Big Government and Big Meat

JBS meatpacking plant in Green Bay, via Wisconsin Public Radio.

It's funny, and not uninteresting, to look at the Trump administration as if it were trying to prove that the conservative theories about Big Government are true—that it's inevitably inept, roughshod, deaf and blind to the realities of life on the ground, and probably corrupt.

But in the case of conservative "federalism" (the bizarre cult around the design of the US Constitution according which it was intended to preserve the autonomy of states against a powerful central government when, as a matter of well understood historical fact, it created a powerful central government to counterbalance the autonomy of the states under the failed Articles of Confederation), it's getting downright spooky.

I'm thinking in the first place about Trump's crusade on behalf of Big Meat, where our capitalism-loving president, so deeply unwilling to use his powers under the Defense Production Act to ensure essential medical supplies, has deployed them to protect our threatened pork, beef, and chicken industry after some plants have become the centers of Covid-19 outbreaks and shut down.

One reason they've shut down is the press, which has been reporting on appalling failure to deal with the pandemic:

Notes from the commentariat continued

Eli Valley's Passover cartoon (Gut yom tov!) featuring Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss.

Then there was Mr. Bret Stephens, complaining about how Big Government is stopping folks from feeding children ("Covid-19 and the Big Government Problem"):

Katie Wilson, a deputy under secretary at the Department of Agriculture in the Obama administration, is the executive director of the Urban School Food Alliance, a nonprofit that works with the country’s largest school districts to improve the quality of student nutrition. Her topmost concern is with the millions of poorer children and their families for whom school meals are essential to diets and budgets alike.

In this pandemic, she has a message for government bureaucrats in Washington and every state capital: Stop getting in the way.

Note how he makes the Urban School Food Alliance sound like some nice little private thing, "a nonprofit", as opposed to a nonprofit institution that is a pretty big slice of government in its own right, a confederation of (not "with") the nation's 12 largest school districts with an almost billion-dollar budget used to "leverage our purchasing power to continue to drive food quality up and costs down while incorporating sound environmental practices."

I polished up the handle so carefullee...

Updated

Incidentally, does anybody want to know why it is that the NSA can be collecting metadata on everybody's phone calls for the last seven years but when the Department of Justice wants the same information on 20 AP reporters over a two-month period they have to go to the AP with a warrant and ask for it?

H.M.S. Pinafore. Image from Leo Weekly, Louisville.

I imagine it's because they have a much better chance of getting what they want in a format they can use. Maybe the DOJ isn't even allowed to talk to NSA, but at least they probably just don't know how to, like FBI and CIA. And would rather not try, because they hate each other. Also, the NSA's information will turn out to be fantastically flawed.

Listen, every time you open up the GoogleBooks database you find an idiotic metadata mistake: like listing vol. 1567 of the US Congressional Edition, 1870, as being published in the year 1567, and the 1968 Handbook of Labor Statistics in 1600 (it's actually Bulletin no. 1600), so that if you do an n-gram search for the frequency of the word "expenditure" it shows these astonishing little leaps in the late 16th century, based entirely on bad coding. That's not the NSA, that's Google. Do you seriously think 10,000 government servants working in conditions of absolute secrecy can't do a worse job than Google, in all its glory?

Because if you give a government agency a worthwhile task to do in the open, they can do great things—really!—but if it is stupid, wasteful, and done in secret, they're going to make it worse. This is an ineluctable rule of fat government, and it's why the war departments are always the worst-run institutions in a given country, because they are where the mission managers congregate to suck up after one another and plan their promotions, from polishing up that handle (on the Big Front Door) to "writing" a revised manual of counterinsurgency strategy.

Putting it coarsely: If our national security establishment ever manages to build itself a dick of what it regards as the requisite size, will it be able to avoid stepping on it? I think not.

Image via HLN TV.

Update September 29:

The NSA is indeed not allowed to share data with FBI, CIA, or the National Counterterrorism Center. The proof is that they did it, apparently by mistake, allowing 250 analysts access to it between 2006 and 2009 when "the problem had been fixed". From a story of September 11 (!) at International Business Times.

How stupid do I think you are?

Svaneke Harbor, Bornholm, Denmark. Phil Degginger, Mira.

This is Mr. Haven Pell, retired naval officer and investment banker, and doubtless a dab hand at tying a bow tie. Apparently between the 19th hole and cocktail hour back at the old hovel, he finds time to maintain a blog called LibertyPell, maybe while dressing for dinner. It's his trophy career.

