In Defense of Government Waste

It's a pretty common refrain, particularly among the people who have recently found themselves leopard chow: "I support cutting government waste, but ...."

The "but" usually is something like ".... but my job really is valuable" or ".... but this program really is important to the community" or ".... but they're going about it all wrong."

And of course, my first thought when reading that is "who supports 'government waste'?"

Well, here I will. Sort of.

The easiest point to make is that one person's "waste" is another person's "valuable job" or "program important to the community." How much of what people imagine to be "waste" actually is quite valuable? A lot, I'd wager. We're already seeing how frequently people could use of dose of Chesterton's fence -- the fact that they don't understand why there's a government program doing X does not mean that there is no good reason why there's a government program doing X. Bring back small-c conservatism!

But I'll take a bigger swing. Let's stipulate that there is some amount of actual, undeniable government waste: money being spent inefficiently, savings that could be obtained with better processes, programs that serve no valuable purpose other than make-work, etc. I'm sure that's true. So who could oppose trying to root that undisputedly wasteful activity out?

Well, I might. Might is the operative word. It depends on how much waste there is. Because ferreting out wasted dollars ... costs dollars. And runs the risk of false positives, either of which can make the "anti-waste" program end up costing more money than it saves. DOGE might end up being an example even as it took a chainsaw to a huge range of government programs. And while DOGE may be distinctive in just how idiotically it is being run, the broader principle holds: there is, in any system, some amount of inefficiency that it is paradoxically more efficient to ignore, because the time, energy, and cost of trying to uproot it will dwarf any potential savings.

One area we see this a lot is in the management of entitlement programs that are "means-tested" or have other barriers and hoops to jump through for recipients to prove their eligibility. The goal is to ensure that no one who is, say, not actually poor or not actually unable to work gets a share of government money they shouldn't. But the usual result of creating these hoops is actually a large drop off in enrollment by eligible families, who find the requirements too confusing or onerous to navigate, even as it creates extra layers of bureaucracy and administration that are expensive to run. We'd almost certainly be better off just swallowing the fact that some "undeserving" people will enroll -- "waste" -- in exchange for better and more streamlined service for the people we are trying to target. It's not soft-heartedness. It's both more empathic and more efficient -- a win-win.

Now again, this is dependent on how much waste we're dealing with. Where waste, fraud, and abuse are rampant, then tamping down on them probably is both necessary and cost-effective (in part because where these things are rampant, there's also a lot of low-hanging fruit that can be picked without much effort). The point, though, is that "cutting waste" isn't self-evidently a good thing; it needs to be cost-justified. And my sense is that the story of widespread of government waste is just that -- a story -- and that in most cases "anti-waste" activity does more harm than good.

You Can’t Theorize a Hand

When we last left off my artist's journey, I was making mediocre (and that's okay!) renditions of a fruit stand. But since then, I've started taking an introductory drawing class at the Multnomah Arts Center (good news -- it looks like we saved it!), and I'm actually very pleasantly surprised by my progress!

We've drawn something different each week. For example, in week two we did self-portraits -- mine would haunt your nightmares insofar as it makes me look like a serial killer. But I do think it's clearly a rendition of me as a serial killer, so that's something.

Last week, we focused on drawing hands, which I know are the bane of every artist. But I think mine turned out pretty good! A little meaty, but to by honest my hands are chonky boys. So good job me!

Moreover, while I was drawing, I think I said something quite profound (in the sense that I said something very obvious, but in a manner that wraps around into being profound). Namely:

You can't theorize a hand.

What does that mean?

I know what a hand looks like. If you asked me to describe it, I'd start with the palm, thumb, and four additional fingers. Going into more detail, there are the fingernails, the knuckles, and the palm lines. And so it's easy to think, when you're trying to draw a hand, to just take the parts of the hand that you know a hand has, and try to render them onto a page.

But that's not actually how one draws a hand.

