Tuesday, March 24, 2015

The Expansion of the Bureaucracy

I remember when a hurricane hit Guam, I think it was, and two WDC employees were sent out to help the Hawaii office administer the provisions of the disaster program (late 80's maybe).  One of the big problems they had was the fact that land was communally owned, or at least that's how I remember it.  In rhe continental US we take our land tenure system for granted, at least we whites do.  The periphery still has remnants of other systems, the Spanish system in NM, perhaps the French in LA, the native American on some reservations.

Anyhow, my mind wanders.  The trigger for this post is this post, on an attempt to get an FSA employee assigned to Saipan, out of the Guam office. (Not clear what CNMI stands for--Micronesia probably.) It's the logic of a bureaucracy: institute a program with universalist parameters and it will get applied everywhere possible.

[Update: CNMI is on the mvariety.com site: "Marianas Variety"]

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