Black Applesauce and Pork

Alexis de Tocqueville, 175 years ago, warned a democratic republic could degenerate into tyranny more intolerable than any of the Europe’s monarchies. As power and wealth became centralized and concentrated he prophetically observed:

“…the sovereign extends it arms over society as a whole. It covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; …it rarely forces one to act, but constantly opposes itself to one’s acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.”

In an August Rasmussen poll, a shocking 69 percent of likely voters no longer believe the federal government governs with the consent of the people. I copped the above quotation from a short article by Jeffry H. Anderson, writing on the topic in the Weekly Standard. (Full text here) In a similar vein Myron Magnet, writing in the City Journal, thoughtfully outlines how we’ve reached this point. (Full text here)

I bring this up because I fear that with my regular rants on the mindless, numbing tyranny of the federal government that I may be becoming something of a crackpot. And while this may true, I take comfort in knowing that at least I am not alone. I am proudly one of the 69 percenters.

Now I shall turn my attention to more pleasant things – black applesauce and pork.

Black apple sauce is a good thing, but you must rethink apple sauce. This isn’t anything like the ready to eat apple sauce that comes in a jar. In Tocqueville’s words that processed applesauce on the grocer’s shelf has been hindered, compromised, enervated, extinguished, and dazed into an insipid mush that only vaguely suggests its beginnings were in something as glorious as an apple.

Instead my applesauce is apples, cider and in this case some balsamic vinegar with a hint of Chinese Five Spices. It’s an autumn celebration – good harvest from the land. It is an ad-lib concoction I made to lather on breaded pork cutlets. And oh my, the balsamic vinegar was a happy stroke of blind genius.

An important note here – balsamic vinegar is a product of Italy and somewhere the label should read Aceto Balsamico di Modena. It should be added just prior to serving so that its aroma carries through to the finished sauce.

For reasons unknown to me, pork and apples marry so well. Sweet/Sour and pork can be perfect. And it’s all so easy.

2 baseball sized apples – pealed, cored and diced into pea sized pieces

¼ cup of apple cider (from the orchard and not reconstituted apple juice from the supermarket}

¼ cup Balsamic Vinegar

½ teaspoon Chinese Five Spices

Pork cutlets, thinly sliced, breaded and sautéed in butter.

For the sauce: cover the chopped apples with a 50/50 mix of cider and cider vinegar, season to taste with the five spices. Bring to a slow boil and allow the apple to cook and soften for about thirty minutes. Add liquid as necessary balancing sweet and sour to taste. Just prior to serving add the Balsamic vinegar.

Serve hot over the pork schnitzel.

Occupy Wall Street: Misunderstanding the Native Wealth of Place

“Accursed be the soil because of you! Painfully will you get your food from it, as long as you live. It will yield brambles and thistles, as you eat the produce of the land. By the sweat of your face will you earn your food…” Gen 3; 17-19

A road trip and the native wealth of place

There was a wedding to attend, so we set out from Milwaukee to Knoxville by way of New Orleans – a road trip.  As we went, the changing agrarian landscape unfolded before us.

Wisconsin is a state of forest, cattle and diverse crops. We are big in cranberries, tart cherries, apples, potatoes, table vegetables, maple syrup, mint, oh yes and cheese. There is forestry and mining in the state. And to help harvest this “produce of the land” there is manufacturing.

In Illinois the landscape changes to mono-crop fields of corn and soy. In Kentucky forestry returns and slowly cotton enters the picture. Travelling further south, along the west bank of the Mississippi river, in Louisiana cotton is still king and then there are oil pumps.

Indeed our wealth is from the land. Yet unseen in the countryside, the agent harvesting this wealth is commerce.

Our first stop on our way to New Orleans was Chicago, to leave our dog in the care of our son Nathan. He lives in Chicago’s Logan square neighborhood. It’s about four or five miles northwest of the Loop – an international hub of commerce.

Along the way we visited other but now faded hubs of commerce: Shiloh, the site of a battle fought over a railroad hub in nearby Corinth; Vicksburg, a town perched high above the banks of the Mississippi and in the 1860s controlling steamboat traffic on the waters below; and Natchez, whose antebellum mansions mark a bygone era of concentrated wealth and a starting point for an even earlier trade route – the Natchez Trace.

Our road trip and odd route to a wedding in Knoxville, TN via New Orleans was set by two circumstances. First, our daughter Hanna recently moved there and second, neither my wife nor I had ever visited that charmed city.    

In thinking of native wealth we naturally think of climate and soil, we think of minerals, of forests and fisheries. But commerce too is part of the native wealth of place. In some places that wealth is so compelling that those places evolve and change but the nevertheless endure. New Orleans is one of those places, as are Chicago and New York, New York.

I mention these only because they are the places my children have chosen to labor in and seek their fortunes. Their harvest is not directly from the soil, but is more closely tied to commerce and to the wealth of cities. Nevertheless, going back to Genesis, they too will earn their bread by the sweat on their faces. There are no free lunches.

This brings me to the “Occupy Wall Street” crowd who seem to believe the economic role of government is to distribute wealth when to the contrary it is to facilitate commerce for the creation of wealth.

To be sure, the “occupy” protesters are voicing the legitimate concerns shared by a majority of Americans: a nearly 20% unemployment rate when the under employed and those who have quit looking for work are factored in; a decline in real wages; lost wealth in retirement accounts and home values; and college graduates facing tough job prospects and loads education dept.

There is much anger and resentment in America today.

Yet focusing the blame on “millionaires, billionaires” and big financial institutions is misguided.    

Of all that our federal government does four things are primary: national defense, securing our borders, ensuring our civil rights, and enabling commerce. All else is tertiary.

In terms of enabling commerce its job is to: maintain a stable currency; provide infrastructure necessary for commerce; and to respect the “rule of law.” Instead we have a government of “quantitative easing” and economic engineering.

Regulatory compliance costs consume 15% of the private sector economy. Federal spending is about 26% of gross domestic product and state and local spending consumes another 20%. Compliance with our byzantine tax code, as well as forcing employers and shop keeper into being tax collectors takes another 5%.  (See attached)

From this, it’s easy to point out that in our economic calculus government directly or indirectly controls or consumes almost two thirds of our economy. Yet the “occupy” crowd direct their rage at the “millionaires and billionaires,” the one percenters who still have enough of a grip on the private economy to create wealth and jobs and who in fact foot the greater portion of our taxes.

It’s a straw man diverting our attention from the degradation of the “rule of law,” and the heavy chains cast by that degradation have imposed on commerce. Through executive order, the promulgation and enforcement of administrative rule, “law” has become arbitrary and capricious – a tool to advance political agendas and to garner political gain and economic advantage.  

In what should be a free economy, the government is picking winners and losers. On the win side: labor with the bailout of GM and Chrysler; green energy with the loan guarantees to the like of Solyndra and sweetheart tax deals to the likes of General Electric.      

And there are legions of losers. There are now more than 4000 ways to run afoul of federal statutory criminal law. The regulatory code implementing those laws vastly multiplies our exposure to potential criminal prosecution. The case of the Gibson Guitar Co. is telling. (Full Text) The hand of soft tyranny has a stranglehold on commerce.