To draw a hand, you can't just have in your mind the theoretical components of a hand. You have to actually look at your hand, and draw what you see. Not "a fingernail" or "a knuckle", but a darker spot here against a lighter spot there. When you think not in terms of a theoretical hand, but in terms of what you're actually seeing, a lot of what you see actually won't seem to line up with your theoretical image of a hand. The dark shadow here isn't a knuckle or a fingernail, it's just present. It's there whether you imagine it being there or not. So you actually have to resist the part of you that's only looking to draw the theoretical hand, and draw what's actually in front of you.

This is really quite bracing, since for awhile it looks like you're just drawing random lines and dark spots that don't correspond to anything. It takes a lot of trust in the process to believe that, when it all comes together, you'll have a hand. But you will! Whether or not you think the above hands are "good", they are a lot better than if I tried to just draw what my mind's eye imagines a "hand" to look like.

A good lesson for me to learn. Onward!

Obtuse Corneal Hydrops

Well, my corneal hydrops are back. And just in time for me to get on a nine-hour flight to London with a four-month-old baby!

I've done some of my own research, which I know are among the scariest words a non-medical professional can speak (but like being a mad, ignorant voter, it's so fun!), but really I don't think I was able to do much damage, because it doesn't seem like much is known about the condition by anyone. 

Corneal hydrops occur when a layer of your cornea called Descemet's membrane rips, letting fluid leak where it shouldn't and resulting in extreme tearing and eye swelling. It is an uncommon side-effect of my already uncommon keratoconus -- don't I feel special -- and nobody really seems to know what causes it or how to prevent it. Likewise, in terms of treatment the prevailing medical opinion seems to be summarized as "suck it up, buttercup". There are some saline drops to draw out the fluid, and you can take Tylenol for the pain, and other similar OTC medications for other secondary symptoms (e.g., Sudafed for sinus congestion) but that's about it.

There was one interesting thing I did find, though. Virtually every source on corneal hydrops appends "acute" in front of it ("acute corneal hydrops"). The "acute" means that it presents suddenly and without warning. But that doesn't describe mine -- in my case, I start noticing symptoms progressively over the course of a week or so. In fact, even that's a bit misleading, since the "symptoms" that correlate with hydrops for me -- essentially, sinus-like symptoms on the left side of my face -- are not as far as I can tell normally associated with hydrops at all. But for me, they always go hand-in-hand, and they predict a forthcoming hydrops event with alarming accuracy.

So a week ago I started noticing those symptoms start to appear and wrote my doctor asking if there was anything I could do to forestall the hydrops before my trip. He replied, in so many words, "nope -- good luck!" I was able to manage the sinus-symptoms with OTC medication, but last night my eye finally -- for lack of a better word -- exploded. Have you ever woken up feeling dehydrated because of the amount of fluid you've lost leaking out of your eyeball? Because I have!

This is the third time I've had hydrops in the past year. The first time occurred while I was on a plane from Portland to Tallahassee, and it was deeply unpleasant (as in, the flight attendants who saw me asked if I needed paramedics to meet me at the gate). I think the dry airplane air exacerbates the effects dramatically. So you can imagine how excited I am to get on a nine-hour international red-eye flight with an infant while ailing with this particular condition.

We leave on Wednesday evening. Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday ... basically, four and a half days for my condition to improve.  I'll stock up on eye drops and other palliative interventions, but still -- pray for me. (And remember, all of this could have been averted if we had a functioning health care system).

I Dream in Generative AI

I've always been a lucid dreamer. I typically know when I'm dreaming, and am able to exert some level of control over the course of the dream.

Recently, though, my dreams have become, for lack of a better word, more mundane. It'll be morning (in the real world), and I'll think "I wonder what time it is", and then I will dream that I checked my clock. Then I will start thinking in accordance with what the "clock" said, up until I remember that I didn't actually check the clock and it could be essentially any time. 

