A MICRO MAN WILL SOON BE AT OUR NATION’S HELM

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a narrow field. ~ Neils Bohr

Donald Trump will become the 45th President of the United States (US) in exactly 30 days, following his unexpected election victory. The Electoral College voted yesterday to make him president and Congress will certify the Electoral College’s vote on Jan. 6. Coming into the presidency, Mr. Trump’s experience is narrowly founded on commercial real estate and reality TV. Unlike Neils Bohr, he would never admit to making any mistakes. His grandiosity-seeking persona has focused on specific, narrow, micro-oriented concerns, usually announced via 140-character Twitter posts.

Political commentators have been spewing too many speculations about how Donald Trump surprisingly won the presidency. Nate Cohn of The New York Times and others have concluded that his victory came from a fortuitous, slight “red-shift” in a few battleground states – Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

He narrowly won each of these states by one point or less of the popular vote. But these slender victories gave him a decisive Electoral College edge. Only with effective, focused and steady effort over the next several years on the part of Democrats will this red-shift be prevented from being a long-term political prospect. This is by no means a sure thing; currently the Democrats are leaderless and far from united. For example, when was the last time you heard that the Sanders-Warren progressive movement was succeeding in the political ground work to place strong candidates on 2018 ballots that can actually win elections?

Interestingly, the red-shift phenomenon has been examined for over 150 years, but not by politicians. Astrophysicists first discussed it in the 19th century. It was a basis for Edwin Hubble’s early 20th century Law that posited other galaxies are receding from Earth, causing a red-shift (Doppler) effect. The Hubble Law supports the dynamic Big Bang model of the universe.

Even though the headline-obsessed Donald Trump likely will cause a number of “bangs” as president, with any luck they won’t compare in the slightest to the Big Bang that Hubble described. Fingers remain completely crossed on this. But let’s now depart from cosmology and take off to the here and now.

Even before he’s president, The Donald (TD) pulled off one momentary bang on Dec. 1 in getting Carrier Corp. to "save" 800 jobs at its Indianapolis air conditioner plant. Nice work. However, despite all the media hoopla that TD created in Indianapolis, the next week United Technologies Corp.’s chief executive (UTC owns Carrier) stated that some of those “saved” jobs would be ultimately lost to automation. In other words, Carrier still plans to cut its workforce, so those 800 saved jobs are a chimera. And what about the other 400 Carrier workers that TD seems to have completely forgotten about who will be soon laid off? Oh well, sorry guys.

Is The Donald ducking his responsibilities to take a comprehensive view of his job as president? So far, as president-elect, it seems so. He is all about tactical, individual, bottom-up “deals,” (micro transactions), rather than a broader, strategic (macro) vision that might unify and preserve America’s greatness. [As I’ve already shown, we are now great, and have been, despite his incessant proclamations to the contrary.] And yes, in recent times certain groups of Americans have not seen much if any economic benefit, as other groups have. This vital issue of economic inequality, that TD’s announced economic policies will not remedy at all, does need to be rectified; but it does not detract from our overall distinction as a nation. There is no nation that can claim seamless distributional equity.

The Donald’s Carrier deal required now-governor Mike Pence to offer a lush $7 million taxpayer-funded bonus to the company. What happens after January 20 when workers beyond Indiana demand TD’s help? Maybe President Trump can create a rotating vice presidency of Republican governors who can bestow multi state crony capitalism outside the Hoosier State on an as-needed basis.

Irony abounds. The US unemployment rate declined to 4.6% in November, the lowest it’s been in over 9 years. This reduction represents a significant success for hundreds of thousands of US workers that the Obama administration has helped in bestowing. In fact, during President Obama’s time in office the economy gained 15 million jobs, which works out to 36,000 jobs per week. Yet TD’s public statements clearly emphasize his disparagement of this advantageous macro situation.

