Customers and Clients

Long piece in the Post today tracing the evolution of the Mineral Management Service's relationship with industry. There's a brief mention of "customers" and "clients" and the Clinton/Gore reengineering of government, which pushed that perspective and partnering with "stakeholders".  That whole ethos doesn't look quite so good today.

It appears to me the problem for MMS (and the SEC, etc.) is one of expertise: the industry has the expertise, so how do you establish an independence that can challenge bad practices? 

The Virtues of Slowness

A quote from Interfluidity on a meeting with Treasury and bloggers (via Marginal Revolution):

The conversation next turned to housing and HAMP. On HAMP, officials were surprisingly candid. The program has gotten a lot of bad press in terms of its Kafka-esque qualification process and its limited success in generating mortgage modifications under which families become able and willing to pay their debt. Officials pointed out that what may have been an agonizing process for individuals was a useful palliative for the system as a whole. Even if most HAMP applicants ultimately default, the program prevented an outbreak of foreclosures exactly when the system could have handled it least. There were murmurs among the bloggers of “extend and pretend”, but I don’t think that’s quite right. This was extend-and-don’t-even-bother-to-pretend. The program was successful in the sense that it kept the patient alive until it had begun to heal. And the patient of this metaphor was not a struggling homeowner, but the financial system, a.k.a. the banks. Policymakers openly judged HAMP to be a qualified success because it helped banks muddle through what might have been a fatal shock. I believe these policymakers conflate, in full sincerity, incumbent financial institutions with “the system”, “the economy”, and “ordinary Americans”. Treasury officials are not cruel people. I’m sure they would have preferred if the program had worked out better for homeowners as well. But they have larger concerns, and from their perspective, HAMP has helped to address those.

Sometimes the best thing is to kick the problem down the road, or to slow the inevitable.  In a way that's been the hidden purpose of farm programs from the beginning, not to preserve the small farmer, but to slow the inevitable decline in numbers and to cushion the adverse impact on rural areas.

Military Bands and the Persistence of Institutions

Walter Pincus has a story in the Post today exploring the number of military bands.  The hook is a statement there are more people in military bands than in the Foreign Service, which seems to be true.  It's also true a member of a military band may get paid more than an entry level Foreign Service officer.  (The Foreign Service used to have the reputation of being the toughest government career to get into.)  I wonder whether the Reps who have been pushing the idea government workers are overpaid would agree that band members are probably overpaid.  After all, how many paid bands exist in the private sector?

I think military bands evolved from the ancient need to coordinate actions of many men on the battlefield.  Before electronics, the methods used were couriers/staff officers/runners (Hitler was a runner), flags and ensigns, and music.  The trumpet called "charge" and "retreat"; the drummer kept the rhythm for the marchers. I'd love a book on how the colonial drum and fife corps evolved into the modern military band of today.

Fighting the Last War

That's what bureaucracies do, whether it's the Army or the Coast Guard and Interior.  There's a good interview with Adm. Thad Allen at Government Executive, which explains the Gulf spew.  Part of the explanation: the system was dominated by the lessons of the Exxon Valdez spill.

Mitch Daniels Takes a Hit?

Mitch Daniels, former OMB head and now governor of Indiana, has been talked of as a possible Presidential candidate (appealing to the good and small government types).  Here's a post describing how government reform really works, even in his Indiana:

I spent two years working for such a dedicated team within Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels’ Office of Management and Budget. The group, “Government Efficiency and Financial Planning,” was originally tasked with conducting a “long-overdue inventory of the state’s operations.” We produced two reports with hundreds of recommendations for making state government more “efficient” and “effective.”
The governor never directed his “lieutenants to execute” very many – if any – of the recommendations. In fact, the lieutenants were so worried about the potential political fallout from the issue of the second report that it was intentionally released when nobody was looking. They needn’t have worried because those interests who might have had cause for concern already saw that the first report was basically inconsequential.
Eggers and O’Leary continue:

There is likely to be some internal friction between the cost reduction team and the various department leaders. That is by design. The cost reduction team is supposed to be disruptive.

GEFP was somewhat disruptive, but not very effective. The governor’s lieutenants typically either sided with the department leaders or did little to support GEFP. The reason was simple. The perceived political costs of GEFP’s efforts usually exceeded the perceived political benefits. Department heads, on the other hand, can create favorable (and unfavorable headlines) and thus possess greater pull.

Given this is a Cato blog, it's not surprising the writer is disappointed. Change is hard, particularly when it's piece by piece ("hundreds of recommendations").  It's like reforming the tax system piece by piece.  Bill Bradley and Dan Rostenkowski proved it could be done, but only as a grand bargain.

Always Nice to be Right

As I guessed in a previous post (and see  this), Sen. Lincoln and the Administration are looking at Section 32 funds for her special disaster program.  She provided this list  of past uses of the authority from Farm Policy.

I'm surprised by the number listed.  When I joined ASCS Sec. 32 funds had been used to buy up surpluses of potatoes, most notably, and use them for cattle feed and/or school lunches.  My impression was that it was method of dealing with surpluses of agricultural products which weren't storable, unlike the "basic crops", including wheat, corn and other feed grains, rice and cotton, and milk.  (Milk isn't storable, but cheese and butter are.) Apparently, though I've not bothered to follow up, there have been some changes over the years, particularly recently, which has expanded the use of the authority.

CCC has a history dating back to the Wilson administration, which I think but don't know gets the credit for using the corporation as a method of doing government business during WWI.  Subsequently Hoover came up with the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to handle depression-era projects, and the New Deal continued the RFC and created other corporations, including the CCC.

The corporation has some advantages over a regular agency: it can be much more flexible because you give it a charter and then leave the power up to its board of directors (CCC's board is basically agency heads plus secretary types).  You can give it an initial fund of money, then allow it to borrow from the Treasury.  That means Congress only gets to appropriate when the corporation runs out of borrowing authority.  And, I again think but am not sure, such repayments to the Treasury don't show up in the budget.

In addition to its borrowing authority, CCC also gets  a yearly cut of some customs money, under Sec. 32, which is probably also off budget.  And that's the money proposed to be used for Lincoln's disaster program.  (Personally, I think it's a stupid idea and hope the administration slow walks it until it's apparent that Lincoln is a lost cause.  Then they can give her a post somewhere.)

As an aside, back in the day ASCS used to tap CCC money for administrative expenses tied to carrying out CCC programs.  Over time we got too inventive  in using it for IT systems, so the Appropriations Committees cracked down.

Public Works Projects

Understanding Government has a post citing an article skeptical of the high speed rail project planned for California.  I commented on it, recalling my awareness of Dulles Airport and its access road.  While it seemed to be a boondoggle in the 70's, it no longer is.  Sometimes it takes a while for infrastructure to prove its worth.  Sometimes it doesn't, as the Erie Canal proved its worth immediately.  And sometimes boondoggles are boondoggles, as in the case of the Chenango Canal.

Manual Dexterity on the Band Saw

Via John Phipps, the end result is incredible, at least to a klutz.

The Downside of Absentee Landowners

Back in the day every farmer owned and operated his quarter section (my "day" was long, long ago and in a different country).  But today most farms are a combination of rented and owned land (at $5-7K an acre, it doesn't take long for land ownership to involve some real money).  And Chris Clayton, whose thoughts never stray far from business, wonders if the dead zone in the Gulf isn't related to the renting. (Actually, the dead zone is my attempt to amp up the significance.)  He and his family float down a river and see corn and soybeans planted with no filter strip bordering the river, consequently nitrogen, phosphorus and top soil fall into the river, thence to be flushed down past New Orleans to the Gulf.  His guess is that the farmers were renting and going for max production, not worried at all about the land.

The Easy IT Projects

This glowing piece in Federal Computer Weekly praises the woman who accomplished this:

In the end, the board awarded a contract July 10, 2009, to build Recovery.gov, and work on the project started the same day. FederalReporting.gov launched Aug. 17, 2009, and Recovery.gov went live Sept. 28, 2009.

Far be it from me to knock a dedicated and successful bureaucrat, but remember that was an easy project. Easy because it was done from scratch, I believe.  The tough projects are those which try to redo existing systems, particularly those integrating separate stovepipes.  All that said, getting software done in 70 days is good work.