Bob Dole: Detail Oriented

 When I was hired at ASCS in 1968 I became familiar with the handbook (17-AS) which had the distribution schedules for all ASCS handbooks. There was a form listing all the ASCS offices: state offices, commodity offices, and aerial photo labs, with the quantity to be sent to each.  Some states wanted a skinny distribution, allowing 1 copy per county office and a few for the state; others would allow for multiple copies per county.  Occasionally we have to create a schedule for new printed material, since the same schedule might be used for some related form or pamphlet.  All of that got me familiar with the number of counties (actually county offices) in the states. 

In addition to the preformated schedule, for some handbooks there might be one or two additional offices which wanted a copy for some reason, perhaps OIG, FCIC, or AMS.  The only Congressional office down to receive any handbook was Bob Dole's office, which wanted 25-GR, the designation for the wheat and feed grain programs.   The dedication to detail of the Congressman, or more likely required by him of his policy person, impressed me. 

I hadn't heard of him before joining ASCS, but he was elected to the Senate the next year. 

Estonia and Aautomation

 I like Estonia because of its whole-hearted adopting of e-government, which apparently carries over to other aspects of life.  However it's not all peaches and cream--the embedded tweet links to a gif of the robots:

https://twitter.com/xgebi/status/1466802322600775686?s=20

The morning in the Estonian capital began with a traffic jam of... robot couriers! Because of the snowfall, they stalled and could not move. Innovation doesn't seem to work in winter... pic.twitter.com/z6KHaWRGSK

— Deleuze (@Kukicat7) December 2, 2021

2.9 Billion Not on Internet?

 This report from statistia says there are that many people who aren't on the internet.

Is anyone else stunned by the stat? I'm more astonished by the converse: that means a majority of humans are on the internet, 4.9 billion to be specific.

  

The Impatience of Youth (and Ideologues?)

 Within an hour I read Frank Bruni's newsleterr (subscribe here) commenting on criticism of scientists re: covid:

What an inevitability. Science doesn’t usually figure everything out all at once; it’s a steadily growing body of knowledge, and its application, especially in the face of new circumstances, can amount to an educated guess, imperfect but invaluable. In the case of Covid, there was no awful screw-up. There was, instead, astonishing speed: These vaccines, powerfully effective, were developed and distributed in record time.

 and a Kevin Drum tweet responding to a Ryan Cooper tweet along the same lines:

Because scientists have the odd notion that they should look for rigorous evidence. The public doesn't give a shit about that. https://t.co/ALAdQfNxwm

— Kevin Drum (@kdrum) December 2, 2021

I agree with both--there's a lot of impatience these days. After a long life (hopefully to be much longer) I've grown more tolerant of people (except the people who post erroneous things on the Internet) 

Vietnam Photo--Men of the 69th Signal

Here's Thorn, seen earlier eating a brownie, and Dave Williams, seen earlier with me getting ready for R&R. 

Unfortunately I flipped the slide when I scanned it, as you can tell when trying to read his name.

A group of us in the barracks.

 A picture of me outside the MARS (Military Amateur Radio System, which provided radio calls back to the world) site for which the 69th Signal men were providing electricity.  The line of vision is towards Bien Hoa airbase, site of a Vietcong attack on amunition dumps.  The sandbagged bunker behind me was significant in my memory. 

Vietnam Photo--Men of the 69th

 I believe he's eating from a Care package my mom sent.

Vietnam Photo-R&R

 

Dave Williams and I are going to Tokyo on R&R. I seem to have lost the photos from that.

Missed Opportunities for Indexing

 Over the years our society has indexed a number of things--Social Security is indexed to the consumer prices, ETF's are indexed to various indices, income tax rates are indexed to consumer prices, etc.  Some social programs are means-tested and indexed to income. 

An index has two advantages IMO: it allows for gradual changes and it establishes a linkage between social factors. The gradual change is important: big changes get more recognition than gradual ones.  And psychology tells us that people get upset by the perception of loss, an upset which isn't balanced by their appreciation of gains. "Graduating" has similar effects.

I think we, especially liberals, should take more advantage of indexing.  For example, in 1993 the Clinton administration backed off its energy tax because of opposition from rural Democrats, particularly senators, and saw an increase in the gas tax as a fallback.  But what we should have done is index the gas tax to inflation. The effect would have been roughly to double the value of the tax. 

Another example: Obamacare was passed with a mandate, a financial penalty for not enrolling. What would have happened if we had graduated the penalty, Lessening the initial pain might have enabled the mandate to be preserved, instead of repealed by a Republican Congress. 

Vietnam Photo-Cathedral

 

This was in Saigon; I'm assuming a Catholic cathedral. Ngo Dinh Diem, the president of South Vietnam after the 1954 settlement which ended France's colonial rule, was a Catholic.

We Were Wrong (Third World)

 Noah Smith writes about China's economic progress and its problems here.

His description of the progress China's made reminds me of how wrong/mistaken internationalist liberals were in the 50's and 60's. Back then it seems to me our focus was on the need for foreign aid to help the "Third World" to advance.  I'm thinking of people like Barbara Ward. For all that our hearts were in the right place, I think it's fair to say we never conceived of China's path out of severe poverty. 

Thank goodness we were wrong, because foreign aid, while important and helpful, never reached the levels we thought were necessary.