Morning Fog

Postal Service Woes

The reports of USPS insolvency grow louder and more insistent.  Now, the venerable old "post office" has announced plans to drastically cut back services, including making delivery slower and dropping Saturday delivery.

I don't doubt that the USPS needs to continue to make cuts, improve its efficiency, and think of ways to enhance its income from services.  Nor do I agree with those who say "snail mail" is completely dead and isn't needed any more.  A few random observations, though, about this latest "plan:"

It seems counterintuitive to slow down delivery.  One-day delivery has become the norm within major metropolitan areas; it's unique (unless you count the hugely expensive alternatives).   Many businesses have come to depend on it, as have many households for their everyday letter mail.  Does it really make sense to make cuts in a part of the operation that is really a competitive advantage?  I don't think so; but prices could be raised.

Speaking of raising prices, one analysis I heard (don't recall now where) suggested that increasing the rate for a first-class letter to just 62 cents would fully cover the USPS's current deficits.  If that is so, why not do it?  To some, 62 cents may sound like a lot; yet I have lived in much smaller, more compact countries where delivery times and distances were far less than in the U.S., and a typical letter was far more than $ 0.62.  In Germany, for example, the cost of a letter was nearly a dollar -  15 years ago!  Why is USPS fooling around with a 1-cent increase that we've been promised for next spring, when clearly it needs more?

The postal gurus also want to cut a delivery day out of the weekly schedule.  Clearly that could save some money, but again, it seems counterintuitive to propose that Saturday be dropped.   I've always suggested it should be a day in mid-week, like Wednesday.  Otherwise, we have a two-day hiatus in delivery that can really snarl things up.  If we add in the slowed-down delivery schedule (above), and all those Monday holidays, a first-class letter mailed on a Friday might not be delivered across town until Wednesday or even Thursday.   We should at least insist that if there won't be delivery on Saturdays, there would be delivery on those Monday holidays.  If we have a three-day gap, we may as well not have service at all.

Technically, the USPS can make its own decisions on these things; the Postal Regulatory Commission gets an advisory opinion, but it's non-binding.  This helps explain the seemingly counterintuitive suggestions for cutbacks.  Personally, I would guess we're seeing strategy, rather than purely objective business decisions, in play.  Cuts are proposed for the most sensitive areas, in hopes of raising objections that will skew the decision-making progress and perhaps drive things toward a different outcome.  It's a game the military has played for ages, and although the USPS doesn't get USG funding, it might nevertheless hope for some special Congressional dispensation to proceed differently, rather than cut popular services.

Do We Exaggerate Natural Disasters?

In my area lately, we had the pleasure of experiencing three different types of natural disaster.  First on July 3 came a very localized "microburst" affecting an area not much wider than our neighborhood; the second, a 5.8-magnitude earthquake in central Virginia felt from Georgia to New York and Indiana; and the third, hurricane Irene, now petering out somewhere over New England, which affected millions of people in the Caribbean and the entire eastern U.S. seaboard. 

Of these, the most damaging for our locality was the microburst, which brought down numerous large trees, cut power, and destroyed several homes -- I theorize that it also probably kept us from experiencing any serious effects from Irene, by preemptively removing shaky trees and weak limbs. 

Hurricanes are excruciatingly long, drawn-out affairs.   You might suppose a weather phenomenon packing winds of 80, 100, or even higher miles-per-hour winds would zip right through your neighborhood, but it's not so.  This one moved up the east coast at a rate of only 15 miles per hour and affected weather in my locality for about 18 hours (6 hours for the most dangerous combination high winds and heavy rain).  The secret, of course, is that the high winds aren't straight, but circulating spirally around the eye of the storm.  

Still, waiting for it, and then waiting for it to pass, was both boring, and a little anxiety-inducing.  Would my neighbor's 100-foot pine tree, just on the property line to the north, be pushed over onto my house by Irene's northerly winds?  And if so, would it kill me or just destroy the house?  For about 24 hours, I got to consider these unanswerable questions.  (In the end, the pine stood firm.)   But if I get to choose my disasters, I'll take the unpredicted 20-second earthquake, or the 10-minute tornado, please.  

