Meanwhile 125 People Died Today of Drug Overdoses

Currently 36 dead in Brussels.

Peter Moskos notes the drug overdose death rate.

I link the two.

Demagoguery Opportunity

FCW has a piece on moves on Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.  I would not be surprised to see politicians demagogue this as ceding US authority to those untrustworthy people outside our borders.

Amish Businesses

I've long been fascinated with the Amish, particularly from reading Prof. Kraybill's book on them. I was on a task force in the 70's with the CED of Lancaster county, who commented on her dealings with the Amish.  IIRC they didn't participated in farm programs, at least not the production adjustment ones, but I think they did with the conservation cost-shares ones.

This is an article on a Kraybill talk, set up by this:

"Over the past few decades, Lancaster County’s Amish have undergone a “mini-Industrial Revolution,” Kraybill said. High land prices plus a population explosion limited farming opportunities for rising generations, fueling a turn to carpentry, small manufacturing and other enterprises.

Today, there are more than 2,000 Amish businesses in the Lancaster area, Kraybill said. Fewer than one-third of local Amish households still rely on farming as the primary source of income."

He describes the factors in Amish culture which have fed into their entrepreneurship.  It's a lesson to those of us who wonder about how society/culture operates--things are complex. 

The Amish, much like the Hasidic Jews, the Mormons and some Native American tribes also lead to reflection on what is the meaning of "America"--what can cover all the variety we see.

Trader Joe's Parking Lots

Via Marginal Revolution, a short piece on the economic logic of Trader Joe's tiny parking lots.  (We shop there occasionally.)   Bottom line: almost no one refuses to shop at Trader Joe's because they spend a little time finding a spot, or walking to the store from the adjacent street.

Court Gamesmanship

Having just seen my prediction for the Presidential elections go up in flames with Rubio's withdrawal, I forge ahead with commenting on the Supreme Court.

I seems to me that Obama has this strategy:
  

• taking the Senate Republicans at their word--they won't vote to confirm any appointee now.
• Clinton is going to be the Democratic nominee and she's likely to beat Trump.
• if she beats Trump, there's some chance a nominee who's not a liberal icon and who's a little older will seem more palatable to the Republican Senate after election day.  That's particularly true if the new Senate has a Democratic majority.   

Paul Meringoff at  Powerline, a conservative with whom I almost always disagree, seems to support my theory, writing this morning: " Things might look different in September, if Hillary Clinton is 25 points ahead of Donald Trump in the polls and the Republicans are headed towards losing the Senate. In that event, Garland might look a lot better."

We Used to Call It Block-Busting: Same Tactics, Different Group

Back in the 1960's we used to call it "block-busting": real estate agents using the fear of blacks to get homeowners to sell out.  In our enlightened modern times, it's similar tactics, but now it's Orthodox Jews in the Toms River, New Jersey area.  See this Bloomberg  piece, hat tip Marginal Revolution.

The key difference is, of course, the aims of the group: blacks in the 60's wanted the American dream-- better homes and better schools and saw integration as a way of getting it; Orthodox in the 10's want the American dream--independence of outside control and see segregation as a way of getting it.

Unbelievable Fact in the Times

The NYTimes has a piece on who supports Trump, including this table:
"correlations are shown in red.

Variable	Correlation
White, no high school diploma	0.61
“Americans” Percent reporting ancestry as “American” on the census	0.57
Mobile homes Percent living in a mobile home	0.54
“Old economy” jobs Includes agriculture, construction, manufacturing, trade	0.50
History of voting for segregationists Support for George Wallace (1968)	0.47
Labor participation rate	–0.43
Born in United States	0.43
Evangelical Christians	0.42
History of voting for liberal Republicans Support for John B. Anderson (1980)	–0.42
White Anglo-Saxon Protestants Whites with European non-Catholic ancestry	–0.42"

If it's in the Times, it must be right, but I absolutely cannot believe the negative correlation between WASPS and Trump support, and I'm writing as a WASP myself. I suppose it's possible because I no longer understand statistics, but I still think it unlikely.

The Difference a Quarter Century Makes

I remember a group of us (middle managers from SCS, ASCS, and maybe other agencies) having an after-dinner conversation in roughly 1995.  I expressed some desire for better feedback on directives (I think), and Paul A. said it could be done with the Internet/World Wide Web (I'm not real sure of the dates or the innovation at issue but this is what makes most sense in retrospect.  I had some familiarity with the Internet, having been a Compuserve subscriber for several years and had heard about the web.

