As many in America get excited about the French sex reports that are only scandalous in America, there is actual very bad news out of France. But first up, the sex scandal.

French President Francois Hollande was caught having an affair with actor Julie Gayet. And it may indeed be the case as Joshua Keating says that, The French Merely Pretend to be Blase About Sex Scandals. But while he may be right that they are as interested in the sex lives of famous people as anyone else, they are not puritanical about it the way we are here in the United States. Here it is not news that a politician cut food stamps for millions of poor children, but it is news that he had a one-night stand during some conference. What’s more, the French media don’t treat Hollande’s sexual affairs as political matters.

Meanwhile, Hollande has moved over to the dark side politically speaking. The supposed socialist has decided that the best way to get France’s economy going is to do what the conservatives want: cut social spending and cut taxes! Sound familiar? Sound like exactly what the Republican Party in our own county always wants to do? Sound like what every person who ever passed Econ 101 would tell you is exactly the opposite thing to do?

Francesco Saraceno quotes Hollande saying Tuesday, “L’offre cree meme la demande.” This means more or less, “Supply creates its own demand.” That is, the old conservative canard that by making more stuff there will suddenly be people there to buy it. In economics, this is Say’s law. (Actually Say’s law is a bit more complex than this but it is basically the idea that all economic downturns are the result of businesses not producing the right stuff.) I call it the “Field of Dreams” fallacy: if you build it they will buy. It’s pretty simple to disprove. Assume you have an economy like ours: there are 100 people, 99 of them have no money and one has a huge amount of money. If some great low cost innovation comes along, only the one person will be able to afford it. Of course, the real economy is more complex than that but the principle is the same. Here is a great graph from Saraceno’s article:

The graph shows year by year what French businesses claim to be their biggest problems. The graph is kind of hard to read (go over to Saraceno’s article for a better copy), but the blue line is “demand” and the yellow line is “supply.” So roughly 50% of firms are suffering from lack of demand and 15% are suffering from supply problems. Roughly 10% (purple) are suffering from both. But as Saraceno points out, “Firms move from demand difficulties to no difficulties and back, but in the past six years they did not substantially change opinion on red tape, regulation, labor costs.” Do you see any evidence there for cutting the taxes of the rich?

This morning, Paul Krugman wrote a great response to Hollande’s new claim, France by the Numbers. He shows that while France is not doing great, they are actually doing fairly well. And much more important, the nonsense that Hollande is now pushing will only make things worse, not better. Currently, France’s GDP is going up. It’s budget deficit is going down. It’s debt-to-GDP ratio is on its way down. And France can borrow money at reasonable rates. So why the sudden turn to the right? Is it just another case of Lord Acton’s observation that power corrupts and that, “Great men are almost always bad men.”

I am especially upset, because I’ve been a big Hollande booster. He was the “moderate socialist” who would do the right things, but incrementally and not upset the nation. Well, I guess this is just more evidence moderates of all stripes are useless because when it comes right down to it, they all come running back to the power elite like a lonely dog desperate for a pleasant pet.

Of course, when Hollande’s new found conservative economics turns out to only make things worse, I doubt very seriously that the people of France will blame it on the fuck-the-poor and give-to-the-rich policies he now favors. They will understandably think that getting fucked for the benefit of the rich is just the socialist way. I think Hollande needs to spend more time hitting the economics books and less time hitting the lovely Ms Gayet.

I haven’t written much if anything about the West Virginia chemical spill. That isn’t because I’m not interested in it. I haven’t been covering much politics for the last couple of weeks. Or much of anything else. But Reed Richardson wrote a great article on the coverage of the spill, or lack thereof, Let Them Drink Coke: The Mainstream Media’s Casual Incuriosity of the West Virginia Chemical Spill. In it, he explains the main reasons that the story hasn’t gotten more attention is the laziness of the national media.

Rather than report the story, they just report the political reactions to the story. But in West Virginia, even the Democrats are afraid of saying anything that might upset the coal industry. If the Democrats and Republicans agree on this spill, it must just be an unfortunate accident like a tornado. Sure, you cover it, but there’s no long term story there. The problem is that there is a story here. And as bad as this is for the people (And environment!) of West Virginia, the story is much bigger than even that.

