MONETIZING MY BLOG - WOULD YOU HATE ME IN THE MORNING?

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Why not?

Tell me what you think. If you're reading my blog, I'd like to think that you're smart enough to deal with ads. But maybe you'd just rather not. Maybe you think that it's a sellout.

I'm listening. I'll give it a few weeks and see who says what, if anybody says anything at all.

CAFE DU MIDI - BIZE MINERVOIS - A REVIEW

You can't go home again. Well, in this case it might be more accurate to say that you can't always get back to where you once were even if you go back to the same place. Catch my drift? Too much drift?

On a luscious fall day in 2004, my wife Cathey, her sister Liz, and I happened across a restaurant in the little village of Bize Minervois. It's a pretty little village with the river La Cesse running alongside, not far from the regional olive cooperative with its neat gift shop, and on the back road from here to there if you're tired of the highway. We're in and around Bize quite often. But we've never returned to that little restaurant just inside the Bize archway until this weekend. We remember the restaurant well, though we've lost the name, because of a picture that Liz took of Cathey and I as we sat down to eat, a picture of a younger, happy, and satisfied couple that was printed out, framed, and given prominent play in my office at work and also served as my avatar on several websites in the decade since it was taken. The meal was as memorable as the picture. The girls shared a huge salad plate with a dozen or more ingredients including fresh veggies of the region and the season, pickles, and a hunk of country pate. I had rabbit, my first in France, stewed to perfection and served in a funky terracotta bowl. No ambiance, though. Not a lick. Just good French country cooking.

Today's Cafe du Midi is a different sort of place. Modern brown and red fabrics in place of the white linen. Modern, slightly awkward chairs. Modern lighting. Modern. That's okay. Modern is okay. But the menu was not okay. Our choice for a main dish was either hamburger or steak. Granted that it was a winter weekend. Granted we arrived just before a party of about twenty that had booked beforehand. Granted that it was the fixed price special. Even so, you shouldn't have to choose between cow and cow.

I will say that the presentation was interesting. Check out the picture. But to Cathey, the idea that hot and cold courses were served at the same time meant that by the time that you got to the last hot course, it wasn't hot any more.

So...

The sauteed veggies atop a square of puff pastry with a mild sauce was OK. The gazpacho with bits of bacon would have been interesting if we didn't get the feeling that the tomatoes came out of a tin. The steak was French biftek with a sauce and a dash of onions. The fries - chilling down while we worked on the veggies and the gazpacho - were probably reconstituted. The pineapple was fresh and the presentation novel. The goat cheese was good and the cheddar was French cheddar. (The French don't get cheddar.) Good baguette.

With a demi of wine, 32 Euros. Cathey has spoken. There are too many kitchens to sample in the region to come back to the Cafe du Midi any time soon.

Read more of my reviews HERE.

TRUFFLES - FRENCH BLACK WINTER TRUFFLES

 

Every day, a link to Languedoc Living appears in my Inbox, providing a useful compendium in English of news, event listings, and feature articles concentrating on our region but including a taste of the rest of France, Europe, and the world. I give the site a thorough look as often as time permits. Recently, I learned that the season for truffle fairs had arrived. Is it any surprise that my wife Cathey knew this? The surprise, I suppose, is that I realized that Cathey would be interested and that I proposed without any prodding that we pay a visit the truffle fair in Villeneuve Minervois, a small town in the foothills of the Massif Central about an hour north and west of us here in Quarante.

We arrived at the salle polyvalente (community room) at about 10am. Just about every village has one of these multi-purpose spaces. Villeneuve Minervois’ sports a kitchen and a stage at the edges of a basketball court downstairs and what appeared to be classrooms/meeting rooms upstairs. A market was already in full swing. Tables displaying wine, artisan whisky, saffron and saffron-infused products, truffle-infused butter and brie, artisan chocolate and cheeses and sausages, and knives and other gadgets with points and edges were arranged in an outward-facing square on the floor of the court. After a quick circuit and tastings, we had purchased two bottles of sparkling Limoux wine and a couple of hunks of chocolate, both white and dark, both with bits of raspberries. I thoroughly enjoyed my sip of Black Mountain, very smooth artisan whiskey. No sale, though. I’m a bourbon man myself.

But the reason for the festivities are the truffles. I won’t bother defining what truffles are or describing their culinary importance. If you don’t know, you can look it up. I will simply say two things: that we are talking here about the French black winter truffle, tuber mélanosporum, and that if you enjoy mushrooms, truffles are kind of like mushrooms to the nth degree. Truffles are a gourmet’s delight. At a cooking demonstration under a small tent with perhaps 50 chairs lined up, the audience was standing room only.