Anyhow, today I find these stats at the World Bank:

"Today, 95% of the global population have access to a digital signal, but 5% do not; 73% have mobile phones, but 27% do not; slightly less than half of all people (46%) have internet, but the majority do not; and only 19% of the world’s population has broadband. There also are persistent digital divides across gender, geography, age, and income dimensions within each country."

Congratualtions to FSA and RMA--Expansion of ACRSI

FSA issued its notice on the expansion of ACRSI to all counties.  This means producers can file acreage reports with their insurance provider or FSA.  It's a limited set of crops, though because the major field crops are covered it will handle most crop acreage, It's a goal it's taken 25 years to achieve. ( Since they've done pilot testing, I assume the new expansion will be successful so it's not premature to credit its success.)

I do have some comments, of course:

• I wonder about the experience in the pilots--were most reports filed with FSA or with the company--is there a structural bias to the system?  
• Did the pilot include surveys of producers using it?
• Will the savings of a more efficient system, besides benefiting producers, mean a reduction in funding for FSA operations or government support for insurance company administration?  
• How is the spot-checking of acreage reports affected?  If errors/fraud is discovered, what's the reporting process?

I'm sure there are answers to the questions and other questions I'm missing.  But the bottom line is I congratulate the FSA bureaucrats (and the RMA types) for the achievement.

Swedish Women: Smart and Sexy

Unleashing my male chauvinism--remember I grew up in the days of Ursula Andress 
(who is actually Swiss, but what's the difference, they both begin "Sw...."), I comment on a Tyler Cowen factoid--69 percent of Swedish college graduates are women.

Build a Wall?

GovExec has a piece on the nuts and bolts of building Trump's wall on the Mexican border.  Bottomline, Congress would have to pass an act authorizing the build, and overriding several laws which would stop the project, and provide for funding (can't rely on contractors buying the idea of Mexican funding--at the very least the government would have to guarantee payment).

The author outlines a number of reasons why professionals (engineers, architects, etc.) might shy away from such a project.

I recommend it, though I'm more cynical than the author: if the money is there, some professionals will work on the project.


However, floating around in my memory is the idea that a number of years ago, probably in the Bush administration but perhaps in the Clinton, we were going to fortify the border with high-tech tools, a project which may have failed.  Was Boeing involved as a contractor?

G Street Fabrics

This is old news, but G Street Fabrics filed for bankruptcy last summer and closed two of their three stores.  When I came to DC it had one store located of course on G street. They moved to the suburbs long ago.  I guess home sewing has declined--just like home cooking.  As women have moved into the paid workforce, they no longer have the time to serve as role models for daughters, much less sons.

Government Software Purchases

When I left FSA, COTS was a big thing (commercial off the shelf software).    I assume it's still a big thing.

GovExec has a piece on the UK experience in trying to rationalize government purchases of COTS.  (I remember in the early 1990's when they tried to standardize ASCS on Wordperfect, Paradox, and Lotus 1-2-3.  )

Why shouldn't the government save billions by standardizing on Libreoffice?

Bureaucrats Aren't Sexy, Say Tinder Folks

Via Tyler Cowen, the most right-swiped professions for males and females on Tinder don't include any bureaucratic ones. (I could quibble about a few, particularly police officer, military, social media manager, but it's generally true.)

Does 2016 Campaign Make Obama Look Better?

IMHO the answer is "yes".

[Update: I note Gallup says his approval rating now exceeds his disapproval rating.]

The Paperless Office Redux

John Quiggin at Crooked Timber discusses a paper of his that says we've reached peak paper.

I remember in 1984 when the IT guys were trying to build their case for the System/36 in ASCS offices, one of them asked me about the paperless office.  Now we all know my memory is fading as rapidly as my age is increasing, so I don't really remember whether I was asked a leading question about it, and answered with a paean to the possibility that ASCS offices and farmers would get out from under the paperwork burden, or whether I was skeptical.  Most likely I wimped out and answered somewhere in between.

Anyhow, Quiggin thinks it's finally here, and that means the consumption of paper worldwide will increase.  It makes sense to me now: I'm typing on a 23 inch monitor with color and WYSIWYG; in 1984 it would have been a monochrome 14 inch monitor, etc. etc.   He points to the explosion in information (in 1984 it would have been an 8-inch floppy).  He goes on to discuss a parallel with Peak Oil, Peak Coal, and Peak Steel.