John Boehner claims that we have enough regulations on the books and then has a temerity to ask, “Why wasn’t this plant inspected since 1991?” Well, I’ve got one reason for you: the government doesn’t spend enough money to pay people to do the necessary inspections. And this is because of people like John Boehner who know it is hard to repeal regulations, but it is easy to deprive agencies of the money they need to perform their mandated duties. In fact, most Republicans would eliminate the entire EPA if they could. And they’ve been gunning for the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. (Note: the Clean Water Act was passed under a Republican; the Clean Air Act was greatly expanded under two different Republican presidents.)

But I can hear the conservative cry foul, “But the government just doesn’t have the money to properly regulate!” And, “The private sector can’t afford to clean up their act when the economy is weak!” Both of these statements are exactly the opposite of the truth. The government can now borrow money at no cost. Thus, it should be borrowing money to clean up the nation and repair and expand infrastructure. And do you know what? That would stimulate the economy. As for the second claim, the economy is bad for workers. Business is doing better than ever. Now is the time they can afford to clean up their acts. And do you know what? That would stimulate the economy, because it would force the rich who are just sitting on piles of cash to actually spend some of it. This is not rocket science, folks; this is Econ 101.

Boehner’s question is an excellent example of conservative double speak. On the one hand, he wants to claim that this wasn’t the fault of Freedom Industries; it was the government’s fault for not doing its job. (You know, the job John Boehner actually thinks the government shouldn’t be doing?) On the other hand, conservatives (not John Boehner specifically) usually think that if left alone, businesses will do the right thing. They say things like, “Why would they pollute half a state? That just costs them money!” (The answer is that not doing any maintenance for 23 years saved them far more than any clean-up or punitive costs this spill will cost.) Well, my conservative friends, you can’t have it both ways. Either Freedom Industries is totally to blame here or we need to properly fund our government’s regulatory systems.

Richardson makes another great point about the spill:

The only state that has poorer people on average than West Virginia is Mississippi. Richardson complains when the Washington Post compared life in West Virginia to “camping,” writing, “What is happening in West Virginia is not at all like camping, it’s more like a taste of the Third World, where the powerful behave recklessly and leave the poor to suffer the consequences.” And that, in the end, is what it is all about. In the coverage of Hurricane Sandy, there were lots of stories of middle class people (none of truly poor people that I remember), because they were close by to the rich who really matter. West Virginia is not exactly a Mecca for the beau monde.

To me, the West Virginia chemical spill story is yet another story about income inequality. It’s all about economics. As I always point out, although I am a liberal on pretty much all issues, I don’t especially care about anything but the economic issues. If we lived in a reasonably equitable country, we would be doing something about global warming. We wouldn’t be treating coal with 4-Methylcyclohexanemethanol to make it “clean.” We would be revitalizing West Virginia so that it’s people could be doing something that is not destroying the planet. Of course, Freedom Industries itself is a fairly small company with about 40 employees and roughly $5 million in profits each year. But it only exists because of far bigger and more profitable coal companies. The huge profits provide great incentives to create externalities. And the huge profits provide great political power to make sure that when tens of thousands of people are harmed by those externalities, nothing costly is ever done to these power elites.

And as Reed Richardson notes: that includes even having the stories properly covered by the national media.

Afterword

The local press continues to provide good coverage. This morning’s news, Pregnant? Bottled Water Recommended. As of Friday, the concentration of the chemical was at 2 ppm. As of today, it seems to be below 1 ppm, which the CDC claims is safe. But they say if a woman is pregnant, it is best that they wait until the concentration is below detectable levels. Regardless, many people question this 1 ppm level, being as it is based on very little study. The US Navy laboratory at Norfolk Naval Air Station, Norfolk, VA says the only safe level is less than 0.057 ppm.

The two news organizations that I turn to now are Al Jazeera America and the Los Angeles Times. Why? Because the former is really good. And the latter is good and has not yet started charging me to read it. (Although I feel certain that this is coming.) But even more, over the last six months, I’ve found myself feeling more and more estranged from the dominance of “national” politics, which is defined as whatever is going on in Washington and New York. Don’t get me wrong. I really like both New York and Washington. I have very fond memories of them both. But they are not nor would they ever be home. It isn’t quite right to say that I’m a California boy, though. I’m a left coaster as defined by American Nations. And that means that I’m not really at home down in Los Angeles. But the Times covers my section of the world. (The San Francisco Chronicle still kind of sucks online, unless you’re really into sports.)

