Kudos for Fred Kaplan

Ran across this prescient post on Slate from March 2003--read the whole thing.

How the Bush administration is botching the Iraq crisis. By Fred Kaplan - Slate Magazine: "It is becoming increasingly and distressingly clear that, however justified the coming war with Iraq may be, the Bush administration is in no shape—diplomatically, politically, or intellectually—to wage it or at least to settle its aftermath."

Reforming Bureaucracy--Empowering Operatives

Last night Lehrer Newshour had another in its series of interviews with people on immigration. The interviewee was an immigration lawyer. She mentioned a case where the waiting for legal immigration (from the Philippines?) would take 12 years, during which no visitor visa would be allowed. She mentioned another case of a high school student who would be sent back because she had no adult advocate here (parents split, father brought her here, then split, etc.) which even Immigration agreed was deserving.

That leads to a thought. With computers and databases, it's easy enough to track histories. So we could empower "operatives" (James Q. Wilson's term for the front-line bureaucrat) to make decisions and track how good or bad they are. For example, in the case of immigration, allow each frontline worker to let in two people a year under a special program. Track the history of the people let in and tie it back to the worker. So if Joan Doe lets in someone who runs afoul of the law, that should impact her ability to make future decisions, her promotability, her pay, etc. Contrarily, let in someone who becomes a good U.S. citizen and you get rewarded.

We could apply the same principle in other bureaucracies.

Caps Lock

Eugene Volokh here supports the campaign to remove the Caps Lock key. From the comments it seems that lawyers still use all caps (and in some cases monospaced fonts). But then, don't the Brits still wear wigs?

More on FBI Computers

George Buddy of Buddy's Bemusings alerts me to this article by Jonathan Alter in Newsweek critical of the FBI's computer efforts, which raises some additional thoughts:

• No good liberal is surprised that a government contractor is in it for the money. When I was a government bureaucrat I always thought I could do a better job than the contractors, but then I always was a know-it-all. One of the problems with contractors is that they are basically used-car salesmen, by which I mean that they're con-men and women. More seriously, there's the same imbalance of information as the economist Akerlof famously identified with used cars and won the Nobel Prize for. The seller (the contractor) knows more about its capabilities and software than does the buyer (the government).
  
• Having said all that, I don't buy the Alter's idea that the FBI's system is so simple that 12 contractors could have done it. It may look simple to us outsiders, but not to insiders.
  
• But given the environment, Freeh should have hired a contractor to devote 12 man-years to the job of building a kernel system, that could have expanded and evolved as the FBI started to learn the capabilities of PC's and the Internet and the process of developing software and as software has changed over the last 15 years. Trying to do a big system all at once was asking for trouble. (NASA got us to the moon, but on an evolutionary path of development.)

I give Alter credit for citing Harshaw's rule one (without the credit): "If you’ve read even one of the 500,000 articles in the popular press about software development, it’s obvious that the first try never works."

Most Ridiculous Bureaucrat Award

Cold War Missiles Target of Blackout: "The Bush administration has begun designating as secret some information that the government long provided even to its enemy the former Soviet Union: the numbers of strategic weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during the Cold War.

The Pentagon and the Department of Energy are treating as national security secrets the historical totals of Minuteman, Titan II and other missiles, blacking out the information on previously public documents, according to a new report by the National Security Archive."

Perverts, Liars, Christians and Bush

An interesting collection of articles in the Times and Post today:

• The Times' Eichenwald explores the online world of pedophilia here--From Their Own Online World, Pedophiles Extend Their Reach. He documents the extent to which pedophiles construct their own world, in which children come on to them and pedophilia is a civil rights cause.
  
• The Times also carries this story about a painting of Jesus in a West Virginia school, raising church-state issues. (The painting is the version I remember from the 40's, a very handsome man with long hair with eyes uplifted. At that time, Jesus was the only long-haired person. I'm certainly no expert, but he doesn't look Jewish at all to me.) It includes a quote that the U.S. was a Christian country, founded on Christian principles.
• Turning to the Post, Shankar Vedantam in his science column reports on research showing how much people cheat, and the excuses they give themselves as justification.
• And finally, in the funniest article, the Bush administration has decided that the number of U.S. missiles in 1969 is classified.
  

Why link them together, other than to create a striking header? Because they all show instances of what I might call "housekeeping"--the very human and birdlike quality of straightening out one's environment to make it more to your liking. The pedophiles aren't any less human than the rest of us; they're just more obvious about it.

Discussion of FBI and Computers

Here's a link to the Post on-line discussion of today's article on FBI and computers. My comment is "Reston, VA", but all the comments were on target. Unfortunately it's not a sexy subject, bureaucratic systems seldom are.

FBI and Computers

I blogged on this back when the FBI project was scrapped. (See here , here, and here--matter of fact, it may be my favorite subject.) Today the Post reviews the fiasco here--The FBI's Upgrade That Wasn't placing some of the blame on the contractor who failed to hold the FBI's feet to the fire. But I liked this quote:

"The setup was so cumbersome that many agents stopped using it, preferring to rely on paper and secretaries. Technologically, the FBI was trapped in the 1980s, if not earlier.

'Getting information into or out of the system is a challenge,' said Greg Gandolfo, who spent most of his 18-year FBI career investigating financial crimes and public corruption cases in Chicago, Little Rock and Los Angeles. 'It's not like 'Here it is, click' and it's in there. It takes a whole series of steps and screens to go through.'

