Cheney and the Bureaucratic Dark Side

Post today has the first of four articles on VP Cheney's work while in office. What's interesting is that Dick (he's only 2 weeks older than I, but I'm much better preserved) has gone over to the dark side. Both he and Rumsfeld offered bureaucratic precepts before beginning service in the Bush administration. Cheney says perfectly good things like: "no surprises". Every player in the bureaucracy needs to know what's happening so they'll go along.

But the reality since 9/11 has been different. Cheney makes a practice of doing end runs around the bureaucratic machinery, predictably making the bureaucrats mad. He's become a bureaucratic Darth Vader. Or a leopard who hunts in the dark, leaving only the rags of its victims behind. It is a way to get results but it only works in the long run if you are either: (a) successful or (b) terrifying. Bush and Cheney succeeded in being terrifying until the lack of success became obvious. (Obvious to all but the most loyal and most blind.)

The article does elaborate on a bureaucratic tactic I don't remember seeing as well used--lack of feedback. Apparently Cheney will never offer suggestions or feedback. That tends to drive people up the wall. I well remember a boss who would reject a draft memo without being very clear on what was wrong. I used to call it: the "I'll know it when I see it" school of management.

Are Americans Really Know-it-alls?

A comment on a post: "I don't understand, but then again you americans think you know everything!" from a Canadian. It was a little misplaced, because I was almost in a state of wonderment that possibly the Canadian government administered their farm program(s) entirely through the Internet. Obviously I wasn't clear, but the commenter makes a very serious charge.

Of course, I often claim to know it all, that's an occupational hazard for a blogger. But do Americans think we know it all? Really? Remember Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady: "men are ...." ("A Hymn to Him) Just replace "men" with "americans" and that's probably fair, "we are a marvellous sex..", we only want others to be like us.

I have to plead guilty to the charge on behalf on 300 million + residents of the U.S. At this point, it's appropriate to refer to the post just below this one.

Incompetence and All Children Above Average

Garrison Keillor says in Lake Woebegone all children are above average. Two professors publish an article suggesting that incompetent people overestimate their abilities. To quote the abstract:

People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.

There's problems with this. Teenagers are incompetent drivers, but think they're invincible. Most drivers of all ages think they're above average drivers, which is mathematically impossible. (I'd suggest the most realistic drivers are those between 50 and 65--after 65 you start to lose it but are in a state of denial :-( )

Praise for Bureaucrats?

Christopher Hayes in the Nation
praises bureaucrats (Hat tip I think to Kevin drum.) for standing up to the Bush administration on various fronts. While I'm all for bureaucrats, and all for standing up to the Bush administration, I suspect liberals should be moderate in their praise and expectations.

Comes the great day when the Democrats control the Presidency again (plus about 2-6 years) and the papers, or whatever media we have in that grand and glorious time, will be full of stories on bureaucrats standing up to the hare-brained dictats of know-nothing Dems. You can count on it.

IT Progress at the FBI (Rah)

The sound of one hand clapping as the FBI rolls out phase I of its modernization program. It doesn't indicate that it will help in the problem recently reported--the length of time it takes to do FBI checks on immigrants. Apparently it's now a semi-manual process, the FBI office in DC has to poll all its field offices to see if they have anything in their files on a specific applicant. It's not clear from the story where that process is in the program. Perhaps after they upgrade their PC's to Windows XP in 2010?

3 to 5 Hours on the Phone, Daily?

Michelle Slatalla in the NYTimes today reports:

"How many calls does the average college student get or receive, anyway?

Peggy Meszaros, a professor of human development at Virginia Tech who asked more than 600 students that question in 2005, said, “An average of 11 calls a day.”

Professor Meszaros said that women, who talked longer than men, reported speaking most frequently to immediate family members, during calls that lasted 16 to 30 minutes.

“They were on the phone for an average of between three hours and five and a half hours a day?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m guessing that it has ramped up more, too, because this study was done before texting was the fad.”"

