The number one song today in 1965 was this pleasant-sounding, upbeat ditty:
That was on the same day that ABC-TV premiered a cartoon, “The Beatles”:
The number one British song today in 1968:
Today in 1970 was the premiere of a sitcom based on the Cowsills:
Unlike the Cowsills, only two members of the on-camera Partridge Family performed with the Partridge Family band (which were a group of session musicians): David Cassidy, who sang lead, and Shirley Jones, who sang backup vocals.
Today in 1975, singer Jackie Wilson suffered a heart attack while singing “Lonely Teardrops” in a casino in New Jersey. The heart attack caused brain damage, and Wilson died in 1984.
Today in 1982, viewers of NBC-TV’s “Saturday Night Live” got to see Queen:
Today in 1989, viewers of “Saturday Night Live” got to see Neil Young:
Britain’s number one single today in 2006 wasn’t from a British act:
Birthdays start with John Locke (not the philosopher) of Spirit:
Owen “Onnie” McIntyre of the Average White Band:
Burleigh Drummond played, what else, drums for Ambrosia:
Two deaths of note: today in 1980, John “Bonzo” Bonham, drummer for Led Zeppelin, died of a vodka overdose:
Today in 1999, Stephen Canaday of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils died when his World War II plane stalled and crashed into a tree:
We begin with an odd moment today in 1962: Elvis Presley’s manager, Col. Tom Parker, declined an invitation on Presley’s behalf for an appearance between the Royal Family. Declining wasn’t due to conflicting film schedules (the stated reason) or anti-royalism — it was because Parker was an illegal immigrant to the U.S. from the Netherlands (his real name was Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk), and he was afraid he wouldn’t be allowed back into the U.S.
Number one in Britain today in 1964:
Number one in Britain …
… and in the U.S. today in 1983:
The number one British single today in 1988 was recorded by a group whose previous number one single was 25 years earlier. The song, recorded 19 years earlier with someone named Elton John on piano, became a number one because it was in a beer commercial:
Birthdays begin with Mel Taylor, drummer for the Ventures:
The late Linda McCartney, Paul’s wife …
… who was born the same day as Gerry Marsden of Gerry and the Pacemakers:
Wisconsin was settled largely by European immigrants in the late 19th century. This immigration led to the popularization of galops, schottisches, waltzes, and, especially, polkas.
So when I first sought to write a blog piece about rock musicians from Wisconsin, that seemed like a forlorn venture. Turned out it wasn’t, because when I first wrote about rock musicians from Wisconsin, so many of them that I hadn’t mentioned came up in the first few days that I had to write a second blog entry fixing the omissions of the first.
This list is about rock music, so it will not include, for instance, Milwaukee native and Ripon College graduate Al Jarreau, who in addition to having recorded a boatload of music for the jazz and adult contemporary/easy listening fan, also recorded the theme music for the ’80s TV series “Moonlighting.” Nor will it include Milwaukee native Eric Benet, who was for a while known more for his former wife, Halle Berry, than for his music, which includes four number one singles on the R&B charts, “Spend My Life with You” with Tamia, “Hurricane,” “Pretty Baby” and “You’re the Only One.” Nor will it include Wisconsin’s sizable contributions to big band music. Nor will it include Packer-related songs, which deserve their own blog. Nor will it include, for obvious reasons, either Liberace or Hildegard. Nor will it include the aforementioned greatest marching band in the universe.
No discussion of Wisconsin-based rock can begin without the contributions of Les Paul, a pioneer not just in building an electric guitar in 1941, but in creating the recording processes of close miking, echo delay, overdubbing and multitracking. Paul’s website’s statement that “It’s safe to say that rock and roll as we know it would not exist without his invention” is for once not hyperbole.
Paul was a friend of the family of Milwaukee native Steve Miller.
Miller’s parents then moved to Texas and Miller went to a military school, where he met William “Boz” Scaggs, who later would be in the Steve Miller Band before embarking on a solo career.
The “If you grew up in Madison you remember …” Facebook page contains numerous (and possibly apocryphal, as in an appearance at a high school dance) memories of Cheap Trick.
Over in Sheboygan, The Chordettes hit the big time in 1949 after winning on “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts.” (Think “American Idol” well before TV.) The Chordettes, which are believed to be the first Wisconsin-based group to reach the Billboard pop charts, are best known for “Mr. Sandman” and “Lollipop,” among their 14 hit singles, and appeared on the first “American Bandstand” program. The Chordettes inspired high school girls of the ’50s, including singers in Boscobel:
Whether the Chordettes were a rock act depends on your definition. The second act from the Badger State on the Billboard charts definitely was, Waukesha’s Chico Holiday:
The third Wisconsin act to make the Billboard charts was the Fendermen (Jim Sundquist of Niagara and Phil Humphrey of Milwaukee), whose “Mule Skinner Blues” reached number three in 1960, the same year they appeared on ABC-TV’s “American Bandstand” and played in a concert with Johnny Cash in Minneapolis. (This depicts their 2005 meeting in Green Bay.)