The truffle foragers arrive with their musky little treasures in baskets, in glass jars, or in plastic containers. They present their finds to an examiner stationed by the entrance, in this case a youngish man casually dressed in jeans, and his female assistant. They represent the French Department of Agriculture as well as the local Brotherhood of the Truffle. The examiner assesses every single truffle, sharp knife in hand, trimming them as needed, carefully shaving and smelling. If the truffle passes muster, it goes in a bin on the examiner’s scale. If it doesn’t, it’s added to a pile of rejects under the examiner’s table. There may be some discussion concerning a rejection, but the discussion is always civil and the examiner’s judgment is final. The assistant writes down the forager’s name by hand in a simple, lined notebook and, when the examiner is finished, writes down the combined weight of the forager’s approved truffles. The truffles are then placed in a cloth bag, tied securely, sealed, and handed back to the forager.

The foragers took their approved hauls to a long table at one end of the hall, separated from the crowd by a waist-high rope. A gent with a rifle, one of the Brothers, patrolled the stage above. When all of the day’s truffles had been examined, very close to the appointed hour of 11am, the examiner walked down the line to each forager’s station, cutting open the seals of the cloth bags and pouring the contents into whatever display container that the forager had set up. Some of the forager’s displays were quite fancy. Some foragers simply used the plastic containers that their truffles had arrived in. Every station had its own scale. When the examiner had opened and poured out the last bag, and without any warning, the Brother on the stage fired off a loud blank. (I hope that it was a blank.) The rope dropped. The stampede began.

I knew then why there had been such a crowd around the examiner’s station by the door. Folks who were intent on buying were scoping out the batches that they thought looked the best, watching and listening to the examiner. So when the rope dropped, they hustled to purchase the truffles that they’d targeted. We weren’t so focused. We simply walked up to the lady at one end of the table with just a dozen or so mostly small truffles sitting on the lid of a plastic container, watched the two ladies ahead of us pick up and smell each and every one of her truffles before purchasing two, then repeated the exercise for ourselves, picking out one small truffle of 14 grams that she put in a little cellophane bag for us. 11 Euros. That’s right. 11 Euros for a fresh French winter truffle weighing one-half ounce. We were amazed. We would have paid at least four times as much in the States, probably more. At that price, we could afford another. We were more discriminating. We walked down the table slowly, eying each display.  We liked that of a forager displaying deep black truffles in a cute little basket lined with red fabric. We picked out another truffle. 16 grams. 12 Euros. Damn.

When we got them home, Cathey put the truffles on a paper towel inside a Mason jar and put them in the fridge. We’ll be shopping for fresh-made pasta. Cathey will make a simple sauce and shave bits of truffle on top. Perhaps an omelet? Yum…

One final note. Cathey rhapsodized over the smell of truffles that she said pervaded the salle polyvalente. I frankly didn’t notice it. But when friends popped by our house the day after the fair for a visit to set a luncheon date in order to introduce us to their favorite local restaurant, Cathey brought out the jar and opened it to give them a whiff. And from the other end of the table the fragrance of the truffles wafted over to me. Unmistakable.

CHARLIE HEBDO - FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION - AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

About a week has passed since the murderous attack on Charlie Hebdo in France. Clearly, there were other targets. Clearly, there was collateral damage. I grieve for all who died and praise all of the heroes. But Charlie has received most of the international publicity and is the subject of most of the commentary. I've read American and European news reporting and opinion pieces. I've interacted with friends around the world on social media. I've been thinking.

It's time to write.

I've never subscribed to the theory of American Exceptionalism. Alexis de Tocqueville observed a bustling, vibrant bunch of Anglo-Saxon American go-getters in the early 1800s and thought that they were the cat's pajamas. But the American Revolution has been widely misrepresented and continues to be misrepresented to this day. Its leaders were landed gentry chafing under the rule and, perhaps more importantly, the taxing authority of an absentee landlord. The Founders were in the majority slaveholders and did not end slavery given the opportunity, continuing to hold slaves in full knowledge of the moral bankruptcy of the practice. They were perfectly willing to ally with Native Americans in time of war and they were perfectly willing to invoke Manifest Destiny in order to screw Native Americans out of hearth and home in times of peace. They didn't give their wives the vote and they impregnated their female slaves. They've been made into saints, but their sandals were covered in mud.