But when I "see" the "clock", why does my brain pick the time that it does? My wife said that my brain is basically acting like ChatGPT -- collating together a mesh of experience to level a prediction of the time it most expects to correspond with me checking my clock while lying in bed asleep. So, for example, this morning I dreamt it was 9:45 AM, which is around when I usually wake up -- in fact, this time I actually genuinely wasn't sure if I had actually checked the clock or had dreamt doing so, since it was quite plausible that I would wake up around 9:45 and check my clock.

Another example: sometimes I encounter text when I dream. I'll see a newspaper or come across a plaque on the wall. Of course, my brain knows a newspaper or plaque should have text on it, and I am congenitally incapable of passing by text without reading it. Yet it would ask a lot out of my brain to put together a full and cogent newspaper article on the fly while I'm dreaming. So it does what image-generative AI does in that situation -- it creates a sort of hazy swirl of jumbled together letters -- a really disorienting effect when I'm trying to read something in the dream. It's really a fascinating effect.

Anyway, this all led to me having one of my dumber thoughts, which was to describe my brain as "like a kind of biological A.I.". Maybe the machines should replace us.

Faithless in Gaza

The other day I was enmeshed in a Facebook thread, as one does, where a colleague was complaining about a post that equally condemned the Capital Jewish Museum shooting by a pro-Palestinian terrorist and the bombing of family homes by the IDF (the sin of "equating", not to be confused with the sin of "one-sided"). The argument was a familiar one: the DC shooter was intentionally seeking to murder civilians (true), while the killing of Palestinian families is an "undesired", tragic byproduct of fighting an urban counterinsurgency.

My response to this argument was not to contest it, exactly. It was to ask my colleague a more basic question: what would falsify his belief? He believes that, for Israel, the deaths of Palestinian civilians are undesired. What evidence would suffice so that he would no longer believe that?

He wouldn't answer.

To be sure, he gave an answer -- but it was just more arguments for why it was still correct to think that these deaths were "undesired". Pressed again to say, okay, but what evidence would make you think otherwise, and I was met with silence.*

That was when it was clear the issue wasn't one of belief, but of dogmatic faith. The bottom line -- "Israel does not desire civilian deaths" -- was written in stone. Everything above that could and would be erased and rewritten to cohere to the bottom line. The "what would falsify" question was impossible to answer, because he knew deep down that if he committed to any non-ludicrous answer, there was a real chance his criteria would be met, and then what would he do?

This does not work. I am familiar with the arguments why the spiraling death toll in Gaza does not mean that Israel "desires" those deaths. I don't find them especially compelling anymore,** but I'm familiar with them. But one argument that has no purchase is the pure tautology: "these civilian deaths are undesired because Israel does not desire civilian deaths". That boils down to rejecting the claim because accepting it would make you feel sad. It does not work.

Nir Hasson had a powerful column the other day about how much of the Israeli media has responded to the IDF killing nine Palestinian children. The media is obsessed with every fuzzy detail or misplaced accent, every AI-generated image or overwrought recharacterization -- but all in order to kick dust around the acknowledged truth that the IDF did kill those children. It is a mirror-image of 10/7-denialism, and, as one expert observes, it is in its perverted way a form of moral self-policing:

"Denying the atrocities that your side has committed is an attempt to maintain your humanity," [Dr. Assaf David, of the Forum for Regional Thinking and the Van Leer Institute] explains. "When you say, 'There are things that my side cannot do,' it is actually a statement saying that I cannot justify these things. It's true that it's a lie and that we do do these things, but denial is trying to set a moral standard."

Denial and justification go hand-in-hand. If it was unjustified then it didn't happen, and if it happened it was justified. Flit back and forth between those positions, and one can keep the faith indefinitely.

