Which Policies Are Most Sensitive To Change?

This is a line of research I'm posing so I don't lose the train of thought.

What are the most outrageous, absurd, or wrong policies that could be enacted that would do only minimal harm?

What are the policies that are most important to get pretty much precisely right and would could immense harm if they were tinkered with even a little?

Why?

The Best of Times, The Worst Of Times

The Best Of Times

There are things about living today that are the best that they have ever been.

For example, one of the things I dreamed about when I was in high school was being able to experience pop culture from all over the world. Now, with streaming services like Spotify, Netflix and Hulu, with art house theaters (which didn't exist in my small town childhood), and with book stores that have more cosmopolitan offerings, at least to some degree, this is possible.

Likewise, the culinary delights of almost any place in the world is just around the corner, who a huge variety of grocery and restaurant choices.

Moveable goods are cheap. Products like 3D printers, computers, GPS and smart phones make possible things we could barely even have imagined.

Cars are safer and last longer and are more fuel efficient and less polluting, and speed limits are higher, We are on the brink of transitioning from gasoline and diesel powered motor vehicles to self-driving electric vehicles. Active efforts are underway to restore supersonic passenger flight. Renewable energy technologies have crossed key thresholds. High speed trains are an effective mode of transportation in Europe, Japan, China and the Northwestern United States.

Teen pregnancies and crime rates are near long time lows for the United States. The average American is more educated than ever and racial disparities in education are less than they were. Gay rights are near a high water mark. The nation is more non-religious and less Christian than it has been since the Enlightenment. The #MeToo movement has brought accountability to sexual abusers in many positions of power (although not the President yet), and the Roman Catholic church under one of its best Popes in decades is cleaning up its own house.

The mindless march towards higher incarceration rates has finally ebbed. Marijuana legalization has probably crossed a point of no return.

We know everything there is to know about fundamental physics that has engineering applications even if we haven't scraped out every last secret that Nature has to offer and sometimes don't know how to apply what it is that we do know. We remain hot in pursuit of more knowledge on this front.

We haven't had a draft since Vietnam and many other countries in the developed world have followed suit. We aren't exactly at peace, but we are not fighting a major war either. Precision munitions and drones have dramatically changed warfare to the point were knowing where to strike is a bigger problem than being able to do so. The Islamic terrorism threat that was at the forefront in the U.S. after 9-11 has largely failed to materialize in the U.S.

We have developed new vaccines like HPV, are making serious progress on an HIV vaccine, can cure near sightedness with lasers, have made real progress in reducing trauma mortality, and may have discovered a cure for most sepsis cases. Again, efforts towards further medical advances are vigorous.

The Worst Of Times

Not all of the news is good, however, and the United States feels to many on both the left and the right like an empire in decline.

Opioid deaths have been surging. So has cirrhosis of the liver caused by alcohol abuse. We are growing obese as our traditions are not long sufficient to keep us well exercised with a healthy diet to match our lifestyles.

Our President is a delusional idiot and about a third of American voters, disproportionately older, white, male, rural and Southern, back him. We are taking steps backwards as he leads us towards a more racist, more xenophobic, more protectionist, more misogynist, more homophobic, more anti-Semitic, more anti-Muslim, more cruel and more hateful world. Nazi and white supremacist politics are resurgent in Europe and the United States.

His movement has disavowed the legitimate media, higher education, science, and the rule of law. They practice a Bizarro World Christianity that hates the poor and loves the rich, that hates the foreigner and is stripped of compassion and mercy.

It is more dangerous to be LGBTQ. It is more dangerous to be black or a foreigner.

We have the most corrupt Presidential administration since Andrew Jackson, and senior staff positions full of people who want to undermine their agencies.

Mass shootings have sprung up at an unprecedented rate. Right wing terrorism is resurgent. Unjustified police violence that goes unsanctioned remains all too common and is encouraged by the President.

The United States has health care less universal than anywhere else in the world, at by far the highest cost in the world, with results that aren't the best by far. Huge tragedies like lead poisoning in Flint, Michigan and the failure to provide adequate relief to Puerto Rico after its most recent losing fight with a Hurricane remain without a remedy.

Since the 1970s, the working class has seen economic stagnation, has found it harder and harder to make marriages work, and has struggled to get by with more work, while education and health care costs, for example soaring. There has been economic growth, but only confined to the upper middle class and far more than that to the 1%.

U.S. international goodwill is gone and so is our commitment to human rights, and we have failed to intervene constructively in miserable wars in places like Yemen and Syria.

Our K-12 education has declined even as our universities remain national leaders.

Despite progress on renewables and green technologies, the administration is working hard to undermine environmental standards, to encourage more pollution, to deny that man made climate change is real, against the entire world.

