The Importance of Making/Fixing Things

 A recent hole in the roof meant I had to move away from my keyboard and actually do some work, physical work repairing the damage to drywall.  

Since gardening has been inactive this winter, I've not been doing such work. I found it good to be active, to try to do something, and actually succeed, not perfectly but good enough for government work.  (Note the source says it used to mean quality work. In some ways government specifications still are more particular, and certainly more expensive, than "off the shelf" civilian products. (Note the origin of this expression, not at all related to its current use, meaning standard items, not bespoke.

That's a digression--my point is doing the work was rewarding.

Boundary Setting

Who knew that we have government bureaucrats worrying about our actual borders, as opposed to migration across them?  FCW had a piece  on Trump's infamous Schedule F, which described the two agencies which had reported their plans to OPM.  One was OMB, as you'd expect.  The other:

Over at the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission, only five of the agency’s 234 employees were slated to move into Schedule F. The agency submitted its plan on Jan. 19, 2021, and OPM was unable to review the proposal before Biden rescinded the executive order.

Officials at the agency, which applies boundary and water treaties between the U.S. and Mexico, said the expedited hiring and firing offered by Schedule F was appealing to senior leaders, particularly given the location of its offices in remote locations along the southern border.

Runaway Administrative Agencies

 The title is a phrase from a libertarian team's take on how to improve our politics and government. It's mentioned in passing as self-evident truth, without any suggestions that I see to make Congress more effective. 

I take exception, of course.  I am, after all, a bureaucrat.

The problem is not runaway agencies, not usually, but the failure of Congress to act so they either:

1. pass laws which don't resolve issues but insteand  kick them over to the agencies.
2. fail to act, leaving a vacuum which the courts and agencies are forced to fill. 

Should I Apologize?

 Reading comments in the FSA Employees Group in Facebook. One noted the proliferation of programs, arguing that Congress should restrain itself.  

One of the things I tried to do during my time on the program side was to make things more efficient, particularly on the software side.  I also got involved in crash efforts when Congress or the administration came up with new programs (1983 payment-in-kind and 1986 disaster I remember particularly). I think I was reasonably successful, so why might I need to apologize?

Isn't there a parable of the  beast of burden which is always able to handle the loads which it's given, until one day the master adds the last straw? (Can't find it in wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_that_broke_the_camel%27s_back, but it seems as if there should be one.)

My point: I was just part of a long tradition in AAA/ASCS/FSA of employees taking pride in implementing programs quickly, which created a reputation among policy makers, which led to more and more programs. 

To some extent this is democratic policy making--IRS, SBA, etc. had similar problems in responding to the economic impact of the pandemic. 

But the reality is if we had been screwing up programs in the 1980s and 90s, the employees today won't be overloaded. 

The To and Fro of Government and Private

 Much of what government,at least American government, does is to take over what private initiative has started and make it more uniform, more universal.

For example, roads--many of our roads started as Indian trails, simply because of the influence of geography. Colonies did some roads, private initiative did other roads ("turnpikes" as I was taught), eventually governments took over almost all roads, except for driveways.  That was mostly true through the 20th century; now private enterprise is building roads again, toll roads.

Another example is redlining.  The simple version is that the New Deal's agency to provide mortgages for housing and distressed homeowners divided cities into two areas: those where no mortgages would be supported and those where mortgages were available.  The redlined areas were black, the others were white. That's drastically oversimplified, as McWhorter describes in this Times piece.

The reality is that bankers were always deciding who could get a mortgage and who couldn't.  As their volume increased, they simplified their decision making by generalizing to areas.  When the Feds got involved, they further generalized the process.  

See this piece by Colin Gordon in Dissent.

How to Build Infrastructure and State Capacity

 Ezra Klein has an essay on building government infrastructure. Some thoughts on the topic, most unrealistic in today's polity:

• review and revise the statistical infrastructure. As I've written before, my guess is that the various statistical agencies of the government are operating in the context of yesterday's world. Because statistics is a boring subject, it doesn't attract much controversy or oversight.  
• there's lots of real-time data out there, as we're reminded regularly in articles voicing concerns about consumer privacy.  Can the government tap that?
• concerns about privacy mean that the census and other reports anonymized--is there a better approach to this?
• what gaps in statistical coverage have developed as the economy has changed over the last 40 years? 
• Jimmy Carter had a vision for changing the federal personnel system with the Senior Executive Service, making it more like the UK system.  IMO it's not worked as it was supposed to. 
• Slowly slowly the government is moving towards more standardization with gov.id and the US Digital Service. Maybe over many years the US will approach the UK in the degree of uniformity in govt sites.
• Probably should be more interaction between the various associatons of state and local government entities and the federal govt.  I'm just vaguely aware that such associations exist--like state legislature, county govts, sheriffs, etc. Possibly there is some formal interface which I don't know about
• Trying to encourage more standardization of state and local government operations would help, as shown by the problems with the unemployment insurance systems during the pandemic recession.
• Maybe giving each legal resident a no-charge banking account and govt email account  would be good.
• 
  

Essence of Decision--I : Models of Decision Making

[Updated to reflect that it's the first post of a series.]  Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow published a second edition of Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisi s in 1997. Some have called the first and second editions "classics", but it's not in print.  

