Blogging on bureaucracy, organizations, USDA, agriculture programs, American history, the food movement, and other interests. Often contrarian, usually optimistic, sometimes didactic, occasionally funny, rarely wrong, always a nitpicker.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Combining Institutions
But, as is often the case with people and institutions, it's not that simple. For one thing, the Starbucks employees are actually Safeway employees, subject to their rules. In the wider world, Starbuck stores have a tip jar at the register, which tends to fill up rather quickly. But Safeway employees aren't supposed to take tips. And I'd suspect manning Starbucks counters is probably less desirable work than being a Safeway clerk, and probably gets paid a lower starting salary.
So over time there's been a big turnover of employees. And there's been attempts to put out a tip jar, which Safeway management at my local store seemed to cast a blind eye on, for a while. But in the last weeks, the jar has vanished, along with the woman who was the best (IMHO) employee, and the one who handled the Starbucks paperwork.
(Having lived through attempts to consolidate USDA agencies, I'm sensitized to these sorts of conflicts and problems.)
Grade Inflation and Grade Deflation
But I just started to read a review of a history of girl's scouting in which the author talked of summer camps as being "middle class". Without being too nitpicky about it, seems to me that's "grade deflation". Surely if you had enough money to send your kids to camp in the first part of the 20th century, you were probably upper class, or at least upper middle class.
I think the logic of this deflation is the same as for inflation--making people feel good by calling them something they aren't. In America, "upper class" is bad, so we deflate the term.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Changing Times--History
Markets, Revisited
Competition and Free Markets and Rationality
Robert FRank writes on whether competition in free markets does away with discrimination. He argues, it doesn't, except in cases where the markets are very good and very competitive. That may have been the case in the 2008 election. He cites Jackie Robinson as a case
"During Mr. Robinson’s 10-year career with the team, the Dodgers went to six World Series and he was voted to the National League All-Star team six times. In retirement, he was elected to Baseball’s Hall of Fame on the first ballot. Shortly after Mr. Robinson’s arrival in the major leagues, it became clear to all that failure to field the best possible team, irrespective of color, was a sure recipe for failure."As a youthful Yankees fan (who only knew his older sister rooted for the Dodgers), I beg to differ--the Yankees mostly beat the Dodgers, despite Jackie (and Roy, and Junior, and Newk, et. al) in the Series throughout the 40's and 50's, even though they were very late to integrate their team. So it wasn't "clear to all" at the time. And irrational prejudice overrode reason.
And in the Week in Review, there's an article discussing research on the role of testosterone and cortisol (i.e., maleness) in the ups and downs of market. An academic believes "raging hormones might explain why the men who rule the global markets send them rocketing up when they’re on a roll, and swooping down when they get scared, exhibiting judgment that can remind you of the guys in an Adam Sandler movie."
Makes sense to me.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Transparency in Government II
The bottom line is few people (outside of the relevant bureaucrats and lobbyists and interest groups) are really interested in the nitty-gritty of government. I'm not aware C-Span puts up high ratings. In terms of feeding the beast, any government has to hope to catch the attention of filters, whether a news media type, or now a blogger type, which can start to amplify the information.
FSA Is Better Than EU
As Wyn Grant has observed, the Court of Auditors annual report on the 2007 EU budget published on Monday identified a clutch of weaknesses associated with the controls on spending on EU farm policies. The Court observes that “Some 20 percent of payments audited at final beneficiary level and revealed incorrect payments, a limited number of which had a high financial impact.” It concludes that farm subsidies remained “affected by a material level of error of legality and/or regularity”.In its worst days, FSA never had that high a rate of erroneous payments (and even that was partially a matter of definition).
Friday, November 14, 2008
On Whole Foods
Transparency in Government
2. Lobbyist disclosure. I favor disclosure, but not prohibitions. (There was a piece in the paper, perhaps the Post, this week reporting academic research that said lobbyists gave the most money to the committee members who asked the best (i.e., not grandstanding) questions in committee hearings.
