Austerity versus rot: Government capacity

The austerity neoliberal policy introduced into the US by Ronald Reagan took a long while to show serious repercussions.  I argued that impact of reducing government workers and capacity didn't show so much because the US had overinvested in capacity previously.

The failure of FEMA in dealing with the post-Katrina aftermath in New Orleans under George W. Bush was to me, the first glaring example of the impact of austerity.  Although this was accentuated by the agency having poor leadership as well.  (Since then FEMA has performed badly under Republican administrations, specifically Trump, "A Post-Katrina Law Guards FEMA Resources. Why Hasn’t It Stopped Noem?," New York Times.)

Writing in The Atlantic, "U.S. Capabilities Are Showing Signs of Rot," military historian Phillips O'Brien makes the point that firing capable officials, and installing ideologically acceptable but less skilled people in their place creates "Rot."  And that Rot is now very apparent in the US military, as shown by the performance in the current War against Iran.

Also in DHS under Noem, ICE ("Leaked Documents Show a Border Patrol Remade in the Image of Gregory Bovino," American Prospect), and the FBI, "How Kash Patel Wrecked FBI’s Ability to Stop an Espionage Attack," New Republic, among others. Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence during war time is another example of rot.  Richard Grenell at the Kennedy Center, most of the Secretaries in the Cabinet, etc.

The first Trump Administration's response to covid is another example of rot.  This rot has been deepened by appointing anti-medicine people in high positions at the FDA and CDC, and with RFK Jr.--who believes his voice dysphonia was caused by the flu vaccine--the Secretary of HHS!

WRT to war, sure the US and Israel can pummel Iran at will, but expending million dollar missiles to shoot down $50,000 drones is a cost-benefit ratio that is unsustainable.  Trump, who treats Ukraine like s***, has reached out to them for technical advice on dealing with drones.  In effect, Ukraine has provided more aid in dollar value to the US than Trump's Administration has provided to Ukraine as it fights Russia's invasion of the country.  (Fortunately, the US still shares intelligence with Iran.  But in general it does everything in its power to promote Russia.)

From the article:

On multiple occasions after President Trump launched a massive air campaign against Iran this past weekend, retaliatory attacks by simply constructed Iranian drones have penetrated American defenses with serious results. For example, at least six U.S. soldiers died, and others were wounded, in an Iranian strike Sunday on a command facility in Kuwait. CNN reported that the Americans received no warning of the incoming drone. According to CBS News, the fortifications around the facility protected it from car bombs but not from a direct overhead strike. “We basically had no drone defeat capability,” an unnamed military official told the network.

... When a complex system starts to decay, the first signs are usually subtle. In the third century, after the Roman empire had reached its geographic maximum, literacy began to decline across Roman society. Education levels fell not only among soldiers, but among officers, aristocrats, and even emperors. The Roman army still looked formidable for years afterward. It had good equipment and could march well. Yet it was no longer as advanced relative to Rome’s enemies as it had once been. It fought as hard as ever, but less effectively.

... The U.S. military’s supremacy over foreign rivals is built on intensive training and the manipulation of advanced technology. By contrast, Hegseth has been stressing lethality and a warrior ethos instead of learning and reflection, to the point of blocking U.S. military personnel from taking courses at the most elite American universities. Yet the events of the past week underscore how shows of force alone may not defeat even militarily inferior enemies.

In Bahrain, a lone Iranian drone penetrated the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, which oversees 2.5 million square miles of the world’s oceans. The incoming weapon destroyed an AN/TPS-59 radar unit intended to provide 360-degree air surveillance for U.S. forces. In a moment, Iranian equipment that cost perhaps $30,000 devastated a piece of U.S. military hardware estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars.

Another term for this is "capital shallowing" or disinvestment.  It's the opposite of "capital deepening" or investing ("Capital shallowing: the effect of disinvestment on government functioning").

Retiring SF MUNI CFO Sonali Bose appears to be a dream hire from the standpoint of transit riders

The San Francisco Chronile reports ("Muni CFO Sonali Bose departs, creating another challenge for SF’s transit agency") on the retirement of Sonali Bose, the Chief Financial Officer of the SF MUNI transit system, one of the most highly used city-only transit systems in the US.  From the article:

The woman who doubled the budget of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency — replacing the junked buses of the past with a splashy new fleet — is heading out the door, creating a new challenge for an agency that is struggling to gain public trust. ...

