"Actively Engaged in Farming"

I was in the FSA website, trying to find data on corn prices. (It used to be there, but they've revamped the site and their PDF documents and I can't find it so I had to revert to Google.) But while I was there I ran across this fact sheet on the Administration's proposal for capping payments to producers with over $200,000 in "adjusted gross income". (I've an alternate proposal.) (Background, Senator Chambliss in the Senate Ag hearings took Johanns over the coals on the proposal, talking about farmers who had to pay off their equipment. This fact sheet explains there are 25 categories of deductions from income to arrive at AGI. It doesn't say that Chambliss was wrong, but I infer it.)

According to the IRS, 38,000 filers had AGI over $200 K and received farm payments.

"These 38,000 tax filers received 4.9 percent of all farm program payments or approximately $400 million.

The 38,000 tax filers who had an AGI of $200,000 or more and received farm program payments in 2004 includes both Schedule F filers and Form 4835 filers. Schedule F is filed by farm proprietors. Of all Schedule F filers, only 1.2 percent, or 25,000, had an AGI of $200,000 or more and received farm program payments.

Form 4835 is used by tax filers who don't materially participate in running a farm to report farm rental income or expenses. Of all Form 4835 filers, only 2 percent, or 13,000, had an AGI of $200,000 or more and received farm program payments in 2004."

What's not noted is that IRS and FSA have different definitions of "farming". If I understand correctly, IRS doesn't consider Form 4835 filers to be "farmers". But FSA does, under the permissive definition of "actively engaged".

User Interface at Fault--Bureaucrat Screws Up

They don't cite the name of the designer, but the conclusion of the panel in FL is that faulty design of the ballot is the reason for a 13 percent difference in votes between the Senate race and the House race. It shows the importance of forms, whether on paper or on the web, as a means of communication between people.

Pet peeve--all of the (mostly liberal) concern about the lack of an audit trail and the possible hacking of touch screen voting systems. Audit trails are good, but the energy is misplaced. As best I can recall the mechanical lever action voting machines never had an audit trail and presumably could have been hacked (sticking something into the gears to interrupt the counting of votes for a candidate). But we never worried.

How Important Are Farmers?

John Phipps has an interesting post on the importance of farmers in the economy. Based on Commerce Dept figures many "agricultural" counties get 3 to 10 times more income from transfer payments such as Social Security and TANF than they do from farming.

Our Health Care System at Work

Further experience with our health care system. My provider is Kaiser, which has its own doctors and labs in the DC area. But when someone covered by the plan travels outside of the area and has emergency surgery, you get into the complications of our marvelous system.

First of all, Kaiser doesn't take the step of assigning an event code when you call in to talk to them about the emergency surgery. Apparently the call is recorded, but there's no automated link to the bill paying process.

Because fee for service is competitive and individual, Kaiser gets bills for the surgery from:

1. emergency room physician
2. lab
3. pathologist
4. anesthesia
5. surgeon
6. hospital.
   

Each bill is individually prepared by someone in the relevant office and coded and routed to the appropriate Kaiser facility, or not. So far we've had bills go to Kaiser California rather than Kaiser MD, bills miscoded (according to Kaiser), bills with the wrong tax ID number on them (according to Kaiser), bills that have been delayed in the mail. Each bill seems to be considered individually by Kaiser (they do have a database that the administrative service specialist can check) and I'm informed individually of the payment or nonpayment (through a very poorly designed form). Whoever is considering them in Kaiser does not have an overview of what actually transpired on the ground but is either trying to interpret the fragments or, probably more likely, is mechanically following some rules. It's now been over 4 months and everyone has not yet been paid.

Because there are multiple parties involved (biller, multiple Kaiser offices, me), each of us thinks the problem is with the other. Each automatically believes that we've done our bit, now it's time for X to finish the job. That's part of the "faceless" part of faceless bureaucrats.

It's no wonder that we spend so much on health care.

Starbucks

The NY Times cites a memo from Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, in this times article
but you can see the whole thing on starbucksgossip.com. (Although I drink the coffee every day, I've never bought their shares.)

It's interesting, not only the use of a blog within a corporation, but also the problems within a bureaucracy. What is the mission of Starbucks--provide great coffee at cheap prices or provide a great experience? He doesn't say, but some of the savings from the decisions made by his bureaucrats, to switch to flavor locked packaging for example, probably also enable them to be more environmentally conscious. How does a bureaucracy make the tradeoffs? His point is that he and his bureaucracy made decisions with tradeoffs of which they were not aware.

Richard Lehman, CIA's Great Bureaucrat

The Times posts the obit for Richard Lehman:

Mr. Lehman created the President’s Intelligence Check List (referred to as the “pickle”) in 1961, after President Kennedy complained of being overwhelmed by intelligence memorandums, many duplicating material while sometimes leaving out vital information.

“Kennedy’s enthusiastic response to the PICL ensured that it became an agency institution,” Richard Kovar, a C.I.A. analyst, wrote in 2000, in an introduction to an interview he conducted with Mr. Lehman for “Studies in Intelligence,” the C.I.A.’s quarterly in-house journal. “For many years thereafter, Lehman played a key role in supervising the agency’s current intelligence support for the White House, including briefings of presidential candidates.”

One of the jobs of bureaucratic innovators is to create the forms and formats through which people can communicate. Presumably Truman and Ike had had regular briefings on intelligence material, but the process of daily briefings using a prescribed format took a while to evolve. How many mistakes were made when decisions were made based on misunderstanding of the data, or the data never reached the President?

Moving to today's world, did Bush and Cheney know about the rules for National Intelligence Estimates--did Tenet ever have a training session with them or did everyone just assume that everyone knew the rules? (I suspect the latter.)

Ted Williams, Bureaucracy, and Habitat for Humanity

The NY Times has an article describing the difficulties that Habitat for Humanity is having in constructing housing in LA/MS after Katrina. The problem is that each local affiliate does their thing, and is geared to build 12-15 houses a year. So their bureaucracy/organization isn't set up to build hundreds of houses in one locality in a year.

Reminds me of Ted Williams. When opposing teams started using the "shift" on him (moving the shortstop behind second base and leaving big holes on the left side of the diamond, he famously refused to choke up and dump hits to left. He may just have been stubborn, or he may have figured that trying to do something differently than that which brought him success was a sure way to fail.

Space and Bureaucracy--Bull in the Bullpen?

