Wine at the Pump

The French may be very regimented, but getting wine at the pump (a la gas pump) is something only they could dream of.

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.

Speaking of Optimism--Fred Brooks

My previous post was on optimism--Fred Brooks wrote a great book in this area 35 years ago: The Mythical Man-Month.  He has another out, which should be good. The Design of Design.  It's on my Christmas wish list.

Overconfidence Among the Professionals

This post reports on a study showing lawyers are overconfident in predicting the outcome of their cases.  I believe the recent Atul Gawande article in the New Yorker said that doctors are overly optimistic in predicting how long their patients will live.  IT professionals routinely promise to complete projects faster and cheaper than they can (see this on the FBI's Sentinel program).  Military professionals often are overly optimistic in predicting the outcome of military operations. Politicians over promise the results of their votes. Economists, except for Tyler Cowen, are overly sure of the outcome of their proposed policies.

Think there's a pattern here?

[Updated: A day late and a dollar short, Professor Robin Hanson comes to the same conclusion.]

The Final Word for Today

From Tyler Cowen:

We still don't know what we are doing.

I respond to honesty.

The Dark Secret of Ossining Was Not Mad Men

If Matt Weiner's Mad Men keeps rolling along, he may get to the time when Ossining's schools were desegregated.

I was trolling through a site listing the reports of the Civil Rights Commission and stumbled across this report, on the desegregation of Ossining's schools over the period  1969-74.  There was what we used to call de facto segregation, because Ossining had a significant black population (working at Sing Sing, I assume. So back in that idealistic time the effort was to realign elementary school boundaries to provide a more integrated environment.

I Thought Republicans Disliked the Nanny State?

This bit from Farm Policy about a House Ag hearing on nutrition was amusing:0

Subcommittee Ranking Member Jeff Fortenberry, R-Nebraska, expressed concern about health and obesity rates, and noted that data from the Healthy Incentives Pilot (HIP) would not be available for another two years. He went on to ask the second panel of witnesses yesterday an interesting theoretical question about a potential “new paradigm” in linking SNAP benefits to improved choice. He offered a hypothetical example: “Instead of a SNAP card having $100 on it, a SNAP card would have 100 ‘nutritional points,’ and that would also be measured as you buy certain foods and therefore the market would then respond to develop food products that would fit easily into the nutritional categorizations.” To listen to this interesting discussion on linking SNAP benefits to nutritional health, click here (MP3- 8:12).

As technology progesses more and more can be done. I don't know whether the old slogans about "nanny state" work in the new environment.
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China

 From a Grist post on energy efficiency, talking about China:

For every 100 urban households there are 138 color TV sets, 97 washing machines, and 88 room air conditioners. Even in rural areas there are 95 color TVs and 46 washing machines for every 100 households.

I suppose I should be used to this by now, but somehow I'm often revert to the images of the 1950's and 60's, from the Korean War and the Great Leap Forward. Who whaddya thunk it?

And a Tear Flows Down a Face: Oldest Farm Gone

Sometime in the 70's I think it was there was a famous picture of an Indian, sorry--Native American, with a tear running down his cheek.  If I remember it was tied into the environmental movement.

Don't know why I thought of that when I saw this article on a farm in NH which dates back to 1632, owned by members of the same family, which is now up for sale.

What David Brooks Fails to Mention

In Tuesday's Times, David Brooks imagines he's a Democrat again, and from that position gives advice to Obama, who should be.

focused on the long term? He could explain that we’re facing deep fundamental problems: an aging population, overleveraged consumers, exploding government debt, state and local bankruptcies, declining human capital, widening inequality, a pattern of jobless recoveries, deteriorating trade imbalances and so on.
These long-term problems, Obama could say, won’t be solved either with centralized government or free market laissez-faire. Just as government laid railroads and built land grant colleges in the 19th century to foster deep growth, the government today should be doing the modern equivalents.

What Brooks doesn't mention is the sort of stuff in this OMB Watch post, because, as it says:

The administration gets little credit for these achievements, which are often wonky in nature and easily overshadowed by the hyper-partisan atmosphere of Washington.