Doing It Wrong

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/books/review/the-generals-by-thomas-e-ricks.html

Bureaucracy is an animal that operates in the same inefficient, self-expansionary fashion whether it finds itself in an entitlement environment, a military environment, or a regulatory environment. In the instance here investigated, regardless of the stakes, quite content to ignore the lives lost and billions squandered, our military bureaucracy grinds on blindly and brutally, led by the madmen charged with our political fate.

Some Poor Realities

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/10/02/business/how-health-care-affects-income.html

The income estimates do not include unreported income, prevalent at the low and high ends of the scale. It also skips the value of services provided to our 2 million prisoners. By the way, the CBO is now basing its income estimates on the methodology exemplified in the graph. But, by including Medicare and Medicaid benefits as income, it completely alters the picture of inequality--and pushes the real working class to the bottom of the income pyramid.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/opinion/americas-ineffective-antipoverty-effort.html

A Republican doing what Republicans do not like to do: thinking seriously about reform of the welfare state, rather than wallowing in the idealistic rhetoric of abolition. The crux of his argument: "We can start by measuring outcomes (results) rather than inputs (how much money can we throw at the problem). Our effectiveness should be assessed, in part, by the per-person cost of moving individuals from dependency to self-sufficiency."

This is the Way the World Ends

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/magazine/how-ready-are-we-for-bioterrorism.html?pagewanted=1&ref=magazine&adxnnlx=1320145648-K5idnXUdyKqBqlIIQsGvhw

The Bio-Defense establishment’s official position seems to be that a smallpox outbreak would be the worst case scenario bioattack. The article mentions a simulation of such an attack done a few years ago, which concluded that a million Americans would die. Calling this the “worst case” might be right if the simulation were modified to “a genetically engineered smallpox outbreak”—the toll would be higher. No one knows by how much!

Diseases can be “improved” for virulence or communicability or survivability or vaccine resistance or treatment resistance—or, theoretically, any other imaginable traits—by means of genetic manipulations. This has been possible since the 70s. And, today, it’s not even difficult to modify diseases. It is difficult, however, to achieve genetic modifications that will produce desired results. That is, transposing genes within an organism’s DNA, as a mechanical operation, is cheap and easy. Finding out which modifications will “improve” the beast remains difficult and expensive because so many non-linear variables come into play, and precise calculation of their interactions is impossible—the Soviets had to do extensive animal testing to determine what effects various modifications would have when exposed to animal immune systems and the natural environment. So, the worst case might involve a more virulent, more communicable disease not susceptible to conventional treatment, a disease that might kill far more than a million Americans. Even back in the 60s, per the article, before genetic engineering was possible, America had achieved weaponized tularemia (presumably by means of rapid, selective, experimentally-guided evolution) to the point that 50 pounds of it, properly disseminated, would wipe out 60% of a megacity.  

Protection against crude attacks with unmodified agents may well provide a high probability of effective defense for a couple more decades (though something more than a black swan risk is present already). The Muslim world is unlikely to muster anything but amateur-hour efforts within this time frame. Attacks from other quarters are improbable. But, back to the lingering black swans. The thing is, there are multiple black swan risks out there. A sample of contingencies: an accidental release of a bio-agent from a government lab (dozens of governments work on dangerous pathogens, offensively or defensively, and America alone has dozens of such labs), a pathogen developed in an “entrepreneur’s” garage and released, a deliberate release into the environment that escapes intended limits (eg, a controlled test of pathogen characteristics), a government employee deliberately steals, then sells or releases a bio-agent.   

The article discusses the dilemma of whether to focus resources on vaccine defenses or therapeutic defenses. Yet it fails to mention one of the prime determinants of the relative efficacy of these two approaches: the impact of the threat of genetically modified disease agents. Do vaccines against the variola major strain of small pox, for example, have a high probability of success against a genetically modified variant of the disease? And how difficult, in the context of a bio-arms race, would it be to develop small pox variants that would resist a known, stockpiled vaccine? I suspect the answers to these questions, if they’ve been considered and if they’re knowable, are classified.

The article concludes with a hint at the clash between political decision-making processes and cost-benefit processes. What translates into political capital tends to starve ugly, obscure issues until the piper comes round at last. “How to balance the unlikely but catastrophic potential of bioterror with the steady advance of natural disease is one of the most puzzling challenges for biodefense policy going forward.” This is an unavoidable question, except I would say the “steady retreat of natural disease.” The only significant inroads natural disease has made in the last 100 years are those related to poor nutrition—consequent upon mere stupidity (including the stupidity or conspiracy of doctors) and torpor. Natheless, sichlike common health issues, never out of sight and never out of mind, exert great gravitational pull on the common politician.  

Another part of the problem seems to be a matter of bureaucratic influence on policy decisions—like this Fauci genius spending 70% of biodefense funding on common diseases afflicting public health. Fauci is a public health bureaucrat, not a defense bureaucrat—so he spends what he can on public health. Bureaucrats generally fit the mold of defective wind-up toys—little action, no thought. Also, moving up a notch to the political sphere, it’s lovely to discover that Obama has ended centralized direction of biodefense. What we have is a few part-timers in the White House overseeing the program and trying to coordinate multiple mutually antagonistic bureaucracies. Well, I suppose it’s over-optimistic to expect Obama to take an interest in something other than handouts and labor unions.   