DC has a new, young whippersnapper of a mayor--Adam Fenty. In his quest for excellence he went off to NYC and listened to Mr. Bloomberg, saw his "bullpen" office, and is reproducing it in DC. See this Post article by David Nakamura, who does a good job in considering the pros and cons.

The intangibles of space and schedule impact the work. I remember working in an office where we all arrived at the same time (before Flexitour, etc.) and all were coffee drinkers. So we (5 of us) had a natural staff meeting around the coffee pot to exchange information and get on a common footing. It made the office work.

Bloomberg seems to have done well in NYC. But he's older and has much more administrative experience than Fenty, who's only run his council member office. My guess is that the bullpen won't work as well for Fenty, who's going to have to learn on the job. It is, however, a valuable symbol for him. He wants a rep as the shaker and mover and this will help.

Jane Galt and Behaviorial Economics

Jane Galt's Asymmetrical Information gets attention from Greg Mankiw and Tyler Cowen for this post, which says:

The post below also applies to behavioural economics, which the left seems to believe is a magical proof of the benevolence of government intervention, because after all, people are stupid, so they need the government to protect them from themselves. My take is a little subtler than that:

1) People are often stupid
2) Bureaucrats are the same stupid people, with bad incentives.

I'm out of my depth, but I put together a thought from Dawkins in the Blind Watchmaker with economics. That is, it doesn't matter whether most people are stupid (in an economic, utility-seeking sense) or not for economic theory to work. If the mass of people act randomly irrationally, and a minority read the Consumer Reports and act rationally, the end result will be the same (but slower) as if everyone read the CR. (Dawkins said it didn't matter whether creatures had eyes or not, just so long as there was some variation in receptivity to light. The minority that had the better sensitivity would, through selection, lead to better eyes.)

1950's Nostalgia--Bill Bryson

I've mentioned the latest Bill Bryson book in the context of disputing Michael Pollan. I happened on this British site (ah, the wonders of the Internet), which includes some 50's images, plus (under the label "Image of 1950's Bounty", the picture of the food for a year for a family of 4 I referred to.

I have to say those chickens look scrawny. Note they're whole chickens. Rather than outsourcing the cutup process to immigrants at Tysons plants, mother does it herself as part of her hours at the stove and sink.

Electricity

Two contrasting articles today:

In the Washington Post:

"...today the state uses less energy per capita than any other state in the country, defying the international image of American energy gluttony. Since 1974, California has held its per capita energy consumption essentially constant, while energy use per person for the United States overall has jumped 50 percent.California has managed that feat through a mixture of mandates, regulations and high prices. The state has been able to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, keep utility companies happy and maintain economic growth."

In the NYTimes:

"...residents in this part of Illinois are seeing some of the biggest rate spikes in the country — in some cases, increases of 100 percent to 200 percent.

The higher rates are touching off a fresh round of national debate over unleashing competitive forces on traditionally regulated electricity markets. Opening up the markets was supposed to lead to savings for consumers. But that did not turn out as regulators predicted. The anticipated competition among energy suppliers never fully emerged as natural gas prices more than doubled in the last decade."

I'm not sure what to make of all this. My February bill was the highest it's been (because of cold) and I don't feature doubling it (according to the articles, VA has a rate half of California's). On the other hand, that much of an increase would lead me to more conservation, which would be good for everyone.

x

NOT ALL CAPS

From a Weather Service alert:

"URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE ALBANY NY
434 AM EST FRI FEB 16 2007
NYZ038-161600-
/O.CON.KALY.LE.W.0008.000000T0000Z-070216T2300Z/
/O.CON.KALY.WC.Y.0006.000000T0000Z-070216T1600Z/
SOUTHERN HERKIMER-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...ILION...HERKIMER...LITTLE FALLS...
MOHAWK...FRANKFORT...DOLGEVILLE
434 AM EST FRI FEB 16 2007
...LAKE EFFECT SNOW WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 PM EST THIS
AFTERNOON...
...WIND CHILL ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 11 AM EST THIS
MORNING...
A LAKE EFFECT SNOW WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 PM TODAY
AND A WIND CHILL ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 11 AM THIS
MORNING FOR SOUTHERN HERKIMER COUNTY. "

Please, bureaucrats at the Weather Service, stop using all caps for emphasis, just because that's the only thing you had back in the days of Teletypes. These days you can emphasize in many ways, whether by color, type characteristics, images, or whatever.

Brooks Jinxes Clinton

David Brooks just endorsed Hillary Clinton for President, thereby jinxing her. His column is based on analysis of her speeches in the Senate on the authorization for the Iraq war. He finds her navigating the hazards, being true to Bill's record, including bypassing the UN upon occasion, supporting a President, but being opposed to the war.

"When you look back at Clinton’s thinking, you don’t see a classic war supporter. You see a person who was trying to seek balance between opposing arguments. You also see a person who deferred to the office of the presidency. You see a person who, as president, would be fox to Bush’s hedgehog: who would see problems in their complexities rather than in their essentials; who would elevate procedural concerns over philosophical ones; who would postpone decision points for as long as possible; and who would make distinctions few heed.

Today, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party believes that the world, and Hillary Clinton in particular, owes it an apology. If she apologizes, she’ll forfeit her integrity. She will be apologizing for being herself."

Her mistake was in believing that GW was someone worthy of support.

Ralph Olson, R.I.P.

Ralph Olson died in January. Who was Ralph? Originally from Vermont, worked for Social Security at one time, which he talked about more than he did about his WWII military service. He had been a typist in the SSA pool, using manual typewriters. He was expected to be fast and accurate. When I knew him it was a fellow editor in ASCS, in 1968 to 1972, when he retired.

In those far gone days, directives were typed, then reproduced by offset lithography--meaning that the printers took a picture of the master that was used to print. So the typed page didn't need to be perfect, because imperfections and corrections could be hidden through the picture-taking process. So when editors asked for changes, the typists would use white-out correction fluid, or correction tape, or, for really big changes, cut and paste blocks of text to compose one page. But sometimes they would have to retype the whole thing. Some handbooks would show their age, when the original page had been typed in 1960 on one typewriter with one typeface, with successive changes and amendments made over the intervening years with newer and different typefaces, with some typists more or less skilled in matching spacing and getting the alignment right.

