Monthly Archives: January 2023

Sources and methods…

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I consider myself fortunate to not be one of those people who has an unseemly love for hearing his own voice. Like Mr. Ed before me, I try to make it a policy to never speak unless I have something to say. It mostly leaves me free to observe people’s comings and goings, their small tics and tells, and generally to spend my time trying to read the room rather than just sitting there cobbling together whatever I want to say next.

Once I make whatever point I believe needs making, I’m perfectly happy to fade into the background as things play out to their logical or illogical conclusion.

The result of this long practice is that, to quote Jed Bartlet, “I hear things. I don’t understand most of it, but I hear it.” Hearing the things, over the course of being dragged into a multitude of meetings, having offhand conversations, and overhearing random comments in passing over the last two decades has proven to be a veritable treasure trove of information about this, that, or the other thing. The vast majority is information that may not prove useful today, but that’s available to dredge out of deep memory at the point where it may be useful.

The trouble with sitting on this vast amount of information ferreted away in dribs and drabs is that much of it was never presented for public consumption. The amount of great stuff I have to write about that’s being self-embargoed because I don’t want to burn my sources and methods is an absolute absurdity… but since using any of it overtly risks leaving me out in the cold, embargoed it shall (mostly) stay.

Maybe someday I’ll get around to writing another helpful guide – this time one on not just joining, but learning to survive decades in the bureaucracy. It’s not the worse idea I’ve ever heard.

Expecting the unexpected…

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About once every six weeks or so I start thinking that hey, maybe it’s time I add another dog to the menagerie. Two always felt like the right number of dogs in my mind, though I’m not sure if that was a function or Winston and Maggie being so well paired, or if there’s any actual data to back up my wild assertions. 

It doesn’t take long between having that thought and finding myself scouring Petfinder, local Facebook groups, and checking in on some reputable breeder’s pages. Before you know it, I’m hours down a rabbit hole looking at available dogs 300 miles away.

After a bit of that, though, I remember the times when there were puppies in the house. Young Winston gnawed through the rails of my kitchen chairs like a psychotic beaver. I’d arrive home from a day’s work to find young Maggie covered from tip to tail in poo that she seemed to take great pleasure in rolling in. Jorah, though not really a pup when he came along, relegated us all to six months of living in the easy-to-bleach confines of the kitchen because of his determined inability to grasp the basics of going outside to pee.

The fact is, life is significantly easier (and less expensive) with one dog instead of two. Even if it weren’t easier, I’m not in any way sure Jorah will be particularly welcoming to a new canine friend. His track record with meeting and interacting with unfamiliar animals isn’t great. When confronted with a new dog, he swings between attempting to hide under the nearest piece of furniture or growling like he’s been training to go to the fighting pits.

Every time the idea of bringing home another one takes hold, I seem to come up with a bunch of perfectly valid reasons why that’s a perfectly dumb idea. I haven’t ruled anything out, of course. Over the years I seem to have come by most of my animals some kind of accidentally, so at this point I’m just letting nature take its course and expecting the next fuzzball to show up more or less unexpectedly.

Federal entitlements… 

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There’s a lot of tongue wagging about Republican efforts to fold, spindle, or mutilate federal entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. From the opposite side of the aisle, Democrats insist that the programs must be preserved in total or even expanded.

Having the conversation doesn’t feel unreasonable. In or around 2035, the Social Security trust fund will be exhausted. That will automatically trigger an estimated 24% reduction in benefits as the system will only be able to pay out as much money as it has coming in. 

If the system is going to be preserved in its current form, the solution is going to have to be some combination of raising the age of eligibility, decreasing benefits, and increasing payroll taxes. Just the hint of an honest discussion on those terms won’t make anyone in Congress the next winner of the most popular person in Washington contest. 

All of this, of course, is based on assuming we should preserve the system as it’s currently put together. I’m not entirely of the opinion that should be our goal. If my records are right (and they are), I’ve paid just north of $110,000 in Social Security payroll tax since I started working. If Uncle Sam were to give me the choice of accepting his pinky promise of some undefined benefit at an undefined time in the future or to cut me a check for that amount today to invest in the manner of my choice, I’d sign a quit claim on all future social security benefits and never look back.