One of my heroes is Jerry Brown. This doesn’t mean that I agree with him about everything. But as far as politics goes, there is no one better and I tend to think there is one one who is even equal. We had a great experiment here in California. You see, one of my most hated canards is that politics is easy and if we just got rid of the professional politicians, we could solve all our problems. We here in California got a chance to try that. We elected (and I am not proud of this) Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of the truly great state of California. (Really, what is with all this “great state of…”? Is Wyoming really a “great state”? I don’t think so. If it were part of California, we might call it the “great congressional district” but that’s about it!)

Look: I have lots of problems with Schwarzenegger, but I fully admit that he is a very smart and capable man. But he was a political amateur. You could see this when he spoke at the 2004 RNC. He spoke in glowing terms about Nixon. Well, as you know, I’m a big fan of Nixon. But Schwarzenegger made two mistakes. First, he mistook political rhetoric for political policy. Hey: listen to what Paul Ryan talks about! It’s all about leveling the playing field and getting rid of crony capitalism. Then look at his budget. It’s all about unleveling the playing field and taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich. This is the most elementary political error one can make, and it is primarily a mistake made by conservatives—especially immigrants. His second mistake was to believe that the Republican Party of George Bush the Younger was the same as the Republican Party of Richard Nixon the Only. Hell, at that time, the Republican Party was mostly pro-choice! Now the only choice that the Republican Party believes in is the choice of the rich to do whatever they want and the choice of the poor to try to make ends meet with the crumbs that the rich leave on the table.

So it was no surprise that Mr I’m Gonna Take Charge was a complete failure as governor. But who knew? Maybe no one could fix California. And then, the 73-year-old former governor Jerry Brown came into office and showed what a professional can do in the job. He did many things that I was none too happy about. But hell, what was he going to do? I’m none too happy that I can’t afford season tickets to the San Francisco Opera. Life sucks some times and when a state is billions of dollars in the red, there is going to be pain. (NOTE: this is not true of the federal government!) And he managed the situation in the best way that any man reasonably could.

Now that California’s budget problem is solved, the question is what are we going to do with the money. Brown has some very good ideas, including $1.6-billion addition to the state’s “rainy day fund.” Of course, not everyone is happy. The courts think they ought to get more money. The court system thinks it’s getting the shaft (defined as $105 million more per year), but the Brown administration has said that other parts of the government—most especially education—have suffered more and thus deserve more. Again, I don’t agree with him completely, but he does his job well—probably better than any other politician.

Bearing this in mind, consider the news from yesterday, Brown Rules Out Presidential Bid. There has been a lot of talk about him running. After all, you could cite the “California Miracle.” But he said no. What’s important is how he said it. According to the article:

That should make us all pause. Legislatively, California is a mess. It is almost impossible to raise taxes. Every two years there is up to a score of really bad ballot initiatives that the corporatocracy has gotten the people to ignorantly put there. And then we have all the other problems of Washington including a Republican Party committed to destroying the government. So if Brown thinks that California is more governable and he is the best executive of the last two generations, what does that say about the state of governance in the United States?

I absolutely do not believe in revolution. I am committed to pacifism. I think that violence always makes things worse for the people (Like me!) who just want to live their lives. But today, at least, I am very pessimistic. The only possibility for a more just society may be to destroy it and start over. Because day by day, the United States is becoming a less perfect union. And the fact that a great man like Jerry Brown would rather stay in California than deal with the country as a whole is a perfect example of this.

Well, the world of banking and credit is indeed a scary place.

Somewhere I stumbled across a credit offer—think it came to my business email—for a new credit card. Since I have been cleaning house lately, credit wise, I thought it might be a good opportunity to consolidate some small debt under a new account. Usually new accounts offer a short period to opt for fee-free or reduced fees on balance transfers with a reduced percentage or 0% introductory interest rates.

In this case, I was especially feeling good about my option since I already had credit with Capital One and was understanding this to be an offer to consolidate my two smaller cards into a single account, with room to grow. (Yikes… With better terms and perhaps a second shrubbery, to create a two-level effect.)[1]

Wrong!

