There’s more than one way to skin a political cat. The new Republican Congress could bring some changes to the political discourse:

The incoming Republican majority in Congress is preparing to give number-crunching a controversial twist, and the new math could make it easier for the GOP to cut taxes.

For years, leading GOP lawmakers have wanted to change the way that the nonpartisan congressional staff calculates — or, in Washington parlance, scores — the budgetary cost of changes to the tax code.

Budget scoring now is fairly straightforward: Just figure out how much more money a tax increase would produce for the Treasury or how much a tax cut would cost in lost revenue.

Republicans, however, want two key congressional offices to use complex models to try to predict the broader effect of hikes and cuts on the economy. The process is called dynamic scoring.

This can be effected without being subject to filibustering and or the prospect of meeting a presidential veto for a simple reason that most people don’t understand: the Congressional Budget Office operates at the pleasure of Congress. You sometimes hear the CBO characterized as “non-partisan” but that’s an exaggeration. The CBO studies the things that Congress wants them to study in the way in which Congress wants them to study them and that can be by direction of the Congressional leadership.

I have little doubt that this will be vilified as politicization but the reality is that the CBO, like the Bureau of Economic Analysis or the Census Bureau, is inherently political.

The Watcher’s Council has announced its winners for last week.

Council Winners

• *First place with 3 2/3 votes!–Bookworm Room – Brit Hume’s loud silence reveals the ugly secret about Obama’s immigration amnesty announcement
• Second place with 2 2/3 votes –Joshuapundit–Strangling the Eagle – Barack Obama And Amnesty, Part I
• Third place with 1 1/3 votes –The Right Planet – The Few, The Proud, The Irregulars
• Fourth place with 1 vote –Nice Deb – Ferguson Cop’s Wife: DOJ Agents In Town Are “Not There to Guide, They’re There to Harm.”
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –The Noisy Room – Obama Rolls the Dice on Immigration – America Comes Up Snake Eyes
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –VA Right! – A Song Dedicated to the Thugs About to Riot in Ferguson
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –The Independent Sentinel – Obama Brazenly Lies, Stirs Up Ferguson, Justifies Violating the Constitution on ABC News
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote –Rhymes With Right – Bar Obama From Addressing Congress For State Of The Union!
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Simply Jews – Western media on Jerusalem terror or Palestinian media on same: who is better?
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – The Next Defense Secretary

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 1/2 votes! –Dennis Prager – We Have a Moral Divide, Not a Racial One submitted by Joshuapundit
• Second place with 2 votes – Blazing Cat Fur – Read the ‘hostile’ column that got student writer suspended by campus newspaper submitted by Simply Jews
• Third place with 1 1/3 votes – Kevin D. Williamson/NRO–A Small Man In A Big Officesubmitted by Bookworm Room
• Fourth place with 1 vote – Victor Davis Hanson–Meet The Snobocrats submitted by The Independent Sentinel
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes –Mai Noman – Why Some Arabs Are Rejecting Strict Sharia submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes –Gateway Pundit –Justice for Mike Brown Means Looting Big Screen TVs submitted by The Razor
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes –Hot Air – Ted Cruz: The Senate must block all presidential nominees until Obama rescinds his amnesty submitted by Rhymes with Right
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes – The Register – Renewable energy ‘simply WON’T WORK’: Top Google engineers submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes –Kurt Schlichter – America,You’ve Been Grubered! submitted by The Watcher
• Sixth place with 1/3 vote –Mark Steyn –A Death In Syria submitted by The Noisy Room
• Sixth place with 1/3 vote –Drew M/Ace Of Spades HQ –Responding To Obama’s Executive Amnesty: Let Obama Give The State Of The Union Somewhere Else submitted by Nice Deb
• Sixth place with 1/3 vote –Mark Steyn – Elections Matter? submitted by The Right Planet

The announcement post at the Watcher’s site is here.

Why are people picking on Ferguson? Ferguson has a much lower homicide rate than Los Angeles, Chicago, or New York and Lord knows its lower than in St. Louis where the homicide rate is almost ten times as high which goes a long way to explain why people have moved from North St. Louis to Ferguson in the first place.