Letting it sit in a low-cost index fund until I turn 65 would give me a far better return than anything the future U.S. Congress will want for me. This alternate future looks even rosier if I were allowed to regularly contribute an amount equal to my current social security taxes into that account. Over a span of 20 years that would end up being real money and more importantly, not in any way reliant on the largess of whatever bunch of crackpots and shysters happens to be running Congress in that distant future.

That won’t be an option, of course. The second President Bush brushed lightly against the idea of privatized accounts way back in 2004 and was roundly shouted down. The U.S. Government simply won’t want to give up direct control of a pot of money as big as Social Security. By the time I’m age eligible – in 2040 if the earliest age to claim isn’t raised – I fully expect Social Security will be yet another one of those government programs I’ve paid for my entire working life from which I won’t be qualified to draw any benefit. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. AFGE Local 1904. Here we are 17 weeks past the “end of max telework” and the union, such as it is, still hasn’t come through on delivering the new and improved telework agreement. So, we’re still grinding along with only two days a week like pre-COVID barbarians… as if 30 months of operating nearly exclusively through telework didn’t prove that working from home works. All this is ongoing while hearing stories of other organizations tucked in next door that are offering their people four or five day a week work from home options. It’s truly a delight working for the sick man of the enterprise. There’s probably plenty of blame to go around, but since the updated and perfectly acceptable policy for supervisors was published 17 weeks ago, I’m going to continue to go ahead and put every bit of blame on Local 1904 for failing their members (and those of us who they “represent” against our will) for not getting this shit done.

2. Home cooking. Week in and week out I make variations of the same 20 or so recipes. Most of them are easy. Most of the are the living definition of comfort food. I want to branch out with more options. I mean as much as I like it, even I don’t want a roast every Sunday. I also don’t want to waste a limited amount of time, not to mention the weekly food budget, by inadvertently making something new and different that just so happens to taste like broiled shit… which is why I always end up sticking with variations on the tried and true 20. It’s a vicious cycle. 

3. Tim Hortons. For years we had the most southerly outpost of the Canadian staple coffee shop in the lobby of our building. Despite their best efforts to recover and reopen when employees started to trickle back to the office in small numbers, they didn’t survive the Great Plague. Now, Tim’s wasn’t what you’d call great, but they were tasty enough, portion sizes were decent, and they had the undeniable virtue of being right there in the building on days when it happened to be raining or when it was ten degrees with the wind blowing 20 miles per hour. I realize now that I probably didn’t appreciate them enough. I find myself missing my regular 2:00 donuts and having the option for a frozen yogurt.  

On Leopard tanks and Russian impotence…

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Let me start by saying I’m not an expert on the employment of armored formations on the battlefield. Neither have the big brains in the Pentagon called me up to ask my opinion on grand strategy. I’m just a guy sitting over here halfway paying attention to what’s going on in some of the world’s hot spots.

With all that said, I’m thrilled and excited to see Germany finally giving in and allowing the export of Leopard II’s to Ukraine. The fact that the official media mouthpieces of Putin’s Russia are howling about it means that it’s an excellent idea. If it were a weapon’s system that the Russians expected to do very little damage to their cause, they wouldn’t be making much of a stink about it. Put another way, I suspect the Russian bear is deathly afraid of facing actual working versions of the equipment they expected would carry them to an easy victory in Ukraine.

If the last year has taught us nothing, it’s that Russia has clung to its classic approach of relying on throwing tons of badly trained and ill led men and unmaintained equipment into the fight in hopes that sheer numbers will be enough to overwhelm and swamp whatever opposition it’s facing. It’s a reasonable approach if you happen to be a country where leaders don’t have to account for tens of thousands being killed and wounded and divisions worth of equipment being turned to scrap in what was billed as a 4-day excursion into a neighboring country.

I’m enough of a son of the Cold War to get a little flush of joy when I see Russia flailing around, rattling the saber, and making wild threats and accusations. That was their play book all through the long decades of the 20th Century. The louder they’re screaming, the more wild eyed their threats, the closer they are to the precipice. My read on the current situation is that Russia’s would be tsar is scared shitless that his country is about to stand entirely exposed as a 4th rate power, unable to enforce its will even on its closest neighbors. It’s the worst nightmare for the man who promised to resurrect the Russian Empire.