In those patriarchal days, the typists were almost all women, the writers almost all men. So editors would ask writers for changes, writers would pass the work on to the typists. Some typists would push back, pointing out that the requested change was pointless, just a matter of format or of following some arcane and stupid rule. If they persuaded the writer, the writer would come back to argue with the editor. The whole process turned into continuous negotiations, almost worthy of the 6-power talks with North Korea.

Now, as I've said, Ralph prided himself on having been a fast and accurate typist, so he had little time or sympathy for the typists. After all, 250 words on a page, meant a good typist would take 5 minutes to retype the whole thing, clean and pristine. So Ralph would huff and puff at the writer. Sometimes he would almost imply that the writer was at fault for tolerating such a lazy and unskilled typists. But more often he would cave, asking another editor for confirmation that a requested change could be waived.

Ralph leaves no immediate relatives--he had some nephews or nieces if I remember. As the number of veterans of WWII dwindle and fade, so too does the ranks of those who typed in pools.

Compliments to a Republican

From the media:

"Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns wasn’t exactly stepping into the lions’ den, but it was close.

A few hours after he announced USDA was proposing to end farm payments for anyone with an adjusted gross income of more than $200,000 and eliminate the three-entity rule, Johanns traveled to a meeting with farmers in Tunica, Miss.

Tunica County is the home of Dick Flowers, the cotton, rice and soybean farmer who became famous on “60 Minutes” for receiving millions of dollars in government subsidies in the late 1990s."

I don't think it was "late 1990s" because I think I was still at USDA when it aired. Those of us who dealt with payment limitation issues were very aware of it. At least one of us enjoyed watching Mr. Flowers squirm. I give Johanns credit for the trip.

Great Bureaucrats, Robert Moses Revisited

Robert Caro did a great biography of Robert Moses, a man who held a number of public offices in New York City and New York state, and did much building (roads, parks, housing projects) from the New Deal to the 60's. In Caro's book Moses comes across as a very talented bureaucrat, who becomes obsessed with building and building ultimately to the detriment of New York. Jane Jacobs was the critic who articulated the case against him in "The Life and Death of Great American Cities.

This LA Times article discusses a revisionist look at Moses mounted as art exhibitions in NYC. The two people, Moses and Jacobs, are at the ends of a continuum--the difference between the person, the expert, who knows best and the romanticized evolution from the roots, which also glamorizes the past. I tend to lean towards the first and away from the second, but in reality they're two halves of the human personality and both are needed.

They Don't Make Wars Nor Armies as They Used to

Hank Bauer just died. (Obit in NYTimes today) For those of you who weren't born soon enough, Hank was an outfielder for the NY Yankees back when I was a Yankee fan (1948-on), starring in the World Series and then a World Series-winning manager for the Baltimore Orioles. He also was a Marine vet, spending almost 3 years in the Pacific and winning medals.

Yesterday I heard a snippet on C-Span of the Secretary of the Army testifying. He was saying that the policy was one year deployed, two years home station. Then Lehrer News Hour ran the photos of 14 killed in Iraq.

In the old days you often enlisted (or were drafted) for 3 years or the duration. (3 years for the regulars of the Continental line in the Revolution, 3 for some in the Civil War, duration for WWII). And, as Bauer shows, you often fought for the duration. (Audie Murphy, the most decorated WWII soldier fought from North Africa into Germany, Nov. 42 to Jan 45 or so.) Of course, you weren't in the war continuously. In the Pacific, at least in the island-hopping phase, islands were taken fairly rapidly. In the Atlantic, there were invasions and preparing for invasions. For those troops who got stuck slogging up the boot of Italy, they'd be rotated in and out of line, as was also the case in WWI. So for our "combat" troops in Iraq, they're probably seeing more continuous danger over their year tour (for the Army, 7 months for Marines, I think) than Hank Bauer did. If you graphed it, one continuous line for Iraq, one discontinuous up and down line for Bauer.

Another thing I note--there's hardly any privates dying in Iraq. I assume, with a volunteer army, everyone gets promoted at least to sergeant E-5. There may also be the sort of grade inflation in the armed services that the rest of the government experiences--we're all above average.

Bureaucratic Systems and Ptolemaic Systems

Was reading "From the Archives", whose author seems to be a pedant after my own heart, (hat tip to Tyler Cowen) which got me thinking about regulations and then to thinking about scientific theories, particularly Ptolemaic system (i.e. geocentric).

Now I was told once that the way ancient astronomers developed the geocentric system was, whenever they had an observation that didn't fit the theory, they slapped on another epicycle or other widget to solve the problem. And the theory worked, from Aristotle through Ptolemy right up to Galileo it corresponded with observations as well as any competing system.

Well, that's a metaphor for the way bureaucratic systems develop. Some policy maker lays out a set of bureaucratic rules, or forms, or organizational structures that seems to fit the situation as they understand it. But then the bureaucracy gets hit by members of the public (i.e., their customers, clients, users, or whatever hell buzzword is in favor) with unexpected situations--reality is more complex than the theory. So the policy makers come up with some solution, often a compromise among interests, sometimes half-assed or make-shift, that gets added onto the bureaucratic rules, gets made another form in the set of forms, gets a special office in the bureaucracy (i.e., Doug Feith in DOD). And time passes, more situations come up, more fixes are made. Pretty soon a once effective bureaucratic system gets constipated, because there's too many twists and turns in the pipeline for the s... to flow.

How To Handle Limitations on Farm Payments

The USDA farm bill proposes changes on payment limitations, including making farmers ineligible if their adjusted gross income (AGI) is $200,000 or more (now $2.5 million). My guess, without doing much research, is that this is just another proposal that won't be enacted. That's the history of changes in payment limitation; lots more get proposed than get enacted.

There are at least two aspects of the proposal, aside from the general opposition to payment limitations, that will play into the prospects:

1. The size of the change, from $2.5 mill to $200 K. The bigger the change, the stronger the opposition from groups that are opposed.
2. The all or nothing aspect.

My suggestion, to USDA, to Congress, would be to consider a progressive payment structure. Assume that FSA has the payee's AGI recorded in its payment system. (The bureaucratic problem is getting the data attached to the payee; once you do that, getting the data into the computer system should not be a big deal.) It then would be easy to program the payment calculation to factor payments according to a progressive rule. For example:

AGI Payment

• < $100,000 100 percent of calculated amount
• <$200,000 80 percent of calculated
• <$500,000 50 percent of calculated
• <$1 mill 25 percent
• >$1 mill 0

Vary the amounts and percentages however you want, put in as many levels as you want.

