakes, most notoriously payments to dead farmers, and potential security problems.  How many thrillers have you read where someone establishes a fake identity using the name/ID of a dead person?

I believe, back in the old days before System/36, the KCMO mainframe files were routinely matched against SSA death files.  But when we went to the 36, because that process was done once a year or so, it fell through the cracks.  As we used to say in the Army: sorry bout that.

Another Appeal for Typography in the FAA

James Fallows has blogged about the Asiana crash.  This is the last bit from one post:

"* Here is the text of the "NOTAM," or Notice to Airmen, announcing the limited ILS status. The opaqueness of the terminology is unfortunately typical of the Telex-era legacy coding of aviation announcements, but professional pilots would know what it means. In essence it says that at SFO airport the ILS glide path would be OTS WEF -- "out of service with effect from" June 11, 2103:

"SFO 06/005 SFO NAV ILS RWY 28L GP OTS WEF 1306011400-1308222359

CREATED: 01 Jun 2013 13:40:00 

SOURCE: KOAKYFYX"

Now I've great confidence in the ability of professional pilots: I'm sure evolution over the years has created a breed of super beings who don't need any of the aids us ordinary humans need to understand a message.  And this breed inhabits all the corners of the world, and regardless of native language is thoroughly schooled in acronyms. 

But please, give me a break.  We don't use Telex these days.  People under 50 have never even heard of it.  We have lots and lots of bandwidth, so there's no need for concise messages, if conciseness comes at the expense of clarity.   It really is true that upper and lower case are more legible than all upper case, that words are clearer than acronyms, and brevity is not always a virtue.

I'm not up to doing a lot of research, but there's a link there to the FAA website.  I wonder whether pilots could, by clicking a cursor on a map, pull up all the messages pertaining to a specific airport which are still in effect?  Seems like a simple application of technology.

I believe the State Department has finally abandoned all caps; it's time for FAA.

[Note:  this is one of my pet peeves, I don't see my label for it.]

Schadenfreude Towards Locavores

Schadenfreude means enjoying others' misfortune.  I find I enjoy it when people are very self-righteous and self-confident, and then stumble, as in the case of locavores who enthusiastically went into the raising of backyard chickens.

Two articles reporting on people who don't know what to do when hens stop laying eggs.

Post Raisin -- Not the Cereal

The Washington Post has a Style piece on the raisin farmer in California who's violating the terms of the raisin marketing agreement and won an interim victory at the Supreme Court this term.

I don't know enough about this marketing agreement, or the other agreements, to be comfortable in any detailed commentary on the case.

What I do know is this:  agricultural producers in the 1930's had very little power in the market--they had to accept whatever prices the buyers would offer.  The perception then was the imbalance in pricing power between producers and buyers resulted in an unstable market, with wide swings in price as producers over-produced in response to good products, creating surpluses.  Because the demand for food is usually inelastic, it takes a big drop in prices to clear the market of surpluses.  

Hence the cartelization of commodity producers, whether tobacco producers in the 1930s, or oil producers in the 1970's.  In the area of fruit and vegetables the cartels took the form of marketing agreements.  (I'm in danger of confusing marketing agreements with research and promotion agreements, which try to increase demand without controlling supply.  Both types may be initially approved by producer referendums.)

IMHO the question today is whether there are other mechanisms available to producers?  For example, the price of eggs went up and down rapidly in the 1940's and 50's, reflecting the same sort of free market mechanics.  My mother got very disgusted with those farmers who'd expand production when the price was high, knowing the sure result would be low prices a year later.  (She didn't believe in following self-interest; one should look out for the greater good.)

But unlike Canada (I think) the US never had an egg cartel.  And what happened?  Contract growers happened.  Big companies contracted with growers to produce eggs and poultry as innovation paved the way for 100,000 chicken houses.   That process of consolidation meant lots of small poultry producers went out of business, but those who remained faced much less risk because the industry was vertically integrated. 

That's happened in other areas, but mechanisms like futures and forward contracting seem also to have played a part, not to mention crop insurance.  If we were re-creating the raisin industry from scratch, would we have a marketing agreement, or some other mechanism to reduce price risk?