Late last February he predicted that the dread sequester was not likely to end up pooping anybody's party, given that the federal government already has far more money than it really knows what to do with from its ridiculously persistent taxation of the Pells and the Havenses and all their in-laws and fraternity brothers and dance partners and bridge companions, and offered the following as a way of keeping tabs on the issue:

As a public service, here are 10 questions you can ask to anyone who suggests plagues of locusts or frogs because of the sequester.

1.  How many White House staff personnel will be furloughed?
2.  How many Congressional staff personnel will be furloughed?
3.  If a departmental budget reverts to the level of 2007 or 2008 (when that level of spending was presumably satisfactory) is that a problem?
4.  Is anything useful found in any part of a budget other than the top line?
5.  Has any elected official given up even one of his earmarks?
6.  If you had to bet your own personal funds on the threatened outcome actually happening, would you do so?
7.  Are you telling the truth or is it time to bring back Congressman Joe “you lie” Wilson of South Carolina who shouted those words at the President?
8.  Would you be willing to tender your resignation if your statements about the effects of sequestration proved to be hyped or indeed false?
9.  If this tiny percentage is so important, why don’t we spend that and cut all the rest?
10.  How stupid do you think we are?

Whatever the actual impact of this political silliness, be assured those whose job it was to avoid it will feel it least.

So, hm?

1. So far 480 staffers at OMB, plus slowed hiring and refilling of vacant positions, with more pay cuts and furloughs possible.  President Obama has given himself a five percent pay cut. All 60,000 employees at Customs and Border Services have received furlough notices, almost all 47,000 of the Federal Aviation Administration's personnel will be on furlough one or two days per pay period, 20,000 federal court employees will be furloughed for 16 days, 4,700 employees of the Labor Department will be furloughed between April and September, 20,500 NASA contractors may lose their jobs, and so on. For a detailed idea of how ongoing cuts affect every aspect of government work see the list of 100 prepared by Sam Stein and Amanda Terkel for Huffington Post (via Ed Kilgore).

2. With the exception, of course, of the Congress. With the sure instinct that has made them the least popular institution since the disbanding of the International Brotherhood of Public Executioners, they exempted themselves. As a matter of fact they were required to, by law. But they are going to lose staff and support, they just aren't talking about it. That's because Congress is run by Republicans who say that the sequester is no big deal.

3. The levels of spending were not satisfactory in 2007 and 2008, unless you were in war propaganda. They were already staggering under a decade of ruthless cuts, first to balance the budget (Clinton), then to unbalance it beyond anyone's wildest dreams (Bush). Does that answer your question?

4. Yes. That is why they consist of more than one line. Did you say you used to work as an investment banker?

5. Earmarks were banned two years ago. (Now they have something else which may be considerably worse, but I've made the point I wanted to make.)

6. Ooh, shall we say $10,000?

7. It is never time to bring back ex-Congressman Wilson, if you've been brought up properly.

8. Are you sure you used to work as an investment banker?

9. Huh? How about we do that with your tax bill? Since you're so desperate to hold on to that additional 4.6% on income over $450,000, which I'm sure you're out there creating jobs with, why don't you just keep it and let the government take the rest of your income in exchange?

10. Explain how question 9 is supposed to work and we'll talk.

Seal Harbor, Maine, Greg A. Hartford.

Another first: Flamed!

Government boobs? Yay! From Europe: An interdisciplinary approach, an educational website created by students at the Universiteit Utrecht

In a giant step forward for the Rectification of Names, I have just received my first angry wingnut comment, from someone offended by my rudeness back in December on the subject of Dr. Ron Paul:

A, rather, mediocre smear attempt at honorable Dr.Paul. I guess, you would prefer to live in a police state, as long as you can suck on a big government tit.

As you can see by that flurry of commas, like a sudden flight of grouse (he also signs himself "Daniel.", with a period), [jump]

Ectomorphic government

Also from NPR this morning, an example germane to the spurious debate of big government vs. small government and what makes it spurious, in a report (only the sound file, no text, available online so far) on the MSHA report on the 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine disaster. As the radio report (from Howard Berkes) makes clear, the agency report makes it clear that the agency shares reponsibility in a major way for the disaster with the company that ran the mine, but the agency never actually says it. That is, they knew all about the mine's problems with ventilation and gas buildup and danger of explosions well in advance of the explosion that killed 29 people, but they didn't succeed in doing anything about it. This is a case of government that is neither too big nor too little but too fat (apologies to anybody who feels that this line of metaphor is prejudicial to the plump, but I really need it). MSHA was clearly big enough, but it wasn't effective: