Peanut butter Chocolate Chess Pie

Start with a Basic Whole Wheat Crust and partially prebake, then look up the Deluxe Chocolate Chess Pie from Ken's excellent book. Use four whole eggs instead of separating one of them b/c little proto-pie makers make it tough to justify the mess and time to separate yolks.  To the melting chocolate, add 2tbsp unsalted peanut butter (the kind you have to stir).

Bake as instructed.  

Resistance on two fronts

Passivity is key to a "managed democracy" (credit to On The Media for introducing me to the term).  Protests and calls to legislators about moves to undermine good governance, legal protections and the United States' moral leadership are entirely appropriate forms of resistance to any move in that direction.

But there is another front where resistance will be key to the survival of the American experiment: polarization.  If we cannot agree on basic facts and assign deep moral opprobrium to others viewing their own interests differently than our own, then we may reach a point where we could not even sit down to eat pie together.

As satisfying as the language of combat and pugilism can be, they are ultimately counter productive.  To paraphrase David Brooks, the punchiest thing you can do to a Nazi may be to offer them pie.

Our political and entertainment professions are well aware of the progress made on these fronts and shamelessly exploit them to sell ads and ensure safe districts. The current administration's efforts to "flood the zone" with outrageous tweets, mendacious public statements, and a flurry of executive orders reflects a desire to completely own the cable news cycle, a commercial enterprise which depends on a passively watching audience that it must keep both affirmed and outraged.  Social media works along largely the same lines, but without the need to protect any reputation for objective credibility.

Long term, the greatest enemy of pie making is thus not any particular politician or party, but the increasingly thick bubbles in which they want us to live.  What follows are some thoughts about how to weaken our own bubbles and maintain or build the tools to pierce others'.

(1) PAY FOR YOUR NEWS.  If you're not the customer, you're the product.  Subscribe to a newspaper, join your local public radio station and donate to any current events or investigative organization/podcast that delivers relevant and verifiable information.  If their standards fall, angry emails from customers get attention.

(2) GET INVOLVED LOCALLY.  National elections and national offices get big audiences, but (a) they focus on somewhat abstract arguments about size/role of government and taxes or regulations that have at best an indirect impact on most people's lives, keeping discussions abstract and often emotional.  However, the operable levers of power are largely in the hands of state and local authorities.  Note that the big story of last week was about a state Attorney General's actions to derail the new administration's agenda.  Your state senator might not be as cool as mine, he has a blog named The Dixie Pig, but state houses are where most of the action happens that really affects your life.

(3) ASSUME GOOD FAITH: The most polarizing statements make the blanket assumption that voting for the other party renders that voter unfit for further conversation and possibly worthy of violence.  Lesser versions assume that the voter endorses, or even excuses, the worst qualities of their preference.  However, each voter's path to their decision is often interesting, and a considerable amount of nose-holding is likely to be involved.  Common ground, if it exists, will be found along that path if you can keep the conversation moving along it.

(4) THICKEN YOUR SKIN: Protective bubbles keep out ideas that challenge the beliefs that define our identities and leave us vulnerable to the idea that our bubbles themselves have merit.  This is not to say that there is no room for safe spaces in which to retreat, indeed the world's major religions explicitly require communal affirmations of belief at least weekly, but that's not a good place to live full time.  Most of us missed how bad things had become outside of metropolitan areas because we never went there, in no small part because it's much easier to just avoid people who will do and say things that are, to cosmopolitan city types, deplorable.  From the other side, who would speak to someone who's patriotically incorrect?

A good start would be to read and try to dissect the arguments in editorials on both the Huffington Post and Fox News.  If you can keep your heart rate under control and identify cases of valid inference, logical fallacies and base assumptions of each, that's a good start.  

It's not easy,  tho, and I don't recommend doing it alone or unfed.  Good thing you know someone who makes pies.

This week in pie making

Two weeks ago, it evoked a dark, ironic humor to see the Nobel laureate President make a case for war in Iraq while the governor of Texas appealed to our faith in public health authorities.  Now, not so much.

First, we learn that any underfunded health system is vulnerable to spread of Ebola, as the protocol for protection requires knowledge and diligence that are not hallmarks of the overworked.  The larger point, that a pluralistic society absolutely depends upon excellent sanitation and capacity for quarantine, shouldn't be missed.

BBC news on Tuesday carried several stories on the theme that states aren't able to solve problems that cross their borders.  The other problem, of course, is ISIS, which has made a name for itself by exploiting the weak governments and ethnic tensions in the middle east.  Now it's facing air strikes in both Iraq and Syria, but still manages to gain and hold territory and threatens to reignite sectarian violence for years to come.  parallels to the Spanish civil war seem apt.

A somewhat related development is that oil prices are falling fast, due to both a surge in fracking and falling demand as China cools and the US adopts a less energy intensive culture.  Your pie maker is writing this on bike-accessible public transit.

Speaking of, we're pleased to present two new features: this week's pie type and the status of your pie maker's bike chain.

Chain check: passed

Pie type: butternut squash

It's really hard to help people

The Washington Post has run a few stories recently about people receiving food assistance in the US.  The most recent is this Thanksgiving Day column.

Here at the Fuzzy Wups B^n, this is a topic of frequent and heartfelt discussion.  How can one claim to promote universal pie making without addressing the fact that the wealthiest country in the world has a sizable population of people who can't afford to buy their own food?  Like a good scientist, your pie maker would answer this with another question: What does it mean to address that fact?

Read the linked column.  Notice how many people on that list drove to pick up their donated food.  Notice the questions that implied some kind of right to expect a donated turkey for their own kitchens.  Notice the reference to "Condo Fees."  The people receiving this aid are most certainly not going to appear next to Sally Struthers, and are more likely to suffer from obesity than malnutrition in the classic sense. 

So how does one frame the policy question here?  What's the desired end state, what situations must be avoided, and how can we measure progress?  There are reams of papers on these questions and their implications for the design of everything from a community food drive to USAID's allocation of the surplus American wheat crop abroad.  This post, this blog and this pie maker's career could very well be spent diving in to this and deriving formulas to optimize the allocation of donated food, labor and money.  That, however, is a deeply impersonal approach and invites precisely the sort of callousness that lets us debate grandly while avoiding the fundamentally intractable problem at the heart of all of this: Why do the recipients need help, and why do we care?  Does the cause of the need impact our response to it?

Put aside any grand theory of social justice or personal responsibility for a moment.  Imagine that the aid recipient is not some faceless statistic or cameo in print.  That down-and-out was, is or someday will be a relative of yours. 

Odds are good that relative, we'll call him Uncle Bob, saw this situation coming.  Odds are even better that you, dear responsible reader, saw this situation coming, and probably even tried to warn Uncle Bob.  But Uncle Bob didn't change his ways, and now he's in pretty tough straights, and even though you're feeling pretty stretched by rising gas, food and rent prices Uncle Bob needs your help.  Denying Uncle Bob would, at the very least, hurt Aunt Bobbie and the Boblets physically and mean teaching any kids in the family that being good is not enough and family might not be there for you.  Heck, odds are good the "trouble" everyone saw coming was just Uncle Bob trying to do the right thing, at least from his perspective.  Most of us have an "Uncle Bob" somewhere in the family.

So you are stuck.  Do you cut off your uncle, let him suffer the fate he knowingly brought down on himself and his family?  Are you ready to explain to the kids who have to watch this fall that, as much as we all love Uncle Bob, he needs to learn his lesson like a grown up?  Even as we watch Uncle Bob and Aunt Bobbie begin to suffer stress and poor-nutrition related diseases?  No, blood is thicker than water, family comes first, and that boat/house/college fund/really nice oven purchase gets pushed back because letting Uncle Bob, Aunt Bobbie and the Boblets starve is just not an option. 

Now, how do we help Uncle Bob?  The "end state" is a self-funding, pie-making family, and the hard constraint is that Bob, Bobbie and the Boblets get 2000 Cal/day every day.  Everyone knows that Bob's not so good with money, so giving him cash is not going to solve this problem, and may be offensive besides.  Losing money is bad, losing dignity is much worse.

 First, Uncle Bob needs to accept the help.  The most dignity-preserving way to do this is to simply ring up the Bobses' groceries with your own, let them use an extra room in your house, and/or fill their cars with gasoline because (a) they are family and (b) they do stuff around the house and run the odd errand for you (not as much as you'd do with the kitchen you'd planned to extend into that bedroom . . . but who really needs to have a bigger Thanksgiving meal when family is so close!  All the time!  Because they can't keep their own house!  Yay family!).  What this approach says to Uncle Bob is that you're just helping him out through a rough spot, freeing up his time and money to put towards more pressing needs. 

Let's unpack that that last sentence.  If feeding and housing Bobbie and the Boblets is not Uncle Bob's highest priority, if "getting back on his feet" means returning to the situation two years ago when things weren't acutely bad but clearly getting worse, then the situation evokes a sense of moral outrage and hopeless frustration.  If the law, not family ties, compelled you to help Bob, you'd understand, and maybe join or even lead a local TEA Party group.  Your funds, your house and possibly your kid's education being sacrificed to pay for someone's very bad decisions, however well meaning, is galling.  Is Uncle Bob's dignity really worth so much? 

If plan A was to provide for physical needs directly via in-person support, what's Plan B if Uncle Bob moves away and still needs assistance?  This is much trickier.  We know Uncle Bob and the Bobses cannot to be trusted with cash, if they would accept it at all.  There really isn't any sort of fig leaf we can put over the provision of aid to make it seem transactional without dredging up things done decades ago (remember all those times Uncle Bob used to help out around . . . ).  This is where things start to get interesting, as the family drama now mirrors a national policy discussion. 