Puffing Agriculture Just a Tad

From the Farm Bureau's New York website:

"Agriculture is New York‘s most important industry. The farm economy generated $4.45 billion in 2008."  It goes on to cite New York's 35,000 farms

From this site

New York's gross state product in 2001 was $826.5 billion, 2nd only to California, to which financial services contributed $282.9 billion; general services, $190.2 billion; trade, $103.5 billion; government, $81.2 billion; manufacturing, $77.7 billion; transportation and public utilities, $59.3 billion, and construction, $17.4 billion. The public sector in 2001 constituted 9.8% of gross state product, tied with New Jersey for the 5th-lowest percent among the states where the average was 12%.

Best Practices, Reinvented

I am reading a biography of Seaman Knapp, sometimes called the father of the extension service.

One of the big problems in agriculture around 1900 was dissemination.  Researchers at the experiment stations and people in the field had identified ways to grow more and better plants and animals, but they couldn't convince farmers to change their habits and adopt new methods.

The description was reminiscent of the "best practices" fad in the 1990's: the idea that business consultants could identify what the best organizations were doing and then inject them into other organizations.

Lots of reasons why the idea doesn't work nearly as well as it ought to.  For one thing, a "best practice" identified by an outsider is likely to oversimplify, to miss some features of the organization's culture which are critical to success.  And importing a "best practice" under the auspices of some high-paid outsider is likely to raise the hackles (does anyone these days know what a "hackle" is) of the people who've been doing the work, in their minds pretty successfully.

[Updated: see this Technology Review post on why Silicon Valley can't be duplicated.]

The Modern Sisyphus or Diogenes

In the Sisyphus myth, the king was fated to roll a stone uphill forever, each only to see it roll back down.  That was my first thought in considering the blog The Daily Howler, written by Bob Somerby.

Mr. Somerby seems always to be disappointed by the truthfulness of media, particularly mainstream media.  The "always" brought Sisyphus to mind, but then I see the king's offense against the gods was to be deceitful and to try to outwit Zeus himself.  So that doesn't work particularly well.

So then I thought of Diogenes, who supposedly wandered the world with lamp in hand, looking for and not finding an honest man.  Maybe that's closer; Mr. Somerby is our modern Diogenes.  Perhaps fitting, since Diogenes was a Cynic.

Or maybe we're fellows under the skin, both nitpickers supreme. 

Anyhow, I recommend occasional dips in the blog, though perhaps Mr. Somerby is wandering the blogosphere with lamp in hand, searching for and not finding the Art of Brevity.

Taxing CRP Payments

The title of this post at Sustainable Ag,  U.S. Tax Court: Federal Self-Employment Tax Applies to Non-Farmer’s CRP Payment,pretty well describes the content.

 It interests me because it involves determining that the owner of land in CRP is not automatically in the business of farming (assuming I understand it correctly).  The theory seems to be that while the owner is being compensated for activities required by the CRP contract, that's not farming but a business.

The EU, Payment Limits, Conservation, and WTO

One of the features of "Freedom to Farm", the 1996 direct payments program, was that it complied with WTO restrictions, meaning basically it didn't affect what crops were grown or not grown.  Regardless of what the farmer did, she was guaranteed the payment as long as she didn't sell the land for a suburban development.   The vision at that time, the height of the Washington consensus,  was that the world was gradually moving away from government subsidies and intervention in agricultural affairs.  Oxfam and other international groups beat the U.S. around the head and shoulders for the distortions introduced by our farm programs, particularly the adverse effects of the cotton program on Third World cotton producers.  But 17 years have passed since that law was enacted and the climate of opinion in the world has changed.  It looks as if we'll replace the direct payments program with crop insurance subsidies without much concern for WTO rules, even though the subsidies obviously affect what's planted.   Has the Great Recession created more tolerance for government intervention, more economic nationalism?

This BBC piece (hat tip John Phipps) shows some of the factors also affecting the EU's redo of their farm policy.

The Importance of What's Underneath

MIT's Technology Review reports on research explaining "fairy circles"., at least those in grassland mostly in South Africa.  It seems it's caused by competition among plant roots.

RSS Feeds and GMO Technology

Just trying to get ready for the end of Google Reader, meaning I'm looking at some stuff which has remained unread. 

Predictably some of the food movement have attacked the award of the prize to Monsanto scientist, claiming that the technology doesn't increase food supply or help with nutritious or sustainable food.  Accepting that position for sake of argument, genetic modification will still prove its worth, as in this case of obtaining resistance to wheat rust.

