Maids in College?

I'm flabbergasted. No, not at the thought of some virgins on campus. (Though there was a legend at my university.  The Arts quad had statutes of the two founders seated opposite each other.  Supposedly if a virgin walked across the quad at midnight, the statutes would rise, walk to the center and bow, and then return to their seats.)

But the Post has an article on social networking and sports recruiting, focusing on a top athlete who tweets his visits to campuses and football coaches who follow his tweets.  And this sentence blew my mind:

" He wrote of being impressed that UCLA has maids cleaning dorm rooms"

Whatever happened to kids cleaning their own rooms? And if it's an athletic dormitory, how about coaches enforcing rules.  

An Administrative Disaster Program?

That's what Sen. Lincoln claims the White House has offered, $1.5 billion of disaster aid done administratively, to get past the roadblocks to the legislative package for small business.  See this Farm Policy report. 

Having been in USDA in 1983 when Reagan's people pulled a land retirement program out of their hat without Congressional authority, I wouldn't bet against it.  On the other, damned if I can imagine how they'll do it.  The effect is psychological--it looks very doubtful Lincoln can win reelection, so the White House is showing they'll run risks to help their supporters.

We Needed a Program for the Topographically Disadvantaged

I just realized my parents were in the category of the topographically disadvantaged--much of our farm was side hill, very steep, too steep to be farmed by horses or tractors, and the soil was too thin to be good pasture.  While justice will come too late for my parents, it surely is not too late to pass some legislation to give equal justice to the topographically disadvantaged as we already have for the geographically disadvantaged.

A New Politically Correct Category?

Looking at USDA regs, I find "geographically disadvantaged farmers" in the title of one regulation.  No doubt something passed by mentally challenged legislators.

USDA Rulemaking

From Chris Clayton:

One thing I asked Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack about at the Rural Summit was the complexity of rules, and delay getting rules out. He responded there were a lot of rules that certainly have been issued from the 2008 farm bill and that the department had more than 600 such rules to issue from the bill.

That sounds high to me, but what do I know.  I hope that's 600 in all stages of completion, and that most have notices of proposed rulemaking.  I'd hope the new Administrative Conference would work on helping to streamline the process, but I doubt it.  Most Congress people are happy to pass stuff they can point to with pride, and are much less concerned about actual implementation.

Brooks and Ricks on the US Army

David Brooks is laudatory today.  He believes the Army has been converted to a counterinsurgency doctrine through the leadership of Gen. Petraeus.  Tom Ricks likes the Brooks narrative,

I must say I'm more skeptical.  There was an earlier post on The Best Defense in which a guest poster ended by saying:

 I would argue, though, that the truth is closer to this being a business as usual concept regarding something perceived as a fad: General Petraeus and COIN are the flavor of the month now, but once Iraq winds down for us and explodes for the Iraqis after our drawdown and Afghanistan drags on and gets more of a mess, will it still be an appetizing taste? Past history shows that it won't be. That leaves the real question as: how much can GEN Petraeus' influence change the dynamic?

There are a  bunch of comments on that post, most of which I've not read.  Personally I'm a bit cynical about the Army, the whole military actually. Supposedly after Vietnam they changed their culture. But either they forgot the change, and the lessons of the war, or the change was oversold.  Or maybe the sheer inertia of the Army is underestimated.  After all, you've got people who've invested their lives in armor or artillery who have every incentive to look for flaws in a COIN Army.  They're backed up by the military-industrial-Congressional complex.  Drinking tea with tribal leaders may be effective, but it doesn't create jobs in a Congressional district.

So my bottom line is Mr. Brooks may be over impressed. Petraeus may have done everything right, and everything it could, but it doesn't mean COIN is embedded in the Army's DNA yet.

The Tragedy of the Common Coffee Pot

Technically, it's an espresso maker, but Tom Hanks observed: ""You know you are supposed to clean this after every use."  He gave the maker to the White House press corps 6 years ago and thereby demonstrated his unrealistic liberal faith in people, only to be disillusioned when he visited this week.  Bottom line: if it's everyone's job to clean, it never will be cleaned.  Or as someone said: no one ever washed a rental car.

Jamie Oliver Costs Money

The Post has an article on Jamie Oliver, a Brit who had a short ABC TV series on his attempts to transform school lunch food in Huntington, WV.  I admit I haven't watched, but it seems he had some impact:

"Oliver has made notable progress. But the hard work, compromises and setbacks continue after the cameras have disappeared."

One of the problems for the future is that good food costs money, money to buy the raw ingredients and money to pay the people to prepare them.  So the forces of evil, as foodies see them, always have an opening argument: "we can save you money." Tie that to  the reports in both the Times and the Post about impending teacher layoffs this fall and a cynic has to believe Mr. Oliver's impact will not last long.

Corruption and Congress

Barking Up the Wrong Tree excerpts from a study on Congressional corruption, in which they tried to compare increases in wealth among members of Congress with increases in wealth among other occupations:

We thus conclude that representatives report accumulating wealth at a rate consistent with similar non-representatives, potentially suggesting that corruption in Congress is not widespread.

