Farmers Markets Are Not Simple

See this post.

The study identified five preference-based consumer segments: market enthusiasts, recreational shoppers, serious shoppers, low-involved shoppers, and basic shoppers -- each with significantly different demographics and behavior characteristics. 

The Reality of Government

Those of us who have wasted too much of our time attending to how the government works know the reality often differs from what's reported in any media. Via Orin Kerr at Volokh Conspiracy, here's a piece on how federal judges are appointed. Similar processes are at work for other appointees.

Nationalism at Work

The National Archives has a post daily which shows a document from their archives keyed to that day's historical events.  Today they disgrace themselves by their nationalism:

John Glenn conducted the first manned space orbit of the earth on February 20, 1962. This is the transcription of his in-flight communication with Mission Control in Florida.
Read more at Our Documents

Or maybe just their youth. Yuri Gagarin was, of course, the first man to orbit the earth; Glenn was the first American into space. [Corrected--my memory is poor, Alan Shepard was the first American into space, Glenn was the first American to orbit the earth. (Remember the fireflies in "The Right Stuff"?]

Those Tunnels in the White House Garden

The make-shift tunnel in our community garden is down--whether the owner took it down before the snow or whether it was damaged by the Dec or Feb snows I don't know.  I wonder how the White House tunnels have held up under the weight of the snow.

The End of the Most Surprising Post Today

From those dour lawyers at Volokh:
"But it is in fact theoretically possible that there will be three vacancies at the Supreme Court this summer."

Pigford Agreement

See here for the text of the statement from USDA and Justice.  I'm not clear how the process will work, whether it differs from the prior one. Congress still needs to appropriate $1.15 billion in addition to the $100 million already done.

All It Takes to Achieve Efficiency: Leadership?

From Federal Computer Weekly:

"When the Office of Management and Budget issued Bulletin 96-02 in October 1995, the number of data centers was believed to be about 200. The OMB directive ordered all federal agencies to close, consolidate, modernize and/or outsource their data centers to increase efficiency and reduce costs. "Industry experience suggests operational savings of between 30 percent and 50 percent from consolidation when compared with unconsolidated operations," then-Budget Director Alice Rivlin wrote.
Fifteen years later, the number of data centers stands at about 1,100, according to OMB."

People should remember such episodes when they focus on what the President can and can't do.

Back When Being a Millionaire Meant Something

From the 1930 blog:

"A record 511 people reported income over $1M in 1928; 26 reported income over $5M, with 11 of those in NY State."

Compare that to this, from Business Week (Bloomberg):

"The 400 highest-earning U.S. households reported an average of $345 million in income in 2007, up 31 percent from a year earlier, IRS statistics show."

So the incomes of the rich have multiplied many times since 1930.  (I won't give a multiple because the figures are apples and oranges.)

Looking Down the Road and Maneuvering--Rep. Peterson

From FarmPolicy: “Peterson said he is opposed to the Obama administration’s plans to cut $8 billion from crop insurance expenditures over the next 10 years, in part because he wants to preserve as high a baseline for agriculture as possible for the next farm bill or reconciliation negotiation."

Tom Ricks and the Right Metrics

I like Tom Ricks' blog, the Best Defense, even though I'm a natural-born civilian whose military career is 42+ years in the past.  He's included some discussion on various metrics useful in war (no, body count which was used in Vietnam is not useful), including stuff from Mr. Kilcullen which seems perceptive.

But this post focuses on how metrics should be used.  I think some of the observations would work for metrics used to measure bureaucracies.  I believe James Q Wilson observed that government bureaucracies often occur because their outputs aren't measurable; the idea being that if the output is measurable it could be sold in a market.  That's one reason why the various proposals for paying bureaucrats for performance are difficult.  It's also why it can be hard to motivate a bureaucrat. Job satisfaction comes from feeling you're accomplishing something, that you can see the results.