The advantages of the proposal are:

1. Makes the implementation more gradual
2. Counters the widespread criticism that the bigger the farmer the bigger the payment--makes payments "progressive" in some sense
3. Might make payees less likely to try to evade the limitation. (The incentive to evade is variable, like boiling a frog slowly.)

Based on my experience with the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings factoring of payments in 1986, it would be imperative to think through the relationship of factored payment dollars to the payment limitation.

Why Bureaucracies (Plural)?

One reason is good old human nature, as in schadenfreude.
Although I'm almost perfect, I'm not above feeling a bit of satisfaction when I read a GAO Report on the problems NRCS has had implementing payment programs. [Background: The predecessor agencies of NRCS (National Resource Conservation Service) and FSA (Farm Service Agency) fought for many years over which one would handle payments for conservation programs. FSA won for about 30 years, but lost them around the time I was retiring. ]

GAO says:

"Despite legislative and regulatory provisions, it is still possible for producers to receive duplicate payments through CSP and other USDA conservation programs because of similarities in the conservation actions financed through these programs. However, NRCS did not have a comprehensive process to preclude or identify such duplicate payments. In reviewing NRCS's payments data, GAO found a number of examples of duplicate payments.

NRCS state officials agreed that the payments made in these four cases were duplicates. They stated that they were unaware that such duplication was occurring and that they would inform their district offices of it. NRCS headquarters officials stated that the agency lacks a comprehensive process to either preclude duplicate payments or identify them after a contract has been awarded. Instead, these officials said, as a guard against potential duplication, NRCS relies on the institutional knowledge of its field staff and the records they keep."

That's laughable, but what one should expect when a bureaucracy has to do something (i.e., make payments) it hasn't done before. It reinforces the position of NASCOE (the FSA employee lobbying organization) that there should only be one administrative organization for offices serving farmers. That's what I worked on in the early 90's, then lost enthusiasm, partly because the Department didn't understand itself, partly because NRCS had too much lobbying clout to allow it to pass, and finally because the end result was going to be reducing the number of jobs in rural areas. I've still not squared that circle.

The End of Tradition--No Spit Shines

The NYTimes today reports on a new Army uniform. The focus mostly is on the use of Velcro to attach name tags and insignia and the end of dry cleaning. (Seamstresses and dry cleaners did good business around Army bases.) But buried in the piece is the move from spit-shined leather boots to "tan 'desert boots' made of suede and synthetic materials."

So no more spit shines in the Army. Even 40 years ago, the leather boots were challenged. Once you got to Vietnam, you very quickly learned that the "in" thing were the jungle combat boots, which had leather toes and heels, but canvas uppers--the idea being if you were in the boonies and wading through water you wanted the water to drain from the boots, not stay inside and help you get jungle rot. They were also significantly lighter. The boots were scarce, first being issued to the advisers and Special Forces, then to combat troops. But naturally they popped up on the black market and REMF's like me got their hands on them.

But no more spit shines? If I remember, the initial hurdles for this recruit were making the bed and shining the shoes. The bed I mastered after a few tries. (I hadn't formulated Harshaw's law then--I'm a slow learner.) The shoes were more of a challenge. Never did get a great shine.

Virginia Postrel has an article on beauty in the Atlantic I skimmed--quotes researchers saying that female beauty ties to fertility and vigor (i.e., hormonal levels, etc.). So too spit shined shoes were a signal to the training sergeants of one's capacity and/or willingness to adapt to the Army's ways. It's a loss.

Michael Pollan from Others

John Phipps comments on Pollan's new piece here . Nice to know there's another partial skeptic in the world.

Marjorie Harshaw Robie

I welcome my cousin Marjorie to the world of blogging. (See the link I've added, though you'd best wait a couple weeks to give her time to post something.) Remember Harshaw's Rule.

The "Surge" and New Orleans

New Orleans was damaged by the storm surge, but its post-Katrina fate says something about the possible fate of Baghdad after the Bush/Petraeus surge. Today's NYTimes has an article on murder in the city. One aspect is the distrust shown the police by the residents of the areas most affected by the violence. The police can't effectively solve murders and gang violence because they can't get information from the citizens, the justice system can't convict and jail offenders because the police don't build good cases for them, and the citizens can't trust the police or justice system because the violent are amongst them, laughing at "90-day murders" (i.e, a killing that you spent 90 days in jail for).

Assume the surge in Baghdad has an effect. It's possible. Malcolm Gladwell has familiarized us with the concept of "tipping point". Presumably there's some level of force that is sufficient to restore order in the city. (I remember the military--National Guardsmen? or regulars?-- on the streets of DC after the 1968 riots.) Gen. Casey thinks 2 brigades of US troops plus the Iraqi forces could do the job, Sen. McCain were thinking 50,000 more US plus Iraqis were needed, someone else might say 100,000. No one knows.

But assume Petraeus and Bush are right and 5 brigades shut down the bombings and the sectarian killings. Suppose for the sake of argument that no one dies in Baghdad from any sort of violence for a month. (I know, that's ridiculous, but so?) Then what? Do you slowly reduce the number of troops until you reach a point of low, but acceptable, violence? What is that point? How much violence have the Israelis been willing to live with? How about the residents of the United Kingdom? Or Spain?

I know the Bush/Petraeus strategy is for economic development to happen, but that doesn't cure things fast.

Can we really do better in Baghdad than in New Orleans?

Art Monk, Bureaucrat

Art Monk, the great receiver for Joe Gibbs and his Washington Redskins (first incarnation), missed out again on being voted to the Football Hall of Fame. His contemporary and rival, Michael Irwin, of the Dallas Cowboys, made it.

Irwin was the more flamboyant figure, making more dramatic catches, being more vocal in the media, having a more colorful (to use a euphemism) private life, than Monk. It's just a little unfair to Irwin to call him a predecessor of T.O., unfair in that he was able to stay on one team for his career. Monk lasted longer, made more catches (had the record at one point), kept out of the media, and did the little things. Irwin fit the image of the Cowboys, swaggering as "America's team", while Monk fit the earnest sobersided Joe Gibbs style of football.

So, naturally, the squeaky wheel got the grease. Such is the fate of bureaucrats*.

