Simple J. Malarkey

Joe Biden is taking heat for putting "No Malarkey" on the bus he's using to tour Iowa.

I've fond memories of Walt Kelly's Pogo cartoon strip, which my sister introduced me to back in the day.

His caricature of Sen. McCarthy was named "Simple J. Malarkey" and was introduced this way (the second strip shown).

I don't know why we don't have good cartoon strips anymore.  Dilbert is usually tolerable but it's not Pogo.

The Coming of World Government in Space

Technology Review has a piece on the influx of new space agencies, both in smaller countries (Luxembourg!) and by private enterprises.

Elon Musk is putting up thousands of satellites to provide Internet access.

Seems to me we're going to come to the point where the practicalities of managing space will force governments to agree to cede some control to an international organization.  Back in the day we were sure the UN was a steppingstone to a real world government.  That dream is long gone, but technology and the need to control the commons might revive it.

Produce Waste

The PBS Newshour is showing a piece on food waste, featuring an effort in California. It is part of a weeklong effort.  This particular one is laudable, featuring coordinators and software packages. 

But my contrarian side is present whenever I hear an estimate of "pounds of food wasted".  Looking at the produce shown, the pounds wasted include peach pits, watermelon rinds, etc.  I know measuring the "waste" is hard, and maybe there is a benefit to using fuzzy statistics: they stir up activism.  My instinct, however, is that better stats, more solid stats, are the way you build the base for a social movement, for changing norms. 

Technocrats and Bureaucrats

Interesting post here, arguing that Robert Moses represented the peak of technocratic government. As some of the costs of technocracy became apparent (see Jane Jacobs and Robert Caro) progressives turned against technocracy

Beneath America’s deep frustration with government is something else: a deep-seated aversion to power. Progressives resolved decades ago to prevent the public from being bulldozed by another Robert Moses—and the project to diffuse power to the public has succeeded. But the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. The left’s zeal to hamstring government has helped to burnish the right’s argument that government would mess up a one-car parade. The new protections erected to guard against Moses’ second coming have condemned new generations to live in civic infrastructure that is frozen in time.

The piece traces the history of attempts to reinvent Penn Station and the surrounding area, attempts led by a variety of strong-willed people, each with a piece of power, but none able to get past the veto points erected by post-1960 reforms.

As a former bureaucrat, I'm instinctively sympathetic to technocracy.  But I also recognize that power without restraints, like Moses', can result in misguided dreams and worse misdeeds.

Happy Thanksgiving

See these charts for things to be thankful for.

The Mystery of California Deaths

Articles today in the Post and Times on a new study of trends in US death rates.

Much information, including this:


Note that while trends are terrible for the upper NE and eastern MW, California and Wyoming are going the other way with OR, NV, and NY not too bad. 

I'd like to know what's going on here, I skimmed quickly through the article and didn't pick up much.  Obesity and smoking are bad, recent immigrants and service industries are good. 

A guess--Asian and Hispanic immigrants might be particularly helpful.  But in the end it's a mystery.

Crime In DC

My title is a bit misleading--this is a report on a poll  asking whether people had, or knew someone who had, been threatened with a gun. 

Notably the results are broken down by DC wards, and as usual east of the Anacostia had the highest exposure/ 

Two things strike me:

1. the difference between the best wards and the worst is not that great--46 percent versus 28 percent..  Yes, that's a big difference, but based on media reports I would have guessed maybe 85 versus 25.
2. there's no difference between west of Rock Creek Park, stereotypically white, and the Northeast wards, more stable middle class black neighbors (my image, which may be outdated).

Bottom line: a reminder that one's picture of the world is likely to be wrong.

The Rich and Donations

Here's a Vox post on the donations to charity by the most wealthy Amercans. As Dylan Matthews notes, there are a number of qualifications and cautions in interpreting the figures.  For my purposes,only three billionaires, Bloomberg, Gates, and Buffett gave more than 1 percent of their wealth in the last year.

I may have discussed this before in connection with Warren's proposed wealth tax.  Anyhow, retirees are told they can withdraw 4 percent of their savings and likely not exhaust them before dying.  I think maybe that's a reasonable target: once a person reaches retirement age, between taxes and charity the total should be about 4 percent of wealth.

Where's the House

MSNBC and others have a story that intelligence officials briefed senators on a Russian effort to blame the Ukraine for 2016 election meddling.

That's all very interesting, but what happened to the House.  I understand that protocol, and institutional rivalry, says what you tell the Senate you have to tell to the House.  Why wasn't that followed in this case?

The Hearings

Random points stemming from the now-ended impeachment hearings:

• I took Fiona Hill as saying Russia interfered with our 2016 as a state project, directed by Putin (I'm intrigued by the possibility that the intelligence community has better sources of information than we know).  The project was hidden and had Russian resources behind it. The project included creating and spreading false information. Conversely, individual Ukrainians mostly openly opposed Trump's election. Their covert actions involved furnishing true information.
• One of the attacks on the bureaucrats who testified was rooted in suspicion of their political views.  I've no information on that, but I do remember being a bureaucrat during President Reagan's tenure.  I called him the "senior idiot" (and my direct boss the "junior idiot".  I am now and was then a strong Democrat.  However, I reserved my epithets for the ears of my wife, and performed my duties to the best of my ability, getting some awards and some cash for my work, representing decisions by the Republicans heading our agency.  Granted my work was not as politically significant as diplomacy is, but I think it's very reasonable to believe that most bureaucrats, even those with strong political views, can keep their work separate.
• I've some sympathy with those who aren't comfortable with impeachment based on the current evidence, because of missing witnesses (Bolton, Mulvaney, et. al.) (Also some questions not asked--like the usual process for authorizing and delivering military aid compared to that used for Ukraine).  But, on the other hand, I'm comfortable with the idea that circumstantial evidence can be enough for a guilty verdict in homicide cases.  And, I think circumstantial evidence is what we have here to fill the holes.