Another factor making the hurricane wait far less pleasant was the media coverage.  With the nearest edge of Irene still about 10 hours away, all our local channels began 24-hour "news" coverage to the exclusion of all else, and they kept it up until (last time I checked) the last trace of the storm was miles to our north.  Overall, the coverage was nonstop for about 36 hours.  With the storm moving so slowly, as you might expect, there was seldom much new to report.  Once the media juggernaut gets moving, though, no force can stop it (sort of like a hurricane?).  Even by the time the reportage began, it was clear that Irene was not only not a Category 3 storm as had been predicted earlier, but barely a 2.  (Not much later, she was officially downgraded to a 1.)   Newscasters, geared for a big, destructive storm, and already deployed to locations hundreds of miles away, were reluctant to acknowledge that this made the storm far less dangerous.

The media attention, plus modern society's tendency to lean toward caution and security, have changed our approach to these natural disasters.  A few decades ago, we probably would just have read in the morning paper that a hurricane was expected that day.   We would have taken whatever precautions we considered necessary, and pretty much gone about our business, and lived with the consequences.  No doubt the new approach is laudable if it saves lives and lessens destruction; yet like many aspects of modern life, it also adds its share of complication.       

Vive la ... ressemblance?

It's interesting, I find, how among very different items in the news of the day, a theme emerges.  Take, for example, this report about students headed to college using Facebook to prescreen, and select, their roommates; and this seemingly unrelated one concerning civility amongst politicians in Washington.   Each of them reflects, in a different milieu, a trend I find a bit disturbing in U.S. society - the tendency of people to group with like-minded others.

Of course, people have always done that, but we used to have more means of social interaction in which people couldn't escape at least a bit of rubbing elbows with somebody different.   

One of those was the college roommate selection process, which usually could not be gamed ahead of time, leading to (gasp!) people of different backgrounds, ideas, biases, and living habits being required to share a room.  The experience could be upsetting, and it often revealed extreme differences that had to be corrected by changes after a semester.   I suspect most university officials will applaud the Facebook approach because it may eliminate a lot of headaches for them.  Yet the mixing-bowl approach did at least  expose people to different ways of thinking and it created a need to adapt, or try to adapt, to someone else's mindset. 

Military service used to provide a similarly broadening experience.  Perhaps it still would, if we had conscription, which brought together a huge cross-section of American men (not so many women in those days) from wildly disparate backgrounds.  Today, however, we have a professional military which may, as some argue, bring some benefits in effectiveness, but which attracts a much more homogeneous group.

As Lea Berman's article about the demise of the Washington dinner-party reports, the mixing of legislators of different parties and views hardly occurs any longer, so that our elected representatives can't benefit from the exchange of ideas with their opponents.  That only increases the tendency to believe there is no common ground, or to insist on one's own point of view, and that is at the core of our current political dysfunction. 

It seems our current President has managed to acquire a sense of what it means to accommodate to different views and look for common ground.  That's the essence of pragmatism.  Yet some members of his own party seem to be of the "my-way-or-the-highway" persuasion, and criticize him for compromise.

Were today's politicians, I wonder, the kids who 20 years ago gamed their college roommate selection?  And what sort of politicians will today's college freshman turn out to be, if they've passed their lives almost since childhood trying to cocoon themselves with like-minded individuals?   How long will their marriages last if they haven't learned somewhere along the way that they can't have everything their way?  Maybe they can learn socialization elsewhere, but it seems a shame that some of the best situations for acquiring such skills are disappearing.

Recognition Proliferation

The other day on the internet somewhere I ran across an item asking people to express their opinions about a recent Congressional move to allow certain government awards for heroism, death in the line of duty, and the like, to be granted not just to military personnel (as has been the case up to now) but also to civilian government employees in the same circumstances.

