Ethanol and the Economy

Corn ethanol production was subsidized $7 billion in 2006. That was about $1.45 per gallon of ethanol. Since it sold for around $0.38 more than the equivalent amount of gasoline, where did the other $1.07 go? To the farmers, ethanol producers and distributors, of course. ADM got drunk on it. ADM made a ton of money on it, for no good reason other than their ability to get Congress to create such a lucrative Ethanol subsidy in the first place back in 2003.

Corn is already, by far, the most subsidized grain in America. Yet Congress’ mandate to increase ethanol production (from corn, specifically) to 8 billion gallons by 2012 is showing nothing but ugly unintended consequences:

• It is costing us taxpayers plenty because of the ever-increasing subsidy;
• It is chewing up 20% of the available corn crop, causing demand to outstrip supply and increasing prices across the board for animal feed stocks, sweeteners and virtually everything else made from corn which we, as consumers, are paying for.
• It is doing virtually nothing to reduce the cost of gasoline
• It has done virtually nothing to reduce our dependency on foreign oil.

I am an advocate of ethanol production. However, I am not at all in favor of paying for it twice, which is what is happening.

Once again, Congress has provided a handout which has quickly become an entitlement. They will struggle to turn off that money spigot, even when it’s open far too wide to ever rationally justify.

The Kearney Report

Buffalo Pundit beat me to writing about Sunday’s New York Times’ article on the stagnating New York economy. His article was followed up by several good comments about the Kearney report, on which the Times’ article was based (some might argue loosely).

AT Kearney was tasked with identifying and prioritizing the reasons why the New York State economy has basically sucked for the past 30 years. The reasons they cited:

• Too much taxation and regulation. New York could shed $35 billion in taxes and fees – $1,800 for every person in the state – and would end up only at the national average.
• No cohesive, statewide plan for economic development.
• New York government profits from, not with, businesses.
• A growing dichotomy between Downstate (the “haves”) and Upstate (the “have-nots”).
• Ineffective political leadership.
• Poorly-planned and miserably failing economic initiatives. Empire Zones were singled out for extra special derision, although the newly-formed Centers of Excellence were not immune from serious criticism, either.
• An Empire State Development Commission that is so non-credible that the State legislature does not generally trust it to control the management of economic development programs.

We have a lot of work to do. Re-electing the same politicians year after year is not the way to start.

China’s One-Child Policy

I wanted to write about how China’s one-child policy will be a death knell for that society.  I wanted to say that this is a typical Communist takeover of a fundamental right and how it is causing discord and internal strife.  However, it’s not working out the way I thought it would.  In fact, it’s currently working out pretty well. 

Some of it has to do with the fact that before China even implemented the policy in 1979 China had already begun to reduce its birth rate, from over 5 to under 3 children per couple.  The trend toward smaller families follows that of other developed Asian countries.

The policy itself is a little misnamed.  There are enough exceptions to the policy such the official fertility rate today is around 1.7 children per couple.  In the long run, China’s population will eventually fall.  Assuming that the birth rate remains constant, China’s population will peak at 1.5 billion around 2030 and then start to decrease.  Contrast this with India, whose fertility rate of 2.8 pretty much guarantees that it will soon become the world’s most populous nation.  Where are they going to put all those people?

There are some unintended consequences to the one-child policy, however.  In some areas the male to female ratio is skyrocketing as female babies are either selectively aborted before birth or die shortly after birth at a much greater rate than male babies.  This is a genuine concern for the Chinese government as it will eventually encourage more sex trafficking and prostitution, with the resulting associated health and crime problems.

Then there’s the 4:2:1 problem:  A couple simultaneously caring for a single child and four elderly parents.  70% of the elderly rely on their children for support, and there is no government-provided safety net.

All in all, the one-child policy will cause a demographic shift to a more middle-aged society similar to other developed Asian countries like Japan and Singapore.  And while it may be difficult for China to control its population exactly the way it wants to, for a country that is running out of arable land the solution it chose seems to be more or less equitable, and practiced by most of its citizens.

Google’s Complete Waste of Time

Google Image Labeler is an interesting way to pretty much completely waste some time.  If you’re quick-witted and a fast typist, it’s also a great way to compete against an anonymous competitor to see who’s faster and quicker.

