Bureaucracies Across the World

The World Bank blog has a post on a survey of bureaucracies, 5 points, remembering these aren't US bureaucrats but those the World Bank deals with:

1. Bureaucrats aren't old.
2. Older bureaucracies aren't massive
3. Bureaucracies aren't overwhelmingly male
4. Bureaucrats aren't undereducated
5. Bureaucrats aren't underpaid

More on Dutch Ag

The World Bank blog has a post on agriculture in the Netherlands, noting various factors in their success.  Some takeaways:

• very intensive agriculture with high investment, not small farms
• apparently the Dutch are strong on co-operatives.  It's not clear whether these are farmer-owned, as we used to have in the US. 
• the agriculture is "sustainable" if not organic.

Is VA a Marxist Plot?

Yes, according to this Post piece, which credits a WWI vet named Robert Marx for pushing veteran benefits (along with others).

Gerrymandering

"When all the votes are counted, in other words, the result will be either a very narrow GOP majority, a very narrow Democratic majority, or a tied legislature — despite the fact that Democratic candidates outperformed Republicans by about 9.4 percentage points.ThinkProgress calculated this figure using unofficial vote counts published by the Virginia Department of Elections — the final numbers will change slightly as provisional ballots are counted and as some ballots are recounted. You can check our work here."

From Think Progress

Why Vertical Farms Fail

Having disdained the idea of vertical farming (particularly its misbegotten sibling--vertical farming using sunlight, not electricity), I want to note this piece: Nine Reasons Why Vertical Farms Fail. 
 Hattip David Roberts at Vox.

One of the nuggets there: "avoid scissors lifts".  

Don't Tick Off the Farmers: NAFTA

Politico has an article on ag organizations concerns over the Trump's administrations NAFTA renegotiation trade strategy.  I've thought in the past that the drop in commodity prices over the last few years, a big drop from their peaks around 2012, played a role in switching votes from Obama to Trump.  If ag fears come true, will be another headwind for Republicans in 2018.

FSA SED's

At least the Trump administration is doing better with women in appointing State executive directors for FSA (I count seven out of 50 in this list) than with new US Attorneys (one of 27 in this tweet)

10 of 14 Women

Dems took 14 seats (open or held by Reps) in House of Delegates yesterday: 10 of the new delegates are women, 2 of whom are Latina.

Updating Gun Check Databases

Vox has a piece on the Air Force's failure to update the federal gun check database with the data on the domestic violence conviction of the shooter at Sutherland Springs.

Proposals to strengthen the system are welcome.  I wonder though, whether the responsibility should be on the Air Force or on ATF or FBI (whoever runs the database).  The problem with our distributed system of government is all the silos and all the interfaces we need.  My general rule is that you need to put responsibility on those motivated to do it right.  In other words, it makes no difference to some AF bureaucrat whether she gets information into a Fed database--she's not going to act on it nor will any AF person act on it.  It does make a difference to the Fed bureaucrat, so she is more motivated to get things right.

VA Election

Polls seemed busy when we voted around 3 pm, busy but no waiting line.  Fingers crossed for good result.