Henry Farrell has a good post taking on some odd recent punditocratic assertions that the United States is in danger of imminent Frenchification. To take this idea a bit more seriously than it merits, it’s worth observing that if you take ideas about path dependence and institutional structure seriously—and you should!—you’ll see right away that the United States couldn’t possibly become France, whether or not Barack Obama or I or anyone else wants it to.

Nothing can happen in U.S. federal politics that’s the equivalent to the scenario that arises in the Fifth Republic when the President commands a majority in the parliament. Barack Obama’s relationship with the congressional Democrats is just nothing like what Nicholas Sarkozy is, in practice, empowered to do with a parliamentary majority. Similarly, the powers of the national government are completely different in the two countries—the subordinate levels of government in France, for example, have no authority to set tax rates. But the United States has its own currency and its own monetary policy which France doesn’t. There’s no metropolitan area in the United States that plays a role even remotely resembling the centrality of Paris in French life, and given the size of the United States there’s nothing you could possibly do to give any metropolitan area that kind of centrality. For all these reasons, to try to do something like adopt the French approach to education would be completely impossible in the United States. But the French education system is integral to the entire operation of the French political and economic system.

Meanwhile, the general habit of looking at departures from the status quo in the United States and immediately comparing them to France is incredibly lazy and inappropriate. Total taxation (including state and local government) in the United States amounts to 28.3 percent of GDP. In France, it’s 43.6 percent of GDP. We’d have to go past such more-generous-than-the-US Anglophone welfare states as Australia, Ireland, Canada, and New Zealand before arriving at the legendary statist nightmare of Germany at 36.2 percent and then plow through the U.K., Spain, the Netherlands, and even such Nordic all-stars as Iceland, Finland, and Norway before you got a French level of taxation. Under the circumstances, it would make a lot more sense to ask if Barack Obama is trying to turn the United States into Ireland—universal health care, slightly higher taxes, somewhat more unions, different St Patrick’s Day celebration—than France. France is just a weird bugaboo for Americans, but it’s just about the least-enlightening comparison you could ask for.

Yesterday, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) — a bill that makes it easier for workers to form unions and prevent employer harassment and intimidation — was introduced in both the House and Senate. The bill allows workers to unionize if a majority agrees, rather than forcing them to go through the months-long and often fruitless process of negotiating with powerful employers for the right to organize.

With a multi-million dollar campaign to defeat the bill under way, Fox News has enthusiastically taken up the anti-union, Big Business talking points. Even putting aside the network’s frequent right-wing guests, Fox News hosts describe EFCA using anti-union rhetoric while constantly distorting the truth about the legislation:

– BILL HEMMER: “Soon Americans who want to say no to unions might not be able to vote in private.”

– BILL O’REILLY: “Union officials have an open invitation to appear here on The Factor. They won’t, because their arguments for socialism won’t stand up.”

– MARTHA MACCULLUM: “This is going to make it very tough for small businesses to function. … They might have to lay people off!”

Watch some of the worst examples from the last 72 hours:

No matter how many times it’s been debunked, the Fox hosts keep repeating the falsehood that workers will no longer have access to a secret ballot under EFCA. The legislation does not eliminate the secret ballot. The bill would simply allow workers to choose whether to have a majority sign-up or a normal election process. And as American Rights At Work points out, a secret ballot is no guarantee to a fair election. Under current rules, union organizers do not have equal access to voters, the right to free speech, funding and resources equal to employers, or the ability to bring about elections in a timely manner.

More than concern for the secret ballot, the Fox hosts make it clear they are simply against unions. When they insist that union bosses — not employers — are intimidating workers, or when they declare that unions that drive up wages and benefits are harmful for Big Business, it’s clear whose side they’re on — and it’s not the American worker’s.

In a Q&A at the Wonk Room today, Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) was asked why “the media still giving space” to global warming deniers. “I’m hopeful that while the old talking heads are still singing the ‘anti-science’ tune, most of America doesn’t really believe it,” replied Edwards.

Unfortunately, a new Gallup poll shows that while a majority of Americans still believe global warming is happening, a record number now say that it is “exaggerated” by the news media:

Considering the manner in which the media covers global warming, it’s not surprising that the public is confused. For instance, when conservative columnist George Will published demonstrably false claims about climate change in the Washington Post, the Post refused to run a correction. Editorial page editor, Fred Hiatt, defended Will, claiming that he was simply “drawing inferences from data that most scientists reject” and that his critics were “irresponsible.”

In 2007, former Vice President Al Gore pointed out that studies have found that “essentially zero percent of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles disagreed that global warming exists,” but that “53 percent of mainstream newspaper articles disagreed [with] the global warming premise.” Gore says that this is “balance as bias.”