Some Sympathy for Gen. Perna

 General Perna is the chief operating officer for Warp Speed, which is now taking some flak for the seemingly slow progress of vaccinating for covid-19.

I never had to deal with his problem, but I have been involved in rolling out programs affecting thousands of counties and a million or so people on a crash basis. The difference between his problems and mine were great:

• the visibility to modern media.  ASCS/FSA programs were visible to local newspapers, but weren't followed nationally or internationally.
• an organizational structure which reached to the end user, the farmer, and one which had long experience in crash programs, dating back to 1933 when it was first set up.
• a program which usually was similar to previous programs--I can't judge how closely the covid-19 program matches the influenza program but it seems quite different.

Just from my back seat position of almost total ignorance, there's some things which didn't happen which should have:

• a tick-tock time schedule. Perna's already apologized for screwing this up. My impression is that there weren't sit-down meetings thrashing through every minute step, which could then be documented in a schedule to establish a base of understanding.
• implementation training. Because a vaccine is just a "jab" in the arm which everyone knows how to give, and because the implementers of the Warp Speed hadn't done this before, it was easy to assume (I assume) that no training was necessary. The reality is that training sessions get everyone on the same page, allow for the identification of areas where silos create problems, and permit exchange of ideas.
• as a former directives person, I suspect whatever directives were issued weren't really in a system.  Part of the problem seems to be lack of delineated authority, but it's also the human tendency to resist systems--to believe that a memo (or these days an email, etc.) handles the immediate problem, without realizing the proliferation of unsystematic directions can worsen problems.

I suspect, given the overall directive of relying on state and local governments to distribute and vaccinate, leaders assumed that those governments had systems in place.  Ass u me.  

I want see to the after-action reports and analyses of the effort to see how wrong this post is.

I also want to restate my sympathy for Perna (unusual for me to feel for a general): doing something new under scrutiny and a time line is a formula for bad public relations.

The Importance of Local Government

 Somewhere in this blog I've mentioned the differences in local government between New York and Virginia.  In New York, outside the cities, the counties are divided into towns for purposes of local road maintenance, tax collection, etc. and into central school districts for schools.  My father was on the Chenango Forks Central School board for a number of years. (You can find a sample of what goes on in a town government in this recent supervisor's email.) 

In Virginia the county handles the schools and other local functions, In NY Broome County has 16 towns, 7 villages, and one city--Binghamton. 

I was struck in reading the Gordon-Reed/Onof book on Thomas Jefferson by a discussion of his letter on local government. In 1816 he was pushing to subdivide Virginia counties into smaller units, specifically in this instance "wards" which would handle local public schools (which Virginia didn't have).  There's a reference to using the areas which were the basis for the militia (I'm guessing companies). He observes that the New England town meetings shook the ground beneath his feet and caused his embargo to fail.

He didn't persuade Virginia to adopt wards/towns. As I've done before, I wonder the effect of this difference in organization.

Robert Putnam in "Bowling Alone" argues for the importance of nongovernmental social organizations as schools for democracy.  If he's right, surely the local government units are as important, if not more so.

Hypothetically--This Is a Messed Up Program

 I graduated from college long before college loan program came into existence, so I've no first-hand experience with it. However, my impression is that it's been a political football as the parties alternate in power.  The Democrats push loans issued directly by the Education Department while the Republicans believe in loans from banks/financial institutions with a federal guarantee. As the program has gone on,  people have made changes to the provisions, including forgiveness of payments under certain conditions.  So you end up with the sort of mish-mash this person finds herself in.  If you follow the thread of responses to her, itbecomes even more confusing than indicated here. 

If, hypothetically, you took out a heap of Stafford and Perkins loans, and then consolidated them, and then the consolidation loans were sold like 5 times, and you qualify for various federal repayment plans but not for the pandemic relief - are those federal or private loans?

— Melissa Johnson, PhD (@Lady_Historian) November 18, 2020

One fallacy of my education in government, as my school called "political science" is that Congress makes decisions and the executive branch administers them.  In reality for some areas it's an ebb and flow of changes making it very hard for the poor bureaucrat to administer.

Nepotism

 Matt Yglesias at Vox writes on nepotism.  It's a thorough and to my mind bipartisan treatment.

I do wish Biden had been asked during the debate what role, if any, his family would play in his administration. Would he have replied: the same sort of roles as my predecessor has assigned to Ivanka, Don Jr., Eric, Jared Kushner or would he have excluded them? Would he promise to put his assets into a blind trust? 