Now I can't find it.  However, it was interesting because the opinions registered really covered the spectrum, from "no, never, these awards are for military" to "yes, civilians also serve with valor, often as much as servicepeople."  (Also interesting was that the first opinion came from a civilian - the daughter of a military man; while the second came from a retired military man.)

There are fair arguments on both sides of this question.  It's reasonable and traditional to reserve certain awards for the military.  On the other hand, the world is changing and frequently, civilians (including, but not limited to, my own foreign service brethren and sistren) often find themselves trying to carry out their mission in conditions of conflict, lawlessness, or the specific targeting of U.S. facilities.  One main difference is that the civilians aren't issued a weapon!

Still, though I suppose I should be "in favor," I actually oppose the idea of granting such awards to civilians as well as military personnel.   That's because it's just another example of a pointless and possibly unhealthy trend -- that everyone has to be "recognized" for everything they do. 

It begins in schools with silliness like middle school "graduations" and competitive events where everyone who competes gets a ribbon or trophy.  I understand the arguments people make for these trends, but I don't agree with them.  We teach the mindset that everybody can be a winner, and we foster the notion that whatever result is achieved is meritorious.  Both these concepts are false.

The issue of military awards for civilians is part and parcel of the same process, as is the latest proliferative event: President Obama reportedly has agreed to begin sending condolence letters to the families of military personnel who commit suicide.  And the word "hero," incidentally, has lost all meaning as it's commonly applied now to a wide swath of humanity who are just doing their regular jobs, tough jobs though they may be.

Some may argue that the recognition proliferation is harmless.  I would suggest instead that it reflects warped values.    So if asked, I would say "no military awards for civilians," let's stop the madness.  And while we're at it, the trade-off is that we have to stop misconstruing what military service is.  In the opinion poll mentioned above, one woman argued that civilians choose their professions freely but the military do not.  That's oldthink.  Our military services are - regrettably and to our detriment - all-volunteer now.  They're pretty well compensated, they choose their profession, they're aware of the risks going in -- and yes, they could have chosen something else. The myth of the citizen soldier is as errant in the twenty-first century United States as the myth of the small family farm. 

Of course, speaking of recognition, I recognize it does me no good to argue against the trend.  The train  of recognition entitlement has left the station headed for that valhalla where everyone gets applause for achievements even if there aren't any.  

Down With Down Payments?

Suddenly there's a flurry of articles like this one by Dina ElBoghdadhy and Zachary Goldfarb for the Washington Post, ringing alarm bells about the Administration's proposal to require that homebuyers make at least a 20% down payment in order to obtain the best interest rates and credit terms.

From the media chorus on the subject, you'd think homebuyers were going to have to give up their first-born child to buy a house.  Plaintive predictions that fewer people will be able to afford to own a house, that the real estate market will crash, that the world as we know it is coming to an end....these are all part of the current story line.    All wrong.

Actually the rule makes a lot of sense.  Let's first be honest with ourselves:  The housing bubble that popped in the past couple of years was due to several unsound practices in the real estate market, but the increasing approval of loans involving low, or even no, down payment was one of the major ones.  

A down payment of a significant amount gives the homeowner a stake in the property, and it gives him/her a cushion against ending up "under water" when the market drops.  Even the linked article above demonstrates this truth, reporting that: 

According to government data on loans made from 1997-2009, borrowers who met strong underwriting standards but made small down payments defaulted at a rate of 2.3 percent, about twice the rate of borrowers who met the same standards but put down 20 percent.

The article goes on to note that the default rate of those who had bad credit ratings was even worse (duh!) but besides being self-evident, that point is argued only by those who don't like the new 20% standard.  In fact the question of creditworthiness is another argument in favor of the 20%, which might be stated this way:  Loaning money is a risk; the risk is greater when the credit rating is worse or when you haven't saved enough for a down payment; and the way that risk is balanced is to charge a higher interest rate.  If that greater risk is not balanced in some way, the system gets destabilized very fast.   It's simple finance.

