DOS and COBOL

Last week I saw references to both COBOL and DOS (see this FCW piece and this piece from Slate); I think both in connection with unemployment insurance systems which are running on ancient software.  I never did much programming with DOS (I was more into WordPerfect macos) but I did take courses in COBOL and did one application as a sideline to my regular job.  The System/36 ran COBOL as did the mainframes in Kansas City.

I can understand why both private and public organizations still run COBOL.  Every change of software runs the risk of creating new problems, so if you've got an application that runs without problems and supports the organization, there's little reason to switch to a newer language.  That's particularly true if the organization is adding new programs or functions, so available people and work hours are needed to support the new.

All that said, the downside of keeping the old programs is you have to live with the old silos and the old thinking, forgoing chances to integrate, and likely forcing you to invent kludges or bridges on occasion. For example, with issuing the federal payments under the current program (CARES), I suspect Treasury had to write new programs to match ID's in IRS files against those in unemployment files.

Impacts of the Pandemic--Social Science

Social science will have a field day analyzing the impacts of the pandemic.  Economists and other social scientists have had to make do with "natural experiments".  They look at the differences in outcome for those who win a lottery (for money, for healthcare, for college entrance) and those who don't.  Or they try to compare different but comparable political subdivisions.  Or, as when air traffic was grounded after 9/11 they look as disasters. As the pandemic subsides they will find:

• a vastly expanded set of such experiments, given how the timing of events has varied.
• a new scope to such experiments, examining the effects of the pandemic shutdown on all aspects of social activity.
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Social Media and the Virus

I often see references to "viral" social media--used to be a blog post, now it's tweets or memes (call them "events")  The metaphor works because there are parallels between social media events and viral infections.  Each event or infection can end with the person, or it can trigger an event or infection in another person.  When the average odds of replication (R)is equal to 1 or greater, you get exponential growth.

The difference is in the nature of the effect.  Social media events can be positive or negative, an infection can be slightly or very negative in effect. 

The Three Silos: Food Supply in the Age of Covid-19

The pandemic has revealed we have three silos in the food supply system:

• commodity agriculture supplying supermarkets and groceries.  This silo is working pretty well.
• food service agriculture supplying restaurants and fast food outlets.  Because the restaurant industry is closed down, except for delivery service (a possible fourth silo), this silo is in deep trouble.  Farmers supplying milk are having to dump, those supplying produce are having to dump. 
• the direct to consumer (Community supported agriculture and farmers markets).  This silo seems also in trouble according to this Times article.

The net result of the pandemic may be a setback for the farm-to-table movement.

[Updated: another Times article.]

Why No Commodity Purchase Program Under Sec. 32?

This is triggered by a twitter exchange I had today.

"Never" is a long time. While it's true they don't get direct payments, except when natural disaster destroys production. Produce farmers very occasionally get assistance from USDA purchases under Sec. 32 authority when prices have gone to hell.

— Bill Harshaw (@BillHarshaw) April 8, 2020

Back in the day USDA might have used "Section 32" authority to purchase fruits and vegetables (I don't think milk, but milk is its own complicated story) which were in temporary surplus, meaning prices were depressed below the level farmers expected/wanted/needed.  USDA purchases were intended to drive up prices, since the established programs covered only storable commodities (including milk, storable as butter and cheese).  The commodities would be donated to school lunch programs or various other food programs. (At some points in the past surplus potatoes were destroyed--see this Congressional Record reference.) For example here's an appropriations hearing in 1964 discussing the sweet potato removal program. I was never involved in administering these purchases, but ASCS/FSA was.

Of course these purchases were in response to lobbying by the producer group--if they could build the heat on USDA hot enough the Secretary would pull the trigger on the purchases, which would take the heat off until the next time. Over the years, as briefly described in this  description of the authority, the expansion of crop insurance to more crops and the establishment of the Non-insured Crop Disaster Assistance Program (NAP) (one of the reasons I retired, though that's a story for a different time) lessened its use, and in 2008 the law was changed further to restrict the Secretary's authority.

The Limits on Websites

I remember when everyone but everyone was going to be on the web.  I thought that, at least for a while.  But then I started becoming skeptical. Partly this was from my experience with FSA--some of my bright ideas flopped, didn't gain the user acceptance that they needed.  Then I became conscious of the feedback loop: if you build it and the users don't come, you won't maintain.  And finally of the culture problem.