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What’s not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

--Gerontion

The Burden We Bear

I read today that less than 1 of a 1,000 federal employees were denied raises due to poor job performance. The problem is that they judge themselves and, further, that they judge themselves by the standard of, uh, themselves. Yeah, that's right, they have to measure up to themselves. Kafkaesque, eh-no?

 

Bureaucracy is eternal and unchangeable in its ways. Public unions merely accentuate the negative. Since improved bureaucratic performance violates the laws of human nature and human social organization--the only way to ameliorate the pathology is to reduce the quantity of bureaucrats. Reduced quantity means less harm from low quality.

Par for the Course

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/nyregion/13homes.html?_r=1&hp I wish I could say this report surprised me. But, when you put a unionized bureaucracy in charge of disabled people, most of whom have been abandoned by their families, this is exactly what I would expect to find: incompetent, unaccountable bureaucrats plus brutal, moronic employees and abused residents. And it's nice to see that the state government sat on its hands for decades to cater to the union. At least the NY Times gives the guilty organizations a fair public thwacking--credit's due--though they will never connect the dots and reveal to their readers that such a bureaucratized/unionized structure always gives rise to bad outcomes of one sort or another. Bad outcomes are what happen in the absence of transparency and accountability.

Insanity Unloosed

Notes from a professor at the Naval Academy: http://www.hometownannapolis.com/news/opn/2009/06/14-47/Guest-Column-The-cost-of-a-diverse-Naval-Academy.html Apparently the military brass thinks that the most important aspect in the training of Navy and Marine officers is well-balanced racial diversity. Not competence, not leadership, not patriotism--instead we prioritize racial politics above all these things and thereby sacrifice lives and treasure and, perhaps, victory. Also, I think this program has been unconstitutional since 2003. Part of the problem is that the guys at the top of the military hierarchy these days are just spineless bureaucrats who never saw combat--they all came in after Vietnam and they're just careerists--not leaders. And they're letting political corruption and bullshit political correctness corrode our military efficiency. Not only do they fail to fight this trend, they boast of it as if it's a success. Success for whom? Worthless bureaucrats and convocations of resenters. And neither political party makes a peep in face of it. I wonder which would be the better option: secession or Australia? I might prefer secession since that way I'd have a chance to shoot some of the people who rendered secession necessary. Hey, maybe the Palins aren't as dumb as I thought--after all, they have been known to show up at meetings of the Alaska secession movement.

Bureaucracies' Intelligence

Some of the conservative establishment fear waterboarding scandals may damage our human "intelligence" agencies. I can't say that I think too much of the CIA or the FBI--it seems as though whenever they're put to the test, they fail. They sometimes even manage to fail against incompetent enemies. They are bureaucrats and, like all bureaucrats, their greatest fear is that some day they may actually be held accountable for their activities. They've arranged their organizational structures with that fear first in mind.
 

OSS/CIA let the Soviets steal the bomb, the invasion of Korea was a complete surprise, the CIA told Truman the Chinese would not intervene in Korea, the CIA conceived, planned and executed the Bay of Pigs operation (at least on this occasion Kennedy inflicted some accountability, taking out the top CIA leaders), the CIA failed in multiple assassination attempts on Castro, the CIA did not know of the Soviet's massive bioweapons program, the Soviet Union's collapse "surprised" the CIA, the CIA/FBI could not prevent 9/11--and that's just off the top of my head and in the public domain. If such a miserable succession of failures hasn't demoralized this ossified, scleroticized, bureaucratized pair of dinosaurs (is it really true they're not union-run?)--I hardly think a bit of "waterboard" publicity will. But, if it does--good. Maybe we can get some new blood in there and introduce some competence.

The Pakistani Way

http://economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10424283

 

The book reviewed revisits the Pakistan-nuclear proliferation nexus managed by Mr. Khan. This is one of America's great foreign policy failures in recent times. If the book's interpretation is accurate, it begets some wonder concerning what other activities our political and intelligence leaders may have decided to let pass as they let Khan's network pass for all those years. Presumably we remain vigilant at least with respect to our rivals--but have we allowed other supposed allies to proceed with WMD programs under cover of our willful ignorance? And doesn't such a policy stance severely diminish our moral standing on counter-proliferation issues? Is this a certain reward now on offer for any nation that allies itself with us--however temporarily? It is difficult to conceive of a more foolishly short-term approach. Also, why did we let Khan run unfettered through the 90's? Pakistan was then less important strategically.

But, of course, the book may be wrong; maybe we just didn't know about Khan--wouldn't that be a relief? Then, our only problem would be somehow to correct our monumentally wasteful and incompetent intelligence services.  

Channelling Kafka

Stupidity and brutality in the drug war, aided and abetted by the coward Jeb Bush, a coward judge, scumbag prosecutors and moron cops:
http://jewishatheist.blogspot.com/2007/11/update-richard-paey-pardoned.html
This puritanical frenzy about psychoactive drugs that "our" government has invented and encouraged and financed for decades--really benefits only bureaucrats and gangsters. And considering that government is definitionally the biggest mafia in the land, I suppose that means bureaucrats and gangsters are rather close relations. At least the various ethnic mafias don't force us to pay protection money to protect us from ourselves...the gangsters are too honest for that, but the mendacity of the mandarins is unbounded.