But it doesn't work. As one side of the fulcrum grows increasingly untenable, unbearable pressure grows on the other. Here is where one starts to see either absurd exercises in denialism (most 10/7 victims were gunned down by Israel; the images of Gaza destruction are "Pallywood" concoctions) or sickening excursions into justifications (the Bibas children would have grown up to be monsters anyway; Gaza's population are tantamount to Nazi collaborators). Such maneuvers are soul-destroying, but they are inevitable when one's dogmatic faith matters more than truth.

So to my pro-Israel friends, this is my challenge to you. If you still believe that Israel is only acting in the interests of self-defense, that its overall policy and practice is one that provides Palestinian civilians with the protections they are due under international law and as human beings, that the scenes of death and destruction are not "desired" but a regrettable byproduct of the inevitabilities of urban warfare against a terrorist entity like Hamas, I won't argue with you. I'll simply ask you to ask yourself, earnestly and without flinching, what would cause you to think otherwise. Commit to something, now, so that if the evidence does come to pass you don't rationalize it away later.

And if you can't bring yourself to do that simple thing, ask yourself what that really means about the status of your faith.

* The closest he did come to an answer was by citing to civilian:combatant casualty ratios which, he said, were lower in the Gaza campaign compared to other analogous counterinsurgencies (e.g., the anti-ISIS campaign in Mosul, which he said had a ratio of 2.5:1). The Gaza ratio, he said, was closer to 1.5:1 or 1.2:1; so if the Mosul campaign wasn't one of desired civilian death, neither was Gaza. But when I pressed him as to what ratio would flip that intuition (particularly given that the 10/7 ratio was slightly worse than 2:1), he refused to commit to a number -- I suspect because he was not as confident in that 1.2 - 1.5:1 ratio as he made himself out to be and knew that if he, say, matched the 10/7 2:1 figure, he might end up being put to the proof (for my part, I've seen the 1.2 and 1.5:1 ratios cited but I've also seen much worse estimates pegging the ratio at closer to 4:1). The cynic, I suggested, might suspect that the only number he'd commit to is .5 higher than whatever ends up being the real number.

** My view is that the prevailing outlook in both the IDF and the Israeli political establishment is, at best, utter indifference to Palestinian civilian life. To the extent Palestinians civilian safety poses any impediment to a military or political objective -- which always centered around "keeping Bibi in power", and which now includes "conquering" Gaza to boot -- that interest is given virtually zero weight. As the value of children's lives approaches zero, the number of children one can justify killing to get at one Hamas operative (or keep Bibi out of prison one more day) approaches infinity.

Among the bits of evidence that buttresses that view are the spiraling death tally itself (and the individual instances of horrifying death and destruction that are virtually impossible to justify), the regular statements by top-level Israeli officials evincing criminal intentions towards the Palestinian people, the credible reports that the IDF has greatly relaxed its operational controls previously meant to assure adherence to rules of distinction and proportionality in favor of establishing effective "free-fire" zones, and the prevalence of deeply racist attitudes towards Arabs and Palestinians that polling suggests are present in Israel's military-aged populations. 

There may be individual units or actors holding themselves to higher standards; there also are no doubt those holding themselves to a lower one where the death and destruction is itself a desired and terminal end. And none of this is incompatible with the belief that Hamas also is utterly indifferent to the wellbeing of the Palestinian population under its de facto rule, that it operates in civilian areas in a manner designed to further imperil the non-combatant population, and is effectively holding Gaza's population hostage in service of a crude desire to retain power. But in any case, it is wrong to say the deaths Israel inflicts on innocent Palestinians are "undesired", as that implies some level of care and concern for which there is little evidence of.

A Lifetime of Pride Awaits

  

Nathaniel turned four months old last week.

And I’m already a proud papa.

Of course, he isn’t really doing that much right now. But why should I let that stop me?

Here’s a list of some of things I’m proud about my baby:

I’m proud of how big he is: Nathaniel scared us a bit at the hospital—he lost a lot of weight after he was born, and wasn’t waking up for feedings. But now he’s a veritable giant! 96th percentile for weight, and literally off the charts for height (28 inches long!). Anyone have advice for raising a jock baby?

