Mark Thoma Reminds Us Of The State Of The Labor Market

We have a lot of headline activity every time the "unemployment rate" goes up or down. But what matters much more is the overall percentage of working age population that is employed. Here is that picture, and the ratio is going down.

Then there is the issue of wages and salaries. As Jim Hightower observes, "It isn't about jobs. Slaves had jobs!"

The Difficult Is Done At Once; The Impossible Takes A Bit Longer

Some say it was the US Army Corps of Engineers during World War II who adopted the slogan, "the difficult is done at once - the impossible takes a bit longer."

I can't vouch for that, but I can testify that the slogan accurately expresses the attitude of those who went off to that war.

No task is truly impossible.

My father's outfit, the 27th Air Depot Group, was set down in the jungle outside of Port Moresby, New Guinea, with a few bulldozers and a dismantled sawmill. That was in December, 1942. They built their own hangers, barracks, roads, runways, washing machines, and anything else they needed. At the end of the supply line, they dismantled damaged aircraft for spare parts and rebuilt, redesigned and improved the aircraft in their custody.

In October and November of 1943, they mounted sustained air attacks on the main Japanese base at Rabaul. Operation Cartwheel, it was called.

The original goal was to capture the base at Rabaul. By August, the concept changed into a plan to neutralize and bypass Rabaul. By the end of November, General Kenney's 5th Air Force operating from New Guinea and Admiral Halsey's aircraft carriers had neutralized Japanese air forces out of Rabaul.

Life Is Short But Art Is Long

Thomas Jefferson Scott, artist, architect and designer, was fond of quoting Hippocrates' observation that life is short but art is long. Our lives are richer because Tom Scott shared both his life and his art with us.

Tom's friends and family gathered last Sunday at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, to celebrate that life and share reminiscences of a life well lived.

It was a joyful time.

Here is a link to his obituary, printed earlier this year in the Baltimore Sun.

Liz and I were honored to be his friends.

Seventy Years Ago: November 14, 1943

November 14, 1943  

In a freak accident, President Roosevelt, Generals Marshall and Arnold, Admirals Leahy and King, plus scores of distinguished politicians, and army, naval and air force strategists came under fire while traveling to the the Tehran Conference on board the battleship Iowa. While running a torpedo drill, the US destroyer William D. Porter was targeting the Iowa's #2 magazine, a live torpedo was ejected and headed for the battleship. After maneuvering, the torpedo detonated 1200 feet aft of Iowa in her wake turbulence. When the incident was concluded, Air Force General Hap Arnold leaned over to Fleet Commander Admiral King and asked, "Tell me Ernest, does this happen often in your Navy?"

Oriental Town Board Meeting November 13, 2013

I attended last night's meeting of Oriental's Town Board.

I'm not quite sure why I keep going. Possibly because I believe in democracy and think everyone should take part. Possibly because I remain puzzled about why so little of importance gets done, why so much of the activity is expended on trivialities and so little on planning for the future.

You can learn a bit by reading Town Dock's account:

"Oriental’s Town Board met last night. Among other things, the Board okayed, in a 4-1 vote, the lettering for a Town Hall dedication plaque that will list the Town Board members and the Town Manager at the time of the renovation. Cost: upwards of $875 (on top of the $160 spent on an earlier rendition the Board rejected.) Commissioner Larry Summers said after the meeting that he voted against it because “I don’t believe in self-aggrandizement.” He said it was also, “quite a bit of money.”

"Earlier in the meeting, the Board put off spending money on 20 chairs for the public to sit on the Town Hall meeting room. Some commissioners said they thought the price too high. The chairs, from Staples, were listed as $54 apiece.

"It was also stated at the meeting that the dock the Town got in the Chris Fulcher land swap cannot be extended now — it’s not CAMA that decides if it can be made longer, as first thought. Turns out it’s up to the Corps of Engineers, whose review is seen as a more onerous process. The dock will stop at 80 feet. The town’s already spent $12,000 to have planks laid and other modifications."