For two minutes you get to label as many images as you can with terms that describe each image.  When you and your partner match descriptions, Google automatically moves you to the next image.  You get points every time you match.  (Those points and a couple of dollars will get you a cup of coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts).

I played for about 10 minutes this evening.  I can definitely see this becoming an interesting diversion – one for which I have no time, and nothing to gain from playing this game (0ther than it being a diversion).

However, it’s certainly a great social engineering experiment.  Google does not ask for personal information like age, gender or education level; but wouldn’t it be fascinating to correlate the image and matched keywords against any defining personal characteristics?  That’s got to be on Google’s agenda.  Coming up with ways to computerize the labeling of images certainly is.

Google Image Labeler should be banned from 9 to 5.  This could be a real time waster during working hours.

The Left Bank

The Left Bank, on Rhode Island Street in Buffalo, is a phenomenal restaurant.  My wife and I struggled to select just one meal from the menu, which means we’ll be going back to try others that looked just as sumptuous.  Even though I thought that the Left Bank refers to a particular section of Paris, the food was mostly Italian with lots of other European/Continental fixings.

Portions are huge – way too much – but at least we got to take the leftovers home.  I had mine for lunch today.

Don’t go there if you’re looking for a hamburger.  Go there if you want food that challenges the pallette.

Five stars.

To My Wife on Our Anniversary

I would be remiss if I did not tell the world that today is our 23^rd wedding anniversary.  Even though half of all U.S. marriages end in divorce, most of those occur within the first eight years of marriage.  After that, marriage relationships become pretty stable.  I’m not sure if that’s because of familiarity, comfort, kids or just plain laziness, but I don’t really care.  I love you and I know that it would be a much more difficult life without you.

So I’m sticking around for as long as you’ll have me.

Honey, thank you for putting up with me all these years.

All My Love,

BBD

When Bush Speaks…

George Bush often makes provocative statements, not very convincing anymore to most Americans but it probably helps rally his conservative base. One unintended consequence is that his words are often construed worldwide as cynical, imperial and militaristic. Occasionally I catch a quote from him that could easily have been said by the other side, his enemy du jour.

Wasn’t it just last August that Iran’s President Ahmadinejad stated “I have authorized our military commanders in Iran to confront Washington’s murderous activities”? No, it wasn’t. It was actually President Bush who said “I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran’s murderous activities” but with just a slight change of wording, it could have been just as provocative a comment made by Iran’s President. And boy, would we Americans have been pissed. I wonder what the Iranians think when they hear a statement like that coming from our President. I’ll betcha they get pissed. I’m sure such statements are welcomed by President Ahmadinejad; they work so well to rally his base.

Another quote from President Bush: “While there are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone – because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place. By its past and present actions, by its technological capabilities, by the merciless nature of its regime, Iraq is unique.” Change Iraq to U.S. and out pops a statement that will have a large portion of the world nodding its collective head in agreement.

October 7^th, 2002, President Bush and his pre-war speech about Saddam Hussein: This same tyrant has tried to dominate the Middle East, has invaded and brutally occupied a small neighbor, has struck other nations without warning, and holds an unrelenting hostility toward the United States. Today, President Ahmadinejad speaks of exactly the same threats of hostility toward Iran – by that brutal invader and occupier, the United States.

It is not surprising that both Iran and North Korea intensified their uranium enrichment efforts given the incendiary words that the President preached in their direction.

It is not surprising that China, Russia and even Venezuela are stepping in to provide aid and trust wherever the U.S. has left a vacuum in those departments.

It is not surprising that by the President’s choice of words alone, the U.S. is seen by many not as a purveyor of freedom, but as a cynical bully whose only real interests lie in the Middle East oil fields.

Sparks on Kindling

Black students congregating under the white students’ tree.  Nooses hung on said tree.  It is recommended that white students get expelled but instead get an in-school suspension.  Black students stage a protest (allegedly peaceful), police break it up.  Numerous fights between whites and blacks occur.  District Attorney J. Reed Walters issues his now-famous statement “I can end your lives with the stroke of a pen.”  White student pulls a gun on a black student, who wrestles the gun away from him; black student charged with theft.  White student attacks black students for going to a white party, and gets probation.  Black students attack white student and get charged with attempted murder.

In the meantime, someone sets the school on fire.

Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton both show up.  Thousands march on the town.  On the 6:30 news a bunch of black people talk about how racism is still prevalent today and a bunch of white people talk about how Jena, Louisiana is not a racist town.

My, we’re a touchy bunch, aren’t we?

The Guardian sees this as an everyday story in America, apart from the nooses.  I see it as sparks on kindling.

Follow the Leader

Who led the Buffalo area when it was at its greatest? Mayors like Charles Bishop, Edgar Jewett and Conrad Diehl, that’s who. I never heard of them, but they were the mayors at the turn of the 19^th century when Buffalo was home to the largest number of millionaires per capita, so they must have been doing something right. Call this the age of the politicians.

Then came the immigrants, steel manufacturing and lifelong jobs. The early 1900s was also known for the rise of the great churches, strong ethnic neighborhoods, and community strength. Call this the age of the diocese.

The political leadership that followed the wane of the Catholic Church’s influence in the 1950s did not provide the moral and ethical strength that the Church could, and ever since we have been living through a period of weak and ineffective leaders. They’ve given us a legacy of patronage jobs and little else.

So who will come and save us? Where can we find great leadership today? Whom can we trust? Maybe the University at Buffalo?

The UB 2020 plan calls for 10,000 more students, hundreds more faculty and a cool $80 million additional community revenue from just the students alone. UB also plans to get a much bigger share of federal and state research dollars to pump up what they call a knowledge-based economy. But that’s not why we’ll rely on them for community leadership.

We’ll rely on them because they’ll be the big gorilla. I look forward to the day when the University has so much clout that politicians, business leaders and the community at large will get behind it out of the fear of being left behind.

We have been a rather timid collective society led, poorly at times, for 8 generations. We will welcome our new overlord with open arms. And I think the University will succeed in taking us a heckuva lot further than any of our elected officials have taken us in God knows how many years.

The Demands of the Enterprise

I’ve been out of town, on business, for the past several days.

As a partner in a persistently lean small business there is little room to take on new initiatives, so when they happen I’m generally called upon to fit them into an already over-filled schedule.  I have learned that this is pretty normal for many, if not most, small businesses.

What I found out this week is that it’s also true of big businesses.  I met with officers and representatives from a number of large upstate companies this week, and they are all overworked, overscheduled and just plain tired.  You could see it in everyone’s eyes, and it was only Monday.  We ate dinner yesterday commiserating over beer and wine about the hours we spend on relentless demands from our jobs.  All agreed that for most company managers the 40-hour work week is out of reach – way out of reach.

Lean manufacturing practices, the profit demands put upon a company by its shareholders, and a dismal upstate economy conspire to force elimination of any slop in corporate structure; but the work once performed by many still needs to be done by the remaining few.  As a result one can expect that the abnormal weeks will require superhuman efforts.

This week, last week and the week before that were all abnormal for me.

The excitement of involvement in entrepreneurial business is tempered by the relentlessness of its demands.  The work never, ever stops.

The Un-Information Age

This is interesting short read.

In an article entitled Online User-Driven News Gives Mainstream Media A Run the writer refers to Internet news-based articles as being “more diverse, yet also more fragmented and transitory than that of the mainstream news media.” 

The question before the reader is whether or not this is good or bad, and the last argument in the report claims that it accelerates the dumbing-down of news.  I liked the article’s last quote in particular:  “The people formerly known as the audience may turn out to be the people formerly known as informed.“

I think the phenomenon of dumbing down actually has more to do with the availability of entertainment alternatives than with traditional media versus Internet.  Not so long ago the news was the only thing on at 6.  If you didn’t like watching the news then one of the few alternatives you had was reading about it.  News had a virtual monopoly in the early evening.

Then came cable, channel dilution and a slip in the ratings.  With greater entertainment choice for every pair of eyeballs, newspapers and other news media began to lose popularity as well; and the slide into obscurity really accelerated when the Internet opened up myriad ways to capture one’s attention.

Today, the ratio of traditional news sources to other information sources is probably the lowest it’s ever been, and that is bound to continue.  Traditional sources will fight back by becoming more like the titillating media sites that drew their audience away in the first place.  The ever-growing Internet, with millions of choices, will only accelerate the trend.

So, say goodbye to the traditional news media – they are circling the drain.  In particular, say goodbye to in-depth reporting and hello the 30-second rundown.  Dumbing-down also means that the competition for the attention-grabbing sound bite will increase dramatically.