The democratic institutions of the United States are deeply troubled. Republicans are actively working on voter suppression. The electoral college and gerrymandering are systemically biased against urban and liberal voters. Russians interfered with out most recent election and many Republicans think it was good thing. Lobbies for anti-social big business interests and the NRA remain absurdly powerful. Third-parties voters hurt their friends and are manipulated nefariously. Republicans have abused legislative norms in Congress while Democrats have not responded in kind and have been taken advantage of in the process. The U.S. Supreme Court is shifting left as a result of a variety of dirty tricks. We have no way to swiftly remove a madman like Trump. Media giants like major urban newspapers are in decline, and more than a third of voters ignore them anyway drawn in by misleading partisan journalism and fake news from Fox and less reputable less well known sources. Social media is vulnerable to demagogues. Political party elites couldn't contain a baser rank and file.

It is infuriating that we know what the problems are, we know who in the administration is dirty, we know the President's deep, deep faults and yet, nothing seems to happen.

The left has mobilized and might get things on the right track again in the mid-term elections in two months, or they could have another stunning and unexpected failure like 2016. All hope is not lost, but right now the future looks like a dark one. We need an unprecedented Blue Tsunami, and that may or may not happen.

There is no vision for a way forward.

The TSA Hates Most States Starting With The Letter M

If you’re a resident of Maine, Minnesota, Missouri or Montana your driver’s license will no longer be valid to pass TSA-checkpoints starting in January 2018, and you will instead have to use an alternate form of ID. This means you’ll have to bring a passport, military ID or permanent resident card next time you go to the airport, even if you’re just traveling within the United States. This new rule won’t go into effect until January 22, 2018[.]

From here.

I have serious doubts about the constitutionality of this legislation.

The Program That Pro-Life Republicans Oppose

Over the past six years, Colorado has conducted one of the largest ever real-life experiments with long-acting birth control. If teenagers and poor women were offered free intrauterine devices and implants that prevent pregnancy for years, state officials asked, would those women choose them? 

They did in a big way, and the results were startling. The birthrate for teenagers across the state plunged by 40 percent from 2009 to 2013, while their rate of abortions fell by 42 percent, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. There was a similar decline in births for another group particularly vulnerable to unplanned pregnancies: unmarried women under 25 who have not finished high school.... 

In 2009, half of all first births to women in the poorest areas of the state happened before they turned 21. By 2014, half of first births did not occur until they had turned 24, a difference that advocates say gives young women time to finish their educations and to gain a foothold in an increasingly competitive job market.... 

The state health department estimated that every dollar spent on the long-acting birth control initiative saved $5.85 for the state’s Medicaid program, which covers more than three-quarters of teenage pregnancies and births. Enrollment in the federal nutrition program for women with young children declined by nearly a quarter between 2010 and 2013.

From The New York Times.

Yet, despite this incredible success, the "state failed to get additional funding through the General Assembly this spring", due to opposition from the Republican controlled state senate.

This is because the extremist in the Republican party believe that birth control is murder, even though 99% of women will use birth control at some time in their life.

Wasting Water In The West

The water law property rights of the arid American West are supposed to lead to efficiency, but the galling reality is that they often encourage waste in reality as applied.

A good example is the use of scarce water in California to grow water thirsty cotton in the Sonoran Desert, when it would be more economically efficient to grow it in the moist American Southeast.

Inefficient agricultural use of water for low value agricultural activity relative to the value of the immense amount of water used is the number one reason that water is scarce in the arid American West. Federal crop subsidies exacerbate the problem.

Over the last 20 years, Arizona’s farmers have collected more than $1.1 billion in cotton subsidies, nine times more than the amount paid out for the next highest subsidized crop. In California, where cotton also gets more support than most other crops, farmers received more than $3 billion in cotton aid. . . . If Arizona’s cotton farmers switched to wheat but didn’t fallow a single field, it would save some 207,000 acre-feet of water — enough to supply as many as 1.4 million people for a year. . . . The government is willing to consider spending huge amounts to get new water supplies, including building billion-dollar desalinization plants to purify ocean water. It would cost a tiny fraction of that to pay farmers in Arizona and California more to grow wheat rather than cotton, and for the cost of converting their fields.

This is also hardly the only problem with inefficient water use in the west driven by bad policy. Another source of waste under Colorado's water laws, for example, is a use it or lose it system for water rights that turn any water conservation approach that reduces water use into an immediate 100% forfeiture as a penalty for not wasting water.

In Colorado, Use It Or Lose It dates to statehood when miners competed for water needed to extract gold. Colorado leaders set up a system defining water as property where settlers who proved they'd put it to a "beneficial use" could divert it from rivers and streams. But settlers could lose rights to water if they didn't continue their use. Leaving water to sustain ecosystems wasn't considered a legitimate beneficial use.

The state engineer records water use. When a farmer, rancher or city uses less than the allotted maximum over a 10-year period, state officials declare all or a part of a water right "abandoned" on a list issued every 10 years. That water no longer can be diverted and goes up for grabs to other rights holders next in priority.

Given the water pressures in the West, Louisiana-based ranch owner Witt Caruthers this year decided to try the new approach at his head-gates along Willow Creek.

"Colorado's water system created an incentive to use our water even in times when it's not absolutely necessary. When you're under that pressure to use it or lose it, you're almost forced to abuse it. That's to the detriment of all," Caruthers said.

Given these incentives, is it any wonder that farmers aren't interested in water conservation?

Of course, Colorado is also famous for forbidding basic conservation practices like keeping rain buckets or establishing grey water systems that prevent water from leaving the place where it falls to be diverted by someone with senior water rights from a river somewhere further along the river basin than the place where it falls.  Legislation to change that policy was defeated in the Colorado General Assembly in this year's session.

Yes, Not Fixing Bridges Really Does Have Consequences

The Interstate Highway 5 Bridge in Washington State did this yesterday.  Early reports suggest that fortunately, no one died, although several cars with people in them were plunged into the water.

At Least It's Not Your School District

Conservatives have different ideas than the rest of us about what calls for parental permission.

Ky. school trip included baptisms

By Andrew Wolfson, The (Louisville) Courier Journal

LOUISVILLE — A mother is angry about a trip led by the head football coach at Breckinridge County High School. The coach took about 20 players on a school bus late last month to his church, where nearly half of them — including her son — were baptized.

Michelle Ammons said her 16-year-old son was baptized without her knowledge and consent, and she is upset that a public school bus was used to take players to a church service — and that the school district's superintendent was there and did not object.

"Nobody should push their faith on anybody else," said Ammons, whose son, Robert Coffey, said Coach Scott Mooney told him and other players that the Aug. 26 outing would include only a motivational speaker and a free steak dinner.

Yet, in the same school district:

The students who watched the president's speech today had to get a note signed by their parents that said they could watch it.

Maybe there was an exception to the rule requiring a note for baptised football players.

Immigration Agents Still Assholes

The New York Times notes that 3,300 people a year from countries where visas are not required to enter the U.S. are detained or deported on the whim of immigration officials (out of 8 million visits). Entry can be denied on a whim without proof or an opportunity to contest the decision.

Those whom the Department of Homeland Security claims are seeking asylum (even when the person detained denies it) are held indefinitely without meaningful due process. The case described suggests strong that immigration officials lie to punish people with unjustified detention for this ground, and often abuse their discretion. The responsible immigration officers in this case, for example, are little more than criminals in uniform.

Homeland Security Still Brainless

The latest initiative of the Department of Homeland Security is to detain people who are in the United States illegally while they are in the process of trying to leave the country voluntarily.

Illegal immigration is a civil violation, rather than a crime, and the sanction for being present in the United States without a valid visa is, of course, deportation (aka leaving the country involuntarily). Deportation usually involves public expenses for detention facilities and transportation, plus bureacratic expenses to process the cases, delays the departure of the person illegally present in the country, increases the risk that they will seek to stay based upon an asylum petition once detained or bring other civil action against the U.S. related to the conditions of their detention, and compromises the dignity of the people leaving.

If the Border Patrol has resources to waste on this kind of nonsense, maybe they need a budget cut.

VA PETA Shelter Kills Most Dogs Received

The organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is known for its hard line opposition to fur clothing and other economic uses of animals. It also runs an animal shelter in Norfolk, Virginia where the organization is based. But, that shelter killed 97.4% of the animals it received in 2006.

PETA has threatened legal action against bloggers who have characterized that high kill rate (higher than most other Virginia animal shelters), in a manner other than they way they would like it to be characterized. PETA has taken the position that it is more humane to kill animals that are "unadoptable" and that almost all of the animals it receives fit this characterization. The notion that mere unadoptibility is a sufficient ground for killing an animal is a philosophy not easily reconciled with the organization's mission and stances on other fronts.

TSA=Too Stupid Agency

The TSA is not a paragon of good decision making.

The most recent situation: an eight year old boy prevented from flying because he was on the "no fly" list. Sadly, this is all too common. Also, while the TSA is good at seizing water, it is less good at finding bombs. For example: "In Red Team testing at Denver earlier this year, screeners missed 90% of fake guns and explosives smuggled through checkpoints."

The problems probably have something to do with the fact that this huge government agency (about 60,000 employees the last time I checked) was created by an administration that doesn't believe in government and hence doesn't understand public administration. They don't understand terrorism very well either, which is why they invented the "war on terrorism" concept.

BTW, they also don't really understand the gender equality concept.