Managing Federal Credit Cards

The NYTimes has an article on the Federal credit cards, with a purchase limit that was raised in the context of Katrina.

"The thought of individual employees able to charge up to a quarter-million dollars per trip with only the plastic in their wallets, directly payable by Uncle Sam, has government watchdogs agog."

The cards were pushed in the Clinton administration, as part of Gore's "Reinventing Government" program. They're a good idea that was poorly implemented, IMHO. The cards were used both for travel and small purchases, but the management controls were lacking, as GAO discovered. I've a couple suggestions in the new context:

• the credit card companies have software that identifies breaks from a normal pattern of usage, hoping to find cases where a card has been stolen. The Feds should apply the same software among cards--the pattern of usage among employees with similar responsibilities should be similar (i.e., if they're only used for travel, or for small purchases).
• public servants have no privacy, so make the record of purchases for each employee available on the internet and authorize rewards for people discovering abuses.
• have the employee's supervisor log on to the account and approve it each month. (Sort of like the controls that parents can put on their children's cards.)

Green Foolishness?

Today's WPost has an article on how an environmentalist redid her kitchen in green, or should that be "greenly"? She says she turned down granite for her countertops in favor of recycled glass embedded in concrete because "granite is definitely not renewable -- once it's removed from the earth, it's gone forever."

I'm tempted to mock her--she fails to realize that concrete is made with cement, derived from limestone quarried from the earth, heated in a kiln fired most probably by fossil fuel, combined with sand which is also derived from the earth. (It's not clear to me which counter top would require more energy to make.) But seriously, it's an example of the limited vision we all have. We all argue based on a subset of data because you've got to close your mind somewhere. It's also an example of trends. To this old codger, the idea of a green kitchen seems a bit laughable, but it's taken seriously in the paper and may well be a coming thing. It's how social norms develop, just remember (as I do every time I watch an old movie) how norms on smoking have changed over the years.

Buy One or Build One, On the Tick of Time

After some 7 or 8 years, I think it's time to get a new PC. The issue is how? Unlike previous acquisitions, I'm now retired so I could save a little money and gain some confidence by buying the components and building it myself. Building would give me a warm fuzzy feeling, whereas spending the money would trigger some guilt.

As far as capability goes, I've installed new cards and hard drives in past PC's, so I have some experience working inside the case. Harshaw's law, you never do things right the first time, might apply, but probably not. There would be a learning curve. It probably would take longer to build than buy. At my age, when one can count the years remaining, that's not a trivial consideration. Is building a PC what I want to do with my time? Tick, tock, not.

Fishing the Blogs

No one is more needy than a blogger in search of readers. Some shrewd people have figured that out and are out to exploit our neediness.

Background: In May I blogged on the flow of culture/information down the classes, using the example of DNA, and the flow up the classes, using rap.

Today I got an e-mail message from "Emily". My heart beat faster, I was happy, someone out there was reading me. This is what it said:

From : emily Sent : Wednesday, September 14, 2005 11:27 AM To : bharshaw@hotmail.com Subject : [Faceless Bureaucrat] 9/13/2005 03:20:48 PM

| | | Inbox

Your blog is great! It's hard to find blogs with good content and people talking about dna testing these days! I have a secret dna testing blog if you want to come check it out

--
Posted by emily to Faceless Bureaucrat at 9/13/2005 03:20:48 PM

Needless to say, the URL is for an advertisement in the form of a post to a blog. It was obviously machine generated, though I'm interested in DNA, the original post is not about DNA and no intelligent blogger about DNA would link to me on that basis. This is an example of the evolution of IT in a free market--whenever there's a sufficient concentration of energy/eyeballs/platforms, someone will figure out how to take advantage. The good old days of idealistic blogging are about to go the way of all utopian dreams. Someone needs to rewrite The Inferno to specify the ring of hell reserved for spammers and phishers.


UPDATE: The above is a bit harsh, being written in the throes of disappointment. The people behind the message are looking for eyeballs, not ID's, so it's sleazy but not illegal.

Updated Update: Got another comment this morning, same effect, but this one was advertising cheap gas. I think the effect might be to kill the goose--getting high from the compliment followed by the depression of finding it's fake nets out to a downer, tending to discourage one from blogging.