Anyhow, just started reading the library's copy--they described three decision making models:

• Rational decision-maker: Model 1. What strikes me here is describing the nation as the decision-maker--i.e., why might the Soviet Union have decided to install missiles, etc.
• Organizational decision making. Model 2.  Where the focus is on the organizations involved in the decision makers, their processes, etc.--for example, DOD's perspective versus the Combined Chiefs versus the National Security council.
• Political decision making.  Model 3. Where the focus is more on the political maneuvering among the parties.

It's early days--looks as if I can renew the book a time or two. A couple things strike me already.  

1. We actually need a Model 0.5--the Black Box decision maker, also known as essentialism.  The Soviet Union was aggressively taking over the world, etc.
2. Not sure how the models relate to historians' descriptions of events--the narrative model.

We'll see. 

What Happened to Civil Service?

 I'm not referring narrowly to the federal civil service but to the idea of serving the society, often through working for the government as a teacher or bureaucrat.

From a Jay Mathews column on education this morning--discussing a book on how to get into the top colleges, describing the audience for the book: "college applicants who yearn for admission to undergraduate institutions that will make them attractive, when they graduate, to recruiters from private equity, artificial intelligence, management consulting, investment banking and other top-paying professions"

Woody Holton: Liberty Is Sweet

Woodie Holton is a historian who has been active in defending the 1619 Project, which led me to read his new book: Liberty Is Sweet,  If I don't write further on it (it's good), I want to note this nice quote from Ben Franklin, which the Democrats could use:

All Property indeed, except the Savage’s temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents & all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity & the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man for the Conservation of the Individual & the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who by their Laws have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire & live among Savages.— He can have no right to the Benefits of Society who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.

From Benjamin Franklin to Robert Morris, 25 December 1783 

[Updated-corrected the author's name.  See this Hogeland post on the related issue.'

Things Change--Biden and Demographics

 

This is the president signing an executive order on customer service. Just a semi-routine ceremony, but I thought the demographics of the attendees were interesting, especially in contrast with the prior administration.

The Value of Consistency: Civilian Lawsuits

 Reading "Public Citizens: The Attack on Big Government and the Remaking of American Liberalism". 

I may write more about it, but I want to note that "civilian lawsuits" were proposed by Ralph Nader and his followers to enforce stronger standards for clean air and water.

Can we see this delegation of authority to sue as paving the way for the Texas SB 8 legislation on abortion?  Is there a difference in them? 

Participatory Budgeting

 Apparently the recent elections authorized something called "participatory budgeting" in Boston (the link seems to say it's more of an exploration than a cut and dried deal). First I'd heard of it, although there's an organization devoted to promoting it.

Without knowing anything about it I don't like it.  I don't get many comments on this blog, but the longest exchange I had with anyone was on this issue, although neither the proponent nor I called it that.  I think my resistance is based on inheriting some "Progressive" or "goo-goo" ideas--the concept that professionals in management know better than mere citizens about what is needed and how to do it.  (I wrote the preceding sentence with tongue-in-cheek, and am only half serious.) 

I may look at it more seriously now, or I may get lazy and pass. 

The Downside of Government Programs

 As a liberal and retired bureaucrat I support government programs.  

But I need to recognize their downside, which relates to the "last mile". When a government sets up a program, it needs to make a connection with the customer/client/citizen who will benefit or whose conduct will be regulated. I've written before about our problems with making that connection.  But I've been writing from a government-centric viewpoint, saying that for example the Treasury has a hard time getting funds to support renters and prevent evictions out.

What about the perspecitve from the "man on the street", as we used to say? There's many problems--off the top of my head some are:

• the person may be "off the grid":''
• without a mailing address (i.e., homeless or on a reservation, etc).
• not have a landline or cellphone
• not have electricity
• the person may be on the grid, but not on the "social-government" grid:
• not interested in the world, not following news, etc.
• not receive information shared by friends or relatives
• the person may be in a position to receive information but:
• doesn't have the initiative, the time, the energy, the ability to research and make a connection 
• is reliant on a caregiver or guardian who's not conscientious
• is suspicious and must be educated and/or sold on the program.

Bottom line--how much effort do we expect government or NGO's acting for the government to expend in order to overcome the hurdles. My impression in the old days of ASCS, SCS, and FmHA was the different agencies had different expectations in dealing with their farmers.  

Even in the best scenario it's likely some people will fall through the cracks, meaning a government program always increases inequality between groups.

[Update: this isn't a government program but the principle is the same--as the article describes, most people are not aware of this alternative abortion option.]

True Facts-I

 Some things are true, among them:

1. In American, and perhaps in all modern societies of reasonable complexity (i.e., possibly above tribes), there will be conmen who will find ways to exploit opportunities.  Their cons can range from affiliating with social movements to fraud (recently collecting unemployment) to crime (WSJ claims people are stealing from big box stores and reselling on the internet) to the Nigerian scam artists and the Rev. Jimmy Jones of Jonestown. A good bureaucrat must anticipate this; a good liberal must design government policies accordingly.

The Last Mile in Health Care

 I follow Atul Gawande in the New Yorker and his books, particularly his advocacy for checklists (an indispensable tool for bureaucrats).  The new print issue of the New Yorker has an article by him concerning health in Costa Rica. 

Costa Rica has longer life spans than the US while spending much less on health care. Gawande credits the way in which they have done public health, a systematic way of having health care professional interact with everyone in their district. 

To my mind it's another example of the benefits of government focusing on the "last mile", the connection between government and the citizen.  FSA does it well for its clientele and programs but the US pattern is to have government work through states and localities. 

10 Percent of Rental Aid--the Last Mile Problem

I've blogged before about the "last mile" problem in government: the fact the structure of government in the US means a gap between government and the citizen. Here's another example, as reported by Politico: 

The Treasury Department said Wednesday that state and local governments had disbursed just over 10 percent of federal rental assistance funds as of the end of July, indicating that millions could be at risk of losing their homes once eviction protections end.

FSA and the Last Mile Problem

 Sec. Vilsack is announcing additional programs to aid producers impacted by the pandemic.

My impression of the various programs which have authorized spending in response to the pandemic and its effect is that several of them have had big problems in getting the money out the door.  Some of the programs have struggled to get the money out; others have perhaps been vulnerable to fraud.  

Those are impressions only.  Meanwhile I'm following the FSA employee group on Facebook. I likely suffer from the old-timer's presumption that the newcomers have it easier, but I try to resist that snap judgment.  On the one hand, I'm very impressed by the variety of programs, some directed to people FSA has long served, some directed to new groups, which the counties have had to deal with.  On the other hand I remember PIK in 1983 and particulary the disaster program in 1986 (IIRC) which hit in the midst of the System/36 automation. 

I hope someday somebody, GAO or Congress, does a high level review of the government's operations, their speed, efficiency, and weaknesses.  My expectation and hope is that FSA would do well in such a review, largely because of a long history in dealing with crash programs and, most importantly, the county offices deal directly with the people, a big contrast with most of the rest of government which has to try to operate through state and county government agencies, and/or NGOs.

The Premonition I

 About a third of the way into Michael Lewis's "The Premonition", which so far describes the development of the pandemic plan in the Bush administration, through the linking of people from different government agencies and a high schooler's science project.

On page 78 he writes:

"Inside the United States government were all these little boxes.  The boxes had been created to address specific problems as they arose.  'How to ensure our food is safe to eat,' for instance, or how to avoid a run on banks'..."  He goes on to describe the people inside the boxes as knowledgeable and talented, developing a culture around the box, but frozen inside the box with little interest in other boxes.  

For me the "box" is a "silo", which includes the "stakeholders" in Congress and NGO's as well as the civil servatns, but the description otherwise rings true. 

How Is CDC Like USDA/FSA?

 An article in the NY Times mag on CDC, critically assessing it and its role in the overall health care system.  One thing which stood out to me was this:

Around half of the agency’s domestic budget is funneled to the states, but only after passing through a bureaucratic thicket. There are nearly 200 separate line items in the C.D.C.’s budget. Neither the agency’s director nor any state official has the power to consolidate those line items or shift funds among them. “It ends up being extremely fragmented and beholden to different centers and advocacy groups,” says Tom Frieden, who led the C.D.C. during the Obama administration. That lack of flexibility makes it extremely difficult to adapt to the needs of individual states.

It reminds me of USDA/FSA.  Over the years the number of programs and crops covered has grown rapidly, The reason seems similar in both cases: there is a group/organization which feels strongly and has found a representative in Congress to push for coverage.  In the case of a disease/illness, it's patients and their families; in the case of agricultural products it's the growers. In both cases, they're tapping the federal treasury and have no countervailing opponents; it's not like the old days when big business was counterbalanced by big labor.

Belief in Democracy and Steven Muller

 Kevin Drum posted  concerning Republican belief in democracy, taking the position that Republicans believe in democracy, just that many do not believe in the integrity of the election process.

I commented on it, but didn't mention that it triggered a memory of a government course in my freshman year (I think--it was taught by a professor who later became head of Johns Hopkins--Steven Muller--I did not know he had a movie career.)

Professor Muller taught a course in political thought, which included Rousseau's theory of the "general will", with his rather vague, IMO, ideas on how society determines the general will. I didn't know Muller's background (Jewish refugee from prewar Germany) before today, so I don't really know whether I'm stating my own conclusions or was influenced by his take on Rousseau.  

There's the contrast between the European take on democracy, following Rousseau, and the Anglo-Saxon (that's probably not a politically correct term these days) take of Locke et.al. who emphasize process and the protection of individual rights by means of institutional arrangements. 

It seems that Republicans now are drifting away from the Lockean position, losing faith in institutions, and relying more on the comforting idea that they are the party of the real America.