* yes, a football player is a bureaucrat. He follows the rules of the game and the playbook of the team to deal with others, i.e., the opposing players and the officials.

Wash Your Hands

My momma said: "wash your hands". This article from the LA Times repeats the fact that health care professionals don't listen to their mommas.

By the way, it's likely everyone on earth is here because someone failed to wash their hands in the past.

Pollan's Back, and I Disagree As Usual

For some reason I climb the wall reading Michael Pollan. In his most recent piece,,
entitled "Unhappy Meals", he attacks "nutritionism" and preaches: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." I don't have a problem with the bottom line content, but I do with the argument. It seems to me to combine unhealthy amounts of vaguely left-wing paranoia over exploitation of consumers and romantic nonsense that carries over from the 1960's granola days. (I say this as someone who claims to be a populist and whose mother was fervently interested in organic food in 1950, probably before Mr. Pollan was born.)

Quotes from the article in italics, my comments follow:

"Once, food was all you could eat, but today there are lots of other edible foodlike substances in the supermarket." Nice snide innuendo there, making a distinction between "food" (good, wholesome) and "edible foodlike substances" foisted on us poor consumers by the evil nutritionists and the food industry, abetted by journalists.

"you should probably avoid food products that make health claims. Why? Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat." Again, the distinction. Of course, Mr. Pollan is a fellow-traveler of the organic interests (I can use innuendo and smears too, :-) ) which is notable for its health claims.

The story of how the most basic questions about what to eat ever got so complicated reveals a great deal about the institutional imperatives of the food industry, nutritional science and — ahem — journalism, three parties that stand to gain much from widespread confusion surrounding what is, after all, the most elemental question an omnivore confronts. For some reason, consumers and their needs play no role in the history of the last 30 years or so. I'd suggest that reading Bill Bryson's "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid"
would be a fine corrective. For one thing, he uses a Life picture from 1951 as front and endpapers. It shows a family of four and all the food they would eat in a year. What's striking is that it's "food", not "meals" (which is really what Pollan is dealing with). The mother spent hours in the kitchen converting the food into meals. Bryson cites a figure of 5+ hours a day, which seems a bit excessive. (On the other hand, my wife spends significant time cooking our evening meal.

The big changes in American cuisine over the last 55 years have been the change from eating at home to eating out (that's now almost half of every food dollar), from cooking raw food to eating prepared meals and processed foods (i.e., microwavable foods) and in the variety of the cuisine.
The first two are correlated with women's lib and the higher proportion of women in the workplace. All three are correlated with our greater wealth. And, despite the obesity and diabetics increases, they are also correlated with our better health and longer life. None of them were foisted on us by nutritionists, the food industry, or even journalists.

I could go on--Pollan romanticizes the past: one of my great great grandmothers would have recognized potatoes, oatmeal, and milk as foods, and not much else while another would have focused on cabbage and turnips; we eat 4 times the amount of green leaves now as we did in 1950 (iceberg lettuce, anyone?). But, I'll save my energy for the next Pollan text in the Times. Leftist thinkers can and should do better.

Guesses on Farm Bill

The conventional wisdom seems to be coalescing around the idea that the next farm bill will see costs decreased because ethanol will push corn (and therefore soybean and cotton) prices higher and keep them high and there will be some sort of linkage between conservation programs and production of cellulosic ethanol (i.e., using switchgrass or whatever instead of grain). See this discussion from South Dakota and this post from John Phipps.

I'm a little skeptical about the reality behind the premise, that is, that we could have 5 straight years of great crop prices. I remember the push on synfuels under Carter in the 1970's, which was dismantled in the 1980's under Reagan as oil prices went south. I also remember enthusiasms for alternate crops that got legislated into law in past years (jojoba was one I remember and I'm too lazy to check the others). The free market does work, at least in the world of commodities such as oil and grain, resulting in volatility and ups and downs. Thus it has ever been since the first farmer sold his first surplus.

On the other hand, the weather's been reasonably good the past few years. Get a drought or a flood and that will put some adrenaline in the market.

Dwelling Place of Dragons, Book Report

I promised to report once I'd read my cousin's book, Dwelling Place for Dragons. (The title is from Jeremiah 51:37, King James version:"And Babylon shall become heaps, a dwelling place for dragons, an astonishment, and an hissing, without an inhabitant.") The cover of the book shows orange and green dragons encircling an abandoned Irish cottage.

The time is 1830 or so to 1849, the place is Newry, Ulster, and its environs. The main characters are James Harshaw, Presbyterian elder and farmer; John Martin, nephew of James, a younger and more well-to-do farmer, college educated, a member of "Young Ireland"; and George Henderson, friend and classmate of John, editor of the Newry Telegraph, and supporter of the established order.

The book provides insight into:

• the interplay among religious groups and political and religious leaders: Daniel O'Connell and his son leading the Repeal Association and the Catholic Church on one side, the Protestants groups and the Orange marching order on the other, and the people in the middle, the British establishment ruling the country and the Young Ireland movement, representing a more secular (or at least cross-religious) nationalism, a conservative radicalism. (The whole mess parallels Iraq today, with religious parties dominant and the secularists isolated.)
  
• the agitation for Repeal of the Act of Union (which put Ireland under the British Parliament instead of having their own parliament under Queen Victoria).
• the famine, and the disputes over how to provide relief.
  
• world affairs, particularly the Revolution in France of 1848, which revived the revolutionary enthusiasm of 1789 (read Jefferson from Paris) and seemed to prefigure revolution in other countries (I was also reminded of 1968, with all the upheavals around the world)
  
• British politics, the alternation of Whig and Tories, the repeal of the Corn Laws which hurt the Irish farmers (I was reminded of the protests of Mexican corn farmers against the lowering of trade barriers through NAFTA), and the response of the British governing classes and those in Ulster to the agitation over Repeal and then over the response to the famine
  

It's published under Amazon's Booksurge program (i.e. print on demand, self published). Is it a great read? No, not compared to a David McCullough. The great virtue of the book is that it's very much tied to the available data so that the events of "history" are seen through the focus on the three men and Newry. Marjorie relies on original source material, most notably the James Harshaw diaries and Henderson's Newry Telegraph (newspaper). Her sources don't permit flights of fancy nor great insight into personalities. The book climaxes with the conviction of John Martin, who was sentenced to be transported "beyond the seas" for 10 years for advocating the overthrow of Queen Victoria. His ship leaves Ireland just before the violence at Dolly's Brae between the Orange Order marchers and the Catholic Ribbonmen.