I'm stunned, amazed, confused. I don't think I've ever had a day where I spent 5 hours talking with one other person (in series). So much for the idea that modern culture isolates individuals into social atoms.

Happy Birthday, Powerpoint

Via xx, here's an article in the Wall Street Journal on the 20th birthday of Powerpoint, the indispensable tool of bureaucrats these days. While interesting, it fails to give proper credit to the IBMers, led by Thomas J. Watson, who spread the gospel of graphics, along with their motto: "Think" around the world.

As I understand, Watson liked visual aids, so IBM got into it. It spread to DOD, where in the mid '60's I attended "charm school" (training for instructors), which included time on how to make your overhead projections. (Wikipedia has a different chronology, giving credit to the Army in WWII.)

As a bureaucrat, I first steered clear of overheads, until my boss (the one I called the "junior idiot", but not to his face) encouraged them. Part of the problem was the specialization of that era--to get overheads done you went to the graphics/forms shop. I didn't like the dependency. So when WordPerfect came out with a presentations package I got into it, because now I could control the process. ("If you want it done right, do it yourself".)

There was an advantage, especially important for a national bureaucracy faced with training people in 50 states and 2700+ county offices. You could create a graphics presentation and duplicate it for others to present. That's particularly important when the emphasis is on speed--if Congress passes a bill today and wants payments out in X weeks. In the old days, you'd present a spiel and state specialists would desperately (if they were conscientious) try simultaneously to take notes and plan their own presentations to county personnel beginning almost as soon as they got back to the state. It was a formula for misunderstanding, mistakes, and mispaid checks.

Gradually we moved to a pattern where (with the help of very capable county personnel (take a bow MK)) we'd be able to provide copies of the national materials ready for the state specialists. Ironically, we managed to centralize the training materials based on a decentralization of the process of developing them. Powerpoint (and, more importantly, word processing) spread skills and capability to more people, making them more productive. Apparently even school children use it these days. Which is just another instance of formerly advanced skills becoming the common property of the young.

TSP and Social Security Privatization

Back in the day when reform of Social security was under discussion, Republicans were pushing the alternative of having people invest in securities. They preferred the idea of individually managed accounts, as opposed to having the government manage investments. Some Democrats (like me) were open to something like the Thrift Savings Plan--the Federal version of a 401 K for its employees as at least one element of a revised system. Republicans attacked the idea, arguing that a government managed plan would be pressured to reflect social objectives in its investments.

A test of that position is underway--some Dems have asked the TSP to divest of stocks of companies in the Sudan, of tobacco, etc. etc. So far the board has resisted the idea.
If we get a Democratic government in 2008, it will be interesting to see if they can continue to do so.

Pet Peeves--"Traditional Farmers"

Don't have a URL for this, but it's aggravated me and, if this blog serves any purpose at all, it should help relieve my aggravations. Last week I ran across an article criticizing US farm programs (which is fine, there's nothing wrong with that). But one of the criticisms was that they had the effect of undermining the traditional farmers in other countries, because they couldn't compete with the flood of food imported from the U.S. at low subsidized prices.

What aggravates me is not the cause and effect relationship, but the idea that undermining traditional farming is somehow wrong and bad. After all, China is surging its way to developed nation status by policies that undermined traditional farming, creating an urban labor force for its new industries. Ireland is the Tiger of the EU because its traditional farming has been undermined and abandoned. The U.S. is an industrial power because our traditional farming patterns have been destroyed.

Granted, destroy any traditional way of life and you cause suffering and pain, loss of the past and loss of life. And granted, the power of the market is blind. But I believe in the general proposition that life in the U.S. today, taken by and large, is better than it was 180 years ago when one of my ancestors immigrated. And that's true despite, and even because, the traditional agriculture found in 1830 America has been destroyed, even on Amish farms.

Impact of Farm Bill

The Farmgate site of the University of Illinois says extrapolations show minimal impact on agriculture from the administration's farm bill proposals. Oddly, though they credit FAPRI (Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute) for the data, I don't see it highlighted on FAPRI's website.