I also suggest another point not mentioned in the Cassandra-like predictions of the press:  The more buyers who can get a loan with a minimal down payment, the higher and faster prices rise.  If the threshold to get into the market is low, more people will be willing to take risks to get in, and they will be less careful about evaluating prices.  Buying a house for $500,000 (if you can find one at that price!) and having to put in 100,000 of your own money makes you a lot more judicious about the price you pay than if your stake is only $20,000.  So here too, the 20% idea might go a long way toward slowing the upward race of home prices that will eventually lead to the next bubble.

Lenders and brokers are arguing for flexibility or for a lower requirement (maybe 10%, they say).  But greed makes their memories short.  We are where we are today because they were given flexibility, and their efforts to keep profits rising meant that they had to dip lower into the credit pool, relax credit standards, and create no-down-payment loans.  They were only too happy to do so because the less a buyer put down at the start, the more interest he would pay over the life of the loan.  (That's still the case, too.) 

The same old story:  Left to regulate itself, an entire industry deceived itself and its customers, producing a mess the country had to pay for.  Now, before we've even got the water pumped out of our lungs, they're eager to throw us back in the pool and return to business as usual, having learned nothing from the past decade.  

I'm all for required down payments.  If lenders won't demand them (as they used to), government should.

Easements Are Easy - Just Read

Mr. and Mrs. Sandler bought a house.  They used an area behind it, which was under conservation easement, as part of their personal property, erecting a basketball goal, building a raised garden bed, paving part of it, and mowing what remained.  They were ordered to remove it all.

The Washington Post, in reporting all this, plays it from the Sandlers’ point of view – this is called “human interest” and is thought to sell papers.  The Sandlers and some of their neighbors were shocked to discover they couldn’t use this slice of land this way; they were amazed when told there was an easement.  They claim they would not have bought the house if they had known.  And, they want to appeal the ruling against them. "The county is going solely by its code, and they don't care if it's destroying people's lives," Linda said.

The Sandlers are honest enough to admit that they

 “didn't pay much attention to the deed or the official plat, both of which describe the easement.  They did find a paragraph in their contract that indicates their property includes ‘land dedicated to a conservation easement as part of a Forest Conservation Plan.’ That paragraph is checked Yes and the Sandlers' signatures are on the form. But Michael said they read right over it in the flurry of signing dozens of closing documents.”

Even so, they think someone should have “told” them.

There’s a lot wrong with this little picture.  The newspaper casts the local government as the “bad guys” even if it’s just enforcing the law. (That’s deceptive.)   The Sandlers admit they ignored the description of the easement that was in full view on documents they signed, yet they feel justified in appealing the order to remove the modifications they made.  (That’s chutzpah.)   No one suggests that the Sandlers might have knowingly violated the easement, figuring they wouldn’t get caught.  (That’s possible.)  Perhaps most amazingly, the need to remove a garden bed and part of a driveway is going to “destroy people’s lives.”  (That’s sad and selfish – tell it to the homeless, or to people starving in Sudan.)

I don’t know if people get title search and insurance as part of a real estate purchase any more; probably that’s become as quaint and outmoded a practice as making a down payment, or letting your loan be limited by the value of your property.  Still, some of those old practices – finding out about easements, neighborhood restrictions, civic association rules – do seem to have some value.      

Dark Age

For at least three weeks now, in my neck of the woods, the lengthening hours of darkness have cast their shadow on morning walks (bringing depressing blackness to the 5:30 AM sky) and on those evening activities for which we supposedly invented Daylight Saving Time (preventing us from being able to see what's on the grill, or whether it's done, at 7:00 PM). 