Finding myself to be feeling cynical today, I'd suggest maybe a better conclusion is: members of Congress are just as corrupt as other sectors of the society.

Where Does the "Main Stream" Flow?

Anyone who's read Mark Twain, or just looked at a river, knows it's hard to tell where the "main stream" is flowing. This weekend with all the talk of whether Obama will nominate a main stream candidate I came up with a surefire test to determine where it is (in the eyes of the Republicans): just to the right of whomever is named.

The Virtues of Failure

Via Govloop.com here's a post at NASA's blog suggesting the need to celebrate failure. As you might expect, the writer gets a little pushback in the comments, given NASA's very visible failures in the past.  But I buy the basic point: you--the bureaucrat--can only learn if you admit your failures. That's what the FAA does--promise pilots they won't get into trouble when they report near-misses. Unfortunately, in the government context it seemed we (I, and maybe others) fell into the us versus them trap in dealing with auditors.  Not always, but often. The problem with GAO and OIG is the possibility adverse reports make it to the Washington Post and Congress.  Bosses don't like being hauled up before Congress to defend their operations, especially when, as is sometimes the case, they don't really understand the issues involved.

Everyone Can "Nudge"

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness is  by Drs. Sunstein and Thaler. Under the banner of libertarian paternalism they argue the government can nudge people into better decisions.  For example, if the default option is to enroll the new employee into the 401K plan, enrollment will be higher and savings greater than if the default is not to enroll.

This is all well and good, and I approve.  But everyone can nudge, as it turns out in a NY Times article on the adoption of credit cards in taxis, a measure the cabbies initially resisted.  Why have they changed their minds?  The credit system provides pre-set tip amounts, so it makes it easy for the customer to tip, and to tip larger amounts than they might otherwise do. 

Idealistic Dreaming by a USDA Official

From Farm Policy

Reuters writer Roberta Rampton reported yesterday that, “The U.S. Agriculture Department could get better results from its agricultural research spending if it focused on a narrower list of priorities, the USDA’s top research official said on Wednesday.

“Rajiv Shah, the USDA’s undersecretary for research, education and economics, told a Congressional hearing that ‘the next six months will be a time of great organizational evolution’ as he reviews research conducted by USDA scientists as well as grants it gives to external research bodies.

“‘To do agricultural research really well, and to do it in a way that generates real benefits for people, we really believe that you have to focus for a long time on a specific, narrow set of scientific problems,’ Shah told Reuters after the hearing of a U.S. House agriculture subcommittee.”

The problem is, you've got to distribute the money among the states and crops. And note he was testifying to House Ag, not the appropriations subcommittee.

Clayton on Musical Chairs: Lincoln as Ag Chair

Chris Clayton argues that Kennedy's death will move Harkin to chair the Health, Education, Labor committee, and Senator Lincoln to chair Agriculture.

Don't know enough to argue, but to observe this is our democracy's version of: "the king is dead, long live the king."

Clayton on NAIS

From Chris Clayton's column a few days ago:

if anyone wonders why animal ID is so screwed up, it's partially because USDA gets no definitive direction from Congress on just what should happen with the program. Some members in the House and Senate want a national, mandatory program. Others say no way. So now, USDA gets potentially half the money to keep the program on some sort of life support.

That's the way legislation works. If Congress comes to agreement, fine. If Congress fudges, and papers over disagreements in order to get a piece of legisltion, the poor bureaucrat suffers.

Obama's in Trouble

Harshaw's law: whenever a politician is in trouble, he or she will start dissing the bureaucrats, as in Obama's pledge not to let a government bureaucrat come between the citizen and health care.

Sharp Phd's

I wonder what went wrong in this quote--it can't be taken literally (from a Treehugger article on how Thai rice farmers preserve genetic diversity):

“They take into consideration [when selecting seed] a multitude of factors which vary annually, including soil type, elevation, and temperature,” according to the study done by Barbara A. Schaal, Ph.D., the Mary-Dell Chilton Distinguished Professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and her colleagues at Chiang Mai University in Thailand.

How do soil type and elevation vary annually?

Don't No Economists Know What's Going On

That's my interpretation of this from the CBO directors' blog (a report on how well their predictions compare with OMB and private, Blue chips):

"Comparing CBO’s forecasts with those of the Blue Chip consensus suggests that when the agency’s predictions of the economy’s performance missed by the largest margin, those errors probably reflected problems shared by other forecasters in predicting turning points in the business cycle."

My Investment Earned 23 Percent

From the Post:

"Treasury spokesman Andrew Williams said the government received an annualized return of 23 percent on the $10 billion in rescue funds it gave to Goldman Sachs last year."

Of course, this factoid won't get the ink the bailout did.

Reciprocity of Licenses

Yesterday there was a vote in the Senate on whether states should be required to honor the concealed-carry licenses issued by other states. Pro-gun Senators argued one way, pro gun-control Senators argued another way.

If there were a vote in the Senate on whether states should be required to honor the marriage licenses issued by other states, the positions of most would be reversed, as would the argument.

My point?

Principle is fine, but usually politicians use principle only to justify a position.

Humans are not consistent, nor should we expect politicians to be.