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.