Put the Dog Out of Its Misery

 I'm not usually this harsh, but I've never ever been impressed by USA.gov.

As the spokesman in this FCW article says: 

""Right now, one of the things that happens is that people go to USA.gov and then we refer people, but it would be ideal, I think … for people to just be able to get stuff done, right there on USA.gov,"

I've always found Google to be a better search engine.  I don't see the point of spending money to improve the site.  It will be a long time before we have one access point for government that works well.  I've only to look at farmers.gov, which tries to be an access point for USDA agencies serving the farmer.  The problem is that it reproduces the silos of USDA.

Changing Views of Left and Right--Possible Images

 What sort of image do we have of our society and the left and right?  Often I think it's as if society is there, a platform or a landscape, while left and right act over time, moving one way or another. 

But is that a good image. After all society is people, as are left and right, so society can move as well. 

What's an alternative image: perhaps a crowd, some wearing red, some wearing blue, the majority, the less politically involved, wearing gray.  So you take a snapshot in 1960 of the crowd and you see the reds and blues scattered through the crowd. Take another snapshot today and you see the reds clustered together, the blues clustered-they've both become more cohesive. 

But that image doesn't reflect  a society's movement. Maybe an image is Hawaii, where the continental plate moves over a volcanic hot spot, which creates the various island.  In this image "society" would be all the people, the economy, laws, etc. So society could change because of innovations in technology, in the rest of the world etc.  Meanwhile there would be two "hot spots"; each representing a temperament which seems to be common in people at large: one conservative, one liberal.

That covers the fact there always seems to be a left and a right, a conservative and a liberal faction. And it allows for the fact that conservatives in the 1950's could be strong supporters of segregation, while conservatives today are opposed to racial segregation.

Don't know, maybe I need to think more.

Changing Views of Right and Left--Personal

Twitter activity on how left and right have changed, as here:

The thing about @NateSilver538’s argument here is that a Musk-owned Twitter would subsequently attract conservatives who have leaned way way WAY to the right, thereby refuting Musk’s original inductive generalization. pic.twitter.com/nhuJMnDF41

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) April 28, 2022

I don't know about the national picture.  I do know I've always considered myself on the moderate left and my views have changed sometimes:

• In the 1950's liberals were still supporting public power, the path marked out by the New Deal in the TVA and Bonneville power. That's no longer the case.
• In the 1950's/60's liberals thought that ending legal  segregation and establishing things like civilian review boards would be sufficient.  No longer the case.
• In the 1970s I was called for a month's jury duty in DC.  For one case I was successful in getting off on the basis I couldn't be impartial in a marijuana possession case.  Despite that, I've never been high on legalizing pot, though by now I'm a reluctant supporter.
• Liberals used to have no opinions on legalized gambling; now I guess they support it but it's not a top issue and I still dislike it. 
• Back in the 1950's/60's liberals supported decolonization and were hot for foreign aid. 
• In the 1990's many liberals supported the "Washington consensus" on global free trade.  I still do, but that seems to put me in the minority.

To be continued, maybe.

Form Design in the Digital Age

 An experience with the Massachusetts online application for an ID (just testing) got me to thinking.

Back in the day, that is the early 1990s', we got PC's with Wordperfect 5.0 at work. One of the things I played around with then was using its table tools to create Wordperfect versions of our printed forms. A good part of the motivation was just the challenge in seeing how far I could get and what was involved in getting as close a facsimile as possible.  IIRC sometimes I was able to create a version where you could enter data.  And I think the ASCS/FSA forms shop followed a similar path for some years, replacing the IBM composers they were using in the 1960s with PCs and Wordperfect.

The next step seems (when I retired I no longer was involved on the creation side) to have been creating online forms with data entry. I don't know the software behind those forms, but over the years I've run into them.  

But when you look at that process, it's a survival, like an appendix or wisdom teeth, left over from prior times.

Currently I seem to be encountering the interview process--a series of windows which ask for data piece by piece, with "back" and "continue" options and often with the data entered determined the next sequence of windows to be displayed.  That seemed to be the case with the MA application, also with the Kaiser Permanente appointment process I just completed, and in a modified form with TurboTax's process.  TurboTax is interesting because the end result of your interview entries is a completed set of tax forms for the user, although it looks as if the data sent to the IRS and VA tax people is stripped down to the data elements. 

