Trump: Keep Your Cotton Pickin' Hands Off My Money

I remember when the Thrift Savings Plan was created as part of a plan to reform the compensation of federal employees, of which I was one. IIRC the administration tried to eliminate the defined benefit retirement plan under civil service.  Switching from defined benefit to defined contribution was all the rage in private enterprise back then.

IIRC correctly there was some opposition particularly on the right based on the idea the investment money would be under the control of political types who would try to use their leverage to further their socialistic goals.

From EBRI's summary:i

KEY FACTORS TO SUCCESS: Despite initial opposition from labor groups and veto threats from the Reagan administration, Congress ultimately enacted a plan that reduced federal spending and eventually won strong support from federal workers, particularly because of the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP). Lawmakers deliberately and carefully insulated the TSP from political manipulation and minimized the impact of the federal workers’ investments in the financial markets.

Now the Trump administration is pushing the TSP board not to include Chinese stocks in the I (international) fund.  (Some in Congress are pushing a law forward to effect the same goal.)What it means is a lower return on my money because they view China as an adversary. 

I hope all those conservatives who worried about political considerations impacting TSP investment decisions back in 1986 will now oppose this move.

We Do Better by Our Animals Than Humans?

This is a paragraph from a Washington Post article on an OK veterinary lab which got into Covid-19 testing:

The Oklahoma Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory’s scrappy, collaborative effort to shift gears amid a crisis was aided by basic biological similarities between humans and other species: Animals’ nasal passages are routinely swabbed for viruses, and nucleic acid is extracted from samples and amplified on state-of-the-art machines identical to those used in human testing for the novel coronavirus. But it also highlights the preparedness of many animal health labs, which — unlike public health labs — have been buttressed by federal grants to be bulwarks against outbreaks that could cripple livestock and poultry industries.

That last sentence struck me.

The Impact of Technology on FSA Communications

I posted previously on my discovery of the FDA Facebook group, which is a new means of communication across the organization.  Some further thoughts:

When I joined ASCS my impression was it was hierarchical organization.  Questions would come from the county through the district director to the state office to the area director to the applicable program specialist in the program division.  At least that was the theory. Over time I discovered the role of the county and state committees, which was contested.  In theory they were in charge of applying policy decisions to their counties and states.  (This is what they had been in the 1930's.) In reality it seemed to me that they often lacked the expertise and always lacked the day-to-day operational awareness really to fulfill that role.  As a result over the years their role had diminished, but smart county and state executive directors would manage their relationships with their committees.

The role of the district director was also evolving, as symbolized by the change in terminology from "farmer fieldman" to "district director".  My impression is that these positions were often quite political, with significant turnover when the political party in charge changed.  As a cynic my impression was the quality of the DD's varied, meaning they sometimes were obstacles and were bypassed by the more knowledgeable CED's.

When ASCS started installing System/36's in county offices, it put a lot of strain on the old systems.  First and foremost, nobody involved in the new technology had experience with it, so a simple question that a program assistant might take to a more senior person, or the CED, wouldn't receive an answer. The time required to move a question from county through state to DC (KCMO)and finding someone with an answer and then getting it back down the chain was simply too long.

Time and experience solved some of the problems as we all learned by trial and error. I suspect, but can't prove, that informal communication networks expanded.  People learned who in the state was more capable with the technology. 

Cleaning Up After the Trump Elephant

The old joke about following a circus parade and having to clean up after the elephants...?

After Trump leaves office there will be a lot of cleanup needed:

• reestablishing norms for openness, including releasing tax returns, maintaining public records of who visits the White House,  putting assets into blind trusts, not using official events to push political agendas or to sell stuff, etc.
• redoing the interactions with Congress.
• [updated--prohibiting policy announcements by twitter.]

I don't know how we do this.  The natural tendency of each branch of government is to keep their authority, so it may be harder to undo Trump precedents than we'd like to think.

Bucket-a-Day

I've started reading P.D.James "Time To Be in Earnest"-- a sort of memoir in diary form.  Describing her childhood she mentioned heating the water for the weekly bath.  Don't know why that cause me to think of our "bucket-a-day". Here's an article discussing a modern use.  For us we used it in the summer only.  The rest of the year we had the coal stove going.  In addition to cooking and heating part of the downstairs the stove also heated our water.  Pipes ran through it to capture heat from the fire.  The heated water, being less dense than cold, would rise through a pipe to a tank in the upstairs bathroom.  When you opened the hot water faucets in the kitchen and downstairs half-bath the hot water was drawn from the tank to the faucets. 