He campaigned with a micro focus on preserving manufacturing jobs, which have steadily declined during the last 63 years, on fending off the purported “war on coal” that has affected the nation’s 80,000 coal-miners and stopping imports. 
Mr. Trump’s allegations about why coal miners now represent only 0.05% of our labor force are, to be generous, misplaced. Sure, environmental policies established by Republicans and Democrats have played a part (and offered important, essential health and longevity benefits to all of us), but the most important factor reducing coal mining jobs has been competitive market forces, specifically the reduction of domestic natural gas prices due to significant improvements in extracting natural gas from the ground (e.g., fracking).

Coal’s share of its key market as a fuel for electric power generation has been cut by 15% during just the past 8 years. Natural gas and non-fossil-fuel technologies (solar, wind, biomass) have gained what coal has lost. No bully-pulpit phone calls or mouth-to-mouth meetings by TD will restore coal’s former markets. Why should they? He continuously accentuates his acumen as a businessman who understands markets and technology, and applauds market forces that he has taken advantage of in commercial real estate. Market forces are present in the energy sector as well.

The improvement in the nation’s overall (macro) employment – now 124 million full-time workers – isn’t his concern; he’s purely focused on micro transactions – industry-specific situations – like Appalachian coal miners or air conditioner builders. Micro matters to him. Perhaps he believes macro is for losers.

If we didn’t know it before, most of us now know that working class wages have stagnated for more than a decade. This upward wage inertia has turned John M. Keynes' famous downward "sticky wages" insight on its head. The wages of less-educated, primarily non-urban workers, among others have been stuck from rising. White working-class people strongly voted for TD and gave him a crushing 39% margin over Clinton. With TD’s beauty-contest cabinet appointments and his suggested economic policies (e.g., not raising the $7.25/hr federal minimum wage) how can wages for working-class laborers be improved? They can’t.

Under the Trump presidency, I expect average real (inflation-adjusted) wage rates will continue to decline or at best stay steady. Inflation is likely to increase if he convinces his congressional buddies to fund his ideas for improving the nation’s infrastructure (an eminently worthwhile, if overdue measure of expansionary fiscal policy), and increase the defense department’s budget (an utterly mistaken, uncalled for scheme). Among other reasons, such sizeable spending, along with Republicans’ incessant desire to cut federal income and remove estate taxes for the richest Americans, will require large amounts of deficit spending. Increased deficit spending will raise interest rates on government bonds. Ten-year Treasury notes’ interest rates have risen 55.7% since Nov. 1.

Right after the Federal Reserve increased the Federal Funds interest rate last week by 0.25%, the US dollar appreciated as expected. The new president’s suggested increases in deficit spending will further strengthen the dollar. With the stronger dollar, US exporters will have a more difficult time selling their goods overseas and imports will become less expensive, something that can threaten a larger trade deficit and lower macroeconomic growth, neither of which is likely to please the new president. Watch for Congressional Republicans to fortify their discussions about reducing the Fed’s much-needed independence.

In his 44 days as president-elect, I’m convinced that TD thinks solely in micro terms, he’s a distinctive deal guy. He is likely to be a pervasive transactional president, unmoored by any unifying vision of meaningful macro objectives. Perhaps learning from the Kardashians (although he’d never give Kim even a milligram of credit), he banks on the broadening power of social media – especially Twitter – to provide pseudo-breadth to his micro moves.

Can micro TD convince us and the world that his narrow, transactional perspective is sufficient to lead our nation? Is this the change that his acolytes voted for? We'll be finding out on a day-by-day basis beginning in 30 days.

A CULINARY HISTORY OF SALAD DAYS

Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of life. ~ Cyril Connolly 

 Salad is my escape path from now; from the startling, dispiriting events that began on Nov. 8. It’s a fresh means of branching way beyond anything drearily political.

So here’s my hopefully appetizing blog about the cliogastronomy of the green salad. [For you etymologists, I’ve tossed Clio, the Greek muse of history, into the bowl with gastronomy, the study of culinary customs, to create cliogastronomy, an historic analysis of culinary customs, in this case of salads.] I picked the green salad because it is parsecs distant from vulgar, citrusy orange-ish hair. Lettuce proceed...