Here's what we want:
(1) No unfettered cash.  Not enough of it will turn into food or acceptable housing for this to be a good idea.
(2) Minimal cost.  The anger that this situation causes is directly proportional to the amount of time it delays your oven upgrade.
(3) Adequate nutrition.  No point if they starve anyway.
(4) Dignity preserving.  Breaking relationships to make a point violates both the requirement to keep the Boblets fed and keep the family whole.  This is the most galling, but also the most necessary.

So what we do?
Option (A): Ship them, or arrange for delivery of, weekly supplies of staple foods.  This is like going shopping with them, but instead of your silently suffering face they see an untipped delivery guy.
Let's evaluate:
(1) Yes. (2) No, emphatic No (3) Yes (4) Maybe . . . depends how much input they have.  It's really tempting to use a pipeline like this to exercise control ("show me three REAL job applications or it's rice, beans and greens again next week!")

Option (B): Grocery store gift cards.  It's saying "we want to make sure you're able to eat well."  Stores that allow them are generally more expensive than stores that don't, but you don't have to worry about the funds going to non-food things like gasoline.  Until the store starts selling gasoline.
Let's evaluate:
(1) Probably (store may redeem for cash or give it as change) (2) Maybe (3) Probably (4) Yes, if the Bobses like the store.

Option (C): Carefully monitored debit card.  It's saying, generally to Aunt Bobbie rather than the Bobses as a group, "We trust YOU to actually buy food, but if anyone tries to buy anything else, that's it!"  The behavioral economists reading this probably wonder why we hate Aunt Bobbie so much, tho, since this option means she has to deny Uncle Bob access to this line of cash herself, and probably quite frequently.  Uncle Bob's dignity comes at a steep price indeed.
Let's evaluate:
(1) Maybe, it's mighty temping to slide that card into a gas pump when other accounts are dry.  (2) Yes (3) Probably (4) Mostly

Option C, incidentally, is how our elected representatives have chosen to implement this type of assistance on a large scale.  They only allow purchase of select products from select retailers, rather than having to carefully monitor the cards directly, but the effect is the same.  These automatic controls make them more like gift cards to low-end stores, essentially combining the best of Options B and C. 

Here's the truly awful part.  We went through all of this and rather than making any progress towards our "end state", we're just barely avoiding the "no one starves" constraint while trying to minimize your costs and the offense to Uncle Bob's dignity.  So what of the questions "why does this situation exist?" and "why do we care?"  Uncle Bob is the reason the problem exists, and will continue to exist pending a significant (and unlikely) change in behavior.  We care because we want to be people who care, and don't want our children to see us be uncaring. 

The help is needed because people make really bad decisions sometimes.   Sometimes those seem like a good idea at the time, or would have been good ones a year, decade or generation ago.   But we who desire to help are powerless to change people's minds directly.  There is no escape from this fact. 

Vegan Taquitos

It's been said that going vegan, or at least vegetarian, is difficult because the food is boring, or just awful.  It is, according to popular belief, also healthier.

Not necessarily.  We at the Fuzzy Wups keep corn tortillas (made from vegetable oil), a few cans of black beans and flour handy for nights when we're down to a few leftover vegetables and we don't want to go out.   Oh, and peanut oil.

Vegan != Healthy

 The recipe is a bit involved, and not compatible with a future pie-maker crawling around in the kitchen.

Ingredients:
 Leftover veggies (We recently used two heads of bok choy and about 1/4lb of cabbage.  The point here is texture and depth of flavor.)
 Soy Sauce
 Garlic Powder (You can use fresh, but should save that for a dish that shows it off better.)
  Onion Power (It's a sweetener that's required if you've got greens in the mix and no onions)
  Other Spices (Make your kitchen smell really good.  Then the food will taste good and everyone will be happy.)
  15oz can of black beans (Don't drain, any style will do.)
   1/4 Cup flour (I use a 50%/50% mix of whole wheat and all purpose, but experiment by using up your oldest stuff.)

 Preparation:
(*) Stir fry the leftover veggies until they are nice and soft, like you might feed to a teething baby.  Add soy sauce, garlic powder and onion powder while heating to ensure they get mixed in properly.  Add other spices as needed to make the kitchen smell very good.  Do not add too much chili unless you call the fire department first.

(*) Mix the vegetables and can of beans in a bowl.  Stir in the flour(s).  Add flour until the mix reaches the consistency of crepe batter.

(*) Heat tortillas, roughly 6 at a time, in a microwave for 30-45s until easy to roll

(*) Pour enough oil into a wok to submerge a rolled taquito.  Heat the oil until it reaches 350F.  Extra points if you can rig something to automatically control your burner's flame. 

(*) Spoon 2-3T of filling into each tortilla and roll it up.  This takes practice and your pie maker considers 75%-80% success to be pretty good.  Mistakes = vegan nachos, a future pie-maker's favorite.

(*)  Using good tongs, place the taquitos, up to three at a time, in the hot oil, wait about 45s-1min, flip, wait another 30-45s, and remove when golden brown.  It may be necessary to hold onto a taquito for 10-20s after putting it in the oil to prevent it from unrolling. 

