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?

Have you heard the news, sonny?! The Republicans are concerned about poverty! It must be true, because everybody’s talking about it. And the Republicans are making speeches! But they aren’t interested in little things like food and shelter and, you know, education. They are interested in dreams. The Republicans want the poor to dream again. After talking to Paul Ryan, Bishop Shirley Holloway said, “Paul wants people to dream again. You don’t dream when you’ve got food stamps.” And they want the poor to dream big. Marco Rubio said, “Raising the minimum wage may poll well, but having a job that pays $10 an hour is not the American dream.” That was quoted in a PBS News Hour article titled without any sense of irony, The War on Poverty: Not Just a Liberal Campaign.

Oh yes! The Republicans care about the poor. That’s why they’re united in cutting extended unemployment benefits. That’s why they’re united in cutting food stamps. That’s why they’re united on leaving the working poor without medical care. And so much more! Matt Yglesias noted of Bishop Holloway’s statement that food stamps prevent dreaming, “Scott Winship, a conservative policy analyst who’s working with Ryan’s staff concede that this kind of thing ‘makes Republicans look like they’re just punishing poor people, which in my experience is a common side-effect of punishing poor people.”

So what we have here, is failure to communicate. And I do mean that. This is just another re-branding effort by the right. Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio both support slashing food stamps and unemployment benefits. But they say a couple of things about allowing the poor to dream and the “liberal” PBS says that conservatives have started their own war on poverty. And it isn’t just PBS. In general, the mainstream media just follow right along. It doesn’t matter what the Republicans do, it’s what they say that matters. So there is failure to communicate. Conservatives lie and the media report those lies as fact. It must be true, Gwen Ifill said it!

Paul Krugman’s column today was, Enemies of the Poor. But even he is being too easy on the conservative movement. He notes, “The point is that a party committed to small government and low taxes on the rich is, more or less necessarily, a party committed to hurting, not helping, the poor.” First, the Republicans are not not not committed to small government; they are committed to big government that helps the rich. But we can talk about that some other time. The point is that hurting the poor is not just some side effect of their ideology. It is a key part of their ideology. And you only have to look at a blog post Krugman wrote today to see this.

In You’re All Losers, he shows that the use of the word “losers” in books has gone up by a factor of four since the 1960s. You see, the problem is that it is a big deal when a Republican politician stands up and says that we have to do something to help the poor. It doesn’t matter that the politician has no actual policy ideas and that it is clear that “helping the poor” really means “hurting the poor.” It’s news! But when a Republican politician says yet again that we are stealing from the “producers” and giving it to the “moochers” that’s not news. No one’s interested in that.

After running in circles trying to put the best spin on all this Republican anti-poverty talk, Jonathan Chait concludes where I started, “If Republicans only care about poverty policy insofar as they can use it to rebrand their party for 2016, it seems fair to conclude that they don’t actually care about it at all.” And indeed they don’t. I would go further. Maybe the real anti-poverty program is to allow all the poor to die quickly. That would be a highly effective program. Of course, being dead is even worse for dreaming than food stamps.

Made Especially for Frankly Curious by: Andrea English

On Thursday night’s Colbert Report, he presented a bumper sticker for a potential Chris Christie 2016 presidential campaign. I often grab these, as I did with the Slow & Measured faux movie poster about Harry Reid’s approach to filibuster reform. I also did it with The Daily Show‘s excellent Obama Hope poster parody, Mitt Romney: No We Can’t! For some reason, I am the only person who sees fit to grab these things, and they are very popular. So when I saw the Christie faux bumper sticker, I knew I had to have it.

Generally, it is simply a matter of pausing the video, doing a screen capture, and then editing to size inside of Gimp. But this time, there were three problems. First, is that they blurred out the word “fuck.” Second, is that since they placed the bumper sticker on a car, they distorted the shape of it. And third, the quality was surprisingly bad, even with a capture done in full screen mode.

