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Don Moynihan

29 Dec, 7 tweets, 3 min read

Russ Vought, Director of Office of Management and Budget, is the most quietly destructive and reactionary Trump appointee you have never heard of. washingtonpost.com/politics/biden…

https://twitter.com/donmoyn/status/1333538172345724930?s=20

Apart from refusing to co-operate with the transition, what else has Vought done? He OK'd Trump's withholding of Ukraine aid, despite his own career lawyers telling him it was illegal, leading to the impeachment process.

https://twitter.com/donmoyn/status/1333538172345724930?s=20

Maybe because he didn't like how OMB staffers would not go along with his illegal Ukraine actions, Vought designated 88% of OMB career staff to be reclassified as political appointees, meaning he can fire them. govexec.com/management/202…

https://twitter.com/donmoyn/status/1342180107826429952?s=20

Vought is suspending performance reporting and strategic planning for no real reason, throwing a little more sand in the gears of the incoming Biden administration

https://twitter.com/donmoyn/status/1342180107826429952?s=20

Vought pushed another Trump culture war goal: eliminating "critical race theory" in employee training. The result has been to create a chilling effect on any discussion of race in training of not just federal workers, but also contractors and universities. npr.org/2020/09/05/910…

None of this is all that surprising: Vought's career is not in budgeting or management, but as a conservative activist. Rather than defend the institutional integrity of OMB, he has pursued a mix of GOP culture war items, Trump corruption, and McConnell-style obstruction.

Fun fact: Sanders called out Vought in his confirmation hearing as being an ideologue for saying Muslims "stand condemned." Sanders then got accused of, you guessed it, anti-Christian bigotry. But Sanders has been proven right. theatlantic.com/politics/archi…

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More from @donmoyn

Don Moynihan

@donmoyn

29 Dec

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1343898714780397568

Mentioned in the article but I think the implementation problems - delays, broken websites, frustrations - with federal UI shaped how it was seen. Policy implementation is a key part of policy feedback.

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1343898714780397568

The importance of implementation is also key to the his point about Social Security expansion. Social Security was piecemeal in terms of eligibility initially but it was because it was well-run and popular that Congress supported later expansions.

You can extend this point to the rollout of ACA. It was initially unpopular because of ideological attacks but also the system didn’t work. With time, problems were fixed, but the point is we probably underestimate how much user experience shapes views about new policies.

Read 4 tweets

Don Moynihan

@donmoyn

29 Dec

Russia's official reporting: 55K Covid deaths
Russian statistics agency: Actually, its more like 186K deaths
amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec…

How did Russia keep the death statistics so low? By only accepting autopsies that defined COVID as the primary cause of death. This is, of course, what Trump and his supporters have proposed - excluding COVID deaths where comorbidities are involved. cnn.com/2020/10/30/pol…

The problem with undercounting COVID deaths is that at some point people notice that a lot more people are dying, and that still needs to be accounted for, which is what the Russian statistics agency did.

Read 5 tweets

Don Moynihan

@donmoyn

28 Dec

Quick thoughts on automation as a means to reduce #administrativeburden in public services. Automation using administrative data can make life easier for most, but those with eligibility characteristics not captured in admin data must apply manually. Creates a two-track system.

This paper examines provision of child benefits in Norway, which automate awards to those whose eligibility can be confirmed via administrative data (or what is sometimes called registry data in Europe). Great example of value of descriptive analysis. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Some observations:
*few systems can be fully automated, meaning there will be a need for manual application processes even if a govt wants to go toward automation
*this creates a source of inequality of treatment, even if most people are better off

Read 12 tweets

Don Moynihan

@donmoyn

27 Dec

@IFNAlphaMale

This may be the saddest thing ever seen on twitter: Scott Walker cropped a picture of a pizza he had in October 2019 and RTd it as "Great Pizza tonight"
(H/t @IFNAlphaMale)

Many people are commenting on the pizza itself, but it is important to remember that Scott Walker is not exactly a pizza aficionado here

https://twitter.com/scottwalker/status/868992971919773696?lang=en

If Walker ever invites you over for a bite to eat, you should say no.
For many reasons.
But chiefly because you will probably catch food poisoning from his positioning various (unseasoned) meats and veggies with different cooking times on the same skewer.

https://twitter.com/scottwalker/status/868992971919773696?lang=en

Read 6 tweets

Don Moynihan

@donmoyn

27 Dec

There is an actual field of sociogenomics, but its just not doing enough race-IQ studies for these guys.

FWIW here is a debunking of much of Murray's long-term project of connecting race and IQ by people who work in genetics.
vox.com/the-big-idea/2…

More on Kirkegaard here. rationalwiki.org/wiki/Emil_Kirk… whose work connecting IQ and race has been rebuffed by people who study sociogenomics google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j…. His highest degree, a BA, is from Aarhus University, who described him thusly:

Read 4 tweets