It’s hard to come up with reasonable statistics but my quick estimates suggest a half dozen black men are killed by the police in Oakland, California every year while I think Michael Brown may have been the first man of any race to have been killed by a Ferguson policeman. There’s a hardly a pattern of abuse there, at least not a pattern of abuse that isn’t less severe than in dozens of places around the country.

And that doesn’t even consider whether Darren Wilson’s action was justifiable or not. The grand jury apparently decided it was.

It’s a question I’ve asked before and never received a coherent answer for: what policy change would prevent similar incidents in the future? Disarm the police? Prohibit black people from moving into white neighborhoods? Declare union contracts null and void and change the demographics of the police force so they’re the same as that of the resident population at every census?

Imagine that job growth all over the world. Not non-existent but slow. Then consider the graph above. Based on that graph and slow job growth alone which countries would you conclude are in trouble?

The Economist uses that graph is a launching pad for a post suggesting that a good chunk of the slow growth in the United
States over the last half dozen years can be attributed to demographic factors:

All else being equal, a half percentage-point drop in the growth of the labour force will trim economic growth by a similar amount. Such an effect should be felt gradually. But the recession may have accelerated the process by encouraging many workers to take early retirement. In America the first baby boomers qualified for Social Security, the public pension, in 2008, on turning 62. According to several studies, this can probably explain about half the drop since then in the share of the working-age population either working or looking for work, from 66% to below 63%. (This echoes the experience of Japan, which slid into stagnation and deflation in the 1990s around the same time as its working-age population began to shrink.)

That certainly can’t be the sole reason that we’ve had slow growth since 2007 as some have suggested. For one thing the proportion of workers over age 60 who have continued to work is higher than was expected, i.e. workers who were able to have been holding on to their jobs longer than was anticipated. You would expect the Social Security Trustees Report to support the hypothesis and it doesn’t.

For another the question that should be asked of older workers is whether they’d planned to retire at 62 or not? I’m guessing that many are working longer than they’d expected to.

However, back to my original question. My interpretation of that graph is that a) if it’s true, the U. S. has already seen most of the slow growth you’d attribute to an aging workforce and b) we’re actually in better shape in that regard than Europe, Japan, or, particularly, China.

Another factor relating to Japan that I haven’t seen mentioned often enough. The biggest issue in Japan is not whether its population is aging (it is) or whether it has experienced slow, no, or negative growth over the last couple of decades (it has). The bigger questions are whether per capita GDP is continuing to increase and how evenly distributed it is. By those reckonings Japan isn’t in nearly as bad a shape as you might expect if you only looked at the working-age population as a percentage of the total.

I don’t have a strong opinion on the EPA’s proposed move to reduce the amount of ozone in the atmosphere. I know that the European standard is 61 ppb compared to our 75 ppb. I’m more interested in the actual measurements.

Ozone isn’t an issue for Chicago; our levels are very low. There are all sorts of reasons for that including geography and that by far the greatest proportion of Chicago’s power derives from nuclear. Until recently the worst ozone in the States was in California—they’re substantially over the present national standards there but, puzzlingly, they have their own much higher standards. Recently, Wyoming took the title due to gas drilling. According to this article the nine counties that wouldn’t meet the proposed standard (excluding California counties that wouldn’t meet the standard) are mostly in Texas plus Suffolk County in New York, New Haven and Fairfield Counties in Connecticut, and Harford County in Maryland. I think I may see a pattern emerging here. Is it possible that ozone emissions rise with income? Say it ain’t so, Joe.

And if this study is to be believed much of Europe doesn’t meet their own standards, at least for substantial parts of the year.

As might be expected Paul Krugman derides Republican reaction to the proposed standard as unscientific, politically-motivated, tools of the oligarchy, etc. Also as you might expect the editors of the Wall Street Journal side with the Republicans:

The ozone rule requires power plants, heavy manufacturers and agriculture operations to limit smog in ground-level ambient air. About a third of the country is out of compliance with the current standard of 75 parts-per-billion, and the EPA wants to take it to 65 ppb. The agency is also taking comments on a 60 ppb standard that would leave 95% of the country out of compliance.

This entirely discretionary rule could cost as much as $17 billion a year in return for ever-more-minuscule gains in public health—by the agency’s own calculation. Footnote: EPA estimates are always wrong by at least an order of magnitude.

In the abstract I’m in favor of environmental controls. There is no question in my mind but that the Clean Air Act has benefited us all enormously. I have a memory. I remember what air quality was like a half century ago.