Lucky for us, we have an artist more or less on staff—Andrea English. So I asked her if she could fix it. I’m not sure that she did. I think she may have just recreated it. She’s rather good at this kind of stuff. When the local Republican Party was doing a bumper contest, I came up with “Fuck America: Vote Republican.” And she created:

Made Especially for Frankly Curious by: Andrea English

That bumper sticker has been very popular. I doubt that the Christie bumper sticker will be as popular. It has less general usefulness, especially now that I think there is no chance he will run for president. Before, I thought that he would run. Now, I tend to think he won’t even serve out his second term as governor. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving man.

And if I’m wrong, I’m sure he will fuck me over. And given that Andrea lives in New Jersey, he is already fucking her over!

Update (12 January 2014 3:07 am)

Barbara Buono agrees with me. I can’t believe this “liberal” interview. As if it was Buono’s job to uncover Christie’s coruption. But as she notes: she tried. No one cared. And that includes most of the people on MSNBC. But she is right on when she says, “He will be leaving the governor’s office before his term’s up, but it won’t be to run for president.”

I’ve been angry for a while about how Buono was treated by both the Democratic Party and the “liberal” media:

Barbara Buono

Why Has the Democratic Party Abandoned Barbara Buono?

Back to Normal in New Jersey

Obama and Buono and Christie

I’m Official in Love with Barbara Buono

“John Dean.”

Richard Nixon did not know about the Watergate break-in before it happened. That’s important to know. The reason that he was forced to resign was that he knew about and approved of the cover-up. And just as important, the cover-up wasn’t about Watergate but about the larger project that the Nixon administration was involved in: the dirty tricks and the retribution against real and perceived enemies. So in a larger sense, the big reason that Nixon was wrong was that he was the one who wanted his administration to be run as effectively a criminal enterprise.

I think the similarities between Nixon and Christie are overwhelming in this regard. There is no doubt that Christie designed his administration in a very corrupt way with the over-arching idea that it could get the most done in such a liberal state if everyone understood that any resistance to Christie’s will would be punished. This is important: it isn’t just that Christie knew about this, it is his own design; it is the way he works.

So just like Nixon with Watergate, I don’t think Christie knew about this particular bit of retribution against Fort Lee. But there is no doubt that his people did it because that is the way they work; that is the way Christie’s people knew that Christie expected them to work. It’s possible that Christie did know about it, but it certainly wasn’t the case that his people would have felt that they needed to get his approval about it. So let’s just give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he was not in on the original conspiracy.

That brings us back to the great question about the Watergate break-in and Nixon’s involvement. Howard Baker famously asked, “What did the president know and when did he know it?” I have the same question about Christie, “What did the governor know and when did he know it?” Because I absolutely don’t believe that he didn’t find out that some of his closest people were involved in a conspiracy to punish Fort Lee at the same time that we all did. That doesn’t strain credulity; it requires credulity combined with an intense desire to think the best about Christie. In other words, it requires a really really stupid Josh Barro.

When the traffic in Fort Lee started backing up, and it became an issue with accusations, Christie could not have failed to at least wonder if this wasn’t the work of his own people. It was, after all, the way they did things in the Christie administration. And as the controversy continued and built, there must have come a time when Christie asked one or more of his people what was going on. And I certainly think this happened well before his big meeting in December—three months after the event. A big meeting is not how he would have approached the issue. He would have asked key people quietly and with no one else around if there was anything to all the allegations.

Look at the way that Christie has answer questions. Politico reported, “When asked about that claims that the closures were ordered for political retribution, Christie said ‘absolutely, unequivocally not.'” Okay, but that isn’t the question now, is it? No one really thinks that Christie went to an aide and said, “Let’s cause a four-day traffic jam in Fort Lee”—much less, “Let’s cause a four-day traffic jam in Fort Lee to get back at…” He’s safe on that count just like Nixon was safe on the count that he did not order the Watergate break-in.