Give the Ukrainians anything they need to win the day and shove the Russian invaders back across the border. A declawed Russia, its impotence laid bare to the world, is in the vital national interest of the United States and the world.

The ghost of Jack Bogle…

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I’ve been with the same financial advisor for near on 20 years. I’ve had very few complaints, aside, perhaps, from his being not quite as aggressive when picking investments as my own comfort level would allow. I appreciated someone who was “fiduciarily neutral” to act as a sounding board to discuss changes, goals, and long-term planning. Now that he’s set to retire, I have to wonder if I’m willing to peel off 1% a year to build that same relationship with whatever new guy comes in to take over the shop.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve held back a small amount in a separate investment account that I tinker with directly. I’m not a stock picker. I don’t have the time or inherent analytical ability to do deep evaluation on this stuff. I am, however, good at recognizing that over time, a broad index of the whole market has given me returns in that account that are perfectly acceptable. I’ve observed the same function in the Thrift Savings Plan sponsored by our beloved Uncle. Its core funds – again, broad market indexes – grind out ample returns over time. Set it and forget it until it’s time to rebalance.

The account I held with my old advisor has always been something I thought of as a fallback – a failsafe that would prevent one disastrous, misguided decision on my part from wrecking the entire house of cards. I wonder, though, if maybe it’s time I take the whole thing in hand for a decade or so… at least until I need to come up with a plan to move from the accumulation phase to it becoming a cash flowing source of income. With less than a handful of index funds being fed automatically every two weeks, it doesn’t feel like the occasional rebalancing should be something that’s too hard for me to manage. Saving the yearly fees until we reach a point where there’s heavy duty planning to do would also be a nice little bonus.

It’s all easy to say here, but does, however, require a tremendous leap of faith in my own ability not to fuck things up in the absence of a safety net. Maybe what I’m really waiting for is a late-night visit from the ghost of Jack Bogle to reassure me that “Nothing is simpler than owning the stock market and holding it forever.” Yeah. That would go a long way towards easing my mind on this one. 

In the end, they’re all Monday…

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It’s Monday. Again. This morning, I reached deep into the cabinet where I store my fucks, but alas those shelves were bare. It’s a sad state of affairs that my increasing lack of fucks to give is even seeping into telework days now. Historically, it’s mainly been a problem reserved to those days when I’m required, for reasons defying logic and common sense, to schlep over to the office and sit with other people all day.

But here we are. Trying to come up with new and interesting ways to say what I’ve probably said 137 times here already. Gods, I’m not sure I could be less interested even if I put maximum effort into it. That’s probably some moral failing in me as a person. Meh. So what?

It’s probably a gift that I don’t have to be particularly interested in something to do it tolerably well. If it were otherwise, we could be in a real spot of trouble here. As it is, I’ll sit here with a dog sleeping on my feet, a cat trying to occupy the keyboard, and tinker about with some PowerPoint slides (while trying not to dwell too much on the four Monday equivalents left to go before my time is wholly my own again). 

The debt ceiling shouldn’t be a suicide pact…

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The debt ceiling has been an evolving creature since 1917 and started life as something of a thought exercise. In handing over some of their spending power (a Legislative Branch function) to the Treasure (an Executive Branch department), long dead Members of Congress thought that if their future selves had to have their votes counted in order for the U.S. Government to continue taking on large tranches of debt, maybe it would restrain them from profligate borrowing. Some of the more wild-eyed optimists among them, I’m sure, thought that it might even usher in a new day of not constantly spending more money than the federal government takes in.

For most of the last hundred years, though, raising the debt ceiling became just a normal part of doing business. No serious person ever considered putting the United States Government in a position where it would default on its lawfully begotten debts. That’s changed in the last 20-30 years, of course. I suspect there’s now more than a few Members of Congress who would cheer on a default and smile for the cameras while they watched the resulting economic chaos.