I’m proud of what a great observer he is: Whenever we go out, Nathaniel is incredibly well-behaved. He almost never fusses in public, but he also rarely smiles in public either. Instead, he gets this thoughtful, observant look on his face and just silently soaks everything in.

Then we get home and it’s silly-town. But not in public. He’s not an animal.

I’m proud of how strong he is: Almost from the get-go, Nathaniel has been very strong. He was holding his neck up and looking around even while we were still in the hospital.

I’m proud of what a great sleeper he is: Don’t kill me, fellow parents, but Nathaniel basically started sleeping through the night immediately. I can count on one hand the number of times we’ve been woken up by him crying. He’ll take a midnight bottle, but sleep right through it—I don’t even have to rock him back down. And otherwise, he sleeps consistently from 7 to 7. Daytime naps are a little dicier, but he’s getting better, and in any event I’ll take that trade all day.

I’m proud of how patient he is: For awhile, Nathaniel had no interest in waiting even a second for a bottle once he got hungry (our running joke trying to soothe him while the bottle warmed was to agree “we’ve never fed you once in your life”). But now he’s much more understanding. It’s even more pronounced when he wakes up in the morning—no tears, no yelling, he’ll just happily entertain himself in the crib until mom is ready to get him.

I’m proud of how resilient he is: This is a big one, because it is not my forte. But when he got his shots, mom and dad were upset for longer than he was. And we’re already seeing him develop self-soothing practices to help him fall back asleep or get through a challenging time. I could learn from him.

I’m proud of how joyful he is: He may not show it in public, but Nathaniel has the best smile. He loves to giggle when being tickled, he loves to jabber while on his playmate, and he loves to dance when we sing him songs (we hold him upright as he bounces about). There’s nothing I love more than watching him take joy in the world around him.

This is just a short list. And it will only grow as he grows older. I’m not going to lie and say there’s nothing he could do that wouldn’t make me proud; but what is true is that there are an infinite number of ways he can make me proud, and I can’t wait to discover what they all will be.

The Joy of Being a Mad, Ignorant Citizen

 

I'm still learning about the fault lines of local Portland politics. Everyone is a Democrat here, so that's no help. We just completely revamped our city governmental structure, abandoning the "commission" model (where elected city commissioners were responsible for particular bureaus of city governance) in favor of city council featuring three elected members each from four geographic districts. I think that's an improvement, though the last election was a bit of a free-for-all.

Anyway, Portland is in a time of budget cuts, and the city council is deciding what to slash. One proposed cut is to permanently close the Multnomah Arts Center (MAC), where I happen to be currently taking an introductory drawing class (if you want a charcoal self-portrait that will haunt your nightmares, hit me up). Since I'm enjoying my class (and am anticipating taking my son to family art classes when he's a bit older), I was horrified at the prospect that the center might close -- it's got a lot of great programming and its five minutes from my house. So I wrote to my city councilors urging they keep the MAC open and find other places to make budget cuts (I apparently wasn't the only one).

Congratulate me on being an engaged public citizen? Maybe. But the thing is, here's the relevant information I was bringing to the table in forming this opinion and deciding to yell at my councilors about it:

1. I like the MAC.

End of list. 

Obviously, in the abstract the MAC is a nice thing and worthy of support. But in times of scarcity, the question is about relative priorities -- the money has to come from somewhere. And for my part, I have no idea what other things might be cut instead of the MAC is kept open, nor do I have any insight in how to weigh potential competing priorities even if I was told of potential alternatives. And moreover, I don't really have any interest in learning more. "There must be another way", I say, while having no idea what those alternatives might be and no interest in finding out.

To be clear, I'm not saying it's likely that the MAC is actually a good place to cut. The hue and cry to save it makes me feel more confident that there really are better places to trim from. And the proposal to close the MAC came from one councilor -- it's not a situation where all the experts agree this needs to be done while I stubbornly refuse to accept it. 