It’s the specifics where the problems and politics arise. I see no particular reason that California should receive special waivers but Texas and Wyoming shouldn’t. Other than political ones, of course.

So here’s my modest proposal. Phase the controls in. Enforce the present 75 ppb standard across the period of the next five years. If that succeeds by some objective measure, lower the standard to 70 and enforce that for five years. If that’s successful, etc. Standards without enforcement are meaningless. Non-uniform standards are political.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but even if you make what is essentially the same menu year after year for Thanksgiving you vary things just slightly, enough that the results are a little different every year. At least that’s the way it is for me.

This year some things turned out okay, some turned out very well, and some were the best I’ve ever made.

The turkey, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin chiffon pie were okay. Smoking a turkey when the temperature outdoors is around 20°F is a challenge. My pie crust slid a little.

Since my sweet potatoes were an experiment I wasn’t disappointed. I tried out the Stokes Purple this year, peeling and slicing them along with some ordinary yellow sweet potatoes, dotting them with butter, splashing them with a bit of bourbon, and baking them in a medium oven. The Stokes has a nice flavor and a much firmer texture than ordinary sweet potatoes. I think it would excel as an ingredient, in a sweet potato pie or sweet potato gnocchi, for example. I may try that out with those I have left.

My dressing turned out very well. Its texture was excellent; it could have used a bit more seasoning, something I’ll remember for next year.

My cornbread turned out very well. I like my cornbread a bit more corn-y than they turned out but it was still very good. My cranberry sauce turned out very well.

My rolls were probably the best I’ve ever made. I was trying out a new recipe which I will unquestionably use again. I’ll pass it along later.

This picture was taken, a bit hurriedly, just before we sat down for Thanksgiving dinner.

We followed our usual custom. Before we began to eat, proceeding from youngest to oldest we each said what we were thankful for. I, of course, was most thankful for my dear wife but there were other things for which I’m thankful.

I’m thankful that my new job circumstances have renewed my confidence in my abilities. If you’ve never experience doubt in that, I don’t know that you can appreciate what a difference that has made for me.

I’m also thankful for Tally’s life. I learned so much from her! I miss her dearly but I’m very thankful for her life.

It should go without saying but I’m also thankful for all of you who stop by here to read and even, perhaps, to comment. This blog is an important part of my life and it would be impoverished without the little coterie of commenters here. Thank you.

This morning I had the turkey on the smoker by 6:00am after a night of brining. I’ll pull it off again between 5:00 and 6:00pm. That should be enough time.

I’ve finished making my pie crust and my cranberry sauce. My wife is preparing her famous pumpkin chiffon pie filling. The only really time-consuming chore I have left is making my dinner rolls and I plan to start those after lunch.

I’ll try to get another post (and a picture!) out before Thanksgiving dinner but just in case I don’t get to it later I want to wish all of you and yours a happy, restful Thanksgiving.

I didn’t want to let this interesting juxtaposition of ideas go by without taking note of it. First, there’s this:

There are two fundamental prisms through which to view the heart-rending story in Ferguson. The first is that it was a tragic episode in which an unarmed young black man, Michael Brown, lost his life in an altercation with a police officer and that the matter, like all such matters, had to be parsed and adjudicated through the local criminal-justice system. That meant waiting for all evidence to be gathered and weighed before rushing to judgment. It meant further that we ultimately must place our trust in the justice system, which certainly isn’t perfect, but it is all we have—and is likely to be carefully pursued particularly when it is under intense and emotional public scrutiny, as it was in Ferguson.

but on the other hand there’s this:

The other prism presents a different picture, one that sees the Ferguson events as a reflection of a serious national problem of white racism within law enforcement and in the criminal-justice system. Viewed through this prism, Michael Brown’s death not only should bring an indictment against Darren Wilson, but represented an indictment against elements of American society. The two aren’t separable, in this view. Michael Brown didn’t get a fair break from the police officer during that altercation, and if Wilson wasn’t punished through the criminal-justice system, then that represents automatic evidence of something seriously wrong with the criminal-justice system.

I believe that this view predisposes one to treat persons as means rather than ends and, consequently, is immoral and should be called out as such.

In the final analysis I guess that I don’t believe that you can have a just end without employing just means. The belief that you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs can be used to justify anything.