Republican controlled Congresses have raised the debt ceiling. Democratic controlled Congresses have raised the debt ceiling. Divided Congresses have raised the debt ceiling. Presidents of both parties have presided over these increases while gnashing their teeth about runaway spending.

Can we please, then, just stop pretending that the debt ceiling is anything more than a bomb we’ve allowed to grow in the heart of the government? With the total federal debt now standing at $31 trillion dollars, let us admit that the debt ceiling is a work of fiction that has don’t nothing to stand between us and racking up unimaginable levels of indebtedness. The only thing it’s really done is create a mechanism by which it’s possible to decimate the global economy if the hands of the incompetents and ideologues now serving in Congress. Better that this failed experiment in limiting federal spending be put on the ash heap of history than allowing it to linger around like some kind of damned suicide pact.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. AFGE Local 1904. Here we are 16 weeks past the “end of max telework” and the union, such as it is, still hasn’t come through on delivering the new and improved telework agreement. So, we’re still grinding along with only two days a week like pre-COVID barbarians… as if 30 months of operating nearly exclusively through telework didn’t prove that working from home works. All this is ongoing while hearing stories of other organizations tucked in next door that are offering their people four or five day a week work from home options. It’s truly a delight working for the sick man of the enterprise. There’s probably plenty of blame to go around, but since the updated and perfectly acceptable policy for supervisors was published 16 weeks ago, I’m going to continue to go ahead and put every bit of blame on Local 1904 for failing their members (and those of us who they “represent” against our will) for not getting this shit done.

2. Missing motivation. You know it’s bad when I don’t even want to sit down and write. I do more reading on days like that, so it’s a bit of a trade off, but still, it’s not exactly good tidings. I’m assuming my current lack of being motivated by anything is part and parcel of the mid-winter doldrums when the yard is a mud pit, I see very little sunlight, and the temperature very rarely claws above 50 degrees. It’s about as bland a time of year as you could ask for and it can’t help, it seems, from seeping into my bones. The days, though, are ever so slightly longer than they were a month ago, so help on the way. Probably.

3. National sales tax. Republicans are currently hung up on pushing a national sales tax. If it were to, in fact, replace the current Byzantine income tax regime with a dead simple x% addition to the cost of goods and services, I could probably get behind it. What the whole program will end up being, though, is a sales tax in addition to an income tax. I mean even if, despite all odds against, Republicans manage to implement a sales tax and eliminate the income tax, does anyone really believe that some future Congress wouldn’t come back to the income tax trough so that John Q. Taxpayer ends up getting hit with both a federal sales and income tax? In the absence of a Constitutional amendment declaring for all time that income taxes are abolished, I’m a hard “no” on a national sales tax.

He’s no Baron Baltimore…

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I like having divided government in Maryland. For the last eight years it restrained the Democrats who perennially control both the House of Delegates and the Senate from relentlessly raising taxes unchecked and launching new programs for every wild do-good idea that someone in PG or Montgomery County pitches to them. Those moderating tendencies are also what kept the whackjob MAGA wing of the Republican Party from taking over the state and installing a treason apologist in the governor’s office.

But here we are now with the Democratic Party controlling both houses of the General Assembly and the governor’s office. It feels like a sure bet that it’ll once again be the season to tax everything under the sun – up to and including the rain that falls upon our golden shores. Those revenues will inevitably flow towards the urbanized counties while western and southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore will be politely told to sit down, shut up, and keep our checkbooks out.

I agree with almost none of Wes Moore’s political philosophy. From taxation, to guns, to his “social justice” initiatives, our new governor will be carefully calibrated to hit all of the Democratic Party’s sweet spots. That’s a strong departure from former Governor Hogan, who regularly annoyed the extreme right wing of his own party while holding moderate policy positions across his tenure in office.

On his inauguration as 63rd Governor of Maryland (not inclusive of our great and illustrious proprietary and royal governors prior to 1776), I wish Mr. Moore joy of the day. I hope he leaves the state better when his term ends than it was when he found it… but I suspect what we’ll see is a growing tax burden, excessive and onerous legislation and regulation, and governmental policy designed more around making people feel good than achieving any objective real world goals.