Having just trashed the Founders, it would be easy to assume that I hate my country of origin and have left it in disgust in order to live a life of decadence in France. Not true. (Well, living out my life in decadent circumstances is a consummation devoutly to be desired, but...) I have been fortunate to have lived in a country that encourages folks like me to speak our minds in this way, free from fear of reprisal. And that's the point. That's one of the things that the Founders got absolutely, positively, 100% smack dab on the button correct and that has continued to be a vital foundation of American society. Freedom of Expression.

But from Facebook trolls to respected columnists, a new meme has emerged: "The murders at Charlie Hebdo were horrible and without justification, but it must be said that Charlie Hebdo was lousy satire."

Well, I say: "No, it must not be said."

The quality of the satire is totally irrelevant and bringing it up at a time like this is both naive and dangerous. Naive because the quality of the satire had nothing to do with the murders. Salman Rushdie and Theo van Gogh are cases in point. They weren't targeted by book reviewers or film critics. They were targeted by terrorists. Not for quality. For content.

And that's what makes this meme not only naive, but dangerous. In assuming that quality is somehow relevant, the way is paved for censorship. With censorship, punishment.

I submit that the responses to artistic expression are not the responsibility of the artist. If they were, one could almost accept censorship. Indeed, that's how censorship gains a foothold - blaming the artist. In fact, the responses to art are personal. The artist has a right to represent. The viewer has the right to reject. But it ends there. It makes no difference if the art is good or bad. We need Punch and we need MAD Magazine. And we need Charlie Hebdo. Here's why.

After World War II, the Europeans felt the need to censor certain speech. Perhaps understandable. Definitely a mistake. Obnoxious and relentlessly insulting speech is the ONLY test of a belief in freedom of expression. Shading a full-throated defense of such speech with caveats, saying that Charlie didn't have the absolute right to print what they printed without expectation of harm, connecting quality to this discussion, defining one form of speech as acceptable and another as criminal, you've opened the door to more than censorship, you've opened the door to punishment. If Charlie hadn't the right, didn't Charlie deserve to be punished?

Who decides what is obnoxious and insulting? Who decides guilt? Who decides punishment? If the answers to these questions are not the free market, then the answers are that the State decides what is obnoxious and insulting, who is guilty, and what the punishment should be. Anyone who is truly satisfied with allocating that kind of power to the State is not a proponent of freedom of expression.

Tomorrow there's time to judge quality, to decide not to view the cartoons or buy the publication. Today is not the time. You have the right to add conditions to your condemnations. Absolutely. But using that right today paints you with the same brush as Charlie's misogyny painted them. You do indeed conduct yourself as you accuse Charlie of conducting itself, using rights to no valid purpose. You've become Charlie. And you do not deserve to be punished for it.

ELECTRICITY IN FRANCE: IT'S DIFFERENT

Moving across the Pond from the United States to France is easier than it sounds. And harder.

Language has to be the most difficult adjustment for those not already fluent. (Speaking English slowly and loudly really doesn't work. Trust me.) You need a basic vocabulary and an ability to speak to the present, the past, and the future. It's true that most of the French in the region have some English given that it's taught in the schools and that Brits have settled here in considerable numbers. But I didn't come here to make France more like America. They already have Kentucky Fried and Subway. I came here to learn. That includes the language.

Once you have the language basics in hand, you can conduct the business of day-to-day life surprisingly easily. I do all of my banking online as I do most of my bill paying. Most every retail establishment, including the post office, accepts credit cards. At restaurants, they can even come to your table with a little wireless device that reads your chip. We do keep a little cash on hand for our fresh bread at the bakery every other day and for Fanny, the local farmer who sets up her produce stand in the church square twice a week. We get our cash from the ATM in the next village over. But otherwise, our commerce is all electronic and works as well as it should.

Which brings us, boys and girls, to our lesson for today. Finally. Electricity. It's different.

If you've traveled at all, you know that electrical service is fundamentally different in Europe. Not only are French outlets configured differently than American outlets, but French outlets deliver 230 volts as opposed to the 120 volt American supply. Thus most American appliances will not work in France, will in fact overload dangerously. Exceptions can include such items as the power supplies for laptops and chargers for cell phones and tablets. Always check to make certain. Find the small print on the device or its power supply. American chargers that will accept the more robust European current will have something like Input: AC 100V - 240V printed on them.  With the use of an adaptor, not a voltage converter that actually steps down the voltage but a device that simply configures the plug so that it will fit into the wall socket, you can use that device in France. And keep in mind, if you are going to travel to other European countries, that French sockets are configured differently from those of the rest of Europe. One size does not fit all.

