They Don't Make Wars Nor Armies as They Used to

Hank Bauer just died. (Obit in NYTimes today) For those of you who weren't born soon enough, Hank was an outfielder for the NY Yankees back when I was a Yankee fan (1948-on), starring in the World Series and then a World Series-winning manager for the Baltimore Orioles. He also was a Marine vet, spending almost 3 years in the Pacific and winning medals.

Yesterday I heard a snippet on C-Span of the Secretary of the Army testifying. He was saying that the policy was one year deployed, two years home station. Then Lehrer News Hour ran the photos of 14 killed in Iraq.

In the old days you often enlisted (or were drafted) for 3 years or the duration. (3 years for the regulars of the Continental line in the Revolution, 3 for some in the Civil War, duration for WWII). And, as Bauer shows, you often fought for the duration. (Audie Murphy, the most decorated WWII soldier fought from North Africa into Germany, Nov. 42 to Jan 45 or so.) Of course, you weren't in the war continuously. In the Pacific, at least in the island-hopping phase, islands were taken fairly rapidly. In the Atlantic, there were invasions and preparing for invasions. For those troops who got stuck slogging up the boot of Italy, they'd be rotated in and out of line, as was also the case in WWI. So for our "combat" troops in Iraq, they're probably seeing more continuous danger over their year tour (for the Army, 7 months for Marines, I think) than Hank Bauer did. If you graphed it, one continuous line for Iraq, one discontinuous up and down line for Bauer.

Another thing I note--there's hardly any privates dying in Iraq. I assume, with a volunteer army, everyone gets promoted at least to sergeant E-5. There may also be the sort of grade inflation in the armed services that the rest of the government experiences--we're all above average.

Bureaucratic Systems and Ptolemaic Systems

Was reading "From the Archives", whose author seems to be a pedant after my own heart, (hat tip to Tyler Cowen) which got me thinking about regulations and then to thinking about scientific theories, particularly Ptolemaic system (i.e. geocentric).

Now I was told once that the way ancient astronomers developed the geocentric system was, whenever they had an observation that didn't fit the theory, they slapped on another epicycle or other widget to solve the problem. And the theory worked, from Aristotle through Ptolemy right up to Galileo it corresponded with observations as well as any competing system.

Well, that's a metaphor for the way bureaucratic systems develop. Some policy maker lays out a set of bureaucratic rules, or forms, or organizational structures that seems to fit the situation as they understand it. But then the bureaucracy gets hit by members of the public (i.e., their customers, clients, users, or whatever hell buzzword is in favor) with unexpected situations--reality is more complex than the theory. So the policy makers come up with some solution, often a compromise among interests, sometimes half-assed or make-shift, that gets added onto the bureaucratic rules, gets made another form in the set of forms, gets a special office in the bureaucracy (i.e., Doug Feith in DOD). And time passes, more situations come up, more fixes are made. Pretty soon a once effective bureaucratic system gets constipated, because there's too many twists and turns in the pipeline for the s... to flow.

How To Handle Limitations on Farm Payments

The USDA farm bill proposes changes on payment limitations, including making farmers ineligible if their adjusted gross income (AGI) is $200,000 or more (now $2.5 million). My guess, without doing much research, is that this is just another proposal that won't be enacted. That's the history of changes in payment limitation; lots more get proposed than get enacted.

There are at least two aspects of the proposal, aside from the general opposition to payment limitations, that will play into the prospects:

1. The size of the change, from $2.5 mill to $200 K. The bigger the change, the stronger the opposition from groups that are opposed.
2. The all or nothing aspect.

My suggestion, to USDA, to Congress, would be to consider a progressive payment structure. Assume that FSA has the payee's AGI recorded in its payment system. (The bureaucratic problem is getting the data attached to the payee; once you do that, getting the data into the computer system should not be a big deal.) It then would be easy to program the payment calculation to factor payments according to a progressive rule. For example:

AGI Payment

• < $100,000 100 percent of calculated amount
• <$200,000 80 percent of calculated
• <$500,000 50 percent of calculated
• <$1 mill 25 percent
• >$1 mill 0

Vary the amounts and percentages however you want, put in as many levels as you want.

The advantages of the proposal are:

1. Makes the implementation more gradual
2. Counters the widespread criticism that the bigger the farmer the bigger the payment--makes payments "progressive" in some sense
3. Might make payees less likely to try to evade the limitation. (The incentive to evade is variable, like boiling a frog slowly.)

Based on my experience with the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings factoring of payments in 1986, it would be imperative to think through the relationship of factored payment dollars to the payment limitation.

Why Bureaucracies (Plural)?

One reason is good old human nature, as in schadenfreude.
Although I'm almost perfect, I'm not above feeling a bit of satisfaction when I read a GAO Report on the problems NRCS has had implementing payment programs. [Background: The predecessor agencies of NRCS (National Resource Conservation Service) and FSA (Farm Service Agency) fought for many years over which one would handle payments for conservation programs. FSA won for about 30 years, but lost them around the time I was retiring. ]

GAO says:

"Despite legislative and regulatory provisions, it is still possible for producers to receive duplicate payments through CSP and other USDA conservation programs because of similarities in the conservation actions financed through these programs. However, NRCS did not have a comprehensive process to preclude or identify such duplicate payments. In reviewing NRCS's payments data, GAO found a number of examples of duplicate payments.

NRCS state officials agreed that the payments made in these four cases were duplicates. They stated that they were unaware that such duplication was occurring and that they would inform their district offices of it. NRCS headquarters officials stated that the agency lacks a comprehensive process to either preclude duplicate payments or identify them after a contract has been awarded. Instead, these officials said, as a guard against potential duplication, NRCS relies on the institutional knowledge of its field staff and the records they keep."

That's laughable, but what one should expect when a bureaucracy has to do something (i.e., make payments) it hasn't done before. It reinforces the position of NASCOE (the FSA employee lobbying organization) that there should only be one administrative organization for offices serving farmers. That's what I worked on in the early 90's, then lost enthusiasm, partly because the Department didn't understand itself, partly because NRCS had too much lobbying clout to allow it to pass, and finally because the end result was going to be reducing the number of jobs in rural areas. I've still not squared that circle.

The End of Tradition--No Spit Shines

The NYTimes today reports on a new Army uniform. The focus mostly is on the use of Velcro to attach name tags and insignia and the end of dry cleaning. (Seamstresses and dry cleaners did good business around Army bases.) But buried in the piece is the move from spit-shined leather boots to "tan 'desert boots' made of suede and synthetic materials."

So no more spit shines in the Army. Even 40 years ago, the leather boots were challenged. Once you got to Vietnam, you very quickly learned that the "in" thing were the jungle combat boots, which had leather toes and heels, but canvas uppers--the idea being if you were in the boonies and wading through water you wanted the water to drain from the boots, not stay inside and help you get jungle rot. They were also significantly lighter. The boots were scarce, first being issued to the advisers and Special Forces, then to combat troops. But naturally they popped up on the black market and REMF's like me got their hands on them.

But no more spit shines? If I remember, the initial hurdles for this recruit were making the bed and shining the shoes. The bed I mastered after a few tries. (I hadn't formulated Harshaw's law then--I'm a slow learner.) The shoes were more of a challenge. Never did get a great shine.

Virginia Postrel has an article on beauty in the Atlantic I skimmed--quotes researchers saying that female beauty ties to fertility and vigor (i.e., hormonal levels, etc.). So too spit shined shoes were a signal to the training sergeants of one's capacity and/or willingness to adapt to the Army's ways. It's a loss.

Michael Pollan from Others

John Phipps comments on Pollan's new piece here . Nice to know there's another partial skeptic in the world.

Marjorie Harshaw Robie

I welcome my cousin Marjorie to the world of blogging. (See the link I've added, though you'd best wait a couple weeks to give her time to post something.) Remember Harshaw's Rule.

The "Surge" and New Orleans

New Orleans was damaged by the storm surge, but its post-Katrina fate says something about the possible fate of Baghdad after the Bush/Petraeus surge. Today's NYTimes has an article on murder in the city. One aspect is the distrust shown the police by the residents of the areas most affected by the violence. The police can't effectively solve murders and gang violence because they can't get information from the citizens, the justice system can't convict and jail offenders because the police don't build good cases for them, and the citizens can't trust the police or justice system because the violent are amongst them, laughing at "90-day murders" (i.e, a killing that you spent 90 days in jail for).

Assume the surge in Baghdad has an effect. It's possible. Malcolm Gladwell has familiarized us with the concept of "tipping point". Presumably there's some level of force that is sufficient to restore order in the city. (I remember the military--National Guardsmen? or regulars?-- on the streets of DC after the 1968 riots.) Gen. Casey thinks 2 brigades of US troops plus the Iraqi forces could do the job, Sen. McCain were thinking 50,000 more US plus Iraqis were needed, someone else might say 100,000. No one knows.

But assume Petraeus and Bush are right and 5 brigades shut down the bombings and the sectarian killings. Suppose for the sake of argument that no one dies in Baghdad from any sort of violence for a month. (I know, that's ridiculous, but so?) Then what? Do you slowly reduce the number of troops until you reach a point of low, but acceptable, violence? What is that point? How much violence have the Israelis been willing to live with? How about the residents of the United Kingdom? Or Spain?

I know the Bush/Petraeus strategy is for economic development to happen, but that doesn't cure things fast.

Can we really do better in Baghdad than in New Orleans?

Art Monk, Bureaucrat

Art Monk, the great receiver for Joe Gibbs and his Washington Redskins (first incarnation), missed out again on being voted to the Football Hall of Fame. His contemporary and rival, Michael Irwin, of the Dallas Cowboys, made it.

Irwin was the more flamboyant figure, making more dramatic catches, being more vocal in the media, having a more colorful (to use a euphemism) private life, than Monk. It's just a little unfair to Irwin to call him a predecessor of T.O., unfair in that he was able to stay on one team for his career. Monk lasted longer, made more catches (had the record at one point), kept out of the media, and did the little things. Irwin fit the image of the Cowboys, swaggering as "America's team", while Monk fit the earnest sobersided Joe Gibbs style of football.

So, naturally, the squeaky wheel got the grease. Such is the fate of bureaucrats*.

* yes, a football player is a bureaucrat. He follows the rules of the game and the playbook of the team to deal with others, i.e., the opposing players and the officials.

Wash Your Hands

My momma said: "wash your hands". This article from the LA Times repeats the fact that health care professionals don't listen to their mommas.

By the way, it's likely everyone on earth is here because someone failed to wash their hands in the past.