1619 Project and the Birth of the Nation

 Bret Stephens writes about the 1619 Project  Actually, he focuses on only a few sentences of it, but the sentences have become controversial.  In a nutshell, the original writeup in the Times said two things: the Revolution was fought to preserve slavery and the nation was born with the arrival of slaves in 1619.  The writeup has been changed and softened since its original publication.  IMHO the Revolution was well underway in the hearts and minds of Americans well before 1775 and had little to do with slavery.  It's true that slaveowners were alarmed by British attempts to woe slaves to support the Loyalist cause, but that was late in the process.  If the preservation of slavery in the face of the Somerset decision in the UK had been a major factor, one would have expected the British sugar colonies in the Caribbean to have joined the 13 colonies because they were even more dependent on slavery than were the mainland colonies.

The question I really want to consider is: what constitutes the "birth" of a country, a nation?  How do we know? Was Canada born with the French in the the 17th century or when the British conquered it in the 18th century, or with the 1867 Act?  When was the UK born, and did it die with the loss of Eire, or will it die if Scotland secedes?  

Was France born with the First Republic, or the Second, Third, Fourth or Fifth?  Was Germany born before Bismarck?  

SBA Small Business Subcontracting

 SBA's Inspector General did a report, including this:

The audit also found a glitch in reporting large businesses working for small businesses on procurements. The report said there are no requirements or mechanisms to measure small business awards that are subcontracted to large businesses.

It's an instance ofthe "golden rule" in government--those who have the gold, rule.  Over the years I've become convinced that, at least in the American system of government, the elite, the wealthy, can and do over time figure out how to evade and/or take advantage of well-intentioned rules and programs.  This is an example:

 SBA is required by law to designate "small businesses" owned by women, minorities, and those with disabilities, and agencies are required to give preference in contracting to these small businesses.  So when a project is big, the small business bids and then subcontracts the work out to the big business.  That happened on several IT projects I was involved with during my career.  That's a legal way to take advantage of the rules.  Alaskan tribal enterprises are one category of such owners.

I'm not sure there's a solution. Part of the problem is that "do-gooders" (like me) get aroused around an issue and get enough power to pass a law/put a program in place, but we assume the law will be self-executing, will be implemented as intended, and other parties won't have the brains and money and incentive to act to manipulate the situation. 

SCOTUS and the Albright Rule

In a NSC discussion over whether and how to intervene in the Balkans during the Clinton administration Madeliene Albright said something like: "what are your great armed forces if you never use them"?  I'll transmute that into a rule, named after her:

"if you have the power, use it".

That rule may be applying in the case of the Supreme Court.  Leader McConnell had the power to freeze Obama's nomination of Judge Garland to the Court.  President Trump has the power to nominate a young conservative woman to the Court.  The Republicans may, or may not, have the power to confirm her.  

After the election the Democrats may or may not have the power to expand the Supreme Court to allow a President Biden to nominate a young liberal black woman and others to the Court and the Senate to confirm them.

It's a game of tit for tat (I initially spelled "tick for tack") with no logical ending except greater polarization.  

Personally I would oppose the steps, but I think analytically down the road some sort of new compromise would evolve.  It's the same sort of dynamic which has created a bipartisan caucus in the House of Representative pushing a compromise pandemic bill. They may fail; the caucus may split; but at some point the center will reassert itself.   

The Last Mile Problem for US Government

 I've used the idea of a "last mile" problem before, but didn't really describe it.  The "last mile" in the internet is linking a home to the internet.  It's relatively easy to run fiber cable around the land.  It's like our blood--the veins and arteries are easy, but the capillaries are where it gets complicated.  In my mind the American federal government has such a problem--it can't connect reliably with all its citizens in all aspects of society.

I just noticed another instance: Treasury Department has 9 million checks it hasn't gotten to citizens.

The problem is more than 9 million--these are people who are part of the economy--IRS knows who they are, as opposed to people who are "off the grid" entitely.

No Longer the Party of Limited Government?

From Reason.com:

So under Trump's signature, before any true crisis hit, the annual price tag of government went up by $937 billion in less than four years—more than the $870 billion price hike Obama produced in an eight-year span that included a massive federal response to a financial meltdown.

The Last Mile Problem in Government--AMS

One of the problems of our government is the threads connecting national legislation to local effectiveness are often broken. 

I think I just found one such case today.  The USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service has a program called "Farmers to Families Food Box".  Briefly the concept is to buy food, mostly perishable, which can't find a market under our pandemic conditions, and provide it in boxes to needy families. I'm thinking the boxing is a new idea being pushed by Secretary Perdue.

