Calm Down II

Don Kettl says to calm down.  

I've commented to Dan Drezner as follows:

"I think you all are too easily dismissing Murphy's Law. We Dems have a good motive to see machiavellian scheming--the more intelligent our adversaries the greater our victory when we triumph, as we surely must. No--simple screwups trying to do too much and please a boss who has a gnat's attention span will explain it all."

 And I said elsewhere that I was reminded of the Clinton administration--their kerfuffles with gays in the military and getting a female Attorney General. Like Clinton, Trump doesn't have a chief of staff cracking the whip.  The question is, how long will it take before Trump brings in a "savior" (like David Gergen was supposed to be for Clinton) and who will it be--Christie?

Two for One Order

The President has issued his order on regulations--do away with two regulations each time you do a new one.  I discussed it previously here and argued against a similar proposal of Senator Warner's back in 2010.  Cass Sunstein back in November argued it might work in limited cases.  He ends:

"In theory, “one in, two out” is silly, and in practice it’s likely to be a bit of a mess. It’s hardly the most sensible approach to regulatory reform. But with a little flexibility, and a lot of determination, executive branch officials might be able to make it work."

The two for one is the headline grabber, but the order also mandates "zero incremental costs" for regulations.  OMB is given this authority:

  The Director shall provide the heads of agencies with guidance on the implementation of this section.  Such guidance shall address, among other things, processes for standardizing the measurement and estimation of regulatory costs; standards for determining what qualifies as new and offsetting regulations; standards for determining the costs of existing regulations that are considered for elimination; processes for accounting for costs in different fiscal years; methods to oversee the issuance of rules with costs offset by savings at different times or different agencies; and emergencies and other circumstances that might justify individual waivers of the requirements of this section.  The Director shall consider phasing in and updating these requirements.

The zero incremental costs creates another dimension to evaluate regulations by, possibly a conflicting one.

My own two cents: by the time OMB gets through writing and rewriting its guidance to the agencies and the agencies get through with their meetings to understand the guidance and train their people, this executive order will have cost the government millions of dollars.

Stepping on a Stick on a Stone

Sometimes you can walk along and step on a stick, or a board, which happens to be in a seesaw position, sitting on a pivot point.  Your foot goes down on the board, and a short time later the other end of the board flies up and hits you in the face.  Our federal legal system sometimes operates that way in history.

Prof Somin says Trump's sanctuary cities EO is unconstitutional.  One of the ironies of history in our federal system is the way decisions spring back to strike people.  In this case a Supreme Court decision on part of Obamacare which liberals disliked may come back to support liberals.  See Somin's post for the details.  This is another example of how federalism works--James Madison would be happy.

Another outcome of federalism is the promotion of hypocrisy--politicians may be on one side of a federalism issue while in power, the other side when not in power. 

Marches Might Cut Both Ways

Five Thirty Eight estimates the total number of participants in all the Saturday marches was about 3.2 million, total in the Tea Party marches of April 2009.  I can read this two ways:

• Republicans should be ten times more fearful of the passion against Trump than Democrats feared passion against Obama.  That is, the Tea Party was effective in limiting Obama to 2 years, instead of 8, so it's likely the Womens March will be more effective in limiting Trump.
• Democrats should be ten times more fearful of the passion against Trump than Republicans feared passion against Obama.  That is, the Tea Party disrupted the Republican party, moving it further to the right, so it's likely the Womens march will also move the Democratic party to the left.

Records and Security Orientation for Trump Staff?

On Sunday the White House staff appointed by Trump had their orientation on ethics. Please tell me that the staff, and all department heads, are also going to receive an orientation from National Archives and Records Administration  and IT on records management, email management, and cybersecurity?

Trump's White House Stuck in the Past

Powerline blog reproduces Trump's Executive Orders on immigration.  Based on the images, his staff is still stuck back in the typewriter era, using Courier or Elite typefonts.   I don't know how many times I have to repeat this: proportional spaced fonts are easier to read.  (Presumably if and when published in the Federal Register they will appear as proportional spaced--I'm assuming the Powerline image is the document Trump signed.)

Cataract Followup

I blogged the other day complimenting Kaiser on its cataract surgery setup.  Very good, but...

My mother-in-law had cataract surgeries about 10 years ago, in the office of her ophthalmologist, with the staff just a nurse, the receptionist, and the doctor.  Her results were good.  I'd assume Kaiser does a better job by devoting more people and better routines (i.e., checklists, etc., everything Atul Gawande would approve of). But "better" is at the margins, an incremental improvement.  Now when it's my eyes, I want every little increment I can get, but as a society we might be better off if one of the Kaiser staff was employed as a home-visiting nurse.  Might be, but there's no way in our society to get there from here.

Calm Down

That's my general attitude to the transition to the Trump administration.

See Brad Plumer's tweets this afternoon, just as an indicator:

I dunno. Stories about EPA frozen grants, deleted websites, media blackout… seems like they've all been smaller than first thought, no?

Is that because the initial coverage was overblown — or because the initial coverage was right and Trump's team backed down? Hard to tell.

[Updated:  This indicates agencies are being cautious in their Federal Register publications.]
 I remember similar stuff happening in previous administrations.  Two things to remember: we're disrupting old political habits, the new administration doesn't know what they're doing and neither does their opposition, so opportunities for mistakes and misreading are great; because we're in new situations emotions run high leading to further exaggeration.

Once we (the administration and the public) get accustomed to our new roles we can start identifying what is going wrong and which policies are bad.

[All of the above doesn't mean I've taken back my endorsement of the demand to release Trump's tax returns.]

The Last Mile Versus the Last 1 Percent

The old saw (Pareto) says 80 percent of the cases can be handled with 20 percent of the effort.  An extrapolation would be: self-driving cars can handle 80 percent of the driving very easily but it's the last 5 percent, especially the last 1 percent of the time which is difficult.  Which I find to be rather like the old "last mile" problem in cable: easy enough to move data across country in a flash, but getting it the last mile was difficult. 

Nissan has an answer, whether it's workable remains to be seen.  They're using a telecenter to handle the unexpected problems (like a emergency road crew patching potholes or something).

Cataract Surgery

Had my second surgery yesterday. Apparently I haven't mentioned it.  It's time to recognize the capabilities of modern medicine and medical technology, and the good people at Kaiser Permanente Tysons Center who performed the surgery.  The mix of backgrounds of the people there warms a liberal's heart (as does the diversity of the people at the Reston Kaiser center where my internist and optometrist work).  

[Updated: Dr. Slack performed the operation and some of the people involved  were Dominique at reception,  Melita in Pre-op, Rizza Bernard and Reagan Jerome in the operating room, and Erin C. in recovery--I hope I've got the names right and there were others whose names I don't have.) Thank you all.]