Organic Growth in Bricks and Mortar

Organic Valley, an organic cooperative, is expanding its headquarters.  Hype is easy, bricks and mortar are hard.

Government Shutdowns--Memories of the Last One

Bloggers and others are starting to pay attention to the possibility that, with the Republicans winning the House and maybe the Senate in November, the next step would be a government shutdown based on a fight between the Reps and the President over budget issues.

I was still working during the shutdowns when Clinton and Gingrich faced off, riding a vanpool in from Reston. As it turned out, the pool included a mixture.  Some people always went to work.  My memory is vague, but I think one guy worked for a section of the Agricultural Marketing Service which was funded by fees, so the lack of appropriations bills had no impact on him.  Then there were several different appropriations bills being considered under different time schedules.  I think Justice got funded pretty quickly; Newt decided that cutting off funds for prisons and law enforcement wasn't good politics and I think one of our riders worked for DOJ. The rest of the pool came back to work in a couple of phases, USDA was deemed more essential than some other people (maybe Interior). 

Shutting down the government always makes for interesting theater and politics.

Bureaucracy and Innovation

Watched Tora Tora Tora the other night from Netflix.  It's a reminder of the problems of bureaucracy and innovation.

For bureaucracy, although Naval Intelligence had broken the Japanese diplomatic code, which led Gen. Marshall to send a telegram to all Pacific posts, the military communications link to Hawaii was out, not having been upgraded to be as reliable as commercial telegraphy, so the telegram went commercial, which delayed receipt.

For innovation, the problems in establishing the standard operating procedures for the new radar installation and its supporting communications and analysis structure.  It's easier to innovate than to integrate the new into the existing structures.

Burning the Pope in Effigy

Some of my ancestors came from Ulster, where lives the Orange Order.  One of the tenets of the Orange Order was an unremitting fight against Popery. So this post in Religion in American History, recalling a little-known order of General Washington, condemning the burning of the Pope in effigy, was interesting to me. (The context: early in the Revolution its leaders hoped to get Canada, i.e., Quebec, to join the rebellion.)

The Growth of Government

Calculated Risk provides graphs which show exactly how greatly government has expanded since 1976, as expressed in terms of employment as a percent of total employment. This is partial followon to a post at Econbrowser. (I'll give the commenters who expressed disbelief one valid point: contractors are excluded from the statistics.

Hollywood and Title Inflation

One of the things people like Paul Light find is the inflation of bureaucratic titles in DC.  Secretary Gates has promised to cut the number of Deputy Assistant Secretaries in DOD.  Wife and I saw The American (we like George Clooney and Italian scenery) today.  I was amused to see a number of credits along the lines of "second second assistant director".

We Don't Know Him

Ruth Marcus has an op-ed commenting on Haley Barbour's comments on Obama, the one where he said: we know the least about him of any President.  She correctly says: the point is, we don't know anyone like Obama.  I'd expand that--he doesn't fit into familiar narratives. For past Presidents, we have a handy label/narrative we can apply:  GWBush, frat boy cheerleader; Clinton, fat boy band leader with alcoholic stepfather; GWHBush, WASP aristo; Reagan, frat boy with alcoholic father; Carter, engineer nerd peanut farmer; etc. etc

We recognize these stereotypes/narratives don't represent the whole man; they're unfair. But I suspect partisans on both sides would agree there's a key element of truth in them.  They give us a handle on the reality.  With Obama the anti people are reacting as I did with Reagan (my person label for him was the "senior idiot"). 

Food Price Trends

Matt Yglesias comments on a David Leonhardt article on housing costs; Leonhardt sees the issue as whether housing is a luxury or a utility.  If the former, then prices might rise; if the latter, prices will track other necessities.It's an interesting article which has also attracted comments from other bloggers.  One in particular was saying "housing" combined houses and land, and most of the appreciation was in land.  {UPdated: Kevin Drum comments.  One thing I haven't seen discussed is the increase in square footage for  housing over the period.]

But all that is a side issue to me, because there's an associated graph of the proportion of household income by category over the last  80 years.  Basically clothing and food had their peaks in 1947 or so, with a consistent decline in each to the present (a bit steeper for food than clothing).  Meanwhile health care costs have been rising steadily since 1947.  The changes in both food and health care are astonishing.

OMB Watch Reports on Obama Naked Government

They give a mixed rating for the first 9 months. 

A Bureaucrat to be Complimented

The head of the National Archives and Records Administration acknowledges his agency ranked lowest in employee satisfaction, in a press release. You can't fix a problem if you don't recognize it.