But what we have here is a very intelligent and sophisticated politician. And he has only acted on a big controversy surrounding him twice. The first time was in December when he had what amounts to a show meeting telling his people to admit to any wrong doing. The second time was when he fired two people, only after their misconduct was front page news. Chris Christie knew that his office was responsible for the Fort Lee traffic jam long before he fired anyone. And that means that he withheld information about the conspiracy. And that means he was involved in a cover-up.

The only thing that will save Christie is if there is no John Dean in his administration. John Dean, as you should recall, was White House Counsel for Richard Nixon. And Dean rolled over on Nixon. Without Dean, I doubt Nixon would have been forced out of the presidency. Well, there are a lot of potential John Deans out there. David Wildstein’s attorney has already made it perfectly clear that his client would have quite a lot to say if he were granted immunity. And as this whole thing becomes a criminal matter when people are looking at prison time, I believe there will be more people who will have stories to tell. I won’t be surprised at all if someone says, “I told the governor what we had done while it was still going on!” Regardless, someone is going to say something that will show that Christie was lying when he said he only found out when the story broke this last week.

If I were Chris Christie, I would be very worried about those two words. Who will be the member of his administration who fills that role? Who will be Chris Christie’s…

John Dean.

Yesterday, when I saw Chris Christie’s press conference, one line really stood out to me, “I was done with my workout yesterday morning and got a call from my communications director…” I had a feeling that was going to make a lot of people laugh. “Chris Christie working out?” But I know that’s the truth. He’s an ambitious guy. He wants to be president and he knows that his weight stands in his way. What’s more, like most fat people, I’m sure he is painfully aware that most people think that his weight reflects poorly on character—incorrect as that belief may be. So I’m sure he is trying to do a Mike Huckabee.

Look: I loath the man. He is a great example of what’s wrong with American politics. He talks populist, but his politics are entirely elitist. He got the people of New Jersey to vote for him despite the fact that they disagree with him on every major policy question in modern America. And above all, he’s a bully. I don’t really care about his physical weight, but he throws his metaphorical weight around and abuses the least among us. The fact that those calling themselves Christians voted for him is sad. The fact that he calls himself a Christian is absolutely unbelievable.

So I think the man should be despised and has no business being in our public life. But I don’t think we should laugh at his attempts to get his weight under control. The truth is that being on the pudgy side is actually much more healthy than being “sit-com fit.” But I’m afraid that Chris Christie is quite a ways past the optimal weight. (Even still, his high weight and excellent healthcare will doubtless beat my optimal weight and terrible healthcare.) So we should applaud Christie’s efforts to deal with his weight.

Good God! The man is waking up early and working out. Do you know what I’m doing at that hour? Trying to stay asleep so I don’t have to deal with the day. Hey, we all have our crosses to bear. Christie apparently eats a lot and I don’t really like leaving the house. I tried to start an Agoraphobics Anonymous group, but no one would ever come to my house; and I couldn’t go to theirs. Sorry about that, the joke just came to me and I had to share it. Moving on…

I got around to watching last night’s The Daily Show and the Colbert Report. Neither show was so low as to make a joke about Christie’s morning workout. But each of them included that part of the press conference. And on both shows, the line got a big laugh. And I understand. It is all about what we as a society think of fat people: they are lazy and gluttonous. Well, I don’t think that’s Christie. The seven deadly sins are: wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. Based upon everything I know about Christie, I would have to put wrath, greed, and pride well above sloth and gluttony. It does, however, highlight what an awful human being he is.

But I think it is wrong to laugh at the man about that. That’s especially true when I’m pretty sure his wrath (hatred of his enemies), greed (power lust), and pride (just listen to him) will win out over gluttony and sloth. In fact, I think I already see it. He looks better than he did a year ago. Regardless, Christie should be taken very seriously—just like a venomous snake.