(*) Serve with your favorite sauce.  We typically use sour cream because we're not vegans. 

Of Values, Interests and Policy

Foreign Policy's blog ran a great piece last year describing policy as "The Opposite of Thinking."  The author's point is that the purpose of policy is to do all of the difficult thinking about policy in advance, such that the people tasked with carrying it out don't make rushed decisions.  Or, for that matter, any decisions.

Your pie maker has been chewing on this idea for a while, and recently came to see it in terms of the "Interests vs. Values" theme of this blog.  Policy is derived from perceived interests of the polity, a set of rules believed to advance the prosperity, power and identity of the decision makers.  Values are rules that help define the identity and meaning of prosperity of the decision makers and shape how they view the use of power.

Because of their connection to identity, values are difficult to discuss and largely impossible to change through dialogue.  However, people of conflicting values can often find common interests, and the US system of government assumes that we will make policy based on that common ground. The prescribed path, in other words, is to go from values to interests to policy. 

However, this idea breaks down when a policy becomes a value unto itself.  If "Lower Taxes" or "Universal Health Insurance" or any policy position replaces the value which lead to the interest from which the policy was derived, discussion is over, the interest involved will be compromised and the original values ill served. 

Change the name to Redtails

A bit cartoonish, but a good start.

Last year about this time, I was riding to work with my orange Camelback backpack with a bright red flashing light clipped to the back.  I passed at least two cars with obvious, perhaps excessive Washington Redskins decorations, and, while waiting at a stop sign, an undecorated car rolled down its window so the driver could cheer my "great Redskins colors".  It's fair to say that the team has a sizable fan base and that they are generally pleased with its name. 

That said, Councilman Grosso had an excellent idea that (almost) won an international rebranding contest.  The titular winner, "Warriors", is so banal that it probably reflects lack of knowledge of the Tuskegee Airmen rather than a serious preference.  American bomber pilots knew that a Redtail would not go haring after Messerschmitts in pursuit of glory; he would stay on their wing and make sure they got home (read the book). There are only a few of them still alive today, and theirs is a story that we must not forget.

The "Redtails" name fits existing cheers and songs with only a syllable to change. "Redtail-gating" will, by rights, become a regional pre-game culinary specialty.  This could include grilling pies, and, of course, plenty of pork.  The team's colors, even my riding gear, are already appropriate.  Most importantly, it would honor a group of men who made an incredible contribution to our nation just as the opportunity to collect their oral histories fades away.

This is not about political correctness.  There is little more powerful for a group's identity than owning its slurs and marching onward to victory.  The Washington Redskins cannot claim to be doing that, however, and have not turned a controversial name into that of a champion.

Changing the name is the right decision because the mood in Washington needs a lift, a reminder of when people let their better selves soar and a deeply divided nation served with distinction for our common good.  It's the right decision because the Tuskegee Airmen were a great example of the discipline and focus that a football team needs to win.  It is the right decision because nothing would honor their courage in war and peace more than stadiums singing "Hail . . . to the . . . Redtails."

Wanted: Pork

For those who wonder why Congress seems to be stuck in a cycle of constant fiscal crisis, your pie maker suggests that the problem lies in a lack of pork in its diet.

At its worst, so called "pork barrel" spending made up a tiny fraction of the federal budget and funded many useful roads, dredging projects and interesting military prototypes.  Almost more importantly, it gave deal-making politicians something tangible to (a) show their constituents that voting for them was a good idea and (b) a means of directly rewarding supporters in their own districts. 

The real key is (b).  Right now, a Republican from a safe district will almost certainly lose his job if the Club for Growth says so because they can mobilize more money for a primary campaign and whip up a core of energetic RINO hunters.  With nothing to offer the local business community but the hope of saner government in the future, who could they convince to stand against the tide and possibly see their businesses blacklisted by the local talk-radio set?

The system was not without its problems.  There were a few incredibly ill-founded projects, and groups like research universities had begun using direct appropriations to subvert merit-based funding awards.  However, eliminating one of the leadership's key tools for whipping votes to bring about good governance was the work of daydream believers.

The sad truth seems to be that we need pork.  When it returns it should come with stricter rules on what could be funded via earmarks and perhaps rules-based agreed limits on the percentage of any agency's budget that can be directly earmarked.  That has two huge potential benefits:
(1) Deal-making Congressmen will have something to show for their efforts, and
(2) Congress would have a clear, if small, role in the setting of Executive priorities.

Most importantly, however, is that pork lets us talk about real interests instead of ephemeral values.  As any good pork pie recipe will tell you, a little bit goes a long way towards helping disparate ingredients come together.  