This was not my old friends at Capital One. No. This offer, as it turns out, came from Credit One, which is not only a sound alike company, but also a look-a-like company, since their logo (which is what I really had noticed) is damn close to that of my current creditor. Check it out:

Well, the new cards arrived (one for me, one for the espousa). I was shocked to find the offer was only for a $1,000 line of credit and carried a truckload of fees. The paperwork enclosed stated that if I did not activate the cards, the account would be terminated. So, I let things rest as-is.

Today I got a statement from Credit One Bank with a balance of $100.95 and $25 minimum due. Yikes again. The fees included an account initiation fee, a second card fee and a fee for choosing the card design I wanted. Now, I don’t have a totally cuddly relationship with Capital One Both my accounts have relatively small yearly fees, but I do know they will allow me to pick a damn card design and a second card for no extra charge.

Anyway, the good news is they actually did allow me to cancel the account prior to activation, and owe nothing. I called Capital One and gave them a heads up on my mistake. They said they are well aware of the common error but its clearly deceptive name and logo are considered different enough to be legal.

[1] In case you don’t get the reference:

A friend of mine sent me the “2014 Speaker’s Priorities Survey.” It is typical of such things. It isn’t a real survey. To begin with, the questions are all leading. It contains things like, “Do you believe that Obama is the Antichrist or just an evil communist?” Really! Here is the actual first question, “Do you want Republicans in the House of Represenatives to continue doing everything in our power to protect families and small businesses from the ObamaCare disaster?” And, “Do you believe House Republicans have a duty to expose the truth about why the IRS spent years targeting conservative and religious groups for harassment?”

Now, I really like those questions and the six others because they are themselves lies. What ObamaCare disaster could Mr Boehner be talking about? The IRS did not target conservative and religious groups for harassment. They were just doing their jobs and it has been well documented that it wasn’t partisan. In fact, if anything, it was the liberal groups who got the worst treatment.

Of course, the Speaker’s little survey is nothing of the kind. As we know from political science research, pretty much the only people that politicians of either party (but especially the Republican Party) care about are the concerns of their big money donors. And it isn’t about pandering to the prejudices of people on Republican mailing lists nor is it about contributing to the Fox News and hate radio mission to misinform all conservatives. The survey’s real purpose is presented on the second page.

That is where we find that Speaker Boehner wants the survey participant to contribute anywhere from $35 to to $1,000. But I can go along with that. The Republican Party is flattering their supporters by asking their opinions and then they hit them up for contributions. It’s like those free online tests that you take. After they give you the score, they try to sell you stuff. I have no problem with that. But that isn’t all that this “survey” is.

Underneath the “Sure I’ll give you a thousand bucks” section, there is a single check box. Next to it reads, “I cannot send a campaign gift today, but I would still like to include my views in this survey project. To pay for the printing, mailing, and tabulation costs of my SURVERY DOCUMENT, I am enclosing $11.” Get that? “We are only interested in your opinions if you pay us $11.” Assuming they even tabulate the results, the form can be scanned by a computer, with a total cost of about 1¢ to pay for the electricity and the person to dump the thousand surveys into the feeder tray. The survey does come with a postage paid envelope, but printed on it is, “Your first-class stamp will save us much needed funds.” Assuming the idiot who sends in $11 doesn’t put a stamp on, that would cost the NRCC perhaps half the cost of a first class stamp, so maybe we are looking at another 25¢. The tabulation costs are basically nothing.

I’ve seen a lot of amazing conservative scams before—I’m on a number of conservative mailing lists. But I’ve never seen this. I’m sure if you send in the $11, it does go to a different account to pay for office expenses, thus meaning that regular contributions don’t need to pay for such things so that that money can go to television ads that spread the misinformation that is found in their survey. So regardless of how you look at it, paying to have the survey “processed” is the same as sending in a contribution.

The amount is interesting too. Why $11? That’s certainly not what it costs. But it is so exact, implying that they worked out how much money it really does cost to process their fake survey. “Do you think the Republicans should try to maintain control of the House of Representatives rather than allowing the Hitler-loving Democrats to take over control?” I am aware, of course, that Democrats (and all groups for that matter), send out these kinds of highly leading surveys as a way to raise money. But the processing fee strikes me as over the top. But I’m sure if it isn’t in widespread use, it will be. The Republican Party has been leading this country in the worst way possible for decades. Why would they stop now?