U.S. Is Okay

Two observations about the current state of life in the U.S:

• a new book getting rave reviews is a sociologist's study of evictions in Minneapolis  One bit repeated in each of the reviews I've seen: one of the renters who was evicted spent her money, much to the disgust of the author, on a lobster dinner with many trimmings.  Her explanation was something to the effect that "she wanted to".   It's a sign of a great country.
• on the way to the Kennedy Center from Reston we turn off Interstate 66 onto the road which leads to the road which passes by the Watergate on the way to the Kennedy Center.  The road passes under an overpass, which has some homeless people seeking shelter.  Over the years they've moved into real tents.  (The kind with an external frame.)  Progress is being made.

David Plouffe says: "Everything is going to be okay." in his interview with Glenn Thrush at Politico

And see this Fallows piece (referring to a previous post and Warren Buffett) 

[Updated--see Kevin Drum's take.]

Reducing Fraud, Waste and Abuse in Government

One of the ways Presidential candidates propose to finance their promises is through reducing fraud, waste and abuse.

GAO estimates $124.7 billion in improper payment in FY2014 in testimony here. 

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that section 281 of the Department of Agriculture Reorganization Act of 1994 precluded the use of recovery auditing techniques>Specifically, the agency reported that section 281 provides that 90 days after the decision of a state, a county, or an area committee is final, no action may be taken to recover the amounts found to have been erroneously disbursed as a result of the decision, unless the participant had reason to believe that the decision was erroneous. This statute is commonly referred to as the Finality Rule, and according to USDA, it affects the Farm Service Agency’s ability to recover overpayments.

In 2013 GAO dinged NRCS and RMA for not checking SSA death files.  Situation hadn't changed by March 2015.

The bulk of the testimony points out problems relative to the SSA death files.

Seems to me Congress could fix many of the problems by changing the laws in several instances: permit SSA to pass on state-provided death data (eliminating the need for separate files), easing the ability to share the data with agencies, forcing state agencies to use the data (in the case of TANF)

Spring and the Garden Calls

Reston's been in the 60's the last two days, so it's time to work in the garden, spreading manure, digging the beds, trying to get peas in timely.

That caused me to google for the White House garden news.  Not a lot.  The latest I found was a June 2015 piece on doing a harvest, segueing to planting a pollinator garden, including for monarch butterflies.  Doubt they'll take credit for the rebound in monarch numbers recently reported.

Cottonseed Yet Again

I've blogged on the issue of making cottonseed an oilseed before.  Here's a good backgrounder by Keith Good on the issue. 

Short summary: bowing to Brazil's victory on cotton programs at the WTO, Congress took cotton out of the other farm programs in the 2014 farm bill.  Didn't touch authority on oilseed designation.

Y2K as Metaphor: International Date Line

From a NYTimes piece reporting on a DOD study raising problems with potential autonomous weaponry, which selects its own targets.

The Center for a New American Security report focuses on a range of unexpected behavior in highly computerized systems like system failures and bugs, as well as unanticipated interactions with the environment.

“On their first deployment to the Pacific, eight F-22 fighter jets experienced a Y2K-like total computer failure when crossing the international date line,” the report states. “All onboard computer systems shut down, and the result was nearly a catastrophic loss of the aircraft. While the existence of the international date line could clearly be anticipated, the interaction of the date line with the software was not identified in testing.”

 I guess the Y2K may work as a metaphor because it refers to a fact which existed and should have been accounted for in system design, but wasn't.  I'd add it to the failure of a Mars mission because of interfacing systems, one of which used metric, and one of which used American.

How the English Were Fooled by Geography

In the Age of Exploration sailors could establish their latitude (ie. how much north or south of the equator they were).  So English sailors knew the latitude of London was 51 degrees north.  Naturally when they first visited what they'd call New England, they figured that since the latitude was 41 degrees, or about 700 miles south of London, the weather should be warmer.  But Bartholomew Gosnold writes his father:

it is the latitude of 41 degrees, and one third part; which albeit it be so much to the southward, yet it is more cold than those parts of Europe, which are situated under the same parallel: but one thing is worth the noting, that notwithstanding the place is not so much subject to cold as England is, yet did we find the spring to be later there, than it is with us here, by almost a month: this whether it happened accidentally this last spring to be so, or whether it be so of course, I am not very certain; the latter seems most likely, whereof also there may be given some sufficient reason, which now I omit; as for the acorns we saw gathered on heaps, they were of the last year, but doubtless their summer continues longer than ours.

