It's easy to mock the frenzied baby-naming efforts described in Alex Williams's "Baby Names That Shout Out …"; the books, the naming consultants, the spreadsheets with categories for government trend data, celebrity naming fads and cultural nuances.
Those crashes – along with other incidents, such as the US state department's problem with Blackwater's trigger-happy contractors in Iraq – are the bitter fruit of the biggest and least-understood government trend of the moment: turning traditional government functions, including soldiering and intelligence, over to private contractors.
That last result ties in with an anti-government trend that runs through answers to the poll.
The new pro-government trend is evident in one of television's most popular series, "The West Wing," about a decent and liberal president who serves as a sort of father figure to his staff members.
And, by transforming how services are provided to the public, the e-government trend can offset the employment losses with productivity gains.
Much of the variation in government spending trends can be attributed to military spending.
The Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan agency that analyzes the government's trends in taxes and spending, estimates that making last year's tax cuts permanent will reduce federal revenues by nearly $200 billion a year by 2012.
Government reform trends moved toward increasing administrative efficiency and accountability, meeting national economic needs through improved technological education, improving the articulation of system parts, opening the school to the community, and correcting inequalities, through both curricular and organizational provisions.
Still, "if current government spending trends continue, $8.5 billion in the 2020s and 2030s could pay for two to five years of state spending, hardly a long-term solution.
A key element of UNICEF's equity refocus strategy is closely monitoring government expenditure trends.