Gandolfo, who now heads a unit at FBI headquarters that fields computer complaints, said the biggest drawback is the amount of time it takes to handle paperwork and input data. 'From the case agent's point of view, you want to be freed up to do the casework, to do the investigations, to do the intelligence,' he said."

It's the old problem. People will bypass your system unless it accomplishes something useful for them. That means you either have to design it well, or have a system that has the users by the short and curlies (i.e., if you don't use the system, you can't get paid).

Governmental Inefficiency at the FBI

The Post starts a series on the FBI in today's world with a look at the training program for new agents at Quantico here--Old-School Academy in Post-9/11 World:

"An obsolete computer system is also a problem for new-agents-in-training, or 'NATS,' as they are called at Quantico.

'That is one of the big frustrations here,' said Supervisory Special Agent Karen E. Gardner, chief of investigative training at Quantico. 'If the American people expect us to connect the dots, we've got to train to do it. We don't have the computer networks here to do that.'

FBI officials said the bureau plans to build a multimillion-dollar state-of-the-art intelligence center at Quantico equipped with secure classrooms and classified computers. But it won't be ready for eight years."

FDR's War Department built the entire Pentagon in a shorter time, 16 months to be exact. I guess that's the difference between the "greatest generation" and the Bush(-league) generation.

Maids for Frosh? THIAH (To Hell in a Handbasket)

From a Post story today on new dorms for college students, being built privately:

Way-Out-of-the-Norm Dorm: "GWU's new freshman dorm has a maid service to clean the bathrooms and vacuum the rooms -- no more sticky beer patches on the floor."

I knew the world was going to hell in a handbasket when the Army contracted out KP duty (everyone under 50 will have no idea what it is). But this is the icing on the cake.

Native Americans, Immigrants, and the Religious Right

The Times had a piece today, How to Make Sure Children Are Scientifically Illiterate,
with links to the recent international survey of how many people believed in evolution (US just above Turkey at the bottom of the scale) and taking off from the recent Kansas school board voting:

"A key concern should not be whether Dr. Abrams’s religious views have a place in the classroom, but rather how someone whose religious views require a denial of essentially all modern scientific knowledge can be chairman of a state school board."

While my knee jerk reaction is to agree, sometimes old age causes my knee not to jerk. Today I'm wondering: liberals usually favor Native Americans and immigration (also a big story today) and oppose the religious right, as in this piece today. But when you think about it, I suspect many immigrants (particularly the non-college educated) and many Native Americans share with the religious right a disbelief in evolution. But we forget that.

Afghan Road Rage

The Post yesterday had another interesting memo from the front. This time it was from the command sergeant major in Afghanistan, counselling his troops on the best approach to the Afghan populace. Unfortunately, they haven't yet put the image of the memo on their web site, just an
introduction to it: "Indeed, U.S. troops have earned a reputation as 'negligent, offensive, rude, callous, occupiers, hostile, disrespectful . . . you get the point.' That description is found in the memo below by a senior sergeant in Afghanistan, signaling that the Army is thinking seriously about how to operate differently -- and more effectively -- in its counterinsurgency efforts."

It struck my eye for two reasons. It reaffirms what I knew from Nam--you put guns in the hands of big young males and they will try to prove Lord Acton's maxim: "power corrupts...." But it also proves the hold of the past--it's typed in monospaced type (i.e. pica or elite). The bureaucracy has problems believing that proportional spacing upper and lower case is the most readable font.

Staging Photography

Dr. Bernstein at The Volokh Conspiracy has commented extensively on evidence of staging and faking photographs from Lebanon. I commented, and will expand here. (I should look up Susan Sontag's book on the subject, but I'm too lazy.) There's are multiple continuums of photography, with many distinctions, some of which get overlooked in the current discussion:

• at one extreme is the "snapshot", interpreted literally. The photographer is an observer with a fast trigger finger (like Col. Van Loan(?sp) shooting the Vietcong prisoner in Vietnam during Tet 68). Security camera footage and "candid camera" shots also qualify.
  
• the planned "snapshot", where the subject matter is predictable but the photographer is still an observer. Think of the famous photo of Clinton and Lewinsky in the receiving line or JFKjr under JFK's desk--the photographers knew they might get a picture from the situation and did.
• this grades over into "photo-ops" and ceremonies, where the subject plans an event to provide the predictable pictures.
  
• there's also the photographer-posed events, like wedding ceremonies, handshakes, etc. The NYTimes had a photo in connection with the completion of digging a section of tunnel for the water system. A worker had one foot on the rail. While it seemed real, I suspect it was posed, because it was too good a picture to be caught naturally.
  
• a new variation is the "realness" of the event. A wedding or a bill signing is a real event, usually but not necessarily. Realness also ties to "uniqueness"--presumably you can only get a picture once.
  
• finally there's the photographer created events, like much art.

For Lebanon, perhaps there's less toleration of "posing", if any occured, because of the importance of the subject (as compared to the tunnel digging). There's an implicit contract between photographer/media and reader/viewer--what you provide is warranted to be a true reflection of reality in all important aspects. But there's also a contract between photographer and subject--you can take the picture if it's in my best interests. Sometimes the contracts are irreconcilable.

Bureaucrats and Info Sharing

Today's NYTimes has an op-ed piece, All Terrorism Is Local, Too , by an Interpol official complaining that:

"ALTHOUGH last week’s disruption of a terrorist plot to blow up commercial airliners over the Atlantic was a great success, it nonetheless exposed a dangerous gap in global security efforts. The problem is that governments and security services in countries that arrest terrorists and announce their triumphs to the press often fail to alert national and local police forces around the world or share with them information that is crucial to protecting their citizens."