A brief history of salad.  According to the Oxford Companion to Food, salad is a term derived from the Latin sal (salt), which yielded the form salata, salted things such as the raw vegetables. Salt is associated with salad because vegetables were seasoned with brine or salty oil-and-vinegar dressings during Roman times.

The phrase "salad days", meaning a "time of youthful inexperience" (on notion of "green"), is first recorded by Shakespeare in 1606. Salads ware eaten in ancient Roman and Greek times with a dressing of vinegar, oil and salt. Apparently ancient Roman salads were quite similar to modern-day ones.

Salad also appeared in late 14th century when the English, perhaps including Richard II, were eating salad or sallet at their meals. International trade records in the 17th century include cargo logs from the island of Curaçao to the Dutch colony of New Netherland (that later became New York, New Jersey and Delaware) of "a can of salad oil at 1.10 florins" and "an anger of wine vinegar at 16 florins", primal precursors to Newman’s Own Italian dressing. Back in the Old World, Louis XIV, the Sun King, probably enjoyed several types of salads, including mixed greens, pickled vegetables and boiled salads (warm vegetables dressed in vinegar/spices). Yum!

Unsurprisingly, salads have evolved over the centuries. The Food Timeline enumerates 23 different varieties of salads, everything from Caesar salad to Watergate salad. Caesar salad wasn't concocted by Augustus, the first Roman emperor; it was created by Caesar Cardini, an Italian immigrant who opened a series of restaurants in Tijuana, Mexico. On Fourth of July weekend in 1924 at Caesar's Place, Cardini created the salad as a main course, arranging the lettuce leaves - together with garlic, olive oil, croutons, Parmesan cheese, Worchestershire sauce and anchovies - on a plate with the intentiion that they would be eaten with his customers' fingers. The salad became particularly popular with Hollywood movie people who visited Tijuana. The rest is history. 
And now we have space salads, way beyond Tijuana. Space salad farming is now officially a thing according to NASA. After proving that lettuce grown entirely in space was safe to eat back in 2015, NASA has announced that the first crop of orbital veggies has now been cultivated exclusively for consumption by the crew.

This latest crop of “Outredgeous” red romaine lettuce grown entirely on the International Space Station (ISS), operation name, Veg-03, is the newest step in NASA’s ongoing efforts to create a sustainable, renewable food source aboard their spacecraft. The first space lettuce eaten by American astronauts (Veg-01) was produced back in 2015, and was sampled both plain, and with balsamic vinegar by the ISS crew. Astronaut hero Scott Kelly said at the time that it tasted like arugula.

Lettuce.  Cliogastronomically speaking, what’s known about lettuce, the primary ingredient in green salads? Lettuce is a member of the daisy family. Its first recorded production was in Egypt 4700 years ago. It was initially grown for the oil from its seeds and considered a sacred plant of the reproduction god Min.

Lettuce leaves’ consumption came at bit later. Based on hieroglyphics, Egyptian lettuce may have been an ancient ancestor of what we now call romaine lettuce. There are 2 broad types of lettuce, head lettuce – like the iceberg lettuce you consumed as a child; and leaf lettuce – like romaine, bib and red-leaf. California’s Central Valley accounts for 71% of US head lettuce production, followed by Arizona producing nearly 29%. These 2 states also produce over 98% of leaf lettuce in the US. Lettuce is grown year-round in California, much of it in the Salinas Valley the nation’s salad bowl, and Arizona.

According to the USDA Census of Agriculture, 3.88 billion pounds of lettuce were produced in 2012 on 323,359 acres, up 3% since 2007. In 2014, annual consumption was 14.1 pounds and 10.8 pounds per person for head and leaf/romaine lettuce, respectively. Due to its very high water content (94.9%), lettuce cannot be successfully frozen, canned or dried and thus must be eaten fresh. The number of farms producing lettuce on 5 acres or less (such as vertical farms) increased 38% between 2007 and 2012. Sales of US lettuce in 2013 totaled nearly $1.5 billion, making lettuce a leading vegetable crop in terms of value. In 2014, salad restaurants in the US were earning more than $300 million. This seems like a fair amount of green (money), nevertheless it represents a minuscule 4 one-hundredths of a percent of total US restaurant industry revenues. Lots of room for growth.

