Ted Williams, Bureaucracy, and Habitat for Humanity

The NY Times has an article describing the difficulties that Habitat for Humanity is having in constructing housing in LA/MS after Katrina. The problem is that each local affiliate does their thing, and is geared to build 12-15 houses a year. So their bureaucracy/organization isn't set up to build hundreds of houses in one locality in a year.

Reminds me of Ted Williams. When opposing teams started using the "shift" on him (moving the shortstop behind second base and leaving big holes on the left side of the diamond, he famously refused to choke up and dump hits to left. He may just have been stubborn, or he may have figured that trying to do something differently than that which brought him success was a sure way to fail.

Space and Bureaucracy--Bull in the Bullpen?

DC has a new, young whippersnapper of a mayor--Adam Fenty. In his quest for excellence he went off to NYC and listened to Mr. Bloomberg, saw his "bullpen" office, and is reproducing it in DC. See this Post article by David Nakamura, who does a good job in considering the pros and cons.

The intangibles of space and schedule impact the work. I remember working in an office where we all arrived at the same time (before Flexitour, etc.) and all were coffee drinkers. So we (5 of us) had a natural staff meeting around the coffee pot to exchange information and get on a common footing. It made the office work.

Bloomberg seems to have done well in NYC. But he's older and has much more administrative experience than Fenty, who's only run his council member office. My guess is that the bullpen won't work as well for Fenty, who's going to have to learn on the job. It is, however, a valuable symbol for him. He wants a rep as the shaker and mover and this will help.

Jane Galt and Behaviorial Economics

Jane Galt's Asymmetrical Information gets attention from Greg Mankiw and Tyler Cowen for this post, which says:

The post below also applies to behavioural economics, which the left seems to believe is a magical proof of the benevolence of government intervention, because after all, people are stupid, so they need the government to protect them from themselves. My take is a little subtler than that:

1) People are often stupid
2) Bureaucrats are the same stupid people, with bad incentives.

I'm out of my depth, but I put together a thought from Dawkins in the Blind Watchmaker with economics. That is, it doesn't matter whether most people are stupid (in an economic, utility-seeking sense) or not for economic theory to work. If the mass of people act randomly irrationally, and a minority read the Consumer Reports and act rationally, the end result will be the same (but slower) as if everyone read the CR. (Dawkins said it didn't matter whether creatures had eyes or not, just so long as there was some variation in receptivity to light. The minority that had the better sensitivity would, through selection, lead to better eyes.)

1950's Nostalgia--Bill Bryson

I've mentioned the latest Bill Bryson book in the context of disputing Michael Pollan. I happened on this British site (ah, the wonders of the Internet), which includes some 50's images, plus (under the label "Image of 1950's Bounty", the picture of the food for a year for a family of 4 I referred to.

I have to say those chickens look scrawny. Note they're whole chickens. Rather than outsourcing the cutup process to immigrants at Tysons plants, mother does it herself as part of her hours at the stove and sink.

Electricity

Two contrasting articles today:

In the Washington Post:

"...today the state uses less energy per capita than any other state in the country, defying the international image of American energy gluttony. Since 1974, California has held its per capita energy consumption essentially constant, while energy use per person for the United States overall has jumped 50 percent.California has managed that feat through a mixture of mandates, regulations and high prices. The state has been able to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, keep utility companies happy and maintain economic growth."

In the NYTimes:

"...residents in this part of Illinois are seeing some of the biggest rate spikes in the country — in some cases, increases of 100 percent to 200 percent.

The higher rates are touching off a fresh round of national debate over unleashing competitive forces on traditionally regulated electricity markets. Opening up the markets was supposed to lead to savings for consumers. But that did not turn out as regulators predicted. The anticipated competition among energy suppliers never fully emerged as natural gas prices more than doubled in the last decade."

I'm not sure what to make of all this. My February bill was the highest it's been (because of cold) and I don't feature doubling it (according to the articles, VA has a rate half of California's). On the other hand, that much of an increase would lead me to more conservation, which would be good for everyone.

x

NOT ALL CAPS

From a Weather Service alert:

"URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE ALBANY NY
434 AM EST FRI FEB 16 2007
NYZ038-161600-
/O.CON.KALY.LE.W.0008.000000T0000Z-070216T2300Z/
/O.CON.KALY.WC.Y.0006.000000T0000Z-070216T1600Z/
SOUTHERN HERKIMER-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...ILION...HERKIMER...LITTLE FALLS...
MOHAWK...FRANKFORT...DOLGEVILLE
434 AM EST FRI FEB 16 2007
...LAKE EFFECT SNOW WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 PM EST THIS
AFTERNOON...
...WIND CHILL ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 11 AM EST THIS
MORNING...
A LAKE EFFECT SNOW WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 PM TODAY
AND A WIND CHILL ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 11 AM THIS
MORNING FOR SOUTHERN HERKIMER COUNTY. "

Please, bureaucrats at the Weather Service, stop using all caps for emphasis, just because that's the only thing you had back in the days of Teletypes. These days you can emphasize in many ways, whether by color, type characteristics, images, or whatever.

Brooks Jinxes Clinton

David Brooks just endorsed Hillary Clinton for President, thereby jinxing her. His column is based on analysis of her speeches in the Senate on the authorization for the Iraq war. He finds her navigating the hazards, being true to Bill's record, including bypassing the UN upon occasion, supporting a President, but being opposed to the war.

"When you look back at Clinton’s thinking, you don’t see a classic war supporter. You see a person who was trying to seek balance between opposing arguments. You also see a person who deferred to the office of the presidency. You see a person who, as president, would be fox to Bush’s hedgehog: who would see problems in their complexities rather than in their essentials; who would elevate procedural concerns over philosophical ones; who would postpone decision points for as long as possible; and who would make distinctions few heed.

Today, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party believes that the world, and Hillary Clinton in particular, owes it an apology. If she apologizes, she’ll forfeit her integrity. She will be apologizing for being herself."

Her mistake was in believing that GW was someone worthy of support.

Ralph Olson, R.I.P.

Ralph Olson died in January. Who was Ralph? Originally from Vermont, worked for Social Security at one time, which he talked about more than he did about his WWII military service. He had been a typist in the SSA pool, using manual typewriters. He was expected to be fast and accurate. When I knew him it was a fellow editor in ASCS, in 1968 to 1972, when he retired.

In those far gone days, directives were typed, then reproduced by offset lithography--meaning that the printers took a picture of the master that was used to print. So the typed page didn't need to be perfect, because imperfections and corrections could be hidden through the picture-taking process. So when editors asked for changes, the typists would use white-out correction fluid, or correction tape, or, for really big changes, cut and paste blocks of text to compose one page. But sometimes they would have to retype the whole thing. Some handbooks would show their age, when the original page had been typed in 1960 on one typewriter with one typeface, with successive changes and amendments made over the intervening years with newer and different typefaces, with some typists more or less skilled in matching spacing and getting the alignment right.

In those patriarchal days, the typists were almost all women, the writers almost all men. So editors would ask writers for changes, writers would pass the work on to the typists. Some typists would push back, pointing out that the requested change was pointless, just a matter of format or of following some arcane and stupid rule. If they persuaded the writer, the writer would come back to argue with the editor. The whole process turned into continuous negotiations, almost worthy of the 6-power talks with North Korea.

Now, as I've said, Ralph prided himself on having been a fast and accurate typist, so he had little time or sympathy for the typists. After all, 250 words on a page, meant a good typist would take 5 minutes to retype the whole thing, clean and pristine. So Ralph would huff and puff at the writer. Sometimes he would almost imply that the writer was at fault for tolerating such a lazy and unskilled typists. But more often he would cave, asking another editor for confirmation that a requested change could be waived.

Ralph leaves no immediate relatives--he had some nephews or nieces if I remember. As the number of veterans of WWII dwindle and fade, so too does the ranks of those who typed in pools.

Compliments to a Republican

From the media:

"Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns wasn’t exactly stepping into the lions’ den, but it was close.

A few hours after he announced USDA was proposing to end farm payments for anyone with an adjusted gross income of more than $200,000 and eliminate the three-entity rule, Johanns traveled to a meeting with farmers in Tunica, Miss.

Tunica County is the home of Dick Flowers, the cotton, rice and soybean farmer who became famous on “60 Minutes” for receiving millions of dollars in government subsidies in the late 1990s."

I don't think it was "late 1990s" because I think I was still at USDA when it aired. Those of us who dealt with payment limitation issues were very aware of it. At least one of us enjoyed watching Mr. Flowers squirm. I give Johanns credit for the trip.

Great Bureaucrats, Robert Moses Revisited

Robert Caro did a great biography of Robert Moses, a man who held a number of public offices in New York City and New York state, and did much building (roads, parks, housing projects) from the New Deal to the 60's. In Caro's book Moses comes across as a very talented bureaucrat, who becomes obsessed with building and building ultimately to the detriment of New York. Jane Jacobs was the critic who articulated the case against him in "The Life and Death of Great American Cities.

This LA Times article discusses a revisionist look at Moses mounted as art exhibitions in NYC. The two people, Moses and Jacobs, are at the ends of a continuum--the difference between the person, the expert, who knows best and the romanticized evolution from the roots, which also glamorizes the past. I tend to lean towards the first and away from the second, but in reality they're two halves of the human personality and both are needed.