Contrarian Time: Trump, Russia, Guns

I'm feeling contrarian today so I'll voice two opinions which will be unpopular with my fellow liberals (most of them):

• I don't think the Russians were really motivated to elect Trump as president; I think they wanted to cause trouble and weaken Clinton.  That fits my judgment that there wasn't serious collusion/conspiracy between Trump and the Russians--Trump himself is too disorganized and his campaign so catch as catch can that conspiracy doesn't work.  Instead, I'll fall back on Murphy's law, and a corollary: different people doing different things and not knowing what they were doing.  (If an alternate history could swap the personalities of the candidates, I'd judge there was collusion between Clinton and the Russians.)
• I hope Congress doesn't act on gun control between now and November.  I well remember Clinton's crime bill in 1994, which included stuff for the right and an assault weapon ban for the left.  We lost Congress that fall.  The last thing we liberals need this year is anything which increases energy on the right.  (Yes, I may be misreading the climate of opinion; we may finally have reached that Holy Grail of a turning point on guns.  But I doubt it.)

Maintenance Isn't Sexy: USNavy

I see I've not set up a label for "maintenance", but I'm sure I've observed that it's an important and often overlooked issue.  What happens when you build a system, as we were building a software system in the mid-80's, is you can't keep building without adding more people/resources.  If you start with 10 people working on the new, once it gets deployed, you need 1 person to maintain the deployed software, leaving only 9 to build the next phase.  And so on.

Furthermore, maintenance is not sexy. You can't tell the people who are paying the bills they won't get anything for their money, just a continuance of the current service (maybe sneaking in a couple tweaks along the way).

The DC area Metro system has found this out.  They built a system starting in the mid-70's, but skimped on maintenance along the way.  Consequently last year and this service has been restricted on various sections so they could do catch-up maintenance.  People aren't happy about it.

Now it seems the USNavy is in the same boat.  GAO has surveyed their shipyards and produced a video of their major points.  An example, using 80+ year old equipment to service nuclear submarines, then discovering the furnace didn't heat the parts evenly, so they had to reinspect years worth of work.

I'm cynical today, so I'm sure Congress will continue to give DOD new weapons/things they don't ask for and fail to provide the money to fix the shipyards.  That will go until we lose a ship because of faulty repairs.  (Training is "maintenance" of your human equipment and lack of training is blamed for the recent collisions the Seventh Fleet has experienced .)

The Golden Rule, Cynic Version

The Post has an article today on development in Prince William county, interesting on several points. It seems that Loudoun County has 70+ data centers, Fairfax 43, and developers are working to put data centers in Prince William ("Prince Billy county" as my wife sometimes calls it) county, just south of Fairfax.

The cynical version of the Golden Rule is: them that has the gold, rules.  Which I take to mean there's a tendency for the wealthy and powerful to become more so, and also for the poor and weak to become more so.  The siting of data centers is an example: there's advantages to having your data center near  other centers--transferring data between them is faster when the distance is shorter.  (Michael Lewis has a book on the super-fast stock traders, who exploit micro-second difference in timing to make profits.) So the Virginia suburbs of DC were an early center for Internet cabling, which has led over time to the concentration of data centers.

There's another case for the cynical version in the article.  Indeed, the hook of the article is the plight of an Afro-American community near Haymarket, a community mostly of descendants from freed slaves who have owned land there and passed it on over the years.  But now progress is coming.

It's a complicated story--data centers require lots of electricity.  In this case there's a data center being constructed in one neighborhood and Dominion Power needs to run new transmission lines for several miles to supply the data center, using eminent domain when necessary to get the right of way for the lines.There are several logical routes to consider, but as the story says:

"Set in a remote area off Lee Highway, the Carver Road neighborhood became the chosen route by default, after other options were either deemed too costly or torpedoed by opposition from local homeowners associations."

The homeowner associations are, of course, wealthier and more influential than the African-American community.   The Golden Rule applies

Safeway Ships Air Around the Country

 (Or how 3 pounds became 30.5 oz.)

Once upon a time, long long ago, coffee was sold in 3 pound cans.  This coffee was roasted and ground, ready for use in office coffee pots and home percolators.   The cans were cans, tin cans, cans which once emptied found many uses around the home. Coffee, being a storable agricultural commodity, was always subject to volatility in supply and so in price, despite the international cartel the supply management setup known as the International Coffee Agreement.  IIRC prices for 3 pounds of coffee ran around $3 in the early 70's.

As time went by, consumer prices for coffee increased and coffee roasters found resistance to paying the high prices.  So someone had the bright idea, instead of raising the price as we need to, let's reduce the amount of coffee in the can by a bit--same effect but consumers will be less upset. (This was probably the same someone who about the same time reduced the amount of candy in candy bars.) And the someone was right.

I don't know when flaked coffee was invented--there's a patent from 1991--but it was touted as a big innovation, delivering better taste for the coffee drinker. The thing about flaking is it means an increase in the volume of roasted coffee for the same weight.  Consumers lapped up flaked coffee.

Bottomline: between reducing the amount of coffee in a can and increasing the volume by flaking, the current Safeway "3 lb" can of coffee contains 30.5 oz, or just under two pounds.  And when you open the can, as I did yesterday, you find it's only about 3/4 full.

So ever since the first decision to reduce the weight without changing the size of the contained, Safeway has been shipping canned air from its warehouses to its stores, wasting space in its trucks.

(I should note that Folgers, and I assume other roasters, somewhat reduced the size of their containers when they switched from tin cans to plastic containers for their coffee.)

Two Airborne Command Centers?

This Defenseone piece says the AF wants to replace the Air Force 2 planes and the Doomsday command center planes.

Did any one know the Navy also runs a Doomsday command center plane?  Next thing I'll learn that the Marines and the Army each have their own plane.  After all, they each have their own air force.

The Important News of Feb. 14?

The White House tours are starting up again, beginning Mar 7.

Don't laugh--this is more important than Flynn.  Congress has few things they can give away these days now that the pork barrel is empty.  If your Congresswoman can't get her important visiting constituents a guided tour of the White House, what good is she--time for a primary

The Most Powerful Force in Washington

According to former intelligence chief Dennis Blair:

"There is no more powerful force in Washington than, “What if this comes out somehow and I was found not to have done my utmost?”

 That's from a [Vox ]   Atlantic interview, on the Trump dossier. Quite interesting--bottomline, not much government agencies could have done with it, since it relates to an American.  Need enough evidence of a crime to get a warrant.

It reminds me of the old days of the Washington Post Federal page, which used to have a column highlighting Fed screwups.

But maybe the real most powerful force in Washington is the reality described in the last paragraph:

"I would just give you one of Blair’s Laws developed over the years: If there is a choice in explaining a government action between a Machiavellian, clever, ingenious plot to achieve that result and sort of blind, bumbling, well-meant incompetence, choose number two all the time.

[Corrected source]

Should I Leave Wells Fargo?

Consider the title of this post : http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2016/09/13/wells-fargo-fired-5300-workers-for-illegal-sales-push-executive-in-charge-retiring-with-125-million/

Remember this when people complain about waste and fraud in government. 

Clinton and Emails

I may have written this before, but Clinton's behavior at State, at least as described in a recent summary of the aide's deposition, makes sense to me.  Bottomline: bigshots don't give a damn about systems and legalities.  It's the job of the bureaucracy around the bigshots to adjust the systems and legalities to what the bigshot wants.  Clinton wasn't going to devote any brain cells to worrying about the security status of what she writes or reads; she was focused on the content.  The exception to this is the initial discussion of the private server and Blackberry.  Then you're expecting a civil service bureaucrat to tell the big boss the rules and how to get around them.  Won't happen with many bureaucrats.

The big mistakes Clinton made was on insisting on a lot of close personal aides (Obama let her have more control over State personnel than is usual) so no one to say nay and on insisting on total control of release of emails. 

The big mistake we the public make is expecting that laws are self-enforcing; they require bureaucrats to say nay.

Too Good Not to Steal

Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns, & MOney writes"

"You lose a war against the United States, we sell you fighter planes.  You fight a war alongside the United States, we sell you fighter planes.  You beat the United States in a war, we sell you fighter planes:"

 The best bit is the title of the post. 

I'm With Trump, for One Time Only

What could possibly put me in the same camp as Donald Trump?

His position on Rolling Thunder--it's not all it's cracked up to be. 

Actually, he said he was disappointed in the size of the crowd he addressed yesterday; he thought it be more like the March on Washington and blamed the officials for not permitting people to attend.

I've a long history, going back to 2005 (albeit in a draft post I never had the guts to post) of questioning the overblown claims for the event.  It seemed every year that the number of motorcycles coming down Constitution Avenue was higher, but the number was always inconsistent with any reasonable assessment of how many cycles could pass a point over any period. Anyone who doubts my claim will have to do a search on the blog; I never did create a Rolling Thunder tag.

Maybe Trump's disappointment will cause the organizers to quietly fold their tents and fade away, like the old soldiers they are. (This Steve Hendrix piece on the organizers is good, he treats them seriously and sympathetically but to a cynic like me the story explodes the possibility that an event attracting hundreds of thousands could be supported out of a garage.)

Hypocrisy: Thy Name Is Agricultural Groups

That's the point made here, in a Tim Mandell pickup of a post at Progressive Farmer.

Briefly, commodity groups want to exclude promotion board data from FOIA because the boards aren't federal, but justify the mandatory checkoffs which fund boards as governmental.

Of course, we humans are all hypocrites.

Cyber security for Farmers?

FBI says farmers vulnerable to hacking of digitized data. 

I'm not sure what the motivation would be.  The piece discusses the possible theft of bulk data for use in market manipulation and such.  That's possible I suppose, perhaps particularly at the state and corporation level, but I'd think it unlikely.  What other motivation: ransom, as has happened with hospitals.  I don't think farm-level data is that crucial or time sensitive. 

I know the ag lobby has put in legal provisions requiring FSA to keep secret some data, but that's more anti-EWG measures than anything else.

Call me cynical, but the cyber-security/industrial complex has an interest in alarming everyone they can, so they can sell their services. 

Guinness Record Set? Reversals in Congress

I doubt the Guinness people keep track of how quickly politicians reverse course.  If they did they'd have to distinguish between individual politicians, who can reverse on a dime, if a dime lasts 12 hours or one news cycle, and governing bodies, like Congress, who naturally take a big longer.

I suspect Congress just set a new record: on Monday the big budget deal included a cut on crop insurance administrative costs; by the time the deal had passed early this morning (in the Senate), the cut was dead as a doornail.

Shows the clout of the insurance agents, and the usual hypocrisy of those who rail against government subsidies.

A Question for Presidential Candidates

The governance of schools is different in different parts of the country.  In Broome County, NY, there were a number of central school districts, each with their own elected school board.  In Fairfax County, VA there's one county elected school board.

I note from today's papers that several of the Republican candidates for President participated in an education forum, many (all?) of whom plugged for state and local control of education.  

I'd challenge each of them to declare whether they voted in the last school board election, and who they voted for.  I may be cynical but I suspect most people couldn't answer the question, which says something to me about the value of local control.

For the record, I can't answer my own question. 

Another Washington Deadlock: 6 Years of Policy Riders

From Farm Policy, quoting Chris Clayton at DTN:

"The House funding bill for USDA blocks the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration from finalizing livestock and poultry marketing rules stemming from the 2008 farm bill. As the senators wrote, ‘The legislative rider is attempting to thwart rules that, in part, allow farmers to request documents showing them how their pay is calculated, ensures that they are given adequate notice of a halt in animal deliveries, and ensure they can exercise their right to speak with their congressional representatives without fear of retaliation.’
“These provisions have been the subject of policy riders ever since GIPSA began trying to implement them. The 2014 farm bill did not change the provisions in the law. Yet, the policy riders continue to get slapped onto the appropriation bills for USDA, blocking GIPSA from implementing those rules.”

13 senators wrote a letter asking that the riders be dropped. Of course they won't be. It's not a partisan deadlock, it's a deadlock between senators representing different interests: farmers versus meat processors (assuming I understand the issues correctly).

(Interesting that Sens. Gillibrand, Harkins, and Grassley don't have the letter posted on their home pages yet.)

What We're Good At

As reported by Dan Drezner:
As a senior U.S. diplomat once told me, “If there’s anything the United States is good at, it’s telling other countries what’s in their best interests.”

Harshaw's Rule of Appropriations

Based on earmarks, block grants, and general experience, I venture to say:

"the more general the appropriation, the more likely to be; the more specific the appropriation the safer from cuts"*

* unless and until the sole Congressional sponsor leaves Congress.

For example, if Congress inserts a particular line item to buy a weapon, a plane or tank, that's pretty immune from being cut; if they appropriate $10 billion for training, that's going to be cut.

Sustainability and Markets: Pet Peeve Again

One of my biggest problems with the studies from Rodale et. al. comparing the productivity of organic farming versus production ag relates to markets.  Typically the studies compare a corn-only  cropping series, a corn-soybeans rotation cropping series, and something like corn-alfalfa-wheat-soybeans cropping series, and finds that the corn productivity is roughly equal.   My peeve is the studies ignore the question of marketing; they assume that everything grown can be marketed.  Back in the old days of horse-drawn ag, you could rotate oats and hay crops with your corn and find a market for any fodder not consumed on the farm.  These days, not so.  California can grown alfalfa to be exported to China, but Iowa not so much.

A little bit of market recognition is the theme of this piece in the NYT, though I suspect the author (Mr. Barber, the chef and foodie) is drastically oversimplifying. (Yes. mustard makes a good rotation crop for the soil, and can be cooked/prepared for human consumption. But being able to provide mustard greens to chefs and CSA's over an extended period is probably not realistic.  If you're planting greens in the garden, you know you want succession planting to extend the season, which is doable in small plots but possibly not on the scale of a farm.)  Despite my doubts, it is a good step towards greater realism on the food movement, at least that part of the movement which reads the Times.

Ode to the "Greedy Bastards"

Anyone want to write poetry--there's room to convert this Jonathan Bernstein post on "Greedy Bastards and Democracy" into poetry?  I think much, maybe all, of agribusiness and the food community would qualify as greedy bastards of some size or another.