Good Sentence of the Week

" Biting people is hard, and people tend to notice when you try it."

From Ezra Klein's review of World War Z--interesting in the parallels of zombies to viruses and werewolves to sex.

The Box and CubeSats

There's a good book on the development of containers, as in container ships, which by permitting the a standardization of the loading and unloading of ships greatly reduced costs and permitted global supply chains.  It's called "The Box"

And here's an interesting piece on a plan for a fleet of small satellites to take photos of the earth  It seems they're going to use CubeSats, which is a standardized module for launching scientific instruments into space. Apparently the concept is on its way to being as important for science as the container is for transportation.

Defeat of Farm Bill

Keith Good at Agfax writes about the defeat of the farm bill, including some interesting discussion from Craig Jagger, who blames the defeat in part on the changes in Congressional rules.   I liked this:

Furthermore, the BGov Study stated that, “In addition, explicit timing shifts were used to capture ‘savings’ of $2.6 billion over 10 years for the 2002 farm bill and $4.5 billion over 10 years for the 2008 farm bill. Timing shifts move costs outside the 10-year budget window. The CBO scores savings for the shifts even though only the timing, not the amount, of program costs change. Those explicit timing shifts are not available for the 2013 farm bill, because all that could be identified have been used and each timing shift can be used only once…When major program changes are being made, having extra money to make them more palatable to those losing benefits makes writing legislation easier. This farm bill process undoubtedly has been more contentious and difficult from not having extra money above its baseline that recent farm bills had. Now to add funding for a new program or to increase funding for an existing program, funding for a different Agriculture Committee program that has a baseline needs to be cut, robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

Bottomline: the Ag committee had run out of tricks to ease the pain.

Concrete Canoes and Leadership

What makes a concrete canoe float?  That question, along with some others, is answered in this NYTimes article today. 

Who knew the civil engineers had a whole competition among colleges to make concrete canoes?  And it's been going on for years? 

Buried in the text is the observation that success in the competition takes a combination of leadership and finding people willing to do the drudgery, like sanding down the concrete so the canoe moves well through the water.   Leadership and drudgery are the keys to success in many things, IMHO.

Paintbrush Factories and Old Farmers

The Times magazine today has a piece on brush manufacturers, mostly paintbrush manufacturers. It seems the U.S. still has a bunch of them.  According to the article the manufacturers are competing with China, not by doing the lowest cost brushes, but in two other ways: constantly innovating to find new niches for their expertise, and doing the same old, same old thing they and their forebears have been doing, producing high quality brushes for the most demanding end of the market.

As I read it, I was struck by some parallels to farmers.  The author cited one manufacturer who wouldn't get into the business today, but since he already had the plant, and the machinery paid for, and he had the labor and customers, he could make a profit going forward.  I suspect that has been the case with many farmers over the years: they have the land and equipment and expertise so they can produce and get a positive cash flow for as long as their health holds out.  It doesn't make sense to an economist, but it makes human sense. 

Yes, I'm talking about my parents.

Student Loans and Urbanism

Buried in a Post piece on the "echo boomers" living in DC and Arlington is this observation:

“What you’re seeing in Arlington and Washington is that you can live here without a car,” said Harriet Tregoning, director of the District’s Office of Planning. She says that is a boon for people who owe a lot of money on college loans: “If you don’t have a car, you can pay off your college debt quickly. As long as it’s expensive to go to college, we have a competitive advantage.”

It makes sense to me.  Of course I've also heard that the average/median (not sure which) rent in DC is around $2,100.  That's a bunch.  Of course if you're young you can squeeze up.  And there appears to be a new phenomenon.  Back in the day I lived just south of Logan Circle.  And for the next 25 years there were alternating stories in the Post--problems with prostitution and other urban ills in the area and people renovating old houses amidst the crime. 

In this century it seems to me the renovation and crime story is much less common, the more common one is the influx of young, mostly white inhabitants.  I don't know whether crime is less, there's a more rapid flow of new people, the newspaper mindset is different, or what's going on, but I think there's a big differenc.e

Healthcare in France--Free Vacations in the Sun?