Marjorie mostly sticks to the facts, without editorializing. [Actually, that statement may be wrong. It may just be that her judgments agree with mine, dislike for religious extremism and a regard for those who tried to take a different course.] It's her first book, and hopefully not the last.

Two Years of Posting

Yesterday marked my 2-year anniversary of blogging. It's been interesting, if not very adventurous. (Do you expect adventure from a retired bureaucrat?) Maybe I'll do better in the new year, that is, right after I get myself and my office organized.

Why CEO's Earn Their Pay

John Phipps provides a quote from Davos, via the NYTimes . (The context is a clueless CEO trying to prep for a PR appearance.)

Sensitive But Unclassified--Bureaucratic Boundary Setting

Elizabeth Williamson in the Post had an article on Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU) markings (things like "For Official Use Only", etc.). These are stamps that government agencies use when they can't justify a "Confidential, Secret, or Top Secret" classification. It seems that they pose a big threat to the information sharing deemed essential to combat terrorism, because each different marking carries its own rules for dissemination and there are 108 different ones. So if the FBI sends info to the state police who relay it down to county sheriffs things can get confused. There's a committee working on simplifying this (to improve the "information-sharing environment").

Why so many SBU's? It's a combination of reasons.

• The official classification system is limited and rigid--only three markings so they have been amplified by modifications.
  
• Bureaucrats are scared--suppose this paper leaks to the Post, that would be embarassing. Or even if it reaches the local gossip. (The Plame affair revealed that even deputy Secretaries of State can love their gossip.)
• There's the high school clique reaction: we know something you don't, ha ha ha.
• Most of all, bureaucrats love to set boundaries and SBU's are a way of marking them.
  

Is it all bad? No. I'm reading William Easterly's "The White Man's Burden". He makes the point that a bureaucracy (foreign aid/foreign development type agency) that tries to do everything (and that has multiple "principals" to report to) is prone to failure. So a bureaucracy that is focused on doing one thing is more apt to be successful.

The problem we have in homeland security is that our bureaucracies have each had their own objective(s). When the global war on terrorism came along, we superimposed new objectives on the old and we still haven't straightened things out yet.

Iraq as a Land of Free Enterprise

"Imperial Life in the Emerald Palace", about which I blogged here, notes several instances where Bremer's people wanted to reform Iraq into a free market economy. Remember that when you read this George Buddy quote of a Guardian article on Iraq, the reporter interviewing a Sunni insurgent who says:

"'I used to attack the Americans when that was the jihad. Now there is no jihad. Go around and see in Adhamiya [the notorious Sunni insurgent area] - all the commanders are sitting sipping coffee; it's only the young kids that are fighting now, and they are not fighting Americans any more, they are just killing Shia. There are kids carrying two guns each and they roam the streets looking for their prey. They will kill for anything, for a gun, for a car and all can be dressed up as jihad.'

Rami was no longer involved in fighting, he said, but made a tidy profit selling weapons and ammunition to men in his north Baghdad neighbourhood."

Nice to know we're making progress.

"Industrial" Farmers

John Phipps has an interesting piece on "industrial" agriculture here (pdf)

Imperial Life and Harvard Business

Just finished reading Imperial Life in the Emerald City, by Rajiv Chandrasekaran (spelled the name without looking, though I did doublecheck--guess I'm not senile quite yet). Interesting, depressing, in line with Tom Ricks Fiasco, Woodward's State of Denial, etc. A couple of comments from a bureaucratic standpoint:

• one of the things an established bureaucracy does is reproduce itself. In other words, it develops patterns of recruitment and training for its employees. The American effort in Iraq, whether Garner's effort or the Coalition Provisional Authority, wasn't a developed bureaucracy. As a result, the recruitment seems to have been haphazard and the training nonexistent. I'm sort of reminded of an old cartoon, perhaps from Disney, where the lead character, an inventor, puts together a super-duper vacuum cleaner, turns it on, and the suction pulls in everything that isn't firmly nailed down. Iraq seems to have had the same effect: pulling in a bunch of young aspiring types, some older people nearing the end of their working life with expertise that might relate to CPA's needs, and a few people in the middle of their careers. It was a natural reaction to the situation: no planning, reliance on who knows who (which leads to political connections being importance), etc.
• a number of bureaucracies ended up in Iraq: CPA, State, DOD, contractors. What's striking is management's failure to ensure the bureaucracies were permeable. It would have been a much smaller book if he didn't have the anecdotes about bureacratic conflicts within the US occupation.

The picture of the insularity of the Green Zone (the "Emerald City") reminded me of Long Binh in Vietnam.

Finally, it seems to me that Harvard should revoke and disown a certain MBA.

EWG Has a Blog

Because I often blog on farm programs, it's appropriate to welcome Ken Cook and his Environmental Working Group to the world of blogging here. I don't expect to agree with him most of the time, but differences make the world interesting.

The Twists and Turns of Public Policy

NY Times has a business article saying that commodity index firms are investing more money in commodity futures, perhaps leading to more volatility. Meanwhile, Tom Friedman reports in his op-ed that his daffodils bloomed in January (mine didn't) and voices a call for a Green New Deal. And the Times world news has an article whose lede (first time I've used that term--gosh, I feel all knowledgeable and hip) is:

"Facing public outrage over the soaring price of tortillas, President Felipe Calderón abandoned his free-trade principles on Thursday and forced producers to sign an agreement fixing prices for corn products."

We liberals want to fight global warming, so we encourage ethanol production, particularly when we're seeking the Presidency and it's primary time in Iowa. But on other days we also complain about farm programs, as undeserved rewards to big industrial agribusiness. Those of us focused on foreign lands worry about the impacts of cheap US corn on poor Mexican peasant farmers, observing that if they can't be kept on the farm, they'll end up in the US.

But that's last years politics. Now it seems that demand for ethanol, sparked by high oil prices and government supports, has taken off at the same time the uncounted millions of Chinese have earned enough money to start eating meat, good corn-fed meat, sending corn prices high. (Soybeans are up too, but not as high.) So high corn prices are bad for the Mexican poor, who need protection. (Not sure if high corn prices will drive the urban worker to the U.S, but it won't help the evolution of democracy in Mexico.) Of course, capping the corn price in Mexico hurts those farmers remaining on the land.

Meanwhile, the volatility of corn prices resulting from the market dynamics (demand is relatively inelastic--it takes lots of meat eating Chinese and new ethanol plants to move the price) may be accentuated by boomer money flowing into index funds that seek the next hot commodity (gold and copper have had their runs, now it's time for ag commodities).

What's missed here is the relationship of farm programs and volatility. Farm commodities are much more volatile than other commodities (just watch your California navel oranges go up in price). Over the years, that uncertainty has led to the creation of programs to lessen risk, which continues even now.

Sentence of the Year! (So Far)

"After watching today's procession, it occurred to me that people inside the Beltway (a precondition for service) are far more normal than they get credit for."

From John Dickerson's piece on the Scooter Libby trial in Slate.

Post Stories on Ag Programs--Followup III

Two pieces by Jeff Harrison, a former House Ag staffer, critique the Post stories on agriculture. They are:

• here(the website of the US Rice Federation)
  
• and here a link provided by Jim Wiesemeyer--media savant. I first Jim met back in the payment-in-kind days (1983), not that we've kept up any contact since.
  

In this, as in most things governmental, one needs a grain of salt. (For example, Wiesemeyer spoke to the US Rice Federation and included a slide showing farm real estate values. The data thereon are inconsistent with Harrison's claim that current real estate values are 23 percent below the 1981 peak.)

IRS and Privacy

LA Times has an article on how law enforcement is tapping IRS records. A quote:

"The law that requires agencies to create privacy impact assessments can be waived to protect classified, sensitive or private information, according to the E-Government Act of 2002. Hohn, who composed the privacy assessment, said it left out some information so tax evaders and terrorists wouldn't know how law enforcement is targeting them.

The point, Hohn said, is "not to reveal your strategy."

This quote is contrary to one of my long-held positions: it's okay for the government to accumulate data on me provided I'm notified periodically of what it holds (as the Social Security Administration does with the wage information it has). That gives me the chance to protest and to get incorrect data changed or deleted.

Law enforcement certainly doesn't like the idea--they like to imagine themselves to be hunters/detectives who accumulate information then capture their suspects. Telling suspects, hey, we just opened a dossier on you for possibly contributing money to a terrorist organization in Lebanon (apparently the sort of thing most common in the context of the article) means you can't build a case to take to trial and build your career on. But I'm not sure we want FBI agents to build their careers on that. I think the public might be safer using "deterrence" (the good guys are capable and on the job) rather than post-crime "punishment".

AMT, Turbotax, and Enablers and Iraq's Banking System

Ann Althouse posts on the Alternative Minimum Tax, responding to a suggestion by Kaus that the hassle of doing two calculations is a reason for opposition to it. She and Glenn Reynolds point out that Turbotax software eliminates the problem. So should conservative oppose Turbotax?

It's a good question, but first let me address the AMT. I like the damn thing, liked it back when it was instituted amidst much publicity about fat cats (we had a few back then (i.e., 1969)) and still like it. Problem is, it wasn't indexed when imposed initially. These days it tends to hit the upper middle class in high tax states like Wisconsin. Someone with a $500K house might get hit with a $12.5K tax bill, then be subject to AMT. While I don't have much sympathy for someone in that position, I'd agree they shouldn't get hit by AMT.

Now for the question: is Turbotax a weapon of the evil, tax-sucking vampires known as liberals? Obviously no. It would be like saying that the lack of a banking system in Iraq, which undermines the Iraqi Army, is a weapon of the Iraqi opposition. Bureaucratic systems and software systems are morally and politically neutral, even though they may accidentally help or hurt the good. After all, Turbotax makes our tax system more efficient, permitting lower rates than would otherwise be necessary.

Big Men, Free Throws, and Bureaucrats

It's a law of nature--big men don't make free throws. Think Wilt Chamberlain, Shaquille O'Neal, and many others. But the NY Times has an article on the Mavericks' free throw coach.
He's the only such coach in the league. He coached Shawn Bradley, who achieved a 90% accuracy figure (though it turns out to have been only one year).

It's amazing that, given the highly competitive environment, no other team has followed suit. Indeed, the article claims that videotaping free throws is highly unusual. (Compare this to a recent article on Phil Mahre, holder of the American record for ski victories, who's making a limited comeback in his 40's. The article observed that now skiers have their runs videotaped and slow-mo analyzed for imperfections in their style, etc.) This seems to be a failure of the competitive free market. Economists, please study.

But the most interesting bit was this:

"Even when the player wants to learn, Boren must conquer another barrier.

He tells them: “When I look at you, I see two things — a brain and a bunch of muscles — and the good news is the brain is really clicking. But the bad news is your muscles have been taking a siesta. They like it the old way and they’re not paying attention to any of this stuff. So when we get down there, they’re going to resist.”

That's a good metaphor for bureaucratic reorganizations and mergers of organization--the brain may say one thing but the muscles do another. It's an especially attractive metaphor because I've found it true. For example, when I drive a usual routine I get locked into a routine so muscles take over. Which is fine, except on those occasions where I need to vary the routine, like deviate from the route to stop at a store.

Census Counts Praiseworthy Children?

According to the NYTimes the Census Bureau has determined that children's quality of life is on the rise. The press release is here.

What blew my mind, at least initially, was the idea that the government would ask how often parents praised children!

Now in my day [tell it, granddad] children weren't praised, at least not to their face. I can remember my parents bragging on me to others (like their siblings), but I don't remember daily praise at any time. I guess, despite evidence to the contrary, we may have advanced.

Federal Crop Insurance and The New Farm Bill

From the Washington Post, with a tip of the hat to George Buddy ,
comes a column by Cato people suggesting reform of the federal crop insurance program. I found this quote ironic:

"lawmakers have made several efforts to "reform" crop insurance. But each wave of legislative changes has moved the program further away from economic rationality and exacerbated its distortion of incentives and inefficiency."

It's ironic because the "reformers" have always operated under the flag of "free market competition". To recap, the New Deal set up the Federal Crop Insurance corporation, issuing government policies for damage to the big field crops. In a parallel universe there were several private companies (some associated with the Farm Bureau, etc.) issuing similar policies. In the 70's we had a standing program that made disaster payments. In 1980, Congress and the Administration decided to phase out the standing program in favor of the private companies, with Federal reinsurance. But each time Congress has said: "no more ad hoc
disaster programs, you have to have crop insurance, they've backed down. The result is a mish-mash of policies and programs that offends every rational bone in this bureaucrat's body. But the reality is the private insurance lobby packs too much clout to expect any big change in the future.

(A diversion--long ago, about a century ago as a matter of fact, the insurance industry (i.e., life, liability, etc.) dodged the bullet of federal regulation because they had too much clout. Insurance agents and adjusters are precisely the sort of people who can make for good political workers.

Roberta Wohlstetter, Separating Wheat from Chaff

Roberta Wohlstetter died. I ran into her work back in 60's. I had done a paper on Pearl Harbor early in my collegiate career which introduced me to the conspiracy theorists and reasonable historians who wrote on it. (Some were the same--like Charles Beard.) The conspiracy theory went that since we had broken the Japanese codes FDR knew when and where they were going to strike and was therefore responsible for the US losses. Further, FDR had maneuvered the Japanese, most notably by embargoing oil, into striking us so he could take the nation into war against Germany. (Some attached a faint odor of anti-Semitism to the final step.) The theory was a carry-over from the American-firsters. People who hated Roosevelt loved the theory, so the right-wing nuts of the day were prominent.)

Wohlstetter wrote a great book, that won the Bancroft Prize, on Pearl Harbor. Her argument basically was, yes, FDR and Washington had lots of information that predicted Pearl Harbor, but in the day-to-day run of affairs, there was also lots of information predicting an attack on Singapore, or Indochina or the Dutch Indies or.... She pointed out the problem of identifying what's significant from amid the mass of detail that a decision-maker receives each day. It's a caution for those who over-simplify.

Ironically she was the wife of Alfred, who was an early mentor to the neo-cons, who have set a new standard for over-simplification.

Farmers, Free Market, and the Future

This Agweb article tied to the American Farm Bureau Federation's annual meeting shows the complexities of farming. Corn farmers in particular are looking to a bright future based on ethanol production expanding. But livestock producers, particularly pork, are facing red ink. Why--because hogs eat corn. The "iron triangle" is at work, as Keith Collins, USDA's chief economist, talks to the meeting and representatives of the universities and other farm organizations are heard from.

Farm groups are concerned with international trade, the Doha round of trade negotiations, immigration, the new farm bill, air quality, and animal protection (against the last two :-) ).

This year has seen a run-up in corn prices. Indeed, I saw one summary that said that corn was the "commodity" with the largest percent increase in 2006. Don't know what price measure was used. Farmers should be used to this--there was a big price increase in 1996, I believe. And then it went to hell again.

Meanwhile, this morning's news has John Deere's stock prices, up 40+% last year, looking good for the future (again based on rosy prices for corn, etc.). But oil prices are falling again, reaching new lows. That means less impetus for ethanol, lower prices for corn, higher profits for pork, and different pressures on politicians doing the new farm bill.

Being a cynic, I think I'll plan to sell John Deere short.

What Price Security?

Apparently a PricewaterhouseCoopers security audit of my old agency found a major vulnerability in its distributed computer system. They have IBM AD-400 minicomputers in about 2300 sites with local administration. I've seen a notice where they're tightening up on procedures for granting access to the system. I've also seen a request for information (which I may discuss in a separate post) considering the possible moving of the computers from county offices to more centralized locations.

I can understand what happened. The accounting firm probably sent out some people who found that anyone could break into a county office (mostly located in small towns of 2-10,000), break into the system and make off with personal data, or hack into the overall system. It could happen. And, as a public agency, you can't really say that the chances are very, very small of this happening, there are things we can do to reduce the risk and mitigate the damage from any such break-in, so we should devote our attention to those areas. Remember that people have lost their jobs over the handling/mishandling of data on laptop computers even though no damage resulted. And know that Congress would pillory anyone who appeared before them after a break-in.

It's the game we bureaucrats have to play--hire an outside firm and then go through hoops just to cover our ass.

What Do Bureaucrats Do?

Rob Carrigan, who's involved with newpapers and technology, believes bureaucrats are an enemy of "process change", as he says:

"The Bureaucrat - This character not only lives “by” the rules, but “for” the rules. “We must follow this rule no matter what,” according to this enemy of progress. In process change, many of the old rules should be reconsidered and some probably be thrown out the window. The bureaucrat, however, will fight tooth and nail to preserve the way things are because “it is the rule."

Bureaucrats occur at different levels in an organization. The "operatives", to use James Q. Wilson's term for them (the clerk at the DMV window), wrap themselves in the "rules" as protection against the demands of their customers. They don't have the authority to change the rules. To get them to change, you need to offer a process that is better in their eyes (hopefully in the eyes of their customers) and training that gives them confidence in the new rules and new process.

At the upper levels you find the bureaucrats who do have the power to change the rules. But to change you have to make a rational case for the superiority of the new process and overcome the natural conservatism of those who are comfortable with the current process and who, in many cases, have invested sweat and tears in developing and perfecting the current process. And you need to recognize that spin doctors in the past have pushed various organizational nostrums and improvements on the incumbent bureaucrats with benefits that have evaporated into thin air. Finally, and the straw breaker in my case, you need to recognize that process improvements that increase efficiency may and should cost jobs in the organization.

The Wisdom of A.J.

Another Post article in the "Black Men" series Sunday, this one on A.J.--a killer and drug dealer. Two things struck me:

One afternoon after a group counseling session, he and another seasoned offender, Kenneth Williams, got to talking. They had been eyeing each other and finally discovered that they had attended the District's Garnet-Patterson Middle School together. Reminiscing with Williams seemed to unlock some happiness stored inside of James. A smile replaced his scowl. "You remember Miss Brown? Miss Mack?" James proudly mentioned he had been in the gifted-and-talented program as a seventh-grader, the last shining moment of his schooling.

That was the only expression in the story of affection--teachers do make a difference, if only in memory and in failing to make all the difference.

The other thing that struck me was his observation--in the context of the justice system, that his allegiances were relative. If he was in prison away from DC, then his homeboys were everyone from DC and that was his identification. If he were in DC jail, then his homeboys were from the neighborhood. But if he were in the neighborhood, he'd be fighting and killing his neighbors.

Cost of Living Index

Cost of one hour of attorney's time in Syracuse, NY = $150; in Falls Church, VA = $300.