The Great Bureaucrats of Your US Government (DOD)

As best one can tell, Nick Kristof is right in the NYTimes to praise the accomplishments of DOD and VA, in running a single-payer healthcare system, in doing child care, in running an education system, in being effective with only a 10 times difference in pay between private and 4 star general.   Steve Benen at Political Animal applauds and amplifies. What's complicated is: why?

Kristof suggests a sense of mission.  I'd say a sense of community. Political scientists have found less support for social welfare programs when the relevant population is more diverse; the more closely we identify with potential recipients of aid, the more willing we are to help. Compare the willingness to help the people of Tuscaloosa and Joplin with our non-help for disasters in Africa.

Why Pasture-Rearing Is More Costly

See the picture of the piglet at Musings of a Stonehead. I'm tempted to state a general law: the more control people can exert over nature, the cheaper the costs, but the bigger the danger when the system of control blows up.  There's tradeoffs in all cases.

House Ag Appropriations Action

While the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition often takes positions with which I have some problems, they seem almost always to do a good and detailed job of summarizing what's happening on the Hill.  Rather than resummarize what happened when the House passed the ag appropriations bill, see their summary. 

Just two things I'd mention: one is the obvious--this vote means little, the real action will be how the conference committee reconciles House and Senate bills (assuming there ever is one) particularly the paying Brazil $147 million for cotton program bit).  The other is the fact that the USDA building and facilities fund was raided for other purposes.  No one worries about how the bureaucrats are housed.

Bureaucrats: Ho Hum, the New Faces Leave

A reason federal bureaucrats in many agencies react with a certain reserve to the bright shiny new ideas of the bright shiny new bosses appointed by a bright shiny new President (I'm thinking of GWB, who did you I think I was thinking of ) is they know the boss won't be around long.  A couple years and gone.  See this Federal Computer Weekly piece on Vivek Kundra, the departing CIO.  (Also this piece from Ohmygov and this from OMBwatch)

[Updated:  see this Kelman post on the same subject:

Making major management reforms in government takes time. Ironically, one problem is that such reforms are often not partisan. That sounds good, but it means that when new political appointees rush to eliminate what the previous politicals have done, it just creates "flavor-of-the-month" cynicism among career employees and diminishes the willingness of the career folks to work on any management improvement initiatives politicals promote.

Though I didn't mention it in the previous blog, I remember my annoyance when the Bush folks arrived in 2001 that  within days they dismantled any mention or trace of the Clinton/Gore administration's "reinventing government" effort. It was, so to speak, bush league.]

Why Obama Desperately Wants to Win Reelection

His daughters, who will be teenagers (Obamafoodorama):
"I have men with guns that surround them often, and a great incentive for running for reelection is that it means they never get in the car with a boy who had a beer, and that's a pretty good thing,” President Obama said.

The Role of Rum in the Revolution

I've always been fascinated by a bit I ran across in a Lancaster county publication: British prisoners, I think from the battle of Saratoga were being kept or marched through Lancaster (for a while they were in a camp near York, PA, possibly guarded by men commanded by an ancestor of mine).  There was a dispute over how much their daily ration of rum should be, so much for the men, so much for the women, so much for the children.  Apparently it was accepted on all sides that rum was mother's milk for all.

Today Boston 1775 quotes a letter on another website written by a private at the start of the Battle of Bunker Hill. He says, as they were digging in: "We began to be almost beat out, being fatigued by our Labour, having no sleep the night before, very little to eat, no drink but rum..."

Not something Tea Partiers will tell you about the Revolution.

You Can't Choose Your Allies: John Yoo and Obama

Yoo attacks Boehner over War Powers Act.  As far as I can tell, both Obama and Boehner have flipped their positions, so Yoo is an exemplar of consistency.

How Come Japan's Life Expectancy Is So High When Fruits Are Expensive

Via Marginal Revolution, a Wall Street Journal piece on the $4000 Japanese watermelon, with mention in passing of their other pricey fruits.

Cynical Me Is Surprised: USDA People's Garden

I cynically said to myself that the USDA People's Garden was likely to be a one-short wonder.  Not so, it seems.  I will, however, go on record with this prediction: unless the spouse of the next Republican President is into gardening, it will not survive a change to a Republican administration.  You heard it here first.

Two-Faced Republicans

Ed Bruske at Grist has a piece on how the House Appropriations committee wants the USDA to change their school lunch guidelines (fruits and veggies, all the stuff kids don't like but the foodies do.)  But USDA says: No, the legislation passed last year rules and not the appropriations language.

Meanwhile, as I wrote yesterday, the House Ag committee wants to overrule what the House Appropriations committee did.

I call the Republicans two-faced, but that's wrong, or rather all sides are two-faced.  Everyone will take advantage of all the multiple choke points and bypasses provided by our system to advance their position and hinder the opposition.  It's "politics", or rather the way politics operates within our historic framework.