In addition to a supply of adaptors for my laptop and those of our chargers that would accept French current, we brought a high-end voltage converter to France with us. Somewhat smaller than a bread box and heavy as lead, the converter steps the 230 volt supply down to 110 volts, allowing my wife Cathey to plug in various of her American kitchen appliances that she would otherwise have had to replace. The cost of replacing her KitchenAid alone would have been several times the cost of the converter.

So, we're set to go. We have an account with EDF, the major supplier that serves Quarante. I'd prefer a local co-op like we had in Cazouls, but we'll see. I pay EDF an estimated bill monthly, drawn automatically from our bank account and, in another six months or so they'll read the meter again and we'll settle up. We haven't had problems until recently. Lights, washer, dryer, fans in the summer, all OK. So far, so good.

But...

When we turned on our oil-filled electric radiators in mid December, the main breaker tripped and we lost all power. Here's the deal. Every room in the house has its own individually thermostatically controlled radiator with some fancy programming available. You can turn the radiator on or off manually and you can set the temperature up or down manually. Or you can use one of four 'Eco'
presets: heat for a couple of hours in the morning, heat for a few hours in the evening, heat both morning and evening but not in the middle of the day or at night, or heat right through from morning to evening but not at night. Of course, none of that matters if you can't turn on multiple radiators at once without tripping the main. We can't turn on multiple radiators at once without tripping the main.

I checked our EDF contract. In France, you don't simply pay for the electricity that you use. First, you decide how much electricity that you think that you will draw and pay an annual fee for the right to draw that much. Without going into too much detail, I discovered that our contract was for less than would be recommended for a house of our size with electric heat, hot water, and laundry. So when we turned on the radiators in several rooms at once, the main breaker determined that we were drawing more electricity than we were entitled to draw and shut us down.

After determining through trial and error just how much electricity we could afford to pull and therefore how warm we could be without tripping the main, I went to the EDF office in Narbonne and contracted for a higher level of draw. By appointment two days later, an EDF worker came by the house. He inspected our equipment and decided that the outside feed and the main breaker leading into our relatively new interior breaker panel wouldn't handle the extra power. They would need to be replaced. There would be an extra cost. He took pictures with his phone and promised to get back to us. This was on December 17th. I asked if we might have the better service by Christmas. He gave a very French shrug of the shoulders and noted that the holidays were coming up. Who could tell?

Three weeks later, well past the holidays, having heard not a peep from EDF, I called EDF's English language customer service help line. Even though my French is reasonably sufficient for face-to-face conversations, telephone conversations are difficult. I can't see the other person. I can't use my hands. I don't seem to have time enough to think of what I want to say. So I called the English language number. I talked to a nice, thoroughly unhelpful fellow. Unfortunately, technical services is different from customer service. And this particular guy in customer service didn't particularly want to talk to the folks at technical services. And the folks at technical services don't speak English.  So back I went to the Narbonne office.

There, the young lady was most helpful. Once she understood the depth (shallowness) of my language skills, she promised me that she would speak doucement (slowly). She pulled up our file. She called technical services. She waited patiently on hold. She were connected. She explained our problem. She took notes. I picked up a bit of what she was saying. They knew who we were. They had our file. They would call us at home after lunch. They would speak doucement.

We went home and waited for the call that never came. Instead, Miles called. You remember Miles. Franglo Fix It. He had set up our EDF account for us before we arrived and they still had his phone number attached to the account. Apparently, the call from the Narbonne office had stirred up the ant hill. Check your email, Mies said. And I did. And there was the devis (estimate) from the technical guys at EDF. 514.14 Euros. Print, sign and mail back the contract. Pay by credit card online. So I did and I did.

I'm a little concerned that I wasn't provided with a receipt for my online payment. And we haven't been given a date for the work to be done. So stay tuned. I'm going to post this and update later.

Electricity certainly is difference in France.

EDIT: The guys from EDF have come and gone. No nonsense, hardworking guys who came to do a job and did the job. Installed a new branch feed and remote meter reader outside and a new meter, breaker, and other bits inside. Made a mess and were good about cleaning it up. I'll need to build a cabinet to hide the workings but I was planning on doing that anyway and I'm glad that I didn't get to it before this work had to be done. All of the heaters are up and running. So far, so good. We'll see how long it will take to warm the house up to a comfortable temperature and keep it there. The only problem I can foresee is that the meter won't be read for several months. We may be in for a shock. Maybe one more edit in spring?

