Halfway There

If you think March Madness does not seep into the nation's Federal Office Buildings, you're wrong. While I of course do not know of any office pools that exist, much less would I ever be part of one as they are of course unethical, I could probably talk to someone who could talk to a "guy" who may be able to send you in the right direction. Basically, I have the scores on auto-refresh going on in the background, and peeked in the minority office at the TV as often as I could. If I were in an office pool, I'd be doing okay. Actually, on the bracket I filled out on facebook.com, I only have two wrong so far (Stanford, yeah, that was stupid of me (but so were 10 other picks I got right); and Creighton, Nevada got lucky in over time).

In the office today I attended a meeting set up by the National Pork Producers Council, which featured representatives from the whole supply chain. The panel included producers, Tyson foods, Walmart, a lobbying firm for grocery stores, a university professor and some of the board members of the NPPC. They talked about how Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling (MCOOL, and Voluntary COOL is VCOOL) would affect retailers, and explained that the fish industry has showed us that there is no added value for the consumers, and an average of $9,000 cost per store to implement MCOOL (with virtually no return). It was a really interesting debate, especially because the Chairman is one of the few Representatives on the Agriculture Committee to come out and support MCOOL (although he has voted for only VCOOL in the past).

Then Gabe and I went out to lunch to talk about our progress in the internship with our intern Coordinator, and to talk about how he got to where he is, and his advice for upcoming college graduates. It was really interesting information, and amazing how much the pay scale (and time dedicated to the job) jumps in just a 10 year span from a ridiculous $22,000 to close to $100,000. Once at that $100,000 level, jobs in the public sector (in the D.C. area) pay two or three times that because all those contacts you have made in your years on the hill stay the same as all your contacts take similar jobs with different firms. It's no wonder this is one of the most expensive housing markets in the country.

It's raining and 35 degrees with a chance of snow. Not sure what I'm up to for this weekend, but you can bet it will involve many hours in front of a television watching basketball. Today also marks the halfway point in my internship, I couldn't imagine being here for only 3 months in the summer, I feel like I have so much more to see and do.