 Of course he was wrong--the New England summer is shorter and hotter.  Because the Gulf Stream had not yet been discovered as a thing affecting climate, Gosnold was fooled by geography and logic: similar latitudes should have similar climates.  According to my logic, this ignorance probably meant colonizing expeditions were less well prepared than they would have been if climate had been understood.

How To Comply With All Laws

Finally two professors have published the answer to the problem.

Less Equality Everywhere, Including Math

Atlantic has a nice piece on increasing achievement by American teenagers in math.  Why?  "problem solving", outside class programs, STEM parents.  But these things are available to the richer among us.

"National achievement data reflect this access gap in math instruction all too clearly. The ratio of rich math whizzes to poor ones is 3 to 1 in South Korea and 3.7 to 1 in Canada, to take two representative developed countries. In the U.S., it is 8 to 1. And while the proportion of American students scoring at advanced levels in math is rising, those gains are almost entirely limited to the children of the highly educated, and largely exclude the children of the poor."

Once upon a time I was good in math.  Participated in a state-wide test (the Mathematical Olympiad) in my junior year, did well, again my senior year, not so well.  It's been downhill from there.

Vietnam Wall Replicas

I never would have thought of replicas of the Vietnam Wall, much less that there were traveling exhibits of it.  But GovExec has an article on the replicas, and DOD"s RFP for another in preparation for the 50th anniversary of the war.  I'm not sure what they're using as the starting date, certainly the first person on the Wall preceded 1966.  Thanks to wikipedia we learn it was 10 years earlier, and he was killed by "friendly fire", so to speak.  A fitting opening to a very complex and confused episode in history.

My personal 50th anniversary won't be for another 16 months or so.

The Lady in the Van

Enjoyed this movie very much.  I see on Rottentomatoes that the critics liked it better than the public (92 percent to 75). I suspect the difference is because it's not the heartwarming story you might expect.  I laughed a lot, perhaps because I'm old enough to enjoy some black humor, perhaps because I just carried over a reflex from watching Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey.  As usual, she's very convincing.

A Tear for Justice Douglas

Nathan Yau at Flowing Data has a chart of the liberal/conservative scores of all justices since 1937.  The point is to show how replacing Scalia will make a big change in the median justice.  It's fine for that.

But for me, a person who remembers the days of "Impeach Earl Warren", it's fun to look toback over history.  Liberals today are more tightly grouped than in the last 50 years.  But look at the outliers over time.  Justice Thomas is one, but the real outlier is Justice Douglas.  The metrics used run from -6 to +4 with minus being liberal and plus being conservative.    So, during the years shown (1937-2015) the outliers are:

• Douglas (-6)  (eyeballed) who wanders ever more "liberal" until the end
• Rehnquist (-4.5) who's most conservative in 1975 but grows more and more moderate, particularly after becoming chief.
• Marshall (-4.3) who becomes more liberal
• Brennan (I think) (-3.9) who becomes more liberal
• Thomas (+3.5) who's pretty consistent, a bit more moderate in recent years
• Scalia (+3.5) who's amazingly changeable, starting off at +1.2, going to +3.5 in 2000 and back to +2

The conservatives get frustrated with the Court.  A clue to why might lie in an eyeball comparison of liberals and conservative justices since Nixon--the conservative paths seem to be more scattered and variable than do the liberal ones (particularly after discounting Brennan and Marshall).  The variability probably means they're less effective in joining to form a majority.

[updated--the reason for the title of the post--Justice Douglas was talented, but he became seriously odd in his later years.)

Request for Information on Acreage Reporting

USDA is:

investigating the use of a commercially available service to provide a reporting system to support Farm Service Agency (FSA) and Risk Management Agency's (RMA) common acreage and crop reporting compliance and other program needs. The objective of this RFI is to investigate whether commercial capability presently exists that can supply a viable alternative to the current Java based in-house system. 

The actual RFI is here.

Looking at the template for responding, I'm wondering whether there's been previous extensive meetings with potential respondents.  If there hasn't, the respondents may be at a loss to complete many of the items.  

China's Rural Areas and America's

FiveThirtyEight  has a post on Monroeville, AL, which has changed since the 1930's.   That reminded me of this NYTimes piece on China's rural areas.  President Xi visited a rural town:

The bucolic scenes, shown on Chinese state television, cast Mr. Xi as a paternal leader in the footsteps of Mao, at home with the rustic virtues that once made this mountainous region of southeast China a birthplace of the Communist Party’s rural revolution.