Nothing new here. It's the way people work and it's why "information sharing" is the name of a mirage.

Anti-Modern Elements Unite

Ilya Somin at The Volokh Conspiracy: has a post " on the religious right in Israel reaching out to Hamas:

[According to Rabbi Jakobovits], '[t]he Islamic world has deep concerns about the penetration of liberal, secular values and lifestyles into the Middle East. A major factor in the conflict between radical Islam and the Western world is Islam's opposition to secular lifestyle and ideology.

'The haredi community understands their sensitivities and mentality and feels threatened by the same phenomena. The haredi community could play a key role in dialogue between the West and Islam because we live in two worlds, one deeply religious and the other liberal and pluralistic. We understand that the secular mind is different from the religious mind."

Some of the religious right in this country also have deep concerns about the penetration of liberal, secular values and lifestyles in the U.S. (See this post in the Times about the push to change "dry laws".) I think it's fair to say that generally the left doesn't have such concerns, except to the extent that "liberal, secular values" overlap "free market, capitalist values"--i.e., some on the left are generally anti-Walmart, so might support the retention of dry laws.

Victory, Defeat, Lottery Wins and Stumbling on Happiness

Tom Friedman in the Times today makes a valuable point, The Morning After the Morning After: which he phrases like this:

"With every war there are two days to keep in mind when the guns fall silent: the morning after, and the morning after the morning after. America, Israel and all those who want to see Lebanon’s democracy revived need to keep their eyes focused on the morning after the morning after."

His point is that, while there will be claims of victory by Hezbollah on the morning after, the real issue is what happens after that. This ties into Dr. Gilbert's "Stumbling on Happiness". He says we overrate the importance of key events in the future--how happy or sad we will be when our team wins, our candidate loses, or whatever. What really happens is that the event bobs briefly above the waves, but then sinks to its proper level among all the day-to-day events of living. We were all sad (not true, but that's the historical myth) when JFK was shot. We were all ashamed when the last helicopter lifted from South Vietnam. We were all elated when Armstrong took one small step. But none of those events, in themselves, contributes to our current glee or tears. We deal with the effects of them, but they're in some perspective now.

The same will apply if we "cut and run" from Iraq. Certainly Bucheney is right to say it would be hailed as a victory for al-Qaeda, just as he's been hailing it as a victory for freedom for these many years. When Reagan cut and ran from Lebanon, it was a victory for Hezbollah. But you can win victories and lose the war. You can win a war and lose a peace. You can gain hegemony for a time and fall into decrepitude.

Of course it's better to win victories. But in the long haul what counts is the day-to-day effects, the work, the intelligence, and the morality with which one strives.

Our Exports--Punks and Posers

The Post yesterday had this article on the punk scene in China--Punks and Posers in China: "For Chinese punks today, it might take screaming to be heard. They make up a small slice of the music industry here, and they play to a largely underground scene. But their struggle to gain attention provides a glimpse of what it's like to be a rebel in a country that suppresses dissent and individuality, and an artist in a culture that worships money and Western fads."

It's the last bit that fascinates me. This was a culture that 25 years ago was still in Mao jackets. Now it worships Western fads. And maybe we should be relaxed about intellectual property rights--won't it be better to have a world in which the second most populous nation (China in 25 years) is strongly oriented to American pop culture and spending their money on our pop stars.

Or, as my old geezer side kicks in, maybe not. Maybe this is really Chinese subversion??

Handedness and Earnings

My father was a lefty, converted to write right, but ate left, which can cause seating complications for group dining. The subject's always been of interest to me.

There's new research out, here at NBER: "We examine whether handedness is related to performance in the labor market and, in particular, earnings. We find a significant wage effect for left-handed men with high levels of education. This positive wage effect is strongest among those who have lower than average earnings relative to those of similar high education". The Wash Post covers the story here.


Tyler Cowen comments here, Dan Drezner comments here.

The subject of handedness has been covered in a fascinating award-winning book--see the web site--Right Hand, Left Hand. The author covers the varieties of leftyism, tying in everything from genetics, fetal development, the road systems in European countries and the process of developing a nation (which side of the road do you drive on) to the structure of the universe (how do you determine what's left and what's right).

One's Deeds or One's Life?

The Post carries an article today that I had an emotional reaction to:

Killer May Be Unearthed From Arlington Cemetery: "The bill requiring the removal of Wagner's remains follows action by Congress last year that tightened restrictions on interring veterans convicted of any offense for which the death penalty or life imprisonment could be imposed.

Previously, the prohibition extended only to those who had been sentenced to death or life imprisonment without parole. This left open the possibility that people who were eligible for parole -- no matter what their likelihood of early release -- could receive military honors at Arlington or another military cemetery."

Seems to me the issue is the separability of one's life from one's deeds. Is it possible for evil men to do good things, or does the evil inevitably stain the deed? Can one enjoy Wagner's operas (I don't, particularly) even though he was anti-Semitic? My first, kneejerk reaction is that deeds should be separated from the life, and that someone who qualifies for Arlington shouldn't be disqualified by later evil. Like I say, it's a first reaction, subject to second thoughts.