3. Broadcast cabinet meetings. That's idiotic. Not broadcasting, but the idea of having cabinet meetings. The meetings which matter are not formal meetings of the full cabinet, but the meetings the cabinet member has with the director of OMB at budget time, the meetings the President has with his staff, with maybe one or two Cabinet secretaries.
5. Get rid of pseudo classifications. I agree. Each piece of paper should have two attributes: its bureaucratic distribution (i.e., Eye-only, etc.) and its classification level.
6 Make all filings electronic. Yes. Also all documents.
How Congress Works
Nickels and dimes over years add up to real money (although not by Sen. Dirksen's definition).
Thursday, November 13, 2008
On Being Too Brief
For instance, nitrogen—which comes from fertilizers—in the form of nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide.I'm no chemist but nitrogen, if I remember, is about 80 percent of the atmosphere. And "nitrogen" fertilizer is not nitrogen, but nitrates (that's why it takes energy to make chemical fertilizer). Wikipedia may be reliable,, or not:
Nitrous oxide is emitted by bacteria in soils and oceans, and thus has been a part of Earth's atmosphere for eons. Agriculture is the main source of human-produced nitrous oxide: cultivating soil, the use of nitrogen fertilizers, and animal waste handling can all stimulate naturally occurring bacteria to produce more nitrous oxide. The livestock sector (primarily cows, chickens, and pigs) produces 65% of human-related nitrous oxide. [1] Industrial sources make up only about 20% of all anthropogenic sources, and include the production of nylon and nitric acid, and the burning of fossil fuel in internal combustion engines. Human activity is thought to account for somewhat less than 2 teragrams of nitrogen oxides per year, nature for over 15 teragrams.[2]If I understand, chemical "nitrogen" fertilizers are mostly anhydrous ammonia, ammonia nitrate, and urea.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
May Farmers and FSA Live in Interesting Times
One Man's War
Worrying About the User
I've always been fascinated by the process of developing IT systems. Part of it is the problem of designing a system, just fitting the pieces together into a whole which hopefully accomplishes the goal, part is the interplay between reality (how users work and think) and the design, part is handling the many tradeoffs involved--what the ideal would seem to be versus what can be done in the time available with the talent and equipment available.
In the late 1980's "usability labs" started to become popular and we made a bit of use of them. The problem then was we were using an information engineering approach (descended from IBM methodology, if I recall) which didn't work well with usability tests.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
USDA's MIDAS
As part of USDA’s plan to reduce the time frame for implementing MIDAS by 80 percent,officials plan to condense the requirements analysis phase from four years to five months. Moreover, they plan to reduce the analysis and design portion of the acquisition from three and a half years to nine months.Several times over the years I was involved in requirements analysis, first for FSA and then for all the USDA agencies with offices at the county level. Sounds as if there have been 10 years of poor management since I left. (And years of poor management before then.)
Hunting and Locavores
Personally, I never hunted for food--just killed woodchucks (rather unsuccessfully), possums, and skunks (raiding henhouse).
Monday, November 10, 2008
A Lesson from Organic Pecans
First, it's reporting on research into organic farming of pecans, by the Agricultural Research Service. We usually assume, and organic proponents often allege, USDA is anti-organic, but not on this evidence.
Second, it provides evidence organic methods of improving the soil and fighting pests, while more expensive, easily pay their way by increasing yields and quality, without relying on any price premium for "organic".
Third, it's claimed probably to be applicable to other tree crops.
Fourth, while the image one has (at least I do) for organic methods is rather romantic, the methods used here sound very rational. That means, for me, it's likely that we're talking a new concept, which might be called "industrial organic" farming. That is, large scale application of industrially produced additives such as iron, zinc, boron, copper, and manganese and spinosad.
Welcome to the Glass House: Program Payments and Donations
In the second part they identified farmers who received payments but who were also fined for violations (apparently mostly CAFO's who violated environmental rules). An FSA official was quoted, correctly, as saying there was no cross-compliance provision--eligibility for FSA program payments is independent of violations/eligibility for other programs.