But those images conflict with contemporary reality here. Within days, this struggling community of 250 souls will be nearly empty.

Like an increasing number of villages across China, most of its people have left to find work or attend school elsewhere, returning to their ancestral home only for the New Year holidays. The rest of the year, only 50 or so people live here, most of them elderly, usually fending for themselves.

 My point?  China's social evolution is similar to the US one, except much faster.  In our case, the rural areas emptied out over decades; in theirs, just years.  (

Crop Insurance Explained

Modern Farmer has an explanation of crop insurance, particularly the Harvest Price option, in their explanation of the cuts Obama is proposing in his last budget. Seems to me to be a reasonable explanation, not that I'm an expert these days.

The Rebel Lee, Harper That Is

The print version of the NYTimes has a picture of Harper Lee and A.C. Lee taken in 1961 on the porch of the home in Monroeville, AL. It's different than the one online in this piece.

I'm sure that town was at least as conservative as the upstate NY area I grew up in.  Three things caught my eye:

1. she's smoking, not something a proper lady did at that time.
2. she's wearing slacks, also not something a proper lady did.
3. her expression, which seems a bit rebellious and sulky.

It's interesting, in the online picture of the two, perhaps taken on the same day, the two are posed the same (A.C. facing left nearest the camera, his daughter reclining behind him facing right), no cigarette is in sight, A.C. hides the slacks (or perhaps she's wearing a dress), and the expression is more neutral.  I wonder about the story behind the two photos.

In the Post there was a picture of Ms Lee as a white-haired pleasant old lady.

Transitions and MIssing "W"s

GovExec has a piece on presidential transitions, basically from a luncheon sponsored by the White House Transition Project.

It's focused on the White House, but there could be similar efforts at the department and agency level.  Though come to think of it, it's likely in the case of USDA that incoming appointees used to work there, so have some institutional memory.

(Incidentally, now the passions have cooled, it appears the stories about the Clinton-Bush transition were overcranked.)

The No-Good Thieving Daily Mail

I'm taking Nathan Yau's account at face value, but it seems convincing--in short, The Daily Mail has stolen his visualizations twice in a year, and has been accused of making it a general practice.

Not good.

Insurance Against Ransomware?

LA hospital paid ransom to free up their IT systems.  Technology Review explains vulnerability.  I wonder if any insurance company is offering insurance against this risk?  It seems a logical step, which would also provide financing for investigators to work against such hackers.

Don't See "Hail Caesar"

Don't see it, that is, unless you're over 65 or are devoted to post WWII movies.  If you meet either of those conditions, see it.  It's very funny, with more of a message than you might expect.

Hypocrisy, Thy Name Is Human

Some more on Scalia:

• a Post piece by a liberal who clerked for him.  At least during the first 20 years, he usually had a liberal clerk.  I guess as a Catholic he believed in the devil's advocate (the post in sainthood proceedings).
• politicians are by nature hypocrites--a good way to persuade people is to make them believe you agree with them, and the only peaceful way to resolve conflicts is to persuade people.
• the fight over his replacement is occasion for a lot of hypocrisy on both sides.
• prognostications on the importance of the replacement process forget we have several senior justices, anyone of whom might kick the bucket at any moment, which would decidedly upset current calculations.

Bitching at OPM

Trying to be good and do taxes early this year.  Need my statement from OPM.  Their website has not, to my eyes, been updated in some years.  Usually these days a commercial site has a "Sign in" button in the upper right corner which allows access to the customer account.  Not so for OPM.  They have "Services Online" stuck in the middle of the page.  It should be obvious to the observant, but it wasn't to an old geezer.

Next, for some reason my password manager and OPM's software are allergic to each other. Over the years I've tried a few times to get into the site.  I've never been able to manage it, without having to reset my password (part of the problem is the weird way they handle account numbers). 

Finally they have two questions to determine whether you can request a new password by email or by snail mail.  That's fine, except who remembers whether one's accessed the site within the last 15 months and set up security questions?  I certainly don't.  Consequently, OPM may be stuck not using an automated process to reset my password. 

Where Does Wisdom Lie

Often between the extremes, is my answer. 

Steven Hayward, a blogger at Powerline (meaning middle right), mentions my favorite blogger, Kevin Drum here:

"Anyway, one of the writers in Mother Jones who is actually worth reading is Kevin Drum, because he does some good original reporting, and sometimes departs from leftist orthodoxy or at least offers some original thoughts. Yesterday on the Mother Jones blog, Drum beat his drum: Over the past few weeks I’ve written five posts making the following points:

1. The acting Oscars are not really all that white.
2. Flint is not a public health holocaust.
3. The 1994 crime bill didn’t create mass incarceration.
4. Photo ID laws probably don’t have massive turnout effects.
5. Social welfare spending has gone up a lot over the past three decades, and welfare reform had very little impact on either this or the deep poverty rate."

How We Handle Dangerous Animals

This is triggered by posts on Prof. Moskos' blog, Cop in the Hood. (He was a cop and is a sociology prof.)

Occasionally we have cases where the authorities have to deal with dangerous animals.  Maybe a leopard escapes from a zoo, or a cattle truck overturns and a bunch of steers are running wild, or a bear wanders into the burbs to raid garbage cans, or ...  Sometimes these situations end with death for the animal, sometimes no weapons are fired, sometimes a tranquilizer dart gun is used.

Occasionally we have cases where the authorities have to deal with dangerous humans.  Maybe a man is running naked with a knife, or a youth is carrying what appears to be a rifle, or...

My question: is there a good reason for not approaching the two sets of situations in the same way?

My theory is that animals don't send the adrenaline flowing in quite the same way as humans, but is that a reflection of our culture or is it innate?

Famous People and Breast Cancer

ScholarlyKitchen passes on a 12 minute video of the scientist who found the BRCA1 gene (breast cancer) describing a little bit of what went into that.  For a scientist she tells a funny story.

Midshipman Nicholson and Louisiana Purchase

A reminder that anonymous bureaucrats and functionaries play an indispensable role in history--see this description of the paperwork which went into implementing the actual purchase of Louisiana.  Some 30 documents.

The Sausage Machine Described

 A law review article reveals the sausage machine which is Congress writing laws.

The truth is that members of Congress do not write the laws; they (or a few of them) decide policy, which gets transmuted into law by staff and staff attorneys employed by members and committees. And when there's omnibus legislation, different people write different parts, not necessarily using the same terminology or legal theories.

This is true now, it was true even with the Constitution.  Anyone who has had experience of a group trying to produce a written product knows the paper does not  magically reflect a group mind, but compromises which fully satisfy no one.

Against Corporate Farming

From Blog for Rural America, what do Oklahoma, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa all have in common?

It might seem that they are the homes of big corporate farms. But no, they all passed laws restricting corporate farms within the last 100 years.  The post explains some of the challenges to such laws.

Love It--the Eternal Silos of FSA and NRCS

Just realized I hadn't heard from NASCOE in a while so I checked the website, which has been completely redone.

Here's what I love.

NATIONAL OFFICE RESPONSE: (combined sources)
At this point, FSA employees with access to existing systems can access FSAfarm+ using their employee eAuth Level 2 login; however, we have not added NRCS employees to the list of authorized users. The website was built as a customer self-service portal and FSA employee access has been authorized so employees may assist our customers with questions regarding the website. NRCS FSAfarm+ access has been discussed with leadership and they are looking into obtaining the required approvals.

They've got a new process for submitting field office concerns and getting responses from DC.  This response is to a request that FSA give NRCS access to their records.  This was Sec. Madigan's concept back in 1991.  As you can see from the response, those silos are still standing tall.

The Revenant Is an Oscar Favorite?

Just saw the movie.  Maybe an old geezer doesn't have the patience for 5 minute shots with nothing much happening, but I did not like it.  Yes, DiCaprio's efforts must be respected and I wouldn't have a problem with him getting best actor.  And the picture making is fine, though the scenery is cold.  But a movie is supposed to tell a story and there wasn't much there, certainly not enough for 2 hours 30 minutes.  Maybe chop an hour out and it would play, but there's no way I see it as a best movie candidate.

Great Work--NRCS

"Agriculture’s “Natural Resources Conversation Service dropped 13 places to rank 25th overall in the 2016 Index – no other agency fell further,” the analysts said"

This is from a Government Executive article on a survey of plain language in government websites.

Not sure how well done this is--the study dings USDA generally, but only NRCS is listed in the detailed results table.

How Government (Congress) Doesn't Work

Politico has an article on unauthorized agencies.  The books say Congress sets policy and authorizes an agency to carry it out in legislation developed by the legislative committees.  Then the appropriations committees allocate the money in yearly appropriations bills.  The reality is the policy committees may shirk their duty.  Why?  It's explained in the text.