Some call her a political fixer: the rare transit bureaucrat who urged her allies to chair commissions and lined up votes for the policies she wanted. Others deem her a truth-teller: the woman in a blazer and a cotton dress who gamely criticized mayors and department heads when she thought they made bad decisions. Most people praise her for fixing the budget of a $1 billion agency that was in disarray before she arrived.

Sonali Bose was inspired to “get into (SFMTA) and figure out what the hell is going on” after buses passed her while she waited at a stop one day in 2003. Photo by Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

“When I walked in, I went, ‘Whoah,’” Bose, 60, said. “It was 2006, and the agency was starved of talent and resources. The budget was about half what it is today.”

Over the next 12 years, she raised the SFMTA’s credit rating to be the highest of any transit agency in the country. She oversaw a new parking program that adjusts rates at meters and garages to match demand. She helped fund the biggest increase in Muni bus and rail service that San Francisco has ever seen and increased the revenue from the agency’s advertising contracts from $400,000 to $30 million. ...

“She wasn’t just a CFO — she was this tireless, in-your-face advocate for the SFMTA,” said Supervisor Aaron Peskin, chair of the Transportation Authority, the body that makes decisions on sales tax spending and some projects.

“She was the kind of person who would text me in the middle of a Transportation Authority meeting, either berating me or provoking new thoughts,” Peskin said. “She did not allow her behavior to be boxed in politically or financially.”

He and others called Bose a “guiding force” who fought relentlessly to improve the financial situation at the SFMTA, and who saw results.

Lies, damn lies, and obfuscations: placemaking, place qualities, historic preservation and transportation infrastructure

(...stealing from the line "lies, damn lies, and statistics."

WTOP Radio reports, in "D.C. streetcar won't open until late summer or fall," that the DC Streetcar (7 years behind the Seattle Streetcar even though planning for both started in 2003) is delayed partly because of historic preservation issues. From the article:

He says there are several causes to the delays.

The main reason is that Spingarn High School was declared a historic site in late 2012. The result was that DDOT spent several months in 2013 working with the D.C. Historic Preservation Office.

"That happened at a time when the streetcar project had left the station, so to speak. We lost 90 days right there. Then as a result of that, we lost nine months," says Jackson.

Many years ago I was talking with a DC developer about preservation related issues and he said that any good developer had "historic preservation" as one of the screens that they considered during the assessment process that is called "due diligence."

Anybody with the least bit of knowledge about Spingarn and when it was built and the city should have taken historic preservation into account when siting a streetcar maintenance facility.

Furthermore, the federal assessment process used by local authorities for transportation projects involving federal funds ("federal undertakings") is supposed to include Sec. 106 review anyway:

- FHWA/ACHP Partnership for Research and Innovation
- Federal Transit Administration - Planning & Environment/NEPA - Historic, Archeological, and Cultural Resources

Sounds like an excuse to me.

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WRT the Spingarn issue, see past blog entries "I was wrong: a streetcar car barn probably shouldn't be built on the grounds of Spingarn High School" and "City Paper article on streetcars and historic preservation."

2.  Related to local transportation infrastructure, placemaking, and historic preservation issues, a couple days ago I took some photos to illustrate an often lack of concern about the intertwining of these issues and how sympathetic infrastructure improvements incorporating historic preservation elements could significantly maintain and improve place qualities instead of diminish it.

One example of course is alley pavements.  Brick alleys being replaced with asphalt or concrete diminish place qualities.

But another is stone retaining walls at the front of residential properties (pictured at left on the 200 block of K Street NE).

DC is known for stone retaining walls for rowhouse and single family properties all over the city.  Sadly, in a cost containment move, when such walls are repaired they are often replaced with concrete blocks or bricks because it's cheaper and harder to find artisans capable of doing quality work with stone.

The 200 block of K Street NE is one of many blocks where stones were originally used in retaining walls.  When DDOT did sidewalk work there many years ago--maybe 8 or more--I complained to the ward planner at the time that they used concrete instead of stone on a particular wall. Her response (and this person is lauded for transportation planning), "it's not designated historic."

The other day I noticed that quality stonework is an element of streetscape features on the 400 and 500 blocks of K Street NW, and those blocks aren't designated historic either.

Across the street is a section of the hyper-small Mount Vernon Triangle Historic District, but I imagine that had little to do with the use of the stone treatment in this "street furniture."

This is another example of why I think transportation agencies should have a "chief thoroughfare architect," comparable in authority to the "chief engineer" on the traffic engineering side of the agency, to enforce high quality urban design standards at the interface of transportation infrastructure and place.

Relatedly, see the post "Transit, stations, and placemaking."