This is just a start. President-elect Obama included a pledge of transparency in his platform and today, with databases and the Internet, you can see it working in some areas. I'd start a pool on how long it takes EWG and/or other publications to emulate the Tulsa paper, and then on how long it is before members of Congress start pushing to bar payments to environmental violations.
And for people who aren't involved in agriculture or farm programs, your turn is next. Farm program payments are a test case for transparency simply because EWG was able to obtain the data and put it online back in the 1990's, well ahead of similar efforts in other areas.
My Rule 1, Only for Americans, Not Germans [Rev]
The German commented that the German crews he had worked with expected less "leeway" compared to the Americans, that is, the Germans expected to get it right on the first take. The Americans, by implication, believed in my first rule: "You never do it right the first time."
[Added] Cultures differ. Perhaps it relates to the idea that the U.S. has always had plentiful natural resources, so we could afford a fast and sloppy effort, refined by trial and error, whereas in Germany the emphasis has been on precision, following rules and not wasting resources. (I believe Germany is maybe the second or third leading exporter in the world, much of it based on its machine tools and similar products.
Geezers Don't Give a ....
The association with age confirms other research suggesting that older people are less susceptible to social pressure.I think it's true, for me, as I grow more and more conscious of my waning days, I sometimes feel freer to say "what the hell" and venture where I wouldn't have gone before ("venture" that is, in a very safe and intellectual, not physical, way).
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Supermarket Pharmacy and Farmers Markets
Why have a pharmacy in a supermarket? Come to think of it, why have a bakery, a delicatessen, and a bank in the supermarket? Why have a meat counter and a fish counter? After all, in many European countries you have (or had) separate butcher shops and patisseries, etc.
The answer, in my mind, augurs ill for any idea of vastly expanding farmers markets. Americans, mostly, seem to have voted for convenience, for saving time, and we see the results of that election in the design of our supermarkets. I'd guess that going to any farmers market is going to cost the consumer 40 minutes of driving time and shopping time. Add that to higher prices and it's going to limit your sales potential, even if the produce is healthier and tastier.
Another Web Site for Agriculture
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Government Management
The Four Thousand Dollar Cellphone
Friday, November 07, 2008
Handling Comments
I never had to deal with anything like 200,000 comments, but I would give the EPA a break. 200,000 of anything can be sorted into categories. So reviewing the comments would be a relatively simple process:
- take a random sample of comments, say 500 or so, and develop a set of categories, including a "further review" category
- have your "reviewers" sort the remaining 199,500 comments into the categories
- analyze each category and develop a response
- analyze each "further review" comment and handle appropriately.
I might challenge the Obama administration: what are you going to do with the input to your website? How will the process be better than what the EPA is doing?
[Note to self: Obama's been elected 3 days and I'm already challenging him?]
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Dissing Bush
One propensity of political partisans is to refuse to believe the good about their opponents. (I earlier blogged about the comparison between Bush's house at Crawford and Gore's place in Tennessee.) It means humans are hypocrites.
Bob Bergland Advises
This I want to watch. It's going to be a fight within the agricultural community--Obama doesn't/shouldn't have a dog in the fight.“He also wants to turn his attention to re-organizing the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He said former agriculture secretary Bob Bergland told him ‘good luck.’ An audience member asked Peterson about the National Animal Identification System. Peterson said he’s not sure it’s the No. 1 fight he wants to take on at this time.
“The United States will probably have to have NAIS if it wants to be in export markets, he said, and if a terrorist introduces Foot and Mouth Disease in this country, the U.S. will wish it had NAIS.
Obama's Rural Change Page
(Don't get all excited, I think they just copied the rural page from their campaign website, not that there's anything wrong with that.)
What Is Moore's Law for Genomes?
- first genome = $300 million
- James Watson's genome = $1-2 million
- Yoruba man's genome = $250,000
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
The 30-Year Bond
Calculated Risk talks here about the problems of financing the debt in today's environment. One thing that strikes me is the supply of treasury bonds is going to expand greatly. That means the price is going to go down, meaning the effective interest rate goes up. That can put President Obama back in the vicious circle we had in the late 80's--high interest rates mean the budget cost of financing the debt rises, making it all the more difficult to balance income and outgo.
A Role for Newspapers
Good Advice for the New President
The new president and his appointees must embrace the career executive corps and effectively engage it if they are to meet those challenges. The almost 7,000 career federal executives, with an average of 26 years of experience, competed for their jobs and were selected on merit. They are an absolutely essential link between any administration's policies and agency implementation at every stage. Perhaps most important, they are the key to mobilizing the 1.8 million federal civilian employees (and millions more contractor staff) to carry out both initiatives and reforms of existing programs.Who wrote it? Only the most objective of people, Carol Bonosaro, who is president of the SES organization.
There's probably a law of economics: the supply of advice rises as the time available to consume it declines;
Speculation Begins: Payment Limitation
Payment Limits
Chris Clayton reported yesterday at the DTN Ag Policy Blog that, “An advocate for tougher payment limits, Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, looked at the glass half-full when he was asked about what he would expect to happen next year in Congress, particularly given that Democrats are expected in the elections to expand their majorities in the House and Senate.
More Democrats in Congress could likely increase the likelihood that farm payment caps could be tighter. McCain and Obama backed efforts by Grassley and Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., to lower payment limits to $250,000. Grassley said hopes that the payment cap would come up in the budget discussions, as it has in the last three years.
“‘If it does come up, I would think it would have a good chance of passage, considering how bad the budget situation is,’ Grassley said in a weekly conference call with reporters Tuesday. ‘They are going to look for every way they can to save money, and particularly Obama during the debates said he was going to go through a line-by-line approach. Well, this is one very obvious line where over the course of 10 years, somewhere between $600 million and $1.3 billion can be saved. I would think he would be looking at it and of course he would have bi-partisan support for it.’
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Predictions Via Blogger--Followup
Blogger has a new feature, relatively new that is. The software will now honor a post-dated post. If I want to go on vacation, I could post date posts for the period of time I was away from the Internet and my dear readers would never know the difference.
That feature makes it possible for me to do some honest predictions--i.e., I put them out in a post now, and copy the post and date it for whatever date in the future.
So, what do I feel safe in predicting?
- concern about "peak oil" will fade as oil prices drop. They're now about $130 a barrel, I predict them to fall to $80 by January 1. (Of course, I would have made a similar prediction last year--a big drop in prices.)
- Obama will win the Presidency in a squeaker.
Markets in Everything
which will farm your backyard. No kidding--it provides a CSA type contract using your backyard. Personally, I sometimes think the health advantages of locavore/organic gardening probably accrue more to the people who grow the food, rather than those who eat it.
Organic
I found this bit to be revealing:
What's happening here is true of many programs--the government runs a program for and on behalf of a small group of people, those whose life is tied up with the program. After all, how many people really care whether the pasture requirement is 30 percent or 50 percent? The dairymen and a few organic activists. The rest of us will decide whether to buy milk labeled "organic" based on our evaluations (price, perceived health benefits, perceived animal care values, etc.). This dynamic, though, works across the board in government. It accounts for "earmarks" and lots of "waste" and "fraud", much of which is in the eye of the beholder. The ordinary citizen will perceive things to be waste which would astound the person who's "into" the program."Barbara Robinson, who oversees the National Organic Program at USDA, said the proposal is expansive because the agency wanted to lay out as many options as possible for the organic industry.
"We have no hidden agenda," she said, adding that she hopes a final rule will be published in the spring. "It's their rule, their industry and their marketing claim."
The Amish and Voting
Vote, If You Haven't Already
including John Adams take on women voting and Ben Franklin's take on jackasses. Hat tip--Ancestry Weekly Journal.
Monday, November 03, 2008
Whoops, Mr. McKibben
There's one other odd thing about this book—it's out of date even before it's published. Though Friedman follows some trends right up through the summer of 2008 (he has reports from June of this year about trends in Egyptian television, for instance), he doesn't even mention the largest story of the year, and indeed the dominant new trendline of our time: the sharply rising cost of oil. Though recently off its peaks, the price of oil has risen fast enough to dramatically change the way Americans behave, and indeed how we think about the world.
Ike, Roads, Archives, and My Grandparents
Dated November 3, 1919, this is Lt. Col. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s report on the Transcontinental Motor Convoy. Setting out from Washington, DC, on July 7, 1919, the Convoy was a test by the U.S. War Department to see if the country’s roads could handle long-distance movements of mechanized army units. Eisenhower’s experience during the expedition would later play a role in his support of the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956 while President.Ike apparently found the roads to be terrible. I was struck by this, because some letters of my grandparents to my aunt (then a missionary in China) reported on their travels from Minneapolis to upstate New York (my father's farm) and back. They drove, ministers then being somewhat higher on the socio-economic order than mainstream Protestants are today, they owned a car. And they preferred it to taking the train, so it couldn't have been too bad. Of course, in those days civilization, as represented by the cities in the American and National baseball leagues, was north of the Mason-Dixon line and east of the Mississippi. And the roads connected civilization--once Ike got into the Plains states, it was a tough slog.
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Identifying Voters, Taxpayers, and Patients
So it's time for me to renew my plea to do away with Social Security numbers. Implement a system that identifies eligible voters, potential patients (based on the recent RAND study) and taxpayers but at the same time phases out the use of SSN's. I'm convinced we could come up with a system that increases the safeguards for each person's privacy, gives people much more control over how their data is used and to whom it is available, and improves efficiency.
The key model is the virtual credit card number, not the one you're used to using but the one VISA offers which few people use. Most people give merchants their credit card number, which can be risky. But you can choose to have VISA provide a number that works only for the transaction, or the vendor. See this. Adapt the same principle and you can have a government-validated identification number for each employer-employee relationship, each patient-healthcare provider relationship, and each voter-voting district relationship; each different, each safeguarded, and none requiring an SSN.
Seems to me if you point out to reasonable people that they already have a unique identifier (their email address) and we get rid of the SSN it's a reasonable deal.
Next Secretary of Agriculture, Take Two
Apples and Rocks
Don't remember how it ended, no big damage done. And none of us was ever elected President of the United States.
Saturday, November 01, 2008
The Problems of the Athlete
Friday, October 31, 2008
So When Will the U.S. Do a Wiki?
I hope our next President will follow suit.
Another Liberal Joins the Club
Maybe there's a club for liberals who think, as I do, that Gov. Palin will be a significant force in American politics, even if the McCain/Palin ticket is defeated. Eugene Robinson, columnist for the Post, just joined today. His last three sentences: "She has learned much in a very short period.
And she will learn more. I predict we'll have Sarah Palin to kick around for a long, long time."
HFCS, Corn Subsidies and Obesity
Major changes in the use of US sweeteners have occurred since 1970, in both the amount and composition. Increased consumption of caloric sweeteners, especially in beverages, has been linked to excess energy intake and lower-quality diets. We examine how US farm policies (specifically agricultural research and development [R&D] expenditures and commodity programs) have affected the consumption and composition of sweeteners in the US diet. R&D expenditures have lowered the unit cost of most commodities and increased their use in food production, ceteris paribus, although corn has benefited more than sugar crops in the technical progress. Commodity programs have raised the price of sugar and decreased the price of corn; high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) became an inexpensive substitute for sugar in food beginning in 1970. However, the effect of this change in the price of ingredients has become less importantI would have liked more research on the next to last sentence, but it's good to read.
over time. Today the farm value share in sweetened food is very small (below 5%), and HFCS has become a specialized input in many food items. Countries with different or no commodity programs experience similar increases in consumption of added sugar. We conclude that the current link between the US consumption of caloric sweeteners and farm policy is tenuous, although historically the link was stronger.