But that's not all. The board held a public hearing on an amendment to the GMO "for clarification," the mayor explained. Balderdash! The purpose of the amendment was to "get" one of our citizens. This was never clearly explained, but one of the commissioners let slip the true objective.

A good question to ask at one of these hearings about an amendment is: "what is the problem to which this is the solution?"

We should be about fixing the town's figurative and literal potholes, and not pursuing personal vendettas.

Is that too much to ask? Maybe it is.

America's Eleven Nations: A Map

In an earlier post, I made reference to Colin Woodard's article analyzing his breakdown of the eleven nations into which he sees America divided. I might quibble with some of his analysis, but on the whole it seems close to the mark. How would I know? I have lived in and have family connections to ten of Woodard's eleven nations. What's missing? Only New Netherlands. Even there, I have ancestors who immigrated to New Amsterdam about 1628. My wife's ancestors immigrated to Nouvelle France about the same time. And our grandsons are native Americans.

So we have seen it all, up close and personal.

Seventy Years Ago: November 12, 1943 - USS Iowa (BB-61)

November 12, 1943, President Roosevelt and his senior advisers traveled on the President's yacht Potomac to the Norfolk area to board USS Iowa (BB-61). Destination: Teheran. Purpose: strategic meeting of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin.

Security measures were elaborate. See the description here.

Iowa was fitted out with a bathtub in the Captain's quarters for the president's comfort. It remains aboard to this day.

This was not a peacetime cruise - German submarines and aircraft still menaced the seas.

USS Iowa - our newest, best armored and most powerful battleship, was the safest platform available for the president.

One Nation, Indivisible? Not Exactly

I wasn't pleased with the results of last Tuesday's municipal election in Oriental. That makes three elections in a row that I found disappointing, but I am not discouraged. My adult life has been spent defending democracy, and I still believe in it. But the older I get, the more I understand Winston Churchill's remark that democracy is the worst system of government, except for all the others that have ever been tried.

We need to remember, though, that our form of democracy is not the only possible form.

Can we get better (more democratic) results with a little tweaking, or do we need more fundamental restructuring? Maybe not.

Last week, I received in the mail my copy of the Fall, 2013 alumni magazine from Tufts University. It included an article by a 1991 graduate, Colin Woodard, entitled "Up in Arms." "The battle lines of today's debates over gun control, stand-your-ground laws, and other violence-related issues," the heading declared, "were drawn centuries ago by America's early settlers."

Woodard looks at all of North America, dividing it into eleven identifiable nations: Yankeedom, New Netherlands, The Midlands, Tidewater, Greater Appalachia, Deep South, El Norte, The Left Coast, The Far West, New France, and First Nation. The Washington Post asks, "which of the11 American nations do you live in" and includes a link to the article. It is well worth reading. Building on the work of historian David Hackett Fisher, whose seminal work of cultural history, Albion's Seed, calls attention to four original migrations from the British Isles, Woodard also cites later work by the social psychologist Nisbett, Robert Baller of the University of Iowa, Pauline Grosjean of Australia and others.

The most interesting feature of Woodard's article is a map depicting, county by county, the location of each of the eleven dominant "nations" today. It turns out that I have lived in eight of the eleven nations.

How does this play out in American political life?

Since 1990, I have followed the work of the Times-Mirror Center, now the Pew Research Center for The People and The Press. Following each presidential election for the past twenty-two years, the Center has surveyed the public for opinions on public policy. Each survey results in a "political typology," breaking down the population into anywhere from nine to eleven clusters of opinion.

The most recent typology, published here, breaks the population down into ten groupings. None is likely to correspond to First Nation, but I find it interesting that the number of the Pew Center's clusters is so close to the number of "nations" in Woodard's article. It would be very interesting to see a county by county breakdown of the Pew Center's typology.