Vilsack and Conservation Subsidies

This Politico story says Vilsack and wife got $42,782 in farm subsidies in 2000-2006, linking to the EWG database. When you go there, you see they've got a Conservation Reserve Program contract, accounting for the payments. (Which is also described lower in the story.) So the question is, are those "subsidies"?

Merriam-Webster says: subsidy=" a grant or gift of money: as a: a sum of money formerly granted by the British Parliament to the crown and raised by special taxation b: money granted by one state to another c: a grant by a government to a private person or company to assist an enterprise deemed advantageous to the public."

So, researchers who get grants to study cancer cures are being "subsidized"? Or Pell grants are "subsidies"?

Technically, the Vilsacks have a contract, it's a quid pro quo. I suppose cancer researchers and Pell grantees also have conditions. I'm not sure what converts the Vilsack's contract into a "subsidy" when a cancer researcher is not normally seen as "subsidized". One might suppose the fact that there's no free market operating, but CRP contracts are competitive, as are NIH grants. (If I recall, there's a bid process where farmers offer land which is evaluated according to criteria as to the relative importance of taking it out of annual crop production.)

I think the bottom line is CRP payments have been tainted by the other payments FSA issues, many of which are more appropriately labeled "subsidies" (i.e., no competition) even though they all are contracts.

How Far We've Come--Tobacco

Listening to a 1956 Bing Crosby xmas special on Sirius/XM--sponsored by Chesterfield, with Bing et.al. pushing cartons of smokes for stocking stuffers just before launching into "Silent Night.."

What Would Harvey Do?

Wife and I saw "Milk" yesterday, the biopic of Harvey Milk, gay activist and martyr. It's well-done and Sean Penn probably deserves an Oscar nomination.

Meanwhile, Obama is catching heat for having Rev. Warren deliver the invocation at his inaugural.

Based on the picture, "what would Harvey do"? Invite Warren. Accept his support on issues where you agree (i.e., AIDS in Africa) and fight like hell on issues you disagree, but always talk.

Most Surprising Sentence Today

"We find evidence that constituent interests and special interests influence voting patterns during the crisis." from an academic paper looking at how people in Congress voted on two of the big bailout bills in the last couple months, relayed with commentary by Henry at the Monkey Cage.

Globalization and Locavores

Stumbled across this quote in Recollections of Troubled Times in Irish Politics By Timothy Daniel Sullivan: "Recollections of Troubled Times in Irish Politics By Timothy Daniel Sullivan: Sullivan is quoting an Irish nationalist, circa 1845+ [had to repunctuate the context while bringing it over from Google book search).

"When an Irish gentleman rises in the morning, he is lathered with a brush and shaved with a razor made in England, he is probably washed with a soap and combed with a comb made in England, for though soap and combs are manufactured at home one trade is conducted with no spirit and the other is nearly extinct. He is braced with suspenders of sitk Indian rubber or doe skin brought from Lancashire. He puts on a stock or neck tie woven by Englishmen in Manchester. His shirt was probably sewed in England, for thousands of dozens of shirts, shirt fronts, and shirt collars made from Irish linen by English hands are sold in this country, the very studs of mother of pearl bone or metal were fabricated in England. His stockings are perhaps Irish, for the Balbriggan stockings are the most durable in the world, but his vest came from Leeds, his coat by bare chance may be Irish, but the velvet on the collar the serge in the lining and the silk that sewed it belong to trades which have long disappeared from Ireland. His pocket handkerchief came from India or Glasgow, and if he is effeminate enough to perfume it, the perfume was made in England or France and sold at thousands of pounds annually to Ireland. His shoes may be sewed at home but probably the leather and certainly the bindings come from England. And yet there is nothing on this man from the shoe tie upwards that could not be made at home before the new year dawns"

I think one can sense in the passage the same particularistic emotion often found in today's anti-globalist, pro-locavore writings, even though the focus is not food, but clothing.

Consultants and FSA Reorganization

I missed this when it was initially put up. But I'll comment now on a couple things:

USDA-FSA Organizational Assessment, Findings and Recommendations, Executive Summary:

"Each division has a Director, Deputy Director, Assistant to the Director and one (1)
to two (2) Branch Chiefs, representing a total of nine (9) managers to supervise 20 employees (authorized FTE ceiling). "(page 16)

Currently, all three HQ divisions of DAFP (CEPD, PECD, and PSD) have their own automation unit structured to provide user requirements and interface with IT programmers in Kansas City ITSD. Each division, in essence, recreates a workflow process for new programs based only on the work done within the division without the benefit of drawing from previously designed programs that have been developed elsewhere in DAFP. This lack of integration and synergy has led to redundancies and inefficiencies in program development, as well as created imbalances in workload among the automation units within the various divisions and complications for the
Kansas City ITSD staff. " (page 26)

"almost all employees responded that they saw little connection between their work and the agency Strategic Plan. Many managers expressed frustration that they could not see the direction in which FSA is headed either as an agency or in their own program beyond the mission of “making sure that farmers and ranchers received payments on time.”

"We are confident that FSA top leadership understands the importance of such workforce communication and is taking the necessary steps to ensure that a communication plan and process is in place to educate employees regarding the
Assessment process and outcomes" (page 63)

Things I found interesting:

• there's almost no reference to the organizational environment (except for USDA IT). The study assumes the existing relationships between FSA, its sister agencies, and the department. That's an assumption Secretaries Madigan, Espy, and Glickman would not have permitted during my time.
• there's no serious discussion of past attempts to reorganize, either within FSA or in USDA. As a failed historian, I believe those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
  
• it's disappointing but not surprising that USDA at the department level ranks 215 out of 222 in terms of morale. I suspect it reflects the relative unimportance of the department vis a vis the agencies.
  
• there's almost no reference to the political environment. As FSA is a political agency that makes the assessment unrealistic. (This may have been in the charge to the consultants who did the report.) For example, I'd interpret the recommendations as something state executive directors would resist. Because most SED's are politically connected, that means many influential members of Congress would resist.
  
• I'm bothered by what seems to be a continuing split between the IT operations supporting the Farm Loan programs (old FmHA) and the FArm Program side (old ASCS). I'd make the common provisions division serve all FSA (and NRCS)
• the lack of perceived connection between day to day work and the Strategic Plan I see as confirmation of my disrespect of Strategic Plans.
• the first quote confirms my disrespect of Al Gore's Reinventing Government initiative to reduce the number of managers.
• the last quote shows, perhaps, a naive faith in FSA management.
  

FSA Computers, Again

FSA announced a new IT officer, with these words:

This position has become an important element of FSA's Modernize and Innovate the Delivery of Agricultural Systems (MIDAS) project. Over $300 million will be invested in the coming years to upgrade existing technology and streamline the Commodity Credit Corporation's (CCC) program delivery business processes. Gwinn will manage 630 federal employees and contractors and will oversee the implementation of off-the-shelf software systems via web-enabled network access.

I worked with the previous CIO, once upon a time. MIDAS is one of OMB's high risk projects.

Vilsack as Secretary

Lot's of commentary on the appointment, some pleased, some not. I won't bother to link to them. But I'll repeat my comment somewhere, perhaps on Ethicurean, suggesting the people who are disappointed should shift their focus to the under secretaries, the assistants, and the deputies, and the agency administrators and deputies (or whatever new-fangled titles they've come up with these days). There's lots of power distributed through USDA, even though the laws limit the discretion and the lords of Congress enforce the law with a capricious hand. Vilsack needs to make gestures towards the foodies and the greens with some of the lower appointments so it's important for those groups to lobby for the best and most effective person they can get.

Mobility and Bureaucracy

From a long interesing post by Reihan Salam on David Brooks, Gladwell, upward mobility, with this observation on American bureaucracy:

There’s something else that comes to mind, namely that our mental map of society only rarely captures the gritty terrain. I’m not sure I can articulate this very well, but I’ll try. My mother is a health worker and my father is an accountant who works pretty much exclusively with tiny immigrant-owned businesses and recent arrivals. A lot of the work he does is unpaid, e.g., helping people figure out how to navigate the social services bureaucracy, etc. Through both of them, I’ve learned a lot about the way the plans of the administrative state mesh with the “illegible” ethnic economy of the city. The most virtuous, hard-working people, it often seems, are the ones who most aggressively game the system, which they see in amoral, impersonal terms (which makes sense, as I’m calling it “the system”). Just as much of the prosperity of the Washington metropolitan area is parasitic and illusory — aha! we’ve turned an undesirable civil service job into a lucrative contractor position! — it’s hard not to think that the skids of upward mobility are occasionally greased by fraud. This is one reason my father has always believed that the IRS needs a much larger budget, both to aggressively audit rich tax cheats (he hates them) and also to curb low-level abuse that undermines trust in “the system.” Ronald Reagan blasted welfare queens. And yet Medicaid mills have helped build the fortunes of plenty of otherwise upstanding citizens. Of course I think this is a bad thing. But it’s complicated. The American administrative state isn’t Suharto’s Indonesia — but in some places and times, it can get badly frayed.

I'm not sure how one addresses the problem he touches on here. And I'm not sure it's simply a bureaucracy that seems inscrutable, so it's okay to defraud it. My impression is that farmers think FSA bureaucrats are pretty good (they should, because they're mostly neighbors) but certainly a minority think it's okay to evade rules (yes, I'm thinking payment limitation and eligibility requirements) just the same.

Earliest Hiring of an Attorney in an Administration

The news reports Rahm Emanuel has hired a lawyer. This must be a record--earliest hiring of a personal attorney as a result of a "political scandal". Not a record the political system should be proud of.