Sundquist later recorded songs as Jimmy and the Radiants, Jimmy Sundquist and His Mule Skinners, and finally the Mule Skinners, while Humphrey recorded a song called “Greensleaves” as Phil Humphrey’s Fendermen. (Think the Irish folk song “Greensleeves” at double speed with saxophones, which sounds like a swarm of angry bumblebees.)
The first release of “Mule Skinner Blues” was on Cuca Records of Sauk City. I have the “Cuca Records Rock ’n’ Roll Story” CD, and it’s got quite a collection of Wisconsin and Midwestern acts, including Larry Phillipson, the Teen Tones, Dick Hiorns (a Wausau nightclub owner), Kenny King and the Be Bops, Bob Mattice & the Phaetons (whose “What’s All This” is a song about rock songs), and Vilas Craig, who sang one song and produced another.
Craig’s group, first called the Kollege Kings and later called the Vicounts, was said to be the first rock and roll band in southern Wisconsin. Note the piano player with the poor posture, who you might notice looks like a certain blog author you’re reading:
(Said Vicounts, by the way, once were the backing band for Bobby Darin when he played a concert at Turner Hall in Madison. The piano player tells me Darin was very exacting and that playing for him wasn’t a particularly fun experience. The Vicounts’ piano player later was working for a Madison music store when the store got a request to deliver a Hammond organ to the brand new Dane County Coliseum for its first concert, Ray Charles. The piano player/organ installer — whose name, curiously, is the same as mine — set up the organ for Charles’ organist, and then was invited to watch the concert from the back stage. While watching the concert, he suddenly heard Charles express his thanks to the music store and the guy they sent out to set up the organ, and hey, why don’t you come out and play a song with us. Unfortunately, my father was so shocked by the unannounced invitation that he remembers nothing about the experience.)
Skip ahead a couple decades and you get an act of some regional notoriety, Milwaukee’s Violent Femmes:
The most notable Wisconsin-based act, of course, is the BoDeans:
A music act has certainly made it when one of its songs is the theme for a TV series. Only one original member remains; the BoDeans now have more former members than current members, which, if you think about it, is a sign of longevity.
Green Bay and Sturgeon Bay take pride in Pat MacDonald, whose one hit as Timbuk 3 was one of those archetypal ’80s songs:
Metro Milwaukee (specifically), Menomonee Falls) also produced Andy Hurley, drummer for Fall Out Boy:
Soul Asylum reached fame in the Twin Cities, but co-founder Dave Pirner is from Green Bay. (Green Bay to the Twin Cities … why does that sound familiar?) Soul Asylum has one gold single, “Runaway Train.”
Genesis hired Milwaukeean Daryl Stuermer as, in the words of drummer/lead singer Phil Collins, “permanent–temporary–part-time member” in 1977. Stuermer continued playing for Collins when Collins went solo. All Genesis has done is record 15 studio albums, six live albums, six compilation albums, two extended plays and 42 singles, one of which, “Invisible Touch,” reached number one in 1986. All Collins has done is release 10 albums and 56 singles, seven of which reached number one in the U.S., and contribute to the soundtracks of six movies. (As a trumpet player, my favorites would have to be Genesis’ “No Reply at All” and Collins’ “I Missed Again,” although I also appreciate the warped sound of Genesis’ “Mama” and the video of “Land of Confusion.”)
Genesis has an interesting history of which Stuermer is part. Collins came to the band four years after Peter Gabriel, keyboardist Tony Banks, guitarist Mike Rutherford and others began the group. The Gabriel-era Genesis was the favorite of rock music critics, while the band had more of a cult following than big sales. The Collins-era Genesis (Stuermer joined two years after Gabriel left) has occasionally suffered the slings and arrows of bad reviews (a Rolling Stone reviewer said of their first post-Gabriel album, “this contemptible opus is but the palest shadow of the group’s earlier accomplishments”) that they could, to quote someone who will show up later in this blog, cry all the way to the bank while reading those negative reviews. As Collins later put in Rolling Stone, “We know that people like us, because our records sell.”
Another group whose records sold is R.E.M., whose drummer, Bill Berry, lived in Wauwatosa as a child. Berry wrote R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” and “Man on the Moon,” and performed on the first 10 of the group’s 14 studio albums and number one singles “Orange Crush, “Stand,” “Losing My Religion,” “Drive,” “What’s the Frequency Kenneth” and “Bang and Blame.” Berry left the group two years after collapsing on stage from a brain aneurysm to become, of all things, a hay farmer in Georgia. Berry summed up the experience of being a successful rock musician in an MTV interview when R.E.M. was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: “It’s a great chance to get back together and perform with R.E.M., which I always loved doing. This opportunity also does not require me to climb onto (a) bus or plane to do it again and again for several consecutive months.”
If you are from the 1980s, you have heard of Talking Heads (another ’80s reference, you say? Well, same as it ever was, I reply), one of the first and best known New Wave bands. Their keyboardist and guitarist was Milwaukee native Jerry Harrison. Talking Heads also was the subject of what movie critic Leonard Maltin calls one of the best rock movies of all time, “Stop Making Sense.” (Maltin gave the movie four stars, one-half star more than Roger Ebert.