A case study: I buy things at the Merrifield Garden Center and the Home Depot.  Both have websites; HD's is better than Merrifield because you can order online for home delivery or pickup at the store. But unlike Safeway, where I also shop, neither site has a Covid-19 page/announcement when you login. 

It's an indication that for the managers involved, thinking early on of their web presence is yet to become a habit.

Our Sacrosanct Public Servants

It probably says something about our times and society when I note:  Dr. Fauci's status as a public servant is equivalent to that of J. Edgar Hoover and Allen Dulles back in my youth.

My Sympathy to the Trump Administration

The bureaucrats in the Trump administration have my sympathy.  I've played a role in the FSA/USDA bureaucracy during times when we had to implement programs, new programs in a rush. What I didn't have to deal with was:

• social media--telephones and email were bad enough.
• the general public--only farmers and those who do business with them were paying attention, but that was more than enough.(The Senate minority leader was never on TV as he is now worrying about how we were going to implement.)
• a heated political and partisan atmosphere..
• IIRC 3 weeks was about the tightest time frame I had to deal with, which is a few days longer than those implementing the third stimulus act, signed a week ago.
• I think they have to construct or reconstruct the bureaucratic infrastructure needed to support the programs.  Things like setting up accounting structures, finding office space and providing IT for the new hires, etc. etc.
• the topper no. 1--doing this all in an environment where in-person meetings are dangerous and teleworking is new.
• the topper no. 2--top leadership which is either missing (as in vacancies) or missing (as in Trump).

There's probably more differences but those are the ones coming to mind now.

In a crisis situation there are a lot of decisions to be made and people do the best they can.  It's easy for kibitzers to criticize because they don't have the same information.  They have different information, often misinformation, but sometimes valuable information about aspects of reality which the bureaucrats have missed or aren't aware of.  It's hard to distinguish between the good and the unfounded.

I'll try to remember these factors when I criticize the administration on their handling of the programs, which I'm sure I will.

Garrow on Obama

Just finished David Garrow's Rising Star.  It's only getting 3 stars on Amazon.  This piece gives a reasonable review.

It's the longest book I've read in a long time--1400+pages with footnotes and index, about 970 pages of text. Garrow seems to have talked to everyone who had significant dealings with Obama during his life up to 2004 and to everyone who remembered him. That means it's exhaustive and exhausting. Garrow vacuumed up everything, so he often reports fulsome compliments ("will be first Aftrican-American president") along with bitter feelings. After he's elected to the Senate the book speeds up a bit, ending with his election, with an epilogue which covers the presidency.

Garrow found a new lover--in addition to the two previous biographers had already identified, one from Obama's days as an organizer in Chicago.  He seems to have had a steady if not necessarily totally monogamous relationship at Occidental, in New York City, and then in Chicago before law school, before finally meeting and marrying Michelle after law school. As far as Garrow can tell he's been a faithful husband, surprisingly so in light of the atmosphere in Springfield, IL when he was a state senator.

Obama seems to have evolved into a person who greatly impressed most people he met and worked with, antagonizing a few along the way and leaving in his wake some more with ambivalence. Garrow sees the mature Obama as very ambitious and very private, rarely allowing people to see his core, sometimes leaving them with the feeling of being used or abandoned.  As his biographer Garrow doesn't penetrate that far, never resolving the apparent conflict between Obama's famous "cool" and his nicotine addiction.

Garrow''s extensive research turns up no skeletons in the closet, at most some evidence of of a toe or two of clay.  He does debunk anti-Obama stories popular on the right, not so much explicitly but by laying out the detailed sequence: these include the relationships with Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn, with Rev. Wright, and developer Tony Rezko.  As his fame grew, he minimized his ties to all of these.  Garrow notes the shading of the truth, but doesn't frame it as hiding lurid secrets, just a politician doing a hedge.

Garrow won a Pulitzer for his bio of M. L. King; he didn't win another for this book.

ELS Cotton in Egypt

New Yorker had an article on ELS cotton grown in Egytpt.  The industry is in decline. 

I'd question some things in the article: the statement that the Egyptian cotton was superior to the American Pima, that it was discovered by a French scientist before the Civil War, that "Egypt's production  quickly eclipsed that of the U.S., and, by the end of the nineteenth century..." and the description of the history of cotton, etc.  All of them may be true, at least given their appearance in a magazine article where you can't expect scientific exactitude.  I wonder how the New Yorker checked the facts.