CAN A FLAT TAX BE A FAIR TAX? COULD BE...

One of the issues that falsely divides us in a variety of ways is the question of taxation. I'm not going to get into a critical discussion of supply side economics or the value of various incentives written into the tax code to the benefit of individuals or businesses. That way lies madness. I'm going to simply discuss how a flat tax on individual incomes can be structured to be easy and economical to enforce, progressive in its way, and equitable.

Why should this discussion divide us? If there's a cheaper and fairer way to fund our government, why shouldn't we be diligent in our exploration of it? There are three main reasons comprehensive tax reform has thus far failed to make progress. Briefly:

1. Folks at the edges of both political parties have championed a flat tax. When both Jerry Brown and Malcolm Forbes think that something is a good idea, there's gotta be a catch.

2. CPAs, lesser-credentialed tax accountants and preparers, purveyors of tax software, IRS workers, elected members of Congress on powerful committees, beneficiaries of those incentives and other goodies that have been written into the tax code over the years...all have either financial interests or positions of power to protect.

3. A flat tax is different. That means it has to be carefully explained. See below. Do you have the patience to read and understand the concept? Most don't. Sorry. Truth.

Here goes...

All income would be taxed and the definition of income would be broad and all encompassing - wages, tips, capital gains, bonuses, however it is that hedge fund managers get paid...whatever results in money in your pocket that wasn't there before. All gets reported. All gets taxed.

Now please, be patient with me. I'm going to make some assumptions and quote some statistics. Don't jump on me. For instance, I'm going to set the flat tax rate at 10%. It would probably be lower but I use 10% because that makes it easy to do the math in this sort of demonstration. I'm also going to set the poverty rate for an American family of four at $25,000. The feds actually set it a bit lower for 2014 but again, for the sake of the math...

We begin by deciding on the exclusion, that portion of income that is yours to keep in its entirety, that's not taxed. Think of it as the standard deduction in the current tax system. And let's say that we set the exclusion at 200% of the federal poverty level. Therefore, a family of four with a total income of anything up to $50,000 (twice the federal poverty rate of $25,000 for that family) will pay no taxes. Zilch. Two wage earners making $12 an hour each working full time, earning something over $40,000 total, will pay no income tax. As a percentage of total income, the effective tax rate: 0%

Now let's assume that the Mom and Dad in that family of four are social workers with a bit of seniority. They could be earning $50,000 each, making the family income $100,000. Exclude $50,000. That leaves $50,000 taxable. At 10%, the tax bill would be $5,000. As a percentage of total income, the effective tax rate: 5% (5,000/100,000 = 0.05).

Dad is an executive vice-president of a profitable local company earning a salary of $200,000. Mom is one of those $50,000 social workers, making the total family income $250,000. Exclude $50,000. That leaves $200,000 taxable. At 10%, the tax bill would be $20,000. As a percentage of total income, the effective tax rate: 8% (20,000/250,000 = 0.08).

A hedge fund manager makes $2,000,000 in 2014. Don't ask me how. His wife makes martinis. (OK. I'm a sexist pig. Roll with it.) His kids make Ecstasy in the pool house. Exclude $50,000, leaving a taxable income of $1,950,000. A 10% tax bill comes to $195,000. As a percentage of total income, the effective tax rate: 9.75% (195,000/2,000,000 = 0.0975).

Do you get the picture? It is indeed a progressive tax even though it's called a flat tax. The higher the income, the higher the taxes paid in both dollars and as a percentage of total income. Strictly limit deductions and other adjustments to taxable income. Move the exclusion as the poverty rate moves. Move the tax rate as necessary to cover the cost of government. Get rid of billions of dollars worth of tax preparation costs to the consumer annually. Slash the budget of the IRS. Figure your taxes on a postcard. What's not to like? If you understand the concept, what are the arguments against a flat tax? That it's too simple? That it's not progressive enough? What...?

Currently, about half of federal revenue comes from individual income taxes. About 10% comes from businesses taxes - down from close to 50% about 60 years ago. Lobbying pays dividends. This points out a major problem with a flat tax scenario. How do you apply a like, simplified structure to the self-employed, small businesses, and corporations? A topic for another day...