And since it grabs your attention, I’ll argue that cursing on the news will soon be everywhere and commonplace.

 

Fears and Doubts

I fear that American society will continue to degrade as individuals isolate themselves by the convenience of high-tech; so I will encourage everyone to participate in as many social activities as possible.

I doubt that the United States will regain the global respect it has lost since the Iraq war; but I am still proud to be an American.

I fear that the United States will never regain the global respect it had before the Iraq war; so I encourage everyone to be good U.S. ambassadors.

I doubt that I will be remembered 60 years from now; yet I’m okay with that.

I fear that what I am able to give to my children is less than what my parents were able to give to me; so I continue to work as hard as I can, for them.

I doubt that I will accomplish half of what I want to accomplish; but I will keep trying anyway.

I fear that I won’t remember my wife’s name on my deathbed; so I call her by name every single day.

I doubt that we are alone in the universe; and I hope I’m alive when we make contact.

I fear that my belief in God is all for naught; but I will pray to Him anyway.

That Other Casino – The Buffalo Bills

Throughout the 70s, 80s and half of the 90s I was a rabid Bills fan. Then something happened. I started working at one of the stadium’s many concession stands as a volunteer for my church, and actually went to the stadium every home game.

In the process I grew older, and perhaps, less interested in the physicality of football because I could more easily appreciate what the body blows from 300-pound linemen were doing to other players. I could more easily sense the aches that will never go away for guys not out of their twenties.

Perhaps it was because I got tired of serving food to crude, impatient, rowdy, overweight and often drunk fans. Or perhaps it was the quality of the product – the dearth of winning seasons and less than exciting football – that did it.

Whatever the reason, I lost interest in the Bills and football in general. I came to the realization that the Bills organization has been, and continues to be, just another Casino – a locale where a middle class that can barely afford a mortgage gives away a few C-notes at a time to millionaires who care relatively little about the community that’s making them wealthy.

If the Bills were owned by the Seneca Nation instead of Ralph Wilson would we be protesting their presence as much as we protested the Casino’s? Are the people who objected to the construction of the Casino the same ones who pay $25 just for the privilege of parking at the Ralph? Does anyone else see this game as an obsession similar to a slot machine addiction?

Like the Casino, I do not believe that the Bills are a good investment. The community at large does not seem to get an effective return on the money spent. Buffalo Bills goodwill certainly has value, but I suspect that many, many other organizations – like Goodwill! – can provide much more of it, much more efficiently. Paying million-dollar salaries to players who will likely return only a tiny fraction of that in goodwill does not make good sense under any economic circumstances, much less so in an economically depressed community.

Yet we continue to throw tons of private and public money at the team and meanwhile, our schools and our infrastructure continue to rot away. We should be working ourselves into a lather about them. Instead the average Joe is more concerned about the team’s lease agreement than how to raise our SAT scores.

As a community we’ve got this really warped sense of priority. We have deluded ourselves into living this fantasy world every Fall Sunday rather than doing much about the reality we live in the rest of the week.

Typical Day

7:00 Have a first-time meeting with someone with whom I have one degree of separation at least 3 different ways. Only in Buffalo would this happen. (Buffalo is not a small town; it’s a closet).

8:00 Take a couple hours to participate in meeting number two, which has to do with WNY but nothing to do with my job

10:30 Get back to work and start in on the morning work load

10:40 Leave for a 10:45 client meeting that I forgot to write down on my calendar

1:30 Get back from client meeting and start in on the morning work load

2:00 Meet with fellow employee who needs to complain about another employee (one more HR issue to defuse)

3:00 Meet with a potential client that my Sales manager set up at the last minute

4:00 Leave for a 4:30 appointment that I will most likely miss because it will take me 45 minutes to get there

5:05 Start in on my morning work load.

Screw it. It’s Friday. I’ll try once again to catch up over the weekend.

Weeks like this make me question whether or not entrepreneurial ventures are worth all the aggravation.

Down the Slippery Slope

Great Britain is going to allow experimentation with human-animal embryonic hybrids.  Ethicists, religious groups and others will be all over this.  Get ready for some very public condemnation from key U.S. politicians and other public figures.