AMS has experience buying perishable food and providing it to schools for school lunches, tribes, etc.etc. But this is a new program using money appropriated by Congress (and perhaps CCC funding, not sure).  So AMS ran a new bidding process to find more vendors capable of handling the boxing and distribution to nonprofit organizations..  (I'm not sure how much overlap between the vendors in the new program and those AMS has dealt with before.  I do know there has been some scrutiny of some vendors with allegations political influence was involved in awards to new vendors.) 

So my picture is, you've this established network of AMS procurements, intermediaries, and recipients.  But now you have new additional money, additional intermediaries, and hopefully new recipients.  Where the threat is broken in my metaphor is the last mile problem--connecting new recipients with the old or new intermediaries.

If I understand the program correctly, which is a problem, AMS and the administration are making the assumption that existing nonprofits can make the connection.  But a question on the FSA employee group Facebook page raised the question.  Checking the AMS sit they have a list of the approved vendors who are getting the food and boxing it.  But there is no national database showing which nonprofits the vendors are dealing with. So the question is, if Jane Doe in Mississippi is interested in getting a box--who does she contact?  As far as I can see, she has to use the phone book to locate a nonprofit which might be  distributing the boxes.

The Effects of the Recession and Other Stats

Three interesting stats in the news on May 29: one was how much fewer school employees the education system has today, as opposed to 2008; one was how much fewer employees the health system today as opposed to 2008; the third was how little time cars spend on roads.

Firing Inspectors General

As a good government ("goo-goo") type, I'm perturbed by the president's removal of several IG's and acting IG"s.  But this piece  suggests there's not much Congress can do to stop such actions by a president.  IG's are executive branch employees and as such are subject to the president's authority.

I wonder: could we look to sports, the NFL, for a solution:  There the tension is between getting the call right and keeping the game flowing.  Could we give the president a couple get-out-of-jail cards per term--allow her to fire two IG's but no more?  Arguably this would permit the president flexibility but not too much.

I'm afraid what will happen when the administration changes: the new president will use the Trump precedent to fire the Trump-IG's and goo-goo norms will suffer further erosion.

Cleaning Up After the Trump Elephant

The old joke about following a circus parade and having to clean up after the elephants...?

After Trump leaves office there will be a lot of cleanup needed:

• reestablishing norms for openness, including releasing tax returns, maintaining public records of who visits the White House,  putting assets into blind trusts, not using official events to push political agendas or to sell stuff, etc.
• redoing the interactions with Congress.
• [updated--prohibiting policy announcements by twitter.]

I don't know how we do this.  The natural tendency of each branch of government is to keep their authority, so it may be harder to undo Trump precedents than we'd like to think.

The Lack of Governmental Infrastructure

One of things crisis  fighters run into is the lack of governmental infrastructure. 

In the Great Recession a bit part of the problem in helping people whose houses were under water was the lack of any infrastructure which had direct contact with mortgagees.  Instead people like Geithner had to design programs to work through banks, but because the mortgages often had been been sold on/collateralized from the original loan maker it wasn't an effective program.

We now come to 2020 and Covid-19.  The programs under discussion now want to make direct payments to people.  But the government doesn't have that infrastructure.  The best we can do is write checks to those who filed a tax return with IRS in the past, but that obviously misses a lot of people: those who weren't required to file, those who joined the country more recently, those who never filed a tax return--i.e., tax evaders.

Reparations as Honey Pot

Under some designs of reparations we might see a "honeypot" effect.  I wanted to write "honeypot", but I find by google that's used in computing for a trap for hackers. What I mean is the effect where something of value is free, or easily accessible, thereby attracting all sorts of con-men who exploit it. We see in the Oklahoma land-rush.

We also see, again in Oklahoma, as described by Daivd Grann's book, Killers of the Flower Moon., an National Book Award finalist. Briefly, oil was discovered on the Osage Native American reservation in the 1910's, enriching the members of the tribe.  Immediately the new wealth attracted a wide variety of people seeking to exploit this new resource:

• merchants selling luxuries at exploitative prices.
• "guardians" appointed to manage the money of "incompetent Indians". 
• murder

Unfortunately in cases where government action or inaction creates opportunity for illicit gain, we don't lay the traps in advance; we try to recover after the fact.

Gains in Government Productivity?

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution has a series of posts on the increased cost of higher education and health services in the US over the past years.  On first reading they're convincing. 

Briefly it's Baumol's  disease--it's hard to raise productivity in service industries because it requires people's time--the time for musicians to play a live performance, a doctor to examine a patient, a surgeon to do an operation, etc.

