USDA: An Example of Waste

Now the USDA is one of the largest branches of the Executive. It controls much of our life. For example, I have a small, 0.25 A, daylily hybridizing business, not really big, I generate and sell, a few, daylilies. Now I am not big Agribusiness. I have been doing this for 27 years and it is a nice small sum from time to time, not going to be Hedge Fund level stuff. It also has helped our work in genomics, as some of you may have seen on our other Blog entries.

So today I got my annual 50 page USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service Questionnaire. By Law I must fill it out and send it in. Yes, if I fail to do this I guess the USDA cops will be at my door. I have about 550 daylily hybrids, on small plots and some 4,000 seeds! But I had to tell them how many people are caring for my goats, how many peas I grew, my race, my income, my prperty value, how much water I used, how many immigrants I hired, and the list went on for hours!

This is an example of Government waste.The last question was what type of Internet connection I had. One would have thought that I could have answered the whole thing on line. But no, this is USDA, caught somewhere in 1921 to 1922!

The USDA building in DC is massive, halls upon halls of workers who in turn contract out to other workers, who in turn ... you get the point. Why in the good Lord's name do I have to tell them, under penalty of law, what I did with my 0.25 A of daylilies! I get inspected, I pay my fees, and then I have to, under penalty of law, make a report on nothing, really, it is almost nothing. But someone will read the data, enter it, put it in a data base and make monumental decisions.

Well I followed the law, filled out the form in complete, and then signed it and sent it back. I could have been making some money, but alas, with taxes going where they are why work. I will have too many forms to fill out under penalty of law. Kafka, where are you when we really need you?