From the article:  “It does seem a little abhorrent at first analysis,” said Newcastle University’s Doctor Lyle Armstrong, who helped to create the world’s first cloned human embryo in 2005.  “But you have to understand we are using very, very little information from the cow in order to do this reprogramming idea.  It’s not our intention to create any bizarre cow-human hybrid, we want to use those cells to understand how to make human stem cells better.”

So, as long as they use just a little tiny bit of cow, we can justify making human-embryo hybrids.  However, this being a slippery slope, I suspect the definition of tiny tomorrow will become different than the definition of tiny today.

The creation of human-animal hybrids, in a sense, has been going on for some time.  A male fertility test called the Hamster-Oocyte Penetration Test (HOPT) is used to determine if human sperm have egg penetrating ability by mixing them with specially-processed hamster ova.  Because of the processing involved a viable hybrid probably (supposedly) cannot ever result.

But there it is.  In a few short years we’ve progressed from human-hamster fertilization tests to human-cow fertilization tests.  Eventually, perhaps in my lifetime, we may see some bizarre quasi-human life forms that result from even more “progress” in this field of research.  The rapidity by which we progress, I think, will depend on whether or not there’s profit to be made from the results.

 

Leaving Our Children Behind

I had the chance to listen to a rebroadcast of author Susan Eaton’s discussion of her book The Children in Room E4, a look at the attempts of one teacher’s making a difference in the Hartford public school system.  The book itself has taken some critical hits, most notably on its attempt to portray the city’s Sheff v. O’Neill civil suit as something akin to Brown v. Board of Education.

The discussion of the book was not nearly as interesting as Eaton’s contention that the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, so vigorously pursued by the Bush Administration and overwhelmingly ratified by Congress, was based on a sham called “The Texas Miracle”.  In 2002 the Houston Independent School District, under then-superintendent Rod Paige, reported that its education policies had reduced the public school dropout rate to practically zero.  In reality the data was faked.  Robert Kimball, a former assistant principal who blew the whistle on the fraud, went so far as to claim that the miracle was choreographed  to make Presidential candidate George W. Bush look better during his run for the White House.  Paige later became Secretary of Education under Bush.

The jury’s still out as to whether or not NCLB has been successful, although the scientific evidence indicates that it probably isn’t having much effect.  What is known is that the Bush Administration and Congress have failed to adequately fund the testing requirements set forth by the law itself.  The budget was cut by $12 billion in 2006 alone.

The NCLB’s intention to force better education through testing has been criticized as a test and punish law, not a school improvement law.  This article points out numerous faults with the law, not the least of which is that the U.S. cannot test its way to better schools.  The article, I’m sure, is written by teachers, for teachers. 

Nonetheless, from an Administration that gave us a song and dance about the Iraqis welcoming us with open arms, I was hoping that something so important to our collective future as education would not be the subject of similar rhetoric and faked data.  It appears that nothing is sacred to this Administration.

Except perhaps embryonic stem cells.

You Know You’re Busy…

…when you fret about having only a four-day work week.
…when you can’t answer this morning’s email until after dinner.
…when you have to turn down offers for a free lunch because it will take too long to get there and back.
…when you can’t get a break to run to the bathroom between meetings.

I have lost the Balance again, and need to find it in a hurry.

Brain on Holiday

This is my brain.

And this is my brain on holiday.

I am accomplishing nothing today, yet with the amount of work I have waiting for me at my job tomorrow I have no idea how it’s going to get crammed into the short week.

Leadership at the Highest Levels

There has recently been a string of high-level resignations from the Bush Administration, in such rapid succession that it must appear that George Bush’s ship is sinking fast.

It got me curious about how this Administration fares against the Clinton Administration. Granted, Clinton had 8 full years as President versus Bush’s 6 ½ years, but both Administrations have had their share of controversies, spinning and subsequent media attacks.

Both Administrations lost significant staff, and often those resignations – especially at Cabinet-level positions, occurred more than once over the course of the President’s tenure.

Both Administrations suffered scandalous or controversial resignations – Bush has had a few more at the higher levels than Clinton and both used their Presidential pardoning power (Deutch and Libby, respectively) to spare them from prosecution or jail time.

The number of resignations indicates that the average tenure of these high-ranking officials is short, typically only a few years. Which begs the question: How the hell is any continuity maintained at this level of government?

Maybe that’s yet another reason why the current Administration has trouble turning rhetoric into action.