Obviously, it's that time of year again, the time when summer time has outlived its usefulness (if it ever had any) and we revert naturally to "regular" time as God and the Greenwich Meanies intended it.   We get our light in the morning, and we get our darkness at dusk.  How neat!  Just as the hours of daylight and dark become about equal in the fall, we switch back to standard time... 

Except that we don't.  Instead, we are in thrall to a handful of Congressional idiots who, unable to conceive any sensible actions to reduce our energy consumption, dreamed up instead the unproved and unprovable proposition that we are "saving energy" by staying on "daylight" time.  As I have pointed out earlier, even Congress's own commissioned study was unable to come up with convincing evidence that daylight time saves anything at all.  

Thus we remain condemned to suffer through another six weeks of artificial and needless light-shifting, all the way through Halloween.  (By the way, parents: It's supposed to be dark when the kids go out trick-or-treating.  That's what makes it scary and fun!)

But in consolation, keep your eye out for the reports, when we do set our clocks back again, of all the energy that was saved while we were on daylight time.  You won't see any such reports, of course, but you can look for them if you like.

Outmoded Infrastructure - Those Overhead Power Lines

Sunday afternoon my little neighborhood experienced a heavy thunderstorm - unusually heavy winds and a violent torrent of rain, but still a thunderstorm - that passed through the area in less than 30 minutes but put out the electrical grid to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses for 10 hours (in my case) or even longer.   This was only the longest of three recent power outages, all of three hours or more, over the past two weeks.  Two were weather-related, the third was somebody driving into a utility pole.  

In addition, we've experienced at least two blips in the same period, of the sort that punch out the power just long enough to shut down computers and cause the waste of 15-20 minutes rebooting, logging in again, and the like.  I wish this performance were rare, but power outages occur where I live on the average of one or two a month.  The electric company's reporting number should be on speed dial, but by now, I have it memorized anyway.

The constant interruption of power supplies, even by fairly normal weather or routine traffic accidents, has several causes, but primary among them is simply our failure as a society to protect power lines by burying them.   Here as in other endeavors, a business's short-term cost considerations are allowed to overrule sensible public policy.  No one has found a way yet to deliver electric power wirelessly; until we do, it only makes sense to update our infrastructure to minimize the potential for disruption.

A Fourth Of July Tradition

When I was a kid (just a few short years ago of course) our family always owned a U.S. flag that my dad would get out and display in front of the house on certain patriotic days.  There was Flag Day of course,Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and especially, Independence Day.  At the time, it seemed that nearly everyone followed this practice.  These days, I don't see very many flags out on homes any more.  Too bad - it's a nice tradition, and one that's still meaningful.

 

 

(A version of this item has been cross-posted on The Tin Lizard,
www.thetinlizard.com)

Dysconnection

Census workers being attacked and threatened?  It's happening.  There are lots of other signs of dissatisfaction with government, and of a more general malaise in the country these days.  It reflects ignorance, and certainly, frustration with the economic disaster brought on by eight years of Bush "spend and don't tax" policies, not to mention an inordinate concatenation of disasters, natural and man-made.

Yet I don't think that explains the extent to which we're seeing unprecedented examples of man's basic inhumanity to man.  Another recent news item, for example, points out the rising use of texting to threaten, cajole, and otherwise seek to destroy a person's privacy, perhaps their life. 

In a world where we are all supposedly so interconnected via new technologies ranging from smart phones and the internet through social networking and texting, we're really not connected at all -- not in ways that count.   The technology in this case has tended to lock people away in compartments. 

Real human interaction becomes more and more rare.  In the 1940s, you might go call on your neighbor; in the 1960s, you might have phoned him; in the timid new world of the 21st century, you're likely to text him.  Rather than going out to a movie, people sit at home and watch a DVD on their gigantic plasma television. They fail to socialize, to learn to deal with others.  And naturally, though unfortunately, it's the weird and the dwellers on the fringe who succumb most readily to the tempations of sitting in front of a screen, connecting without connecting. 

Virtual reality, after all, is not reality.  It all boils down to dysconnection, rather than connection.