Post Stories on Ag Programs--Followup II

This continues my response to DZ, who commented on the Post stories in early July:

4) Should recipients of farm program payments be means tested? DZ mentions the means testing for student aid. We could also mention the earned income tax credit, TANF (welfare), etc. In the farm area, most (all?) of the disaster programs are limited to operations with less than $2.5 million gross income (provision dating back to 1986) and what's left of the old "Farmers Home Administration" loan programs require collecting extensive financial data. (Essentially FSA becomes the bank of last resort.)

My thoughts--means testing could attract urban support for the program, but would drastically change the programs as they operate now. Bureaucratically, we know that such provisions are subject to abuse and fraud, more so than the relatively simple entitlement programs FSA is used to. Confidentiality of data, which DZ mentions as an issue, is tricky. One of the strengths of FSA offices is that the workers are part of the rural community. It's lots different than entrusting your IRS-1040 to some anonymous clerk you never meet at church or the store.

5) DZ says some local governments have required developers of ag land which had the far lower farmland tax assessment to pay the difference between assessments when they finally develop the land.

I guess there's a difference between tax breaks based on usage and establishing "permanent" agricultural zones like Montgomery county, MD has done. Bureaucratically, I'm dubious of some of this sort of thing. The Post articles mentioned that Texas counties looked to FSA for their definition of "agricultural use." One of the problems I'd see is that there's no check and balance (except for the occasional muckraking journalist); no one looking over the shoulder of the bureaucrat to be sure the rules are followed, like whether the amount the developer is to pay is computed correctly and is actually paid. Both MD and Fairfax county have had problems where builders built houses bigger than the rules allowed. (Of course, assessments in Fairfax are now online, so maybe new technlogy is handling the problem.)

6) From DZ: "While the story largely focuses on non-farmers who receive money for land not producing crops, it also devotes a fair amount of attention to farmers and investors who own land and get farm payments on land producing "program" crops. Given the latter focus, it's interesting that there's no mention of the impact of the Real Estate Investment Trust on farmland purchases and prices. I know that's been a concern in the Cornbelt where property owners - for example, those in Chicago - have sold property and then bought land at much lower prices per acre. That's made it more expensive for "large and established" farmers to buy farmland, not to mention any impact on small/young farmers with little capital."

Yes, I've seen mention of this issue when I surfed some discussion sites devoted to agriculture. I'm no expert on it, but it might illustrate one of the problems for journalists writing on farm problems--there's overlap between sectors, like agriculture and financial, and the journalist almost has to grow up with the topic to follow all the ins and outs.

Post Stories on Ag Programs--Followup I

Back in July, while my PC was down (and no, I haven't backed it up yet, :-( ), I got an email from D..Z.. (it was an email, not a comment on the blog, so I'm hiding the full name just in case he's concerned. He made very good points, which I promised to respond to when my PC was up. This is the delayed fulfillment of the promise:

1 DZ points out that the Post articles describe the 1996 Freedom to Farm Act as allowing farmers to grow crops without restrictions. That was the way the Act was sold to farmers and the general public. But buried in the fine print was a restriction (actually carried over from the previous farm bill, if memory serves) that prevented farmers from growing "fruits and vegetables" on land previously used for program crops. In other words, farmers were free to switch among "field" crops, like soybeans, other oilseeds, corn, cotton, rice, etc. But established fruit and vegetable growers were afraid of new competition, so the ban was included.

2 That many of the program recipients are widows. DZ heard a USDA official use 30 percent as the figure. I don't know the stat, but the point is true. From the beginning of the farm programs, the landowner has been eligible for payments if the owner shares in the crop. In other words, if I grow the crops on land I rent from Widow Jones for $100 an acre, cash payment, I get all the program payments. But if I rent from her on crop shares, with her getting one-third of the crop, she gets one-third of the payment. A controversy relates to what happens when the program prevents growing the crop--can Widow Jones get all the payment or can I get my 2/3's, even though I grow no crop? The issue arose in 1933 with cotton and sharecroppers, and continues to the present.

Back to widows: women outlive men, so they inherit land, rent it out, and still get payments because they own the land, which leads to point 3.

3 There is a stipulation in the law (since 1985) that payment recipients have to be "actively engaged" in farming. It's part of the payment limitation provisions. To oversimplify, in part because I no longer remember the rules well enough, contributing land and/or capital to the farming operation can qualify one as "actively engaged". So someone who inherited farm land years after they moved to the city and became rich can still be actively engaged in farming and receive program payments. It seems weird, but perhaps it's because our image of the farmer is the 160-acre man and his wife in "American Gothic".

To be continued (This just covers the first few of DZ's points.)

Deadly Modern Arms

A couple years ago there was a newspaper piece on the military's ordering a bunch of ammunition in order to avert a shortage for Iraq. The statistics on usage in the piece implied that our troops shot off 7000 rounds for every Iraqi killed (that's assuming that all of the estimated deaths were due to small arms fire; none were caused by artillery or bombs.)

As of August 2 statistics seem to say that Hezbollah kills one Israeli for each 100 rockets it fires into the country. (This probably changed since, as there were some rocket hits on groups.)

Be Very Afraid?

Orin Kerr has an interesting discussion of Sen. Spector's bill to revise FISA. It includes this scarey bit:

"If you don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your cell phone calls, which those cases suggest is the case, Specter’s bill would mean that the NSA can tap every cell phone in the country of every US citizen, for entirely domestic calls, all without a warrant. This monitoring wouldn’t be “electronic surveillance” because (based on the cordless phone cases) the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply."