So how about government?  That's a question I'll try to get back to.

Who Gets Chosen as VP?

Scott Adams blogged this:

"VP candidate traditionally boring, watered-down version of POTUS

• Biden was more boring than President Obama
• Now Biden has to select his own VP, that’s even more boring"

I'm afraid he needs a course on American history.  Traditionally the vice presidential candidate is different than the presidential candidate--it's called "balancing the ticket".  There's even a wikipedia page for it.

To go over recent history:

• Trump chose a VP who had extensive DC experience and personally was very different and was from a different region.
• Obama chose a VP who had extensive DC experience and personally was very different (old, white, ebullient, not buttoned up)and was from a different region..
• GWBush chose a VP who had extensive DC experience and personally was very different (older, buttoned up) and was from a different region..
• Clinton chose a VP who was indeed of the same age and region but who had extensive DC experience.
• GHWB chose a VP who presented a fresh face  from a different region.
• Reagan chose a VP who had extensive DC experience and personally was very different and was from a different region.
• Carter chose a VP who had extensive DC experience and was from a different region.
• Nixon chose a VP who was a fresh face and was from a different region.

I think Mr. Adams just went for a cheap attack on Biden. 

What Happens If We Win--the CRA

Commented in a twitter thread today or yesterday about what would happen if a Democrat wins the Presidency next year.  Part of the discussion was to the effect that the new administration would reverse a lot of the Trump administrations regulatory actions.  The impression was that it would relatively easy.

Not true, at least for those regulations which were killed by Congress using its authority under the Congressional Review Act.  The reason is the wording of the act--once a regulation is killed by Congress the agency is prohibited from issuing a substantially similar regulation, forever.  The out is that Congress can authorize the agency to regulate again. 

The problem I see for a new Democratic administration is presumably such a Congressional authorization would require 60 votes in the Senate to be brought to the floor for passage (assuming the legislative filibuster is still available.   For some regulations such authority might be included in a budget reconciliation act, but others wouldn't.

The alternative for a new administration is to kill the  legislative filibuster, at least with respect to CRA actions.

The bigger problem, of which CRA is only part, is a decrease in stability of laws and regulations.  If citizens can assume that laws/regulations are permanent, they can act on that basis.  If they assume the next administration of the party in opposition will undo what the current party has done, there's less stability, less certainty.

Advice to Trump: Don't Play Games With Congressional Appropriators

When I joined ASCS one of the things to learn was the relationship of ASCS and CCC.  Essentially the Commodity Credit Corporation was a way for USDA to put on another persona, a corporate one, allowing it to bypass the annual appropriations process.

It had the most impact for me when we were trying to impact new farm legislation and were on a very tight schedule.  Lew Calderone, the head of printing, would ask whether the program specialists could justify the rush job as fitting under the CCC's responsibilities.  When the answer was "yes", he could bypass requirements to go through the department and GPO and send the work to a printing contractor. (At least, that's the way I remember it.)

I was also aware that CCC and ASCS had separate inventories of personal property, depending on whether the item had been bought with appropriated funds (ASCS) or corporate funds (CCC).

The agency's ability to switch between ASCS and CCC personas was the envy  of other agencies,like SCS and FmHA.  

In the mid-80's through into the 90's ASCS and USDA began to use the CCC authority more widely, which is where the agency came to grief.  As I understand it, the procurement and automation people used CCC funds to buy a lot of computer gear.  What's worse, the computer projects didn't work out--success might have had a different result

Anyhow, the bottom line was the House Appropriations Committee put restrictions, tight restrictions, on ASCS and USDA on their spending, including spending of CCC money.  As far as I know those restrictions remain in the current law.

This leads to my advice to Trump: any effort to reprogram money to build your wall runs the risk of stepping on the toes of the appropriators.   If that happens, and I'm sure DOD will try to avoid touching anything in the districts of the members of House appropriations, the committee is perfectly capable of putting tight clamps in the appropriation act.  

The Advantage of Two-Party Rule

This Govexec piece (originally in Propublica) describes an instance of how people can learn to game government rules, in this case the HUD rules for federally-subsidized housing. If it's worthwhile, people are ingenious enough and motivated enough to figure out games, whether it's the "Potemkin Villages" of the Czars or installing walls in a building to hide major defects.

With two-party rule you establish some incentives to find dirt on the other guys.  Even there is no dirt, there's the human incentive to make change, to throw out the bathwater because it was the pet project of the other party.