Dirk Beauregarde has a vitamin D deficiency, which leads to this:

In France we have a massive welfare bill, mainly due to our free, universal, cradle to grave health care system – it is quite common for the public Heath system to send the sick, the lame, the stressed and the depressed, away for long term cures by the sea or in the mountains why cant they send a low level vitamin D teacher to Corsica for a couple of weeks.

Eating on Food Stamps

Rep. Stockman's staffer reports the results of a week on food stamps.

His purchases:

For $21.55 Ferguson purchased at Dollar Tree:
Two boxes of Honeycomb cereal
Three cans of red beans and rice
Jar of peanut butter
Bottle of grape jelly
Loaf of whole wheat bread
Two cans of refried beans
Box of spaghetti
Large can of pasta sauce
Two liters of root beer
Large box of popsicles
24 servings of Wyler’s fruit drink mix
Eight cups of applesauce
Bag of pinto beans
Bag of rice
Bag of cookies

For $6.03 at the Shoppers Food Warehouse next door Ferguson bought a gallon of milk and a box of maple and brown sugar oatmeal.

 The total cost is about 4 dollars less than the $31.50 Dems have been using.  I'm not sure I'd call it "eating well" as Stockman does, but he has the right idea, mostly.  Lots of rice and beans, some pasta and cereals--cheap calories and nutrition. He could have varied it by buying more in bulk over time.  I'd suspect it's a fairly healthy diet, vegetarian, although there's no fresh fruits or vegetables at all. 

Of course, I'd not want to be him when he feeds two young kids this diet for a week.  A stop at St. Elizabeth's might be next.

Some Businesses Always Liked Immigration

This post from Making Maps reprints an article about a 69 foot map being moved back in 1917.

I find it interesting that it belonged to the "immigration department" of the Northern Pacific Railway.

It's also a reminder of how much we've gained by the ability to zoom.

Editing Mistakes and Crop Insurance Fraud Used as a Weapon

In the political infighting over the farm bill, with supporters of farm programs attacking SNAP (food stamps) the SNAP people are fighting back by citing crop insurance fraud.  There's an article in the NY Times this morning on the subject--obviously the SNAP proponents have dug up some ammunition, including the recent NC case and a GAO report.  That's all good. 

What's not so good is this correction:

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the annual spending for the food stamp program and the amount of fraud involved. The budget is $75 billion a year, not $760 billion. The amount of fraud is around $750 million, not $760 million. The article also contained another error: Federal data shows that the rate of food stamp fraud, which has declined sharply in recent years, now accounts for .01 percent of the $75 billion program, or about $750 million a year; not 1 percent.

 Apparently the Times has fired so many fact checkers that they've no one left who knows the difference between 1 percent and .01 percent.  They were right the first time and their correction is wrong.

We Were More Cultured in the Old Days

Erik Loomis posts the lists of best selling books in 1969 here.  Roth, Nabokov and Vonnegut were on the fiction list; serious stuff on the non-fiction list.

Hot News in the Confederacy

Happened to have cause to look up the Southern Illustrated News, which turns out to be the Confederacy's answer to Harpers'.  Amazing how much attention was devoted to fashion.  An excerpt:

The Latest Style of Parisian Belle.

            At the French spas, during the past summer, the ladies have worn their skirts nearly as short as the Bloomer surtout, while Hessian boots, laced from the knee about half way down, and with tassels swinging from the tops, have been the sole substitutes for the Bloomer unmentionables.  Add to these articles of costume a broad belt at the waist, with a buckle in front about fourteen inches in circumference, together with a jaunty hat, without strings, something like the chapeau of the stage highwayman, and worn rakishly aslant on the head, and you will have some idea, fair reader, of the gentlemanly appearance of a Paris belle at a fashionable watering-lace during the late flirting season.  Stay, we have omitted one item—an eagle's feather stuck erect in the hat in the  Rob Roy Macgregor fashion.  The correspondent of an English newspaper, after describing this outrageous "rig" (which, by the way, is rendered still more conspicuous by its glaring and strongly contrasted colors), says that the impudent bravado with which it is worn is more offensive to decency than the dress itself!  Such is the mode, in the court circle of France under the eyes of a matron Empress.  Whether she set the fashion or not, we cannot say; but as she some time ago assumed the masculine hat and cane, it is quite likely that the Hessian boots, short petticoats, belt and chieftain's feather are specialties introduced by the gay and festive, though middle-aged and somewhat faded, Eugenie.