Goes on to qualify the statement--read the whole thing.

Reps Back Down in War on Terror

As reported by the Washington Times, the Republicans are backing off their positions in the GWOT. No longer are we hurting the French.

"The fries on Capitol Hill are French again. So is the breakfast toast in the congressional cafeterias, with both fries and toast having been liberated from the appellation 'freedom.' "

Fallible Statistics

The Times had an article yesterday on men who've dropped out of the labor force.
Men Not Working, and Not Wanting Just Any Job.

It raised some questions:

• we compare favorably to European nations on unemployment rates. Would the comparison change if we used the percentage of the population working? Do all nations use the same rules to create unemployment statistics?
• is this relevant (I assume yes) to the question of immigration's effect on US workers? (See comment on a Marginal Revolution post on a new academic analysis. Presumably it is--perhaps US workers don't drop down the status ladder to get work as much as they used to because the bottom is filled in?
• is the phenomena related to the general social disdain of "low class" work and greater concern for status?
  

The article observed that some men lose contact with society as they reach their 40's and 50's, particularly the unmarried/childless ones. I suspect that's always been true. Maiden aunts would care for children and oldsters; bachelor uncles would sit further from the fire.

Selective Memory--Dems Support War!!

The NYTimes today has a story, Partisan Divide on Iraq Exceeds Split on Vietnam
including this factoid: "An analysis by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that the difference in the way Democrats and Republicans viewed the Vietnam War — specifically, whether sending American troops was a mistake — never exceeded 18 percentage points between 1966 and 1973. In the most recent Times/CBS poll on Iraq, the partisan gap on a similar question was 50 percentage points."

But that's not the most surprising thing. Even though I lived through the 60's and should know better, I suspect I'm part of a vast majority of Americans who would say that Democrats started opposing the Vietnam War around 1966. But the Times includes a graph, which I couldn't find on-line, that shows that Dems didn't clearly move to opposition until 1971 (Cambodian invasion I suspect). It's an example of Dan Gilbert's (Stumbling on Happiness) thesis that we reconstruct memory.

Competition for Attention

As far from academia as I have been for 40+ years, I find bits like this report from
OrinKerr.com to be interesting, concerning a recent academic conference and referring to the issue of laptops in college classrooms:

"Lots of the professors had their laptops with them, and one or two professors used the wifi to liveblog the conference. But by the middle of the day-long conference, it seemed to me that a large chunk (around half) of the professors in the audience were online checking e-mail, reading blogs, and surfing around to see what was up in Boston that weekend. Most were paying partial attention to the symposium, but they had a lot more going on than just the symposium."

Given the pervasive use of cellphones while driving, this sort of thing is going to be big over coming years. [Not sure what that means, but maybe that measures to mediate the competition will attract innovators.]

Farm Subsidies Good for Africa?

Thanks to Marginal Revolution here's an argument for farm subsidies, at least on food.
Africa does not need more expensive food:

"The trouble is that the truth is a little bit too simple to be credible. Farm subsidies in the EU and USA mean that we sell some kinds of foodstuffs (mainly grains, milk products and sugar) to Africa and other countries cheap. So cheap, in fact, that the Africans etc can buy our imported goods cheaper than they can produce them for themselves. This is good news.

No, stop, yes it is. If you can buy something for cheap, then that is good news. Food being cheap is good news for Africa. It isn't bad news. I promise you it is as simple as that."

Not sure I agree fully. We may be making life harder for African farmers and easier for African city dwellers. There's still many more farmers, see here.

Effects of Ending Farm Subsidies

What would be the effect of ending U.S. farm subsidies? I'm no expert, but when does that stop a blogger?

Economists seem to say that landowners capture farm payments. Their reasoning: if I can profit from growing cotton (for example), then I'm willing to pay more to rent land to grow cotton. If I own the land, then when I sell I can expect a higher price because buyers know they can make money growing cotton. So over time land rental rates and land values adjust to the flow of subsidy payments. That's what economists say anyhow.

The Economic Research Service of USDA studies the costs of production for various crops. As you'd expect, there's a distribution curve (bell curve) from low cost to high cost, with the bigger operators usually being more efficient. My impression is that for every crop, perhaps excluding sugar, low-cost operations can make money at current world market prices.

If that's true, then ending payments should cause U.S. land values and rental rates to fall. Only those (large, efficient) operators who can make a profit without subsidies would be willing to buy or rent land. So in the absence of subsidies we'd still have farms and the acreage of land being farmed might be much the same. But we'd have fewer farms.

Chinagate, Revisited

Remember the flaps during the Clinton administration about leakage of technology to China? Much ado about very little, IMHO. It's interesting to see that GAO doesn't like the Bush enforcement of limits on export of high capacity CPU's. Where are the right wing fearmongers when you need them?

(I tried to understand the report--I think the bottom line is DOD and Commerce realize the law the Republicans imposed on Clinton is foolish and unrealistic so they took some short cuts. GAO never appreciates short cuts. Without knowing anything about the subject except Moore's law, I'd say the law should just enforce a lag time (1 year lag for China, 10 year lag for North Korea or whatever).

Achievement, Genetics, and Gender

Eugene Volokh has had some threads discussing the old topic of woman/man differences in scholarly achievement and their possible basis in genetics. See the last one here.
Because the discussion started when I was still doing catch-up, I'll restrict my comments to these points:

• often such threads assume that one can make points about genetic influences by pointing to American data, as if "women" and "American women" were the same. We need to look across countries, across time, and across subcultures.
  
