Notable Bureaucrats: Jager and Lauter

Harald Jager and Gerald Lauter deserve places in the bureaucrats hall of fame.  Their roles are described in The Collapse by Mary Elise Sarotte, the book I blogged about yesterday , on the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Jager has a bit of fame, sufficient to rate a wikipedia page.  He was the lieutenant colonel in charge at a major Berlin crossing, who ultimately made the decision to open the gates and let East Berliners cross to the other side without facing rifle fire.

Lauter doesn't get that much fame, but arguably was the more important player. He was the second level bureaucrat who led a group of 4 bureaucrats from different agencies which produced the directive on a changed policy on travel to the West.  As Sarotte tells it, he didn't think much of the policy memo he was given to implement, so the group wrote a new one, including two important provisions: the new policy to take effect immediately and to include Berlin.  He wasn't a good bureaucrat, because there was a big omission--travelers needed to obtain a visa before traveling. (The policy types really wanted only to allow permanent emigration of selected individuals but Lauter believed that wouldn't work.)

So Lauter writes the directive, a PR type holds a news conference and answers questions by reading the directive, the media reasonably interprets the directive and answers as announcing free travel to the West, East Berliners gather at the crossing points, Jager is faced with a decision of using force or opening the crossing and his superiors are no help. He finally makes the right decision.

Why do I consider them candidates for a hall of fame: both deviated from mindless obedience to orders from above, resulting in gains for freedom and human rights.  And both found themselves in situations which other bureaucrats can sympathize with: stupid policy decisions from management (Lauter) and failure by superiorss to provide helpful and reasonable decisions, leaving the bureaucrat on a limb.

I do recommend the book.  The epilogue draws some conclusions  with which I agree--both on the fall of the wall and the general sense in which history happens, accident and luck, individuals and not plans often rule.

Bureaucrats and MLKing: the Collapse

Reading "The Collapse", a very good narrative description of the events leading up to the demise of the Berlin Wall.  Having lived through that time and followed it in the media, even though it predated Internet news, I came to the book with good background.

I was surprised to be reminded by the role M.L.King played in the demonstrations leading up to the fall; East Germans knew and were impressed by his example and followed it in their own actions.

The political decision making and the bureaucracy to implement the decisions was notably defective. A change in leadership, the need to clear decisions with the Soviet Union, the aftermath of a long holiday, the miscoordination of two parallel bureaucracies (the regular bureaucracy and the Communist Party), all made for a dysfunctional system, even worse than our system today.

Presidential Management and Sidney Blumenthal

Some styles of presidential management:

Eisenhower, very structured, staffed, bureaucratic.

Carter, less structured, very micro-managed,

FDR, intentionally unstructured, free-flowing.

Back when I was in college, Ike was dismissed as too old and dated.  FDR was defended for intentionally creating conflict in his administration, and making effective use of Eleanor to  gain information from outside formal channels. (Carter was running the peanut operation.)  The idea, the historians and political scientists said, was to ensure that issues were forced upwards and onto his desk for decision.  (By contrast Ike used his Cabinet extensively, leading to the criticism that he never saw significant issues.)

With the release of Hillary Clinton's emails, her long-time friend and supporter Sidney Blumenthal has come to prominence again.  He sent many emails to her, and was involved in business initiatives in Libya etc. Clinton's defended his input as part of an effort to get outside the "bubble" which can surround and entrap Washington politicians/government executives.   Since she's just a little younger than I, she may be channeling the same sort of professorial wisdom as I received back in the day.  What I don't know is whether the professoriate has updated their ideas in the last 50 years.  I know Ike's reputation has risen, so maybe the answer is "yes"?

"Maggots Don't Lie"

An all-time great line, from an episode of "Waking the Dead".

The speaker is the forensic scientist, played by Tara Fitzgerald.

A quick google reveals this is what Gene Weingarten of the Post calls a "googlenaught"--something which returns no hits, though there is the meme that "bugs don't lie".

Precision Ag/Internet of Farm Things

Technology REview has a post on the Internet of Farm Things, noting the sensors on field equipment, the use of drones, the release of historical data (soil surveys), etc. and the involvement of big corporations.

"Combining information like localized weather forecasts with details about topography, water levels in the soil, and the seed that has been planted in a field, a company like Climate Corporation will advise farmers about how much fertilizer, an expensive item, to put on a field and when to do so."

There's speculation it will help farmers make a profit. I suspect the real impact will be a further lengthening of the tail--younger, bigger, more aggressive farmers will become bigger (though with a higher risk of failing) while older, smaller, less aggressive farmers don't.  In other words, the history of farming ever since the invention of hoes and seeds.

Forgetting Emotion: David Brooks

David Brooks has a column today reflecting on the decisions to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq and drawing some lessons.

IMHO he misses two basic issues: confirmation bias, which led us to select data which fed into our preconceptions (i.e., because Afghanistan went well in 2001, it would go well for decades into the future and Iraq would go as well); and emotion, which clouded our judgment after 9/11 in many ways.

Office of Advocacy and Outreach

How effective can the office be if their latest event, at least as recorded on their webpage, is April 2014?

That's a bit cynical, because it's very common to run into webpages which are stale, or dead, where the initial enthusiasm for the Internet has evaporated like the head on an hour-old beer.

What USDA Does--Back to the Beginning

One of the early functions of what eventually became USDA was the gathering and publishing of data, both production and sales data.  Based purely on anecdotal data, one of the big benefits of cellphones in some areas of Africa and India is that suddenly farmers can find out what markets are doing.

In this context USDA touts their new service for grass-fed lambs and goats, reflecting their rising popularity.  I assume the popularity has several causes: a growing market from the immigration of people whose native cuisine features lamb and/or goat meat and rising interest among the foodies in such gras-fed meat plus the fact that lambs and goats fit a small farmer's operation much better than beef or pork.

Best College Food?

Business Insider has a list of the colleges with the best food.  My alma mater comes in 9th, but my wife's comes in 2nd.  Via Marginal REvolution.

Back in the day I worked in one of the dorms--I don't think the co-eds thought we had great food then. But then, college costs have gone up a bit since 1959.

Word of the Day: Decerebrated

James Fallows has declared jihad against the "boiled frog" anecdote, the idea that if you turn up the heat slowly, a frog sitting in a pot of water on a stove will not jump out.

Turns out the original experiment a couple centuries ago had the frog either decapitated or "decrerebrated", i.e. the brain removed or brain function destroyed.

Now who do we know who seems to have been decerebrated?