This was late in the war--November 26, 1864 to be exact.

Welcome to This Century, the US Navy

According to this PCMag item, the Navy is finally, finally going to stop using all caps for its messages.  But the last two paragraphs don't give me confidence:

"At this point, the Navy still has systems that can't handle messages with upper and lowercase letters. "In these instances, the C2OIX system will be able to convert the text to upper case before making final delivery," McCarty said.
That problem is expected to be fixed by 2015, the Navy said."

Good Sentence on the Nature of Our Politicians

"For starters, it means that the entire political system is filtering strongly for a very peculiar personality type"

From Matt Yglesias, here.

Security Clearances and Math

Somehow the math doesn't add up.  There was an article in the Post this morning, then I found this blog post.

 "The number of persons who held security clearances for access to classified information last year exceeded 4.2 million — far more than previously estimated — according to a new intelligence community report to Congress (pdf)."

OPM says there are 2.756 million federal employees, and a total of 4.403 million legislative, executive and military branch employees.  I never had a security clearance, either in the Army or in USDA, but the figures imply that the average person in government does.  Why, for goodness sake?  I can see the law enforcement branches, but not much else.

I hope the figures are wrong.  I hope what's going on is that the data bases of security clearances aren't being purged very well when people leave the government.  Or is it the case that: once cleared, always cleared, and leaving government doesn't cancel the clearance. 

Defeat for Research and Promotion Plans

One legacy of the New Deal (perhaps even of Herbert Hoover) was the creation of government-sponsored, farmer approved cartels called research and promotion plans.  Basically a referendum of farmers approves a plan to assess a fee on sales to be used by an organization to promote the commodity.  Some raisin producers have taken USDA to court, made it to the Supreme Court, and won--at least that's how I interpret this post at SCOTUS blog.  (In the case of raisins, there's requirements for the handlers to hold reserves, and the issue is whether the people suing were handlers or producers and whether the reserve requirement was a "takings" under the Constitution.

I wonder if athletes will try again to challenge the cartels run by the NCAA and the pro leagues?

"Personal Data"

Some senators get upset by EPA releasing personal data tied to CAFO's. 

I continue to be perplexed--I think it was the DC Circuit Court said in 1994 ASCS had to give payment data to EWG, including names and addresses. I think the logic was the data wasn't personal.  But now we're saying it is personal, which is the position ASCS had taken since the Privacy Act was passed.

The Joys of Dairying

Threecollie at Northview Dairy reminds me of one of the joys which I really, really miss--milking a wet cow.  

It's one of things aspiring farmers should experience before investing too much of their hopes and money into a dairyman's life.

More Administrative Procedure Act Weeds

I mentioned an amendment to the farm bill from House Judiciary, requiring compliance with the Administrative Procedure Act.

Today I followed up an a USDA notice in the Federal Register, not something I usually do, and found they're withdrawing a 1971 statement on APA compliance.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is proposing to rescind the Statement of Policy titled “Public Participation in Rule Making,” published in the Federal Register on July 24, 1971 (36 FR 13804) that requires agencies in USDA to follow the Administrative Procedure Act's (APA) notice-and-comment rulemaking procedures even in situations where the APA does not require it. The Statement of Policy implemented a 1969 recommendation by the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), which urged Congress to amend the APA to remove the exemption from the notice-and-comment requirement for rulemakings relating to “public property, loans, grants, benefits, or contracts,” adding that agencies should follow the notice-and-comment procedures pending amendment of the APA.

They've several justifications for withdrawal: loan programs are governed by OMB rules, some notices of proposed rulemaking don't attract significant comments, Congress never adopted the 1969 recommendation of the ACUS, information on rules is much more readily available in today's environment than it was in 1971. 

I know the Dems revived the ACUS. I wonder what they've done, if anything, to bring the rulemaking/public participation process into the 21st century.

What the Government Can Do With My Phone Records

As a Verizon subscriber, the government has my phone records or rather the records of what my number was doing: what numbers called my number, what numbers my number called, etc.