But the point is that I'm getting to be an uninformed voter (for real this time!) and it is glorious. I just get to see something I don't like and be mad about it! Do you know how much more relaxing that is compared to when you do know the difficulties and complexities of an issue? I can also decide that the reason we're facing the need for such cuts is Donald Trump. Do I know that? No, but I can't imagine his slash and burn attack on effective governance is doing Portland any favors, and that's good enough for me!

This could get addictive. I have to be careful.

What Internet Randos Are Saying About the DC Jewish Museum Shooting

Earlier this evening, two staffers with the Israeli embassy were shot and killed while leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC. The event was a multifaith and multinational gathering exploring "how a coalition of organizations - from the region and for the region - are working together in response to humanitarian crises throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region." The attacker reportedly shouted "free Palestine" after committing the killings.

(Tomorrow, the Museum was scheduled to host an event on "Pride: The Policy Accomplishments of the LGBTQ+ Movement", but this doesn't seem related to that).

Whenever events like this happen to the Jewish community, I have the macabre habit of trawling through the comment sections of my favored social media outlets, looking for people to block. I say macabre, but I actually find it quite cathartic: every block is another terrible person I don't ever have to deal with. Is it an endless and Sisyphean task? Of course. But you know that story about the kid throwing starfish back into the ocean and being told "why bother -- there's so many, you'll never make a difference throwing them back one by one", and he throws another one back in and says "I made a difference to that one?" It's like that, but oppositional.

I digress. After hearing the news, I did my perusing on Bluesky, and I have some anecdata to report.

First, a positive: Most people are reacting with what I would consider basic normalcy and decency. Just generally expressing horror and sadness or worry about how actings of political violence are only going to make a bad situation worse. Sometimes people I think exaggerate the pervasiveness of the "bad" takes on Bluesky -- and at one level I get why: if 1000 people are commenting on a political event, and 10% have a repellant take, that's simultaneously only 10% (a pretty small minority) and also that's 100 repellant comments, which can feel very overwhelming, very quickly. So while I don't begrudge anyone who can't look past the bad actors, I want to put it in some perspective. To everyone who had a normal response to a terrible tragedy: you get a sticker.

On the "bad" side, I sort the bad actors into a few groups. The number of people I saw affirmatively cheering the murders was very small. More common was either an overacted performance of yawning indifference ("huh -- anyway, did you see the Pacers game?"), or a dashed off "I'm not saying I support this..." followed by a very long "but...."

To be honest, though, none of these surprised me (either in their content or their relative numbers). The response I saw which did surprise me in terms of the frequency I encountered it was the number of people suggesting the shooting may have been a false flag, designed to justify either complete ethnic cleansing in Gaza and/or further authoritarian repression here at home. 

To be clear: I'm not including in this group people suggesting the Trump and Netanyahu administrations will attempt to exploit this shooting to further their malign agenda. That goes without saying. I'm talking about people who think the shooter was himself an Israeli operative, or otherwise acted at the behest of the Israeli government.

This is "the paranoid style", leftist version, and I was stunned at how many people seemed ready to indulge in it.  I probably shouldn't have been -- one still sees people arguing that Israel intentionally let October 7 happen (and massacred its own people) in order to justify its invasion of Gaza -- but still, it stood out. A lot of people really are prone to believing these sorts of conspiracies.

Anyway, that's my impressionistic take on what random reply-guys are saying. Mostly normal, some cheerers or apologists, and a bit more conspiracy theorists than I was comfortable seeing. Your mileage may vary.

UPDATE: One other thing I noticed -- the replies are much worse in the replies to politicians' posts (compared to news stories). Chris Van Hollen's skeet is overrun with people screaming "but you don't have a word to say about Gaza, you AIPAC-bought bastard!", which suggests they're either bots or aren't paying attention.