Intersections, Aging, and Plans

Was thinking about when I should give up my driving license. Supposedly the key is reflexes, we oldsters are a lot more careful than you whippersnappers, but our reflexes are slow. But is that true?

I've had three accidents so far: the first was unambigously the other driver's fault; the second was perhaps a little mine (pulled off the side of the road in very heavy fog and was rear-ended by someone a bit high; and the third was all mine. In that case (back in 1978), I came up to an intersection and made a left turn in front of oncoming traffic. I was thrown by two facts--it wasn't a 4-way intersection with right angles, but a 5-way with no right angles and it was the first time I had entered it. I was first distracted by the possible traffic on the road coming in on my left, then by figuring the angle to my left turn and I assumed (ass u me) that there was nothing coming from the opposite direction. Unfortunately, this was at the top of a grade, so the traffic on the oncoming street was somewhat hidden. At 37 my reflexes were still sharp, but not enough to avoid the accident.

So the bottom line is that the concept "intersection" in my head didn't match the reality on the ground. I suspect that's a major pitfall of driving while old, we've too many pictures in our head and we have neither the flexibility nor reflexes to adjust quickly when reality doesn't jibe with the pictures in our head. In that, we are a lot like the government in handling Katrina, the reality didn't match our stereotype of "hurricane".

Social Capital, Family Ties, and Corruption

Robert Putnam, author of "Bowling Alone" has popularized the idea of "social capital", the sort of thing Tocqueville identified when he saw Americans forming multitudes of voluntary associations. Putnam argues these tie people into the larger society, give them practice in working together in a democratic institution and, at least pre-1960, cross-cut class and social lines.

I saw a brief reference a day or two ago that suggested Louisiana ranked very low (last?) on measures of social capital. I'm not sure that's tied into the idea that Louisiana is very high on family stability and solidarity, as I've blogged before, and Cmdrsue has affirmed in comments. It might also tie into the expectation of corruption, the subject of an article in the last couple days. Apparently Lousianians have low expectations of their government, remembering Huey Long and the plutocrats against whom he fought, so they figure that officials will be taking a cut out of the money destined for rebuilding.

It fits Putnam's original research, which I've not read but understand he compared the social capital in Sicily, with heavy Mafia/family influence, with northern Italy, which is very much a modern economy. It also fits the Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft opposition which was a main theme of sociology back in my days as an undergrad. I wonder what's happened to that since 1960?

Health Care Comparison

This week I did a "physical assessment" at Kaiser Permanente--it's their jargon for an old fashioned physical. Interesting contrast with private physician service, in that their laboratory is in the same building as the doctor's office. So when I told the doc that my hip hurt sometimes, he sent me off to get x-rays, it took 15 minutes, and he told me I've moderate arthritis in the hip, take anti-inflammatories and so long.

One of the points I'd make is that, when we think of "patients" as being reasonably healthy and mobile, the travel and coordination required by the specialization of services in different organizations (as I blogged in August) is tolerable. It's like New Orleans thinking of its citizens as mobile and able to evacuate. But when the patient is ailing and hurting and not so mobile, it becomes a real big deal.

Factors Affecting Government Response to Katrina

I commented at Marginal Revolution on a Tyler Cowen post.
(I thought I did, but it's not visible, so here is a modified version):

Being a retired bureaucrat, not an economist,and operating from ignorance, I'd put another slant on the subject. Though I voted against Bush, I have to console myself that the criticism, some unwarranted)he's getting now is balanced by unwarranted praise after 9/11. I'm particularly interested in the comparison between Katrina and last year's hurricanes. Factors I haven't seen fully discussed include:

1. Wealth tells. The hurricanes last year hit Florida, much richer than Mississippi and Louisiana. The physical infrastructure is greater (more roads, more of everything) and the redundancies in networks are greater. Skinny people and skinny governments can have problems handling sudden illness. One truism of free markets is "you get what you pay for". That's also true for government. (It's no coincidence that Fairfax county, VA ranks high both on wealth and on government.) My impression is that all three states affected by Katrina are less than models of democracy. (See "All the Kings Men".)
   
