Conference Rooms and Potted Plants

Reading the Steven Rattner book on the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies/bailouts.  As he used to be a reporter, it's a well written narrative, and I'm enjoying it.  I gather it was his first experience on the inside of a governmental bureaucracy, and he has a sharp eye for how it operates. A couple of the bureaucratic touches:

• "potted plants", which is the internal name for the people who stand behind the President as he's giving comments or making an announcement.  Rattner mourns one occasion where he and his aides didn't even make that status, being pre-empted by assorted cabinet secretaries.
• conference rooms.  Early on his group had a problem locating a conference room within the Treasury Department to hold a meeting in.  He says, or implies, there were a number of such rooms in the building, but each room was the property of a different agency within the department, so identifying a free one was difficult.  If I remember this used to be the case in USDA, but somewhere towards the end of my tenure there someone at the departmental level at least created a consolidated list for secretaries to work from, if not a single person in charge of scheduling.  Such things are an example of why the first priority of any ad hoc group leader should be to grab an experienced, top-flight secretary.

The Blinkered Conservative

Scott at Powerline has a post attacking Obama's foreign policy in regard to nuclear weapons, and other issues.

Based on my recent reading about Reagan's negotiations with the Soviets, I don't think Reagan would have much problem with Obama's view, particularly his: "...I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons..."  That's precisely what the Ronald the Great wanted.

The Filibuster 35 Years Ago

Just finished slogging through Jimmy Carter's Presidential diary book. 10 years ago I might not have used "slog", but my interest in political history is waning a bit.  Towards the end of the book, in 1979, he comments in passing that Sen. Jake Garn, Republican of Utah, threatened to filibuster any legislation to permit registering women for the draft (Carter was pushing a stand-by draft registration, which eventually passed in a male-only form).  To the best of my memory that was the only mention of a filibuster in the book; there's no entry for "filibuster" in the index. 

Carter does have a complaint about his appointments being confirmed slowly.  There was a big expansion of the federal judiciary during his term, so he had 150 new vacancies to fill.  He mentions coordinating with Senators and being frustrated by their resistance to appointments of blacks and women.

Simple Solutions to the TSA Scanner Policy

I've two simple suggestions (alternatives) to offer for TSA to adopt.  They should either require passengers to go through their scanners, or through the pat-down process, or do one of the following:

• allow up to 5 percent of the passengers on a flight to go without scanning or pat-downs, provided they wear a bright yellow vest with a big question mark on it from the boarding gate, through the time they're on the plane, until they get off.  That way their fellow passengers can keep an eagle eye on them, ready to jump them if they make a suspicious move.
• allow a person to board a flight unscanned if they buy flight insurance indemnifying the airline against loss of plane and passengers against loss of life in case of a terrorist attack.  We've pretty much guarded against planes being taken over in flight to be used as weapons, so the big danger now is simply the downing of a plane. 

How Time Flies

"Twenty years ago this month, Tim Berners-Lee published his proposal for the World Wide Web."

I can't believe that.  

Pigford II Passes Senate

As reported by the Post here.  Also includes money to settle the long lasting lawsuit over BIA's handling of Indian trust funds.  I must say, given the way ASCS/FSA and BIA pass information on payments for land owned by BIA Indians, I've never been surprised at how screwed up the accounts got.  Some historian will write an interesting book on the subject because it's a place where Native American society and the market-oriented, individualistic society of the European settlers interfaces, interfaces poorly.

The Unmentionable in France

Dirk Beauregarde provides more information than some will want, on excretion in France and the UK.  Among the items:

"70% of French workers consider their toilets in the workplace « unfit for use », though 30% still use them – presumably out of necessity.
In French schools a staggering 68,3% of kids never use the loos, either for lack of paper or lack of soap."

Dairy Management Answers Back

The Post carries a letter today from the chief executive of Dairy Management, defending their position.  One point he affirms, which I thought I got from the AMS website but which wasn't clear, is:

"The Post objects that the program wastes "government authority" by being administered by the Agriculture Department. But even here, dairy farmers actually pay USDA for all its costs of administering the program. It costs taxpayers nothing, which is as it should be."

 Of course, the tobacco program ran into a public buzzsaw, which resulted in a "no net cost" program.  But that never inhibited tobacco's critics from blasting the government for "subsidizing tobacco".  Similarly, I fully expect the food movement to blast the government for subsidizing obesity by promoting cheese.

Transparency--Taking My Own Medicine

I've stated my opinion that government websites ought always to have a link to a page which would give the metrics on readership/usage, etc.  I just visited the blogger.com layout site in order to add an interactive poll to the site (I'm inspired by Ann Althouse, who is using polls regularly, albeit in her posts, not the the blog layout.)  When I did, I found blogger offers a gadget to show pageviews, so for consistency sake I felt impelled to add it to my blog. I did cheat a bit by putting it low down on the right hand column, so you'll have to scroll to get the figures, in case anyone is interested.

What Will Happen to Farm Programs?

Somehow Congress has to fund the government for the rest of the 2011 fiscal year.  The new Congress will have to appropriate money for the 2012 fiscal year.  And sometime there will be a new farm bill.  So there's lots of unknowns and I thought I'd try out offering a poll where any reader can predict the future.  The poll is in the right hand column, below the "My Blog List".  It's a little complicated--you should choose one or more program categories ("basic programs, like DFC/counter cyclical; conservation, etc.) and the amount by which they'll be cut.  My own prediction is for relatively small cuts in almost all categories.