Perhaps 50 years from now we'll no longer be using forms? 

Essence of Decision-- II Then and Now

[I belatedly checked and saw I'd already posted on this book, so I'm changing the titles of the two posts so they make a series. ]Part of a planned series on Essence of Decision, a very interesting book using the Cuban missile crisis as the core example of three modes of analysis of how organzations work and act.  

 I'm struck by how much Kennedy got into the weeds during the crisis.  Even so, as Allison/Zelikow describe, there were still disconnects where State, Air Force and Navy were doing their thing unaware of or misunderstanding his orders and desires.

Thinking about that presidency and the one completed on Jan 20, 2021, it's like night and day.  Kennedy both by experience in the Navy and by inclination was hands-on; the former guy is hands-on only when it comes to furnishing his buildings or painting his airplane. LBJ, Nixon, and Carter would, I think, have been similarly involved, though with different perspectives, strengths, and weaknesses.  Ford I don't know well enough, but I have my doubts. Reagan and GWBush no.  

So America was lucky that the former guy never had a real crisis.

Another observation--the Soviet Union's communcation network between Moscow and Dobrynin in DC was marginally better than the 1941 network between Gen. Marshall and the Hawaii command (telegram delivered by Western Union).

And one more--Kennedy didn't have the option of a "surgical strike" on Cuba--dumb bombs on jet planes were too inaccurate.The authors say the decision to go with the blockade was due to that lack.  Maybe with today's missiles he would have quickly gone to a strike.  Then again, maybe Khrushchev wouldn't have  decided to install his weaponry.

Essence of Decision--I : Models of Decision Making

[Updated to reflect that it's the first post of a series.]  Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow published a second edition of Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisi s in 1997. Some have called the first and second editions "classics", but it's not in print.  

Anyhow, just started reading the library's copy--they described three decision making models:

• Rational decision-maker: Model 1. What strikes me here is describing the nation as the decision-maker--i.e., why might the Soviet Union have decided to install missiles, etc.
• Organizational decision making. Model 2.  Where the focus is on the organizations involved in the decision makers, their processes, etc.--for example, DOD's perspective versus the Combined Chiefs versus the National Security council.
• Political decision making.  Model 3. Where the focus is more on the political maneuvering among the parties.

It's early days--looks as if I can renew the book a time or two. A couple things strike me already.  

1. We actually need a Model 0.5--the Black Box decision maker, also known as essentialism.  The Soviet Union was aggressively taking over the world, etc.
2. Not sure how the models relate to historians' descriptions of events--the narrative model.

We'll see. 

Amish/Mennonite Dominance in Farming?

 

Read this tweet today:

Young Mennonites posh with cash from selling in high priced areas are stopping at random farms around here trying to buy the farmers out. Fastest growing sector of farmers in my area, along with young Amish.

— NYFarmer (@NYFarmer) April 24, 2022

Back in the day it seemed as if the "Pennsylvania Dutch" and Amish were the same, with the majority living in PA.  In the 60+ years since I'm aware that Amish communities have been established in many states in the Northeast and Midwest.  I assume the Mennonite pattern is somewhat similar.  I know not all Amish are dairy farmers, or even farmers of any type.  And I don't know how heavily they're represented among those leaving dairy farmer.

 So my question is--are close are the Amish/Mennonites to establishing a dominance in dairy farming above the Mason-Dixon line?  How about the organic and traditional (i.e. pasture/silage) types of dairy? 

I assume the statistics aren't readily available from the government. 

Legacy College Students

This Atlantic article pushing for colleges to stop giving priority to applications from children of their graduates had a tantalizing sentence:  "Johns Hopkins abandoned it in 2014, reducing the percentage of legacy students from 13 to 4 percent."

If we like meritocracy, we should end legacies.  

News Flash

Daniel Drezner who wrote a book on the infantile former guy, has some kind words for him: "Trump ... can move down a learning curve..."

His argument is that Trump spent most of the first term learning the basics of the government, so in a second term he could be more effective in implementing his policy goals, such as withdrawing from NATO and our alliances with South Korea and Japan.

Global Warming

 Bits from today's media: 

• Charlestown SC sees "sunny day" flooding of streets about once a week.
• Since then, temperatures in Fairbanks have shifted so much that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officially changed the city’s subarctic designation in 2021, downgrading it to “warm summer continental.”