The perils of "G"

In a standard college-level course on macroeconomics, a student will see an equation along these lines:

Y = I + C + G + (Ex - Im)

The economy's total output (Y) is a function of private investment (I), private consumption (C), net exports (Ex-Im) and the subject of today's post, government spending (G).  This will not be a discussion of "output gaps", "multipliers" or other econometrics, but rather an attempt to humanize a discussion that for the last three years has focused on abstractions instead of narratives.  In other words, this isn't a post about what size "G" should be, but about assessing whether or not it supports pie making.

Here's a cautionary tale of "G" gone wrong.:

  The first is an article from The Washington Post about food stamps becoming a town's economic engine.  William Easterly tells almost exactly the same story in his book, about a "temporary" relief program rewards the very need it is supposed to eliminate.  However, it would be cruel at best, and socially destabilizing at worst, to just cut off this support suddenly without some kind of replacement. 

    At first, this story supports Ronald Reagan's assertion that "the scariest seven words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"  Here "G" supports economic output, but Congress certainly did not intend to have food assistance become a treadmill of dependency.  However, its tools are blunt and correcting their unintended consequences means overcoming both bureaucratic inertia, which generally favors reducing its own costs over providing effective services, and entrenched interests such as unions, Big [Industry] and the banks that hold stakeholders' mortgages and lines of credit.  
    Small wonder, then, that much of the debate and sound bites as we enter our "fiscal Great Harbor" focus almost exclusively on the size of "G" with little or no thought to where it actually goes.  This is a half-baked discussion.  There are clearly good, important things that the government provides which doubtless enhance national pie making capacity.  But a simple focus on the top-line number forces us into a form of hasty generalization, equating all of the outputs with their best or worst manifestations.

     As a free and educated people we should be able to engage in a more productive debate.  If you agree, and can help roll a crust or hold a baby for your pie maker, let him know.  He'd like to discuss whether we can define good "G" in a way that could survive rulemaking and support pro-pie interest groups.

Happy Pi Day!

It's March 14th, or 3.14.  However, as your pie maker is a good engineer, he'll be celebrating Pi Day on the most convenient approximation.

Labor vs. capital in the driver's seat

One of the keys to a successful middle class is finding a way to keep labor from becoming a simple commodity.  Technology can be a huge help in this regard, allowing an individual with a particular skill set to be far more productive than his neighbors in a particular field such that it makes more sense for them to pay him than do the job themselves.  It can also be highly disruptive, replacing human labor with physical capital and allowing a smaller number of people to sell the same services as a larger group.

For an example, consider two approaches to the problems of traffic safety:  The first, from the Wall Street Journal, touts technology, or "capital" in the classical economic sense.  London, on the other hand, incentivizes labour. 

As a professional roboticist, your pie maker understands the appeal of the capital-intensive self-driving car.  He also understands the tremendous costs and risks involved in bringing that technology to market.  If it goes well, then the potential payoff is huge, otherwise the effort and money invested has no value.  This is the central reason that US tax policy has big incentives for endeavors that can easily lose participants money, instead of wage-based contracts that are safer for the recipient. When the definition of "capital" stops involving machinery, this notion gets a little more complex, and Simon Johnson does a pretty good job of explaining how this system can go awry.

The alternative approach to congestion and safety is regulation, in this case explicit licensing of preferred drivers and penalties for the rest.  In a way, this approach threatens a society with the same problems that Gail the Actuary predicts will befall us due to rising oil prices: Steadily increasing cost of transportation results in a net decline in personal productivity.  Your pie maker can make more pies if he spends less time commuting, i.e. not waiting for a cab or stuck in traffic.  On the other hand, this kind of economic inefficiency results in greater employment at lower levels, curtailing roboticists (and their investors') earning potential in favor of higher velocity of money. 

One of the central questions before the body politic today is whether your pie maker's time is best spent effectively replacing cab drivers or working to make them incrementally safer and more efficient over time.  There are clearly arguments to be made on both sides, and it is not clear which is the truly "pro-pie" position.  The best your pie maker can say at this point is to examine your own interests, not begrudge others their own, and work to find acceptable compromise whenever possible.  Interests are much easier to discuss than "values."

Consider, for example, your pie maker's somewhat unique perspective.  He rides a bike to work and everywhere else he can, largely for health reasons that don't factor into the calculus above.  His commuting interests lean slightly towards the "labor" side as he relies heavily on some very good bike mechanics, and he would prefer there be many somewhat safer vehicles with steadily improving alert systems instead of a few self-driven cars.  His hope is that the desire to keep the marginal product of labor (i.e. per capita GDP) high as energy prices rise will drive enough public and private investment to keep him in biofuel.

Questions for your next Congressional debate

Much of the press concerning the pre-election end of the 112th Congress is focused, rightly, on the unfinished spending and farm bills.  As good citizens we ought to read through this and consider it in light of the upcoming election.  As an added bonus, more time spent reading about legislation means less time watching political ads.

However, here at Pie and Policy we try not to focus on the headlines, and instead step back and look at the larger narrative.  With that in mind, here are two fundamental questions about the next chapter in the United States' history that your pie maker would love to hear his candidates answer:

(1) What size recession are you willing to cause next year?

Consider this: 10% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) this past year consisted of the Federal government borrowing or printing money, i.e. borrowing money from the Federal Reserve.  While no one thinks this is sustainable, it means that roughly 10% of all of the mortgages in the US, 10% of the shopping and probably more than 10% of all jobs require the United States to carry a sizable current accounts deficit.  Fiscal responsibility is a good thing, but its meaning gets murky once you put on the green eye shade.  For an example of austerity gone wrong, buy a ticket to Athens, and the Parthenon while you're at it.

There are three fundamentally different answers to that question tossed around this year.  The first is "I don't want to cause a recession at all," which is being pushed by those demanding that there be "no cuts to Defence!" or tax hikes either "for anyone" or "for the middle class."  This approach is known as "kicking the can down the road", and a good follow up question is "how do we get to a sustainable deficit?"  Honestly, the election should hinge on who can provide the best answer to that question.

The second option is to fall off the Fiscal Cliff, which no one seems to want to do, but House Speaker John Boehner warns is very likely.  Odds are good that the current Congress will agree to put the actual decision in the hands of the next Congress, much like happened in 2010, and so this is an entirely valid question of both candidate and challenger.  Left to its own devices, this approach results in a sudden drop of roughly 5% of GDP, so a net loss of 4%.  For comparison, the drop was 2.8% between 2008 and 2009.

The third answer, for which you'll find few serious minded advocates outside of Gary Johnson, is to cause the full 10%, or nearly so, and balance the budget.  The ramifications of that are very interesting, as it would probably lead to a substantial "un-development" of the United States in favor of a Jeffersonian vision.  If someone advocates this and can't describe the consequences, probably best to not vote for them.

(2) When you say "more jobs", doing what and for whom?

Policy has a dramatic impact on which industries are able to get capital, regulatory approval, their goods to market and the cost of production.  If policy favors industries for which there is a ready labor supply and strong demand, then it can be said to be creating jobs.  The GOP's focus on rewarding capital gains over other earned income makes the actual employment of people much less attractive than use of machines for production and increasingly elaborate credit systems for payment, often to workers abroad. Democrats argue for increasing labor and production costs through tighter requirements on work conditions, health insurance coverage and pollution.

In some industries, such as financial services, there is enough demand that regulation such as Sarbanes-Oaxely is more of a public-works program for accountants than an actual hindrance to economic activity.  In others, such as manufacturing, aviation and medical devices, business either moves abroad or doesn't happen.  There are risks and externalities associated with any jobs, and it would be more productive as a polity to discuss those trade-offs than abstract questions about the "size and role of government." 

Justin Beiber and the TEA Party

Your pie maker recently asked an intern from the Institute for Women's Policy Research about how the male ideal changed from "tall, dark and handsome" to "small, pale and pretty."  He pointed out how he had once mistook a picture of the pop star for a five year old, and could not see how someone who might not need to shave yet could attract such attention.  This was intended to be rhetorical, almost an ironic lament, as a hearty diet in his youth and regular outdoor exercise put your pie maker closer to the first category. 

Her answer, however, was both immediate and insightful.  Women do not need the protection of a man anymore, at least women living in the parts of town with good police protection.  There is no need for women to put up with the risks associated with signs of high testosterone levels, as a man able physically defend her is equally able, and somewhat likely, to harm her.  Since laborers are no longer primary breadwinners, at least in families that can afford concert tickets, evidence of physical labor will be a sign of "otherness" at best, lower caste at worst.  Only very rarely would a man working with his hands be pointed out by their mothers or older sisters as objects of desire.  In other words, since women are in many ways better equipped to thrive in the modern economy, it's not surprising that the new heartthrobs are more effeminate.

Herein lies a fascinating view of the psychology of the generation gap that largely defines the TEA Party.  A man who reaches adulthood without the scars, sun-driven wrinkles and callouses that come from learning at the basics of maintaining his own land will rely on contracts with others to ensure the work gets done.  Those contracts require courts, police and a whole body of laws to ensure that they are enforced.  To keep inequities in contracts from turning into civil unrest or threats to public health, they must be monitored by regulators.  The wealth required to ensure that enough of those contracts get paid that an acceptable amount of work gets done requires a financial system that cannot lose money, and so must be carefully regulated and backed by public funds. A nation whose majority work in offices needs to import its goods, requiring globe-spanning security with the equipment and intelligence systems, foreign and domestic, to ensure that the empowering technologies that make life in the US comfortable do not get turned against us.  Someone has to pay for this, and aren't we Taxed Enough Already?


There's no doubt that the Baby Boomers who make up the majority of the TEA Party have benefited from this system, even helped build major parts of it.  But they have ushered in a world whose reward structure is very different from the one in which the Greatest Generation raised raised them.  "Self reliance" is hard, and much of what we used to call "progress" trades it for interdependence.  Successful politicians have managed to keep many of the mechanisms that provide this prosperity hidden via subsidies, tax incentives and mandates on employers and manufacturers, allowing them to run essentially as their own opposition.  When times are good, the costs for this can be easily absorbed in by steadily increasing tax revenues and corporate earnings.  Indeed, regulations create barriers to entry that heavily favor incumbents and enable genuine economic profits.

However, times are not good.  We need to choose whether government influence should become more visible, and our lack of independence made clear, or accept less comfortable lives with fewer services.  Classic notions of masculinity clearly argue for the latter, but it's clear those views are losing cachet.  There is a lot of unfocused anger in the national discussion today, and your pie maker thinks this trend is at the heart of it.  He's not entirely sure which side of it he falls upon, however.  Interconnectedness, another word for specialization, is the core of civilization, but too much leads to fragility, a system rife with single points of failure as each individual is needed to make vital services function.  There is no easy answer, but it helps to ask the right question.

A progressive case for Mitt

Author's note: This is part of a series of semi-satirical pieces your pie maker is writing as a means of studying the writing and argumentative styles of various groups. I'll start with this, now Overcome By Events (OBE), "progressive" case for Mitt Romney. I'm going to try and adopt the language, style and most of the assumptions made by Huffington Post and Slate's left-leaning columnists. Obviously, the argument itself contains flaws, but they should be similar to those common in the writings I'm attempting to imitate.  Comments are appreciated on the style, language and assumptions.  The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of your pie maker, the Pie Cabinet or anyone associated with the production or consumption of pies.

A Progressive Case for Mitt

Take away the wars, tax cuts and bellicose language of the 43rd President of the United States, and what you have is perhaps the most progressive legislative legacy in our history. Consider:

No Child Left Behind: The largest and most forceful effort to compel school districts to educate all of their children.
Medicare Part D: The largest expansion of government health care coverage since LBJ. 
Sarbanes-Oaxley: The most comprehensive and, this is key, quickly implemented overhaul of financial regulation since the Great Depression.
An energy plan with support for lower-carbon fuels: Despite incredibly cheap oil at the time, this laid the regulatory framework to allow domestic gas drilling to explode as well as support for renewable energy.
The largest expansion of Federal spending since Reagan: Under the guise of increasing "security", the Federal workforce expanded rapidly, providing good jobs, benefits and stability to many disadvantaged parts of the country.

There are two reasons for this.  Number one, at least since WWII Americans have expected their Presidents to play against type.  Eisenhower warned us of the Military-Industrial-Complex.  War-hero Kennedy founded the Peace Corps.  Johnson, the Old Southern Gentleman, pushed through the Civil Rights Act.  Nixon, for all his faults, opened relations with China and signed the National Environmental Protection Act.  Reagan raised taxes and Bill Clinton signed the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.

The second reason is that progress is inevitable because it is good for business.  The president of Ford has called for a public healthcare system.  Employees whose identities are affirmed, relationships are legal and do not fear discrimination are more productive.  When a society's reactionaries are placated by seeing someone who looks and sounds like them at the head of the state, they are less likely to stand in its way.

Mitt Romney knows better than to say any of this now, but his record in Massachusetts clearly shows his understanding of the importance of governing progressively, even if you have to run conservatively.  He's smart enough to know that it isn't smaller government, but less visible government that people want.  It is unfortunate that we have to choose between progressive government and progressives in government, but the lessons of history are clear.  It may be distasteful, but history suggests that a vote for Mitt is a vote for progress.

Sustainable Substitution #2: The Outdoor Kitchen

During the summer, your pie maker doesn't like to run the oven and the air conditioning at the same time. So, like last time, we turn to a solution that could win the Design for the First World competition: The Fuzzy Wups Outdoor Kitchen.

The key element is the Weber kettle-style grill, which allows both high direct heat and lower, indirect heat from the same heat source. The key is to stage the meal properly so that you're using the coals at each step properly. Consider, for example, your pie maker's Independence Day celebration, pictured below.

Clearly, this approach requires no small amount of effort. The tray in the top picture is required to carry the dough, sauce, cheese, toppings, wings and tools for the "cooking" phase. For the important part, the baking phase, your pie maker recommends one more accessory to make slaving away a bit easier, as shown below.

On discussion and debate

Your pie maker is a huge fan of Information Dissemination precisely because its lead author writes columns like this about The Great Green Fleet. There is no doubt what his opinion is, but it is always presented in a way that acknowledges the humanity and likely good will of those with whom he disagrees. This is the heart of how to disagree peacefully and present opinions that one holds based on consideration of observations, rather than as a fundamental part of one's identity.

Consider, for contrast, the Conservative and Occupy movements. In the recent GOP primaries, affirmation of Conservative credentials played as large a role in the discussion as any policy provision, with the assumption that present Conservative orthodoxy can and ought to be applied to all past positions. Even staffers at the Supreme Court feel that they ought to attack those who break ranks, threatening the Court's legitimacy to affirm their identity. The demands of Occupiers for jobs and social justice are perhaps noble, but the movement, much like the Conservatives they oppose, proclaim more of an identity (we are the 99%) than a coherent message.*

This leads to a poisonous environment for debate because it suggests that all compromise is a failure to uphold one's values, and thus a surrender of one's identity. How do we produce more Gahlrans, more people who are confident enough of their own intelligence and good will to acknowledge it in others? Your pie maker believes the recipe calls for equal parts of humility and affirmation from sources such as this column. Humility because we are all limited, unable to fully understand our own interests much of the time, much less something as complicated as the modern economy. Affirmation because it encourages engagement, creates comfort and allows us to face the often painful cognitive dissonance that's necessary to correct a mistake.

*"Lower taxes" is a consistent theme for Conservatives, and "more taxes for the rich" for Occupiers, but the consensus tends to end around there.

This Week in Pie Making

It's still too early for seasonal fruits in the Mid-Atlantic, so your pie maker has been working through the back half of Ken's magnificent book. This week's was the Canadian Maple Sugar Pie, which is delicious. Elsewhere, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced a very pie-friendly approach to invasive species management: put a fork in it, this time for the snake head. Meanwhile, Springfield Butcher, a good shop in Northern Virginia, is taking a direct approach to providing organic, grass fed meat and dealing with an overpopulation problem.

Presidential Pie

A numbered pi plate helps you slice this pie for maximum effect.

Approximately four years ago, then candidate Obama challenged a crowd to produce a sweet potato pie that is better than his mother-in-law's. There were no takers. This is not a sincere attempt to win, although it does represent all of the lessons learned in five years of weekly pie making. Indeed, your pie maker doubts that his President is impolitic enough to choose any stranger's pie over his mother in law's, especially since she lives in the White House. No one would hold fair contest in those conditions unless they were epically bad at relationships, and would have trouble securing his party's nomination, much less the Presidency.

The story of this effort begins with pie crust dough that had been left in the refrigerator for about a week. This has little impact of flavor, but does tend to activate more of the gluten in the flour, so you have to be careful not to handle it too much lest it become tougher than an aluminum pie plate. Turns out the crust will shrink quite a bit, although this is not a problem if you make an upstanding ridge. It's a serious problem if you try to make a checkerboard crust for a Hoosier Sugar Cream Pie. The net result is that 1/3 of the filling from Ken's Sugar Cream Pie had to be left in the pot.

From that mistake, the Presidential Pie was born:

While the crust is shrinking pre-baking, place a pan with

3 sweet potatoes, peeled and diced

to soak in the extra heat. Once they are tender, about 2 crusts worth of pre-baking, pull them out and scoop 2 cups into a food processor and reduce the oven temperature to 350F. Add

2 eggs

3/4 cup whole milk

2/3 cup light brown sugar

3/4 t ground ginger

3/4 t ground nutmet

4 freshly ground cloves.

Adjust spice amounts depending on their age; these amounts are too much for newly purchased spices.

Process the mix until there are only split-pea sized pieces of sweet potato. Around the outer edge of the partially pre-baked crust, place

8 dried apricots

and in the middle, arrange a circle of

8 preserved figs

Pour the mix into a partially pre-baked crust (with an upstanding ridge!) and bake until the center only jiggles a little bit, roughly 45 min. Once the pie is out of the oven and cool enough to touch, scoop about

1/2 whole milk yogurt

into the leftover Sugar Cream Pie filling over low/medium heat, stirring continuously until it has a yogurt-like texture. Pour and spoon this over the mostly-cooled pie and then let sit over night.

PMCIN Pie

Grain Production: You don't need to irradiate homemade pies.

Fruit Production: Access to transport means access to good food.

Animal Husbandry: Sometimes, a subsidy is well hidden, like in the clean up costs of nitrogen pollution.

Housing: A weak government and iffy property rights leads to epic poverty. And, as the Top Gear guys love to remind us, there's isn't a good mobile solution.

Health: The NRDC takes on "Human Security" from a health perspective.

Transportation: NATO's got a webpage on piracy that should help remind us how important Navies are to our way of life.

Energy: The cheap oil is mostly gone, will there be enough of an economy to left to pay for the transition to other sources?

Security: It's prime time for the Navy, maybe not for scientists, but maybe there is hope for us yet.

Epiphany Pie

Last week, the Fuzzy Wups B^n staff celebrated the Solemnity of the Epiphany, sometimes called Three Kings' Day. We celebrated with friends, and, of course, made a pie.

As is becoming the P&P standard, symbolism to celebrate the priest, prophet and king was baked in. The crust used flour and wine vinegar. While your pie maker is interested in entomophagy, locus are hard to come by this time of year, and so had to make do with a honey sweetened cottage cheese pie from Simply in Season (an excellent book for everyone interested in a sustainable kitchen). Not shown in the picture, there was a rough attempt at the Natal Star using a broiled crust with the background darkened with homemade mulberry syrup, itself good enough to be served to royalty.