• one possibility for a genetic influence would be an observed differential in risk-taking behavior as reported yesterday. It says: "Young men all over the world have higher death rates than women because of their riskier lifestyles, researchers said yesterday.Accidents and suicide are the leading killers in men 15 to 34 years old; deaths from heart disease, cancer and chronic liver disease rise sharply in those 35 to 44." So maybe men are more willing to go for broke career-wise by working harder and exploring more risky hypotheses? (Females are more mature?)
  
• finally, the Scientific American runs a story on chess experts which suggests that it's study and more study rather than "genius" that gets you to the grandmaster status.
  

Deja-Vu, Disaster Program Weaknesses--I

Interesting testimony from GAO on the Risk Management Agency's operation of the federal crop insurance program. Briefly put, RMA reinsures private crop insurance companies for the policies they write and losses they take on crops, mostly field crops and fruits.

GAO found a number of problems, which take me back to the late 1970's when ASCS was operating a crop disaster program through its county offices, and I was involved in its administration in DC. The deja-vu ones include:

• farmers getting indemnities in multiple years (sometimes because the coverage levels (yields) are set too high)
• farmers dividing acreages into separate insurable units. There's a rational basis--for example hail on the Great Plains may cut a swath through the wheat. If you have 10 1,000 acre fields each insured separately rather than 1 10,000 acre field insured as one you increase the chances of having a loss on one or more fields. But there's also a reason to cheat. Because wheat is wheat, as Gertrude Stein didn't say, you can shift your actual production among different fields, possibly boosting your yield history (for future years) and/or creating a indemnifiable loss on another field

Shock, Shock--Dems Play Politics

It's not a high point in the history of the Democratic Party when they take umbrage at the Iraqi Prime Minister criticizing Israel. I see Brad DeLong agrees. But since al-Maliki is also a politician he should understand. Every politician has hot button issues among his or her constitutency to which obeisance must be paid [ed.--does one pay a button?]. Hopefully none of the posturing will affect serious issues.

Why Farm Programs--Blame the Founding Fathers

There are a number of reasons for farm programs. One is the Constitutional Convention, with the bargain between the small states and large States that gave us the bicameral legislature. While we no longer are an agricultural country, as we were in 1790, farmers still retain enough influence to affect Senatorial elections in most states. The result is bipartisan support for farm programs. There's no way to build a coalition against farm programs per se. You have to make the case on budget grounds or perhaps as part of the free trade discussion.

Openness in Government--Coburn/Obama as a Cure for Problems?

Senators Coburn and Obama have sponsored a bill that would "require the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to establish and maintain a single public website that lists all entities receiving federal funds, including the name of each entity, the amount of federal funds the entity has received annually by program, and the location of the entity. All federal assistance must be posted within 30 days of such funding being awarded to an organization. " See Coburn's website
(Obama seems less active and he's not much of a blogger). This proposal has been greeted enthusiastically by the NYTimes, and Wash Post. While the Post editiorial commends the proposal in the context of their recent articles on farm programs, it fails to mention that we've had a database of farm program payments for 12 years now. Granted, it's not run by OMB but by EWG,
a private entity, but it's based on USDA data. Not to be a gloomy Gus, but during the time the database has been available, farm subsidy payments have increased, not decreased.

Disaster Aid for Livestock, Wash Post Stories

The Post continued its series on agriculture programs this past week. See the links here.

If I weren't trying to catch up from hardware problems, I'd blog a bit more, but these points strike me (albeit with minimal research):

1. Neither program was a permanent yearly program, authorized by the 2002 farm bill. Instead there was a combination of administration action using the Section 32 authority (an obscure provision dating to the '30's, that's dusted off every decade or so for a one-shot deal) and Congressional action by sticking provisions in appropriations acts. That's different than the programs they covered last week--the continuing ones.
2. Regardless of whether the policy is correct, it's harder for bureaucrats to implement one-shot programs. There are several reasons including: a one-shot program usually is late before it's started, the bureaucrats are scrambling to get it in place but have little or no experience with it, and there's little chance and no real incentive to improve and learn from mistakes. Even if the OIG and GAO look at the program, the bureaucrat will say: "yes, we messed that up. We promise, if those [expletive deleted] in Congress ever give us a similar program to try to do better.
   

I think there's a parallel with Congressional earmarks--

Catchup

Well, my computer is fixed and I'm busily trying to catch up. Will probably take a couple days to do so.

Backup--Confessions of a Reformed Sinner

Yes, backup is important. I've had a home computer for over 16 years now and have not regularly backed up. But now I've lost both my new PC and my old (backup) PC. Although the new one is still under warranty, figuring out the problem has been slow. Before they would agree to replace parts I had to agree to reinstall the original software. That is, they restore the original software from the hard drive, wiping all of my programs and data. :-( Not wanting to do that, I had to get a new hard drive and pay to have the data copied from old to new. Now I'm waiting for next week and the arrival of the repair person. Meanwhile my whole routine is disrupted and being very anal, routine is critical to my happiness.

Lesson: backup is worth it.

Posting from the library, one of Franklin's better inventions.

Backup--Confessions of a Reformed Sinner

Yes, backup is important. I've had a home computer for over 16 years now and have not regularly backed up. But now I've lost both my new PC and my old (backup) PC. Although the new one is still under warranty, figuring out the problem has been slow. Before they would agree to replace parts I had to agree to reinstall the original software. That is, they restore the original software from the hard drive, wiping all of my programs and data. :-( Not wanting to do that, I had to get a new hard drive and pay to have the data copied from old to new. Now I'm waiting for next week and the arrival of the repair person. Meanwhile my whole routine is disrupted and being very anal, routine is critical to my happiness.

Lesson: backup is worth it.

Slow/No Blogging

Currently dealing with equipment problems at home, so will not be doing much blogging until those are resolved.

One thing I noted--the British suicide bomber who had his video played on Al Jazeera is described as having a Yorkshire accent. That says something about the different levels of acculturation.

The Pollan/Critser Farm Program Narrative

A summary of Michael Pollan, Omnivore's Dilemma, and Greg Critser, Fat Land, as they deal with agriculture programs: farming was undeveloped in the 1920's, went into crisis in the 1930's when the New Deal came up with the "Ever Normal Granary" program, after the war farming became mechanized, industrialized, using nitrogen fertilizer developed by the scientist who developed poison gas, but still was mostly okay until Nixon and Earl Butz. Butz, the racist Secretary of Agriculture destroyed New Deal farm programs, encouraging full production "fence row to fence row". This led to cheap corn, which was used by big business using the Japanese invention of high fructose corn syrup to make big soft drinks. Cheap food meant the fast food outlets could "supersize" their meals to get more business. As a result, Americans overeat and get fat.

[This is based on memory, oversimplifies, but is not totally unfair to the writers. As you can tell from my tone, I quarrel with the narrative.]

Loan Deficiency Payments--WPost Ag Series

The Post's second article on agriculture programs is here: Growers Reap Benefits Even in Good Years. It's again well done, with some graphics that should be noted. The farm programs are so complex you almost have to draw pictures, and even then people will misinterpret what you write.

Today's article covers the loan deficiency program, focusing on corn. The following is of no interest to anyone, being too inside baseball. My memory, which gets worse daily and more cynical weekly, is that the cotton and rice people started "marketing assistance loans" and "loan deficiency payments" in the 1985 farm bill, partially to evade payment limitations. (Nonrecourse loans under the old loan and purchase program weren't subject to payment limitation because the hope was that the farmer would be able to pay them off. So you come up with "marketing assistance loans", which kick in when market prices fall below loan rates (roughly).

Again, this is outside my expertise even when I knew anything, but this is how it evolved. Say the loan rate for cotton is $.55 a pound. In the old days the farmer would harvest the cotton and then take out a CCC price support loan, getting $.55. If market prices never got above $.50 at the end of the loan period the farmer would forfeit the cotton to CCC and keep the $.55. When the marketing assistance program came in, the farmer had a new option--redeeming the cotton for $.50 and keeping $.05 in "marketing assistance loan" benefits. That meant CCC didn't have to worry about disposing of surplus, which meant that the next year we wouldn't require (as big) an reduction in planted acreage. But the net effect was to revert to the 1930's--a two price system where we'd dump surplus cotton on the world market. (That's my cynicism.)

But where do "loan deficiency payments" come in? To simplify operations, instead of going through a loan process on paper, just allow the farmer to pick a date, then compute the $.05 payment and give it to him. So "loan deficiency payments" were "in lieu" of marketing assistance loans. But still outside payment limitation. (They aren't now, but they were for years. And even when Congress instituted limitations, they came up with a separate amount.)

An irony--Al Gore trumpeted his "reinventing government" program--I think the only two programs ended under it were the wool/mohair and honey programs. Of course, Congress always has the last word, so when attention strays, guess what? That's right, welcome to the honey, wool, and mohair loan deficiency payment programs.

WPost on Farm Program Pays $1.3 Billion to People Who Don't Farm

Washington Post is running articles on farm programs, in advance of debate over the 2007 Farm Bill, is here--
Farm Program Pays $1.3 Billion to People Who Don't Farm:

I didn't catch major errors. (There was a misunderstanding by at least one payment recipient--if someone wants to refuse the money it would not go to others. As an entitlement program, FTF differs from appropriated funds.)It emphasizes the personal and the attention-grabbing--for some reason the media like to get readers. If I get the energy to read other blogs I'll probably see some other misinterpretations--like the distinction between cash-rent tenants and sharecroppers, even though it's in the article. Someone will swear that the government is paying some foreigner, I'm sure. One thing about today's article--it didn't lead with big payments to big producers as many such articles do.

It would have been less interesting, but fuller if the writers had pointed out (which they might do tomorrow):

• Freedom to Farm payments were more expensive than payments under the predecessor programs. The increased money was supposed to be part of the "buyout" of farm programs. (I can't say that a simple extension of the programs before FTF would have been cheaper than FTF, but we taxpayers sure didn't get what Pat Roberts promised.)
  
• the big impact of WTO negotiations. WTO rules frown upon payments directly tied to production, another motive to shift to payments based on history (in FTF) (Ironically, today's paper also carries a story about the breakdown of the latest round of WTO negotiations, all because of agricultural subsidies
• the farm lobby was able to consummate the buyout of tobacco and peanut programs in the last few years.

Bottomline--it's difficult to square the circle. Make sure that payments go to current farmers, don't tie payments to current production so they don't aggravate surpluses, don't help absentee landowners who don't have dirt under their fingernails, help the small farmer more than the large one, protect tenants (that's a fight that began back in 1933 with the socialist/communist left strong on the tenant side, just another historical irony). If you can create a program to do that, try tackling world peace.

"R.A."--Blast from Past

Was talking this morning in our community garden to a neighbor about the damage wrought by this week's rains. She said that 3 of her neighbors in the row of townhouses had basement flooding. In some cases it was because their gutters were blocked; the water backed up into the ceiling and attic and ran down inside the walls. She started to explain that her husband had said that they had been smiled at for having their gutters cleaned so often. She's originally from Vietnam and she stumbled a bit in the telling. At first I thought she was having trouble with the English, which is unlikely since it's good, but when she came out with the phrase "[smiled at] for being so R.A.... I realized she was afraid I wouldn't recognize it, but really it brought back memories.

For anyone under 55 or so it's a meaningless phrase and it doesn't come up in Google's top ten results. Back in the days of the draft, and before the GI's serial number became their social security number, the Army assigned 8-digit serial numbers to every new recruit. If you enlisted, you got an R.A. number, meaning "regular army", while if you were drafted you got a U.S. number. Anyone who bought into the army's ways wholeheartedly (or even quarter heartedly, given the times) was mocked for being "R.A."

Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma--Bad Fact I

On page 38, as part of a discussion comparing the state of agriculture post-World War I to now, Mr. Pollan says that in 1920 only 257 tractors were built in the U.S. That seemed improbable, given the volume of cars so I went to my old copy of "Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957" and in table K-150-158 found there were actually 257,000 tractors in 1920. Mr. Pollan or his research assistant missed the unit of measure (thousands). See here For an accessible source providing some historical background. (Who knew we were actually producing over 2,000 steam tractors a year in 1900?)

Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma--Enjoy with Care

For some reason Mr. Pollan rubs me the wrong way, so I've troubled to try to doublecheck some of the information in his Omnivore's Dilemma. But give him his due--his reviews at Amazon.com are almost uniformly glowing--the only criticism is a couple of former English teachers who critique the editing. Personally, despite my problems with parts, I'd recommend the book, but I'm going to challenge some of his facts in separate posts.

Krauthammer Gets One Right

I don't usually agree with Charles Krauthammer but today's column, Amnesty for Insurgents? Yes. gets it right:

"Reconciliation-cum-amnesty gets disaffected Iraqi Sunni tribes to come over to the government's side, drying up the sea in which the jihadists swim. After all, we found Zarqawi in heavily Sunni territory by means of intelligence given to us by local Iraqis.

Protests in America over the amnesty suggestion have caused both the administration and the Maliki government to backtrack. But don't believe it. Amnesty will be an essential element in any reconciliation policy. Which, in turn, is the only route to victory -- defined today just as it was on the first day of the war: leaving behind a self-sustaining post-Hussein government, both democratic and friendly to our interests. It is attainable. The posturing over amnesty can only make it more difficult."

My agreement is reinforced by my recent viewing of the movie "In My Country", which deals with the Truth and Reconciliation commission in South Africa. That's one thing Krauthammer misses. For liberals, Nelson Mandela is a secular saint and he could have reinforced his argument by pointing to South Africa rather than Chile. The second thing he missed is that he would refuse amnesty to foreign terrorists in Iraq. I disagree--if you want peace, you have to deal with those who fight, regardless. Israel needs to deal with those it calls terrorists, if and when there's an opening; Ian Paisley needs to deal with those he calls terrorists, now there's an opening, etc. etc. When violence is politically motivated, there should always be room for a political deal, however unjust that may be.

The bottom line is

Floods and Rain

Reston got a lot of rain recently. Our rain gauge is in our garden plot and holds 5". We emptied it twice when it was full and again on Tuesday morning it had 2.5". So we can claim to have had 12.5", more than Dulles is reporting.

The area where I grew up, north of Binghamton, has seen flooding of the Chenango and Susquehanna rivers. Binghamton set a new record for rain of 4+". But they've had more flooding than Reston, even though they've gotten much less rain. The difference, I think, is the soil. It's all glacial sand and gravel there and the water runs right through and off. Here we have good Virginia red clay which absorbs a hell of a lot more water.

Wikipedia and Self-righteousness

I've started to get into Wikipedia , the encyclopedia. Several years ago when the "wiki" concept first got a bit of press I looked at it, but didn't follow up to contribute. At that time there wasn't enough to get your teeth into. Or to put it another way, it was like visiting a construction site and seeing some building materials lying around with a few people digging for the foundation. While the idea of a free encyclopedia constructed by volunteers, of work of value coming from nothing, was interesting, I didn't see a place where I could pitch in.

Now that I'm revisiting, there's a lot of stuff and a number of places where I think I can contribute. As a know-it-all, like many bloggers, I find correcting people's errors greatly rewarding. I'm not sure I like what that says about me--that I'd rather critique than construct?

Best Use of Money--A Distressing Liberal

I'm pleased with the Buffett/Gates story. (Andrew Carnegie, whose Gospel of Wealth was mentioned in some stories, was raised a Presbyterian.) I was distressed though to read the following comment from History Net news:

"My only problem with the countering illness angle [i.e., Gates foundation focus on malaria, TB, etc.] is that it seems reactionary and addressing the problem on the periphery instead of at the core...when we address the issues that create the conditions that allow these illnesses to run rampant (denial of rights, ignoring the rule of law and international legal authority, illegal wars, insistence on sovereignty, etc), then we will be practicing adaptive management and proactive advocacy and will be able to make more of a difference."

Sounds to me like his brain's been in academia too long.