FSA Now and Then

I signed up for Facebook years ago, but rather quickly decided I wouldn't make much use of it.

But, the other day I thought to search for FSA and found there's a big and active FSA group there.  I was approved to join, so I'm occasionally starting to review the posts (whatever the Facebook term is for it).

Apparently most (all?) FSA offices are operating behind locked doors, so producer contact is by phone and email.  Looks to be variation in the rules applied and the infrastructure being supplied.  (IMHO that's an old story, inevitable in the US but that's no consolation to those getting the short end of the stick.) 

Reading some of the comments of the toll being experienced by the staff reminded me of the field's experiences with the 1983 PIK program and then the pain of moving to the System/36.  This generation will have their own war stories with which to bore their young successors.

Upton Sinclair's Jungle

The covid-19 problems in meatpacking plants remind me of Upton Sinclair's Jungle. It had a major impact on the American food system, but much remains the same--especially the use of immigrant labor under what seems to be harsh conditions, at least when looked at through American eyes.

Legislating Good Norms

Our current president has broken a lot of the norms and a few of the laws which existed before 2017.  One of the tasks of whoever succeeds him will be to figure out how to return to those norms.  One pathway is for Congress to pass and the president to sign laws which have that effect.  One such effort is already under way, as described in this post from FCW.  Rep. Porter is proposing to tighten the rules on "acting" officials.  President Trump has admitted he likes to have acting officials so he has more power: he can intimidate them more easily and fire them if they won't bend.  In normal times presidents and Congress acted reasonably quickly to fill most vacancies, although they were instances where a Senate would put a hold on a nominee in order to pressure the administration to take some particular action.

My opinion of Porter'sbill: we shouldn't have needed it but we do. The bureaucracy does not work well with "acting"officials at the top.

On Fences and Hedgerows

Here's an article on hedgerows in the UK. 

I remember visiting North Carolina ASCS offices with the district director (this was 1968 or 9) and noticing some barbed wire fences (not many in the tobacco-growing area) with the wire on the outside of the posts.  I was struck because in NY we put the wire on the inside; dad explained it meant that cows pushing against the wire were pushing against the post, while if it were on the outside they would be forcing the staple out of the wood.

Years later I learned the difference related to the way agriculture developed in the Northeast versus the South.  In the Northeast livestock were fenced in; field crops were attractive to livestock.  In the South livestock, especially hogs, were left to roam free, field crops of tobacco and cotton weren't attractive to livestock, fields of corn etc. that were attractive were protected by fencing out.

Now I'm guessing the use of hedgerows in the UK reflects the relative scarcity of wood--no split rail fences there,  the fact that fields developed long before barbed wire became available, and the development of a historic pattern.  Hedgerows would seem to require a long lead time to grow; not like a fence which can go up in a few days.  So if farms have been around for centuries, there was time for hedgerows to develop.

Superspreader Individuals or Situations

Megan McArdle offered this thought in a thread commenting on an elaborate analysis of probabilities (too elaborate for me to even try to follow):

Over the long term, I think this stuff matters less; if you remain open, in any moderate population center, a superspreader will find you. But early in the epidemic, a random walk will make some places look smart and others look dumb, purely by chance.

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) May 4, 2020

I can venture to comment on this, however.  The assumption here seems to be that "superspreading" is a function of an individual (think Typhoid Mary perhaps, but not necessarily asymtomatic).  That's certainly been my understanding from the past. 

But in the context of this new pandemic, I ran across an interesting report by someone who tried to assemble worldwide reports of mass contagion and then to analyze common features. I may have mentioned this before.  The features were crowds plus intimate contact and/or a lot of vocal activity--cheers, shouts, etc. 

One would think we could rely on people to avoid such situations, although when you look at the rallies protesting against lock-downs you have to wonder.  But in principle avoiding such situations is easier than identifying potential superspreaders.  It's likely unknowable currently to determine the proportion of total infections occurring from superspreader individuals, versus crowd contagion, versus individual contact.