Tomatoes.  As you know, a myriad of other veges can be tossed with lettuce to create a mixed greens salad, including artichoke hearts, avocados, carrots, celery, cucumbers, hearts of palm, mushrooms, olives, onions, peppers, radishes, red onions, shallots, and spring onions. For me, the most important vegetable to include in a mixed greens salad is the tomato, all others pale in comparison. The US popularized mixed greens salads in the late 19th century.

Tomatoes are a new-world fruit, probably originating in what’s now Peru. They made their way to Europe in the 16th century, courtesy of Spanish explorers. There are more than 3,000 varieties of heirloom or heritage tomatoes in active cultivation worldwide and more than 10,000 known varieties. The name tomato comes from the Aztec xitomatl (or tomatl, that means “plump thing with a naval.”) gave rise to the Spanish word "tomate," from which the English word originates.

Rudolf Grewe dug into the earliest of Europe’s culinary encounters with the tomato and discovered that although some Europeans knew tomatoes could be eaten; few actually did, because most thought tomatoes were poisonous. [Since it is a relative of the nightshade family, a tomato plant’s leaves are indeed poisonous.] One writer in 1585 suggested they be prepared “with pepper, salt, and oil.” But this writer didn’t recommend it, as tomatoes “give little and bad nourishment.”[Tomatoes are 94.5% water, so he had a nutritional point. But despite their low calories, they offer a fair amount of vitamins C and K and minerals.] Even though they were widely grown in European gardens as a decorative plant, it took more than a century for Europeans to record any formal culinary preparations for tomatoes.

Likewise, some early colonists in the US also believed that the brightly colored fruit was poisonous. By the time commercial production began in the mid-1800s, the tomato was well established as a popular produce item in the American diet.

From coast to coast, we love tomatoes. Tomatoes are the second most consumed vegetable in the US, behind potatoes. Ninety-three percent of American gardening households grow tomatoes. My parents planted them in their WWII “victory gardens” and every year afterwards. As a youth, I remember driving past miles of commercial tomato groves in Southern New Jersey (the “Garden State”) when we vacationed on the Jersey shore in the summer.

There are 2 general categories of tomatoes, fresh market and processed. Fresh tomatoes are grown in all 50 states. In 2014, annual per capita fresh market and processed tomato consumption was 20.6 pounds and 67.2 pounds, respectively. Florida produces the most fresh-market tomatoes. California grows 96% of all US processed tomatoes that you eat in salsa and other tomato products such as sauce, paste, ketchup and canned tomatoes. Americans have increased their tomato consumption 30% over the last 20 years, mostly in processed forms.

In 2014, approximately, 27.3 million pounds of fresh market tomatoes were harvested with a total value of $1.14 billion. A total of 14.6 million tons of processed tomatoes were grown in 2014, with a total value of about $1.32 billion. Tomato production has become much more efficient. Half a century ago, harvesting California’s 2.2 million tons of tomatoes for ketchup required as many as 45,000 workers or barely 49 tons per worker. In the 1960s, scientists and engineers at the University of California – Davis, developed an oblong tomato that lent itself to being machine-picked and an efficient mechanical harvester to do the job in one pass through a field. By 2000, only 5,000 harvest workers were employed in California to pick and sort what was by then a 12-million-ton crop of tomatoes. That’s roughly 2,400 tons per worker, a 49 times increase in productivity over 5 decades.

As mentioned before, there are innumerable varieties of tasty, colorful tomatoes such as beefsteak, plum, cherry and grape cultivars. Our favorites include dry-farmed Early Girls, where the tomato plants are no longer watered after they reach maturity. This lack of water stresses the plant, forcing its roots deep into the soil in search of water and focuses its efforts on producing fruit.

But no matter what the size, shape or color, when tossed in a mixed greens salad the tomato provides the perfect accompaniment for a wondrously fresh, flavorsome dish that many have enjoyed over the centuries. May every day be a salad day; it trumps anything.