High-Level Resignations

Position	Clinton Administration	Bush Administration
Attorney General		John Ashcroft Alberto Gonzales
Deputy Attorney General		Paul McNulty
Associate Attorney General		William Mercer
CIA Director	James Woolsey John Deutch	George Tenet Porter Goss
Secretary of Defense	Lee Aspin William Perry	Donald Rumsfeld
Joint Chiefs of Staff	Colin Powell John Shalikashvili	Henry Shelton Richard Meyers Peter Pace
Secretary of State	Warren Christopher	Colin Powell
Deputy Secretary of State		Richard Armitage Randall Tobias
Secretary of Treasurer	Lloyd Bentsen Robert Rubin	Paul O’Neill John Snow
Secretary of Commerce	William M. Daley Mickey Kantor	Donald Evans
Secretary of Veterans Affairs	Jesse Brown	Anthony Principi Jim Nicholson
Secretary of Labor	Robert Reich
Secretary of Agriculture	Mike Espy	Anne Veneman
Secretary of Education		Rod Paige
Secretary of Housing	Henry Cisneros	Mel Martinez
Secretary of Transportation	Federico Pena	Norm Mineta
Secretary of the Interior		Gale Norton
Secretary of Energy	Hazel O’Leary	Spencer Abraham
Secretary of Homeland Security	<did not exist>	Tom Ridge
Secretary of Health & Human Services		Tommy Thompson
Chief of Staff	Mack McLarty Leon Panetta Erskine Bowles	Andrew Card
Vice President Chief of Staff		Lewis Libby
EPA Administrator		Christie Whitman Michael Leavitt
Deputy EPA Administrator		Linda Fischer
U.S. Treasurer		Rosario Marin
Director OMB	Alice Rivlin Franklin Raines	Mitch Daniels Rob Portman
White House Press Secretary	Dee Dee Meyers Mike McCurry	Air Fleischer Scott McClellan Tony Snow
Senior Politcal Advisor	Dick Morris	Karl Rove Sara Taylor
Communications Director	George Stephanopoulous	Nicolle Wallace
White House Counselor		Dan Bartlett
White House Budget Director		Rob Portman
White House Counsel		Harriet Miers
White House Director of Strategic Initiatives		Pete Wehner
White House Deputy National Security Advisor		J.D. Crouch
White House Liaison Justice Department		Monica Goodling
Army Secretary	Robert Walker	Joseph Westphal Thomas White Les Brownlee Francis Harvey
U.N. Ambassador	Madeline Albright Bill Richardson	John Negreponte John Danforth John Bolton

 

Restricting Volunteer Help During Disasters

This is one of those Let’s Shoot Ourselves in the Foot articles.

The Federal Government (wait for it…FEMA) is establishing new rules and tightening others regarding access to disaster areas, in order to “get professionals on scene quicker and keep untrained volunteers from making tough work more difficult.”  Critics argue that it’s just a way for the government to restrict finger-pointing at its own incompetence.  The new rules include establishing a first responder ID card that indicates the responder is certified.  That’ll keep them volunteer varmints away!

This AP article tries to present both sides succinctly, using the World Trade Center and Katrina disasters as examples. 

And what good examples they are, of both government officials and professionals completely overwhelmed by the enormity of the disasters.  Yet the government wants to restrict the amount of support they get in the first days of a disaster?  They argue that there are cases where volunteers just get in the way.

The Federal Government should take note:  Several years ago Oregon put together a very short checklist for state officials to follow in the face of a disaster.  This easy-to-read paper embraces the idea of assigning an official to act as volunteer coordinator and assigning a staging area so that volunteers could be assigned roles in a coordinated manner.  It is a simple, straightforward and logical way to make sure that disaster recover professionals and volunteers are working together smoothly.  Florida, too, has an active volunteer program that stresses coordination and training, but doesn’t appear to turn people away when hurricanes hit.  I suspect that most states have programs that run counter to FEMA’s intended direction.

Rather than creating yet another ID card (how many days after a disaster will that take to implement?), perhaps the Feds could follow Oregon’s lead and create an official Volunteer Coordinator position, whose sole job would be to synchronize volunteer activities with the heads of the disaster recover teams.  I bet the Red Cross and other agencies would jump at supporting this.

I used to think that the Government embraced the harmonization of government and citizen involvement.  Of late I’ve come to believe that it’s Them against Us.