Transparent Society

I've always liked the ideas in David Brin's Transparent Society. Brad DeLOng participates in a discussion of it after 10 years. IMHO federal bureaucrats, especially SES, and to a lesser degree perhaps the GS, should lose most on the job privacy. Let's stick an Internet camera in the office of each Congress person and each Federal executive. Let's let everyone know when someone in the bureaucracy is looking at their data. (Yes, it will take forever to implement, but it's the way to go.)

Sorry, I'm Doubtful

I just don't believe this claim of hundreds of thousands of bikers for Rolling Thunder. 3500 local riders I could buy.

In 2007, over 3,500 bikes from the local area as well as from points across the USA and Canada joined us for the Ride of the Patriots. The bikers assemble in an orderly manner eastbound along Fairfax Boulevard (Lee Highway) starting at Patriot Harley-Davidson and then with the help of Police motor squad units from Fairfax County, the City of Fairfax and Arlington County are escorted safely to the Pentagon staging area to join 400,000 other bikers for Rolling Thunder.

EU Ag Policy

Now we have a farm bill, we can pay a little attention to what the EU is going through. Here's a link to a summary.

It must be nice to have 27 bureaucrats (the ag ministers of the countries) be able to set policy.
And from a summary of the EU Commissions proposals:

Abolition of set-aside: The Commission proposes abolishing the requirement for arable farmers to leave 10 percent of their land fallow. This will allow them to maximise their production potential.

Phasing out milk quotas: Milk quotas will be phased out by April 2015. To ensure a ’soft landing’, the Commission proposes five annual quota increases of one percent between 2009/10 and 2013/14.

Decoupling of support: The CAP reform “decoupled” direct aid to farmers i.e. payments were no longer linked to the production of a specific product. However, some Member States chose to maintain some “coupled” – i.e. production-linked - payments. The Commission now proposes to remove the remaining coupled payments and shift them to the Single Payment Scheme, with the exception of suckler cow, goat and sheep premia, where Member States may maintain current levels of coupled support.

Moving away from historical payments: Farmers in some Member States receive aid based on what they received in a reference period. In others, payments are on a regional, per hectare basis. As time moves on, the historical model becomes harder to justify, so the Commission is proposing to allow Member States to move to a flatter rate system.

Extending SAPS: Ten of the 12 newest EU members apply the simplified Single Area Payment Scheme. This is supposed to expire in 2010, but the Commission proposes extending it to 2013.

Cross Compliance: Aid to farmers is linked to the respect of environmental, animal welfare and food quality standards. Farmers who do not respect the rules face cuts in their support. This so-called Cross Compliance will be simplified, by withdrawing standards that are not relevant or linked to farmer responsibility. New requirements will be added to retain the environmental benefits of set-aside and improve water management.

John Phipps Scores

John Phipps pointed out the final version of the new ACRE program in the farm bill will be lucrative if prices decline off their current highs. This morning that was picked up and discussed by Dan Morgan in the Post--concerns in Congress and in USDA. See John's new post this morning.

Caution: We Don't Know What We're Talking About

The title of this post is triggered by this bit of information:

"African Americans have replaced Asian Americans to become the ethnic group that spent the most on organic produce"

Certainly surprised the heck out of me. Source: Choices Magazine--an article by USDA/ERS--
from their summary (data is 2001-2004):

We used the Nielsen Homescan data from 2001 and 2004 to analyze consumer
purchase patterns of fresh organic produce. Our analysis shows that Asian and African Americans tend to purchase organic over conventional produce more than Whites and Hispanics. Households residing in the western region spent more on
organic produce on a per capita basis than those residing in other regions.
Contrary to popular opinion, we do not find any consistent positive association
between household income and expenditures on organic produce.

Comfort Food and Stress

John Tierney at NYTimes writes about research suggesting primates who are stressed out seek "comfort food". The suggestion is that stress would help account for the class differentials in obesity.

A Veto Forthcoming?

Commenter CDCaddy says the farm bill should be vetoed. This NY Times article describes why Bush's veto will be overridden.

"Few pieces of legislation generate the level of public scorn consistently heaped upon the farm bill.

Presidents and agriculture secretaries denounce it. Editorial boards rail against it. Good-government groups mock it. Global trading partners formally protest it. Even farmers gripe about it.

But as Congress proved again last week, few pieces of major legislation also get such overwhelming bipartisan support — enough, in the case of the current farm bill, to override the veto expected by President Bush any day now. The Senate vote on Thursday, 81 to 15, was the widest margin for a farm bill since 1973, when food stamps were added.

Daryll Ray: We've Been Here Before

One of the people who has been around long enough to remember, Prof. Daryll Ray shares memories of the 1970's vis a vis the current state of agriculture here.

I'd Be Crying If I Weren't Laughing

I don't know what Yogi Berra would call it. In part, it's "deja vu all over again", but it's also the situation where you don't know whether to laugh or cry. What am I talking about:

1. Congress just passed a new farm bill. Although the changes in FSA programs for 2008 don't look too major, doing the ACRE program for 2009 will be. And handling the changes in payment limitation rules, particularly attribution to individuals, will be hard.
2. GAO just released a report on USDA's attempts to modernize their IT systems. Some excerpts:

"USDA never completed the MIDAS requirements development process because key program officials lost confidence that the process would be an effective solution to meet USDA's future business needs and consequently withdrew their support...

"According to USDA officials, as of October 2007, they had spent approximately $18 million to take steps towards achieving these objectives. For example, they had expanded telecommunication channels, acquired more sophisticated firewalls, and had a contractor prepare the first draft of process flow diagrams of selected program delivery processes....

"Until USDA addresses the inconsistent tracking of users’ reported problems and the lack of clearly defined roles and responsibilities, it may not be able to establish a solid foundation for achieving and sustaining stability in the farm program delivery systems. As a result, the department faces the risk that its stabilization plan will not ensure that it is able to successfully deliver benefits to farmers in the future...

Why am I crying and laughing? Well, when we first installed System-36's in the county offices, it was in the same general period as the implementation of the 1985 farm bill. By the 1990's, we were working on Info Share, a project to share information and computer systems among ASCS, SCS, FmHA, etc. (all obsolete acronyms now) and the new farm bill. By 1996, another new farm bill and a project to merge the IT and administrative ends of NRCS, FSA, and RD. (I retired toward the end of 1997.) And to modernize the IT.

Now, some 11 years later, USDA is still in the same situation vis a vis IT systems. They seem to have dropped the idea of cross-agency coordination, but they're no nearer having documentat6ion of their business processes and they're facing the criticism of GAO. And facing implementation of a new farm bill. Time for employees to take the buyout.

The only redeeming feature is that agriculture is in better shape today than in 1985/6, so USDA/FSA screwups won't hurt farmers as much as they might.

GAO, USDA, and Discrimination

Here's a link to the Post article on GAO testimony on a GAO report charging USDA continues to mishandle discrimination cases. Here's a link to the report.