2. Timing counts. Yes, those who live from check to check, whether pay or welfare, were hurt by the timing of Katrina. But Bush wasn't the only bureaucrat on vacation on August 28. French society notoriously shuts down in August. The U.S. government isn't that bad, but late August is a great vacation time.
   
3. "The American government system is a mess", a paraphrase of a BBC reporter, is right (as the Founders intended). Because we don't have the sort of hierarchical system Cuba has (a post referenced from Marginal Revolution said that Cuba had successfully evacuated last year in advance of a big hurricane using its system of and China and the USSR used to have, schools are the best way to get information into the community. I doubt that New Orleans schools were open yet, and if they were, the weekend timing would have cut off that avenue of coordinating evacuations.
4. The power of math. FEMA coordinates. In last year's Florida hurricanes they were coordinating mostly with one state and I don't think the Corps of Engineers, Coast Guard, or regular military had any significant role. This year they had multiple states simultaneously, plus a bunch of new players. (Just ask your secretary about the amount of work to place one phone call versus setting up a conference call--as the number of parties expands the work involved increases exponentially, not arithmetically.) Assuming they trusted the state people, last year the only allocation issue was: do we have what you need? This year, the issue is: which state needs limited resources most.
5. Two disasters, not one. We've not had levee breaks and hurricane damage in one event for a long time. It pulls in more "stakeholders" to coordinate and poses new problems to learn.
   
6. Never underestimate learning. I say over and over, we never do things right the first time.
7. Finally, politics matters. Last year every bureaucrat in the Florida and federal governments knew that their boss's rear was on the line if the hurricanes weren't handled well. Neither George nor Jeb had to say a thing; it was in the air. That knowledge makes a difference on the margins, not the center. The question is: do you make one more phone call, check one more city block, bite your tongue a little harder to work cooperatively with someone in another agency. Knowing the big boss will get very excited over failure helps then. This year, George is a lame duck, the Louisiana governor is a Democrat, so....

Regardless of the above, neither Albaugh nor Brown nor Brown's no. 2 should have been appointed to that job. That's Bush's culpability--personnel selection.

Social Networks and Katrina

One of the interesting things (rather cold statement) in the aftermath of Katrina is the unexpected (to me) profusion of extended families among the evacuees. Mostly black, but some white, although that's the proportion of media coverage, it seems lots of people have lots of siblings, cousins, uncles, aunts, who may evacuated together, got separated in the evacuation, or stayed behind to help relatives. It makes for a good story, a lot better than the individuals who were by themselves. Is this area of the South home to more extended families who seem to have been relatively immobile than other areas?

I've a hypothesis in mind--familial bonds are literally that--ties that can and do hold one back from individual achievement but supports that rescue one in times of peril.

Ganging Up on Barbara

The Post ran an article this morning on Barbara Ehrenreich and her new book. I'd had mixed feelings about her last one, Nickeled and Dimed, along the lines of "yes, but". Haven't read the new one, but was ready to fire off a blog article saying: " a 64-year old looks for a $50K job in PR while lying on her resume? Give me a break, there should be no reasonable expectation that she get a job."

Then I found that Tyler Cowen and Alan Wolfe in Slate were taking the same line, after having read the book (they try to uphold intellectual standards, I don't).

But consider this excerpt from the Post article (which is standard puff-the-writer stuff)--No Help Wanted, hitting a point Cowen and Wolfe haven't discussed yet:

"But in the end, what outraged her the most was the pervasive blame-the-victim ethos she encountered. Personal responsibility is a fine thing, she says, but it's not the same as omnipotence. Yet over and over, the newly unemployed were told: You totally control your own fate. At an 'executive boot camp,' the leader hammered the core message home:

'It's never about the external world,' he said. 'It's always between you and you.'"

I can understand how that might provoke outrage, but the reality in the situations is that it is all about "you". In today's environment, neither unions nor political action are a realistic route for the middle class job seeker. Controlling oneself is the only thing a person can control. So their alternatives are bleak: change oneself to be a more acceptable employee or endure. (Or perhaps, seek ease in religion.) (Can you see my inherited Calvinism emerging?)