Even though I'm a longtime supporter of ACLU, it doesn't particularly bother me.  I do wish, however, that NSA and FCC would put their heads together and stop all the automated calls I get.  My number is on the Do Not Call registry, but it doesn't stop the machines calling my machine.  Surely NSA has all the data FCC would need to identify the callers and stop the calls?  IMHO those calls are a more serious threat to the safety and sanity of the country than Al Qaeda is.

Into the Bureaucratic Weeds with the Farm Bill

From Farm Policy:

"A news release yesterday from Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R., Va.) noted in part that, “[Chairman Goodlatte] introduced an amendment that would ensure regulations imposed under the FARRM Act are subject to promulgation under the Administrative Procedure Act and the Congressional Review Act, which falls under the jurisdiction of the House Judiciary Committee.  The version of the bill reported by the House Agriculture Committee last month waived this requirement. Congressman Goodlatte’s amendment passed the House Judiciary Committee by voice vote with bipartisan support.”

 I've not followed this closely.  Farm Policy goes on to explain this action on the part of House Judiciary is part of the infighting over the dairy provisions in the House Ag farm bill.  Chairman Goodlatte wants USDA to do some studies.  But from the description, it sounds more general, perhaps applying to all provisions of the farm bill. 

In my memory the farm bill always contained an exemption from the APA for production adjustment programs.  The usual reason was that Congress never got the legislation completed in time, so we were always behind the eight ball in getting the program in the field.  By waiving APA requirements Congress could ask us to act quickly and keep their constituents happy.  Now as I write my memory is being tickled with the idea that maybe one of the attorneys in OGC did push us to comply once or twice, but by putting out an interim rule instead of doing the proposed rule/public comment/ final rule process. 

I may also be wrong on this, but I think the APA always technically applied to the farm bill, but in the 70's ASCS ignored it.  It was only with the 1983 PIK program with its contracts that we got really serious about involving the lawyers and dotting every i.

Federal Program Inventory

Performance.govhttp://goals.performance.gov/federalprograminventory has a new inventory of federal programs.  I'm not sure why it exists, or how it differs from the Catalog of  Federal Domestic Assistance Programs maintained since I was a new bureaucrat by GSA.  The administration is cutting redundant data centers; are they creating redundant catalogs?

The End of the "Healthy Immigrant" Paradox?

The Times Saturday had a report on the results of a new German census which cuts the German population.  Germany had thought they had a handle on their population because of their mandatory registration system, but the first census in many years showed different.

According to the article what happened is that immigrants registered themselves in a place, which was added to the cut.  But when immigrants decided to leave Germany, they often didn't report their leaving to the authorities, meaning the total population was inflated.  What's more, because those shadow people were never reported as having died, it came to seem that immigrants were healthier than native Germans--the "healthy immigrant" paradox.

What's interesting is that scholars have worked on the "healthy immigrant effect" in this and other countries, offering varying reasons for the phenomenon.  Google the term and see.  So I wonder whether there's similar problems with the data being used to assess the effect in the U.S.?

Should the White House Garden Be Quarantined?

That's the suggestion Chris Clayton makes (tongue in cheek) at his Progressive Farmer blog, referring to the GMO wheat found in Oregon.:

For conservatives, the wheat controversy could lead to "Roundup-gate," but because of USDA's handling of the situation. No, this scandal goes straight to the White House. You see, First Lady Michelle Obama planted wheat in her garden this year. We were told in April by White House policy advisor on nutrition, Sam Kass, that the wheat came from Oregon or Washington and was an "experimental variety." However, the White House assured blogger Eddie Gehman Kohan of Obama Foodorama that there was no reason to believe the wheat is genetically engineered. http://dld.bz/…

A good patriot would call for the White House garden to be sealed off, sprayed with glyphosate and tested. Perhaps the House Government Oversight Committee also needs to investigate the source of the seeds.

Two themes run through the lives of my relatives and ancestors: teaching/preaching and science.  So both lead me to endorse Mr. Clayton's position and disdain Japan's, S. Korea, EU etc.  And his position on raw milk is pretty good, too.

Germans Tip?

Now I'm a good tipper.  I worked in a dormitory cafeteria for 4 years in college to help pay my way, so I identify with servers, and by extension others who are tippable. 

My mother was of German descent, and somehow I always thought of Germans as tight, organized, methodical, but not good tippers. 

That's why this piece on NBCnews is surprising.

My Relative, the Zombie

A relative of mine is engaged in selling a house and buying a condo, so called the electric utility to arrange the transfer of billing, and had major problems getting it done..  The third person my relative dealt with finally figured out the problem: relative was dead.

Apparently when the spouse died some years back, the person who handled the update of records then added my relative's name to the account, but then recorded the relative as dead, rather than the spouse.

On Public Service, Bureaucrats and Libraries

Neil Irwin at Wonkblog has an interview with Paul Volcker on his new ideas for governance. 

One exchange led me to do a Google ngram, comparing the occurrences of "public service" and "bureaucrat".  In American books the frequency for the two started out with "public service" more frequent and "bureaucrat" less, but the two lines cross about 1976 so we now think more of "bureaucrats" and less of "public service".  "Public service" peaked in 1920 or so.

That's bad.


But I'd like to recognize a very good bureaucrat, Ginny Cooper, the retiring head of the DC public libraries.  Among other things, in 7 years she tripled the number of books checked out.  I remember using first the Mt. Vernon building, then the MLK building on G street a lot in my years in the city.  Libraries to my mind are more important than schools--you know some of the students in the school are not interested, but you know all of the people in the library are interested.  (Except for the homeless, which is a problem in Reston as well as DC.)

Fading Titans

First Eastman Kodak went bankrupt, now Sony's electronics business is their Achilles heel.

What's the quote from Ecclesiastes?

Harvesting the White House Garden

This week, they had a harvest event--inviting the kids who planted in April to harvest in late May.  More and more the garden becomes a publicity event, because a true garden would be harvested (and planted) right along, in succession.  Radishes, lettuce, scallions, peas, etc. grow on their own schedule, not the convenience of a PR event.  I'm not writing to criticize Mrs. Obama and her staff. It's just a matter of fact you can't live real life in the White House, at least not if you invite the cameras in.

As a followup to a previous post which I can't find so may not have completed, despite my skepticism their spring wheat is heading out and seems to be filling the rows pretty well.  Just a reminder I sometimes (often?) don't know what I'm talking about.

Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny: the Case of Drones

The "ontogeny" bit is a stray factoid from my 55+ years old high school biology class.  I assume it's been invalidated by now, but the idea was that looking at the progress of the human embryo you could see the progress of the phylla (i.e. single-cell through gills to lungs, etc.)

Anyhow, on a completely different subject, here's a piece on the arms race in drones.  Every country with a military seems to want to add armed drones to their arsenal.  Now the evolution of aircraft went from reconnaissance and artillery spotting  to bombing to hand guns and rifles to machine guns.  So far drones have gone through the first two stages.  I'm waiting for a drone-destroyer aircraft/drone that will seek to regain dominance over the airspace.  (That's what happened on the sea when torpedoes arrived: first you had torpedo boats, then you had torpedo boat destroyers, which became just destroyers.) 

On Giving Up Books

Stanley Fish, a famous and controversial professor of literature (I think that's right), writes a blog for the NYTimes.  In this post, he writes about getting rid of most of his books, what he feels about it (not much), and his qualms about possibly retiring.

For someone who's been reading avidly since an early age it's a melancholy piece.  But I'm afraid my attitude towards my books is more like one of his commenters: "you'll have to pry them from my cold dead hands".  But in reality I read very little literature these days, mostly biographies and histories, and I could and should clean out the house.  (But see my previous post on hoarding.)

No GMO Organisms

The Times has an article today on the search for supplies of commodities which aren't GMO.  Seems to be particularly inspired by Whole Foods decision to emphasize such products.  (I own some stock in Whole Foods.)  It cites a premium of $1.50 to $2 per bushel for grain, and discusses the difficulty in doing a dual-track supply system.   It also includes this, which I found astonishing:

And farmers cannot simply replace genetically engineered seeds with conventional ones, because soil in which genetically modified crops have been grown may not be immediately suitable for conventional crops.

“There’s a transition period required,” said Richard Kamolvathin, senior vice president at Verity Farms, which sells meats, grains and other products derived from conventional crops, as well as natural soil amendments. “You don’t just stop growing G.M.O. seed and then start growing non-G.M.O. seed.”

 Now I understand moving from conventional to organic production requires a 3-year phase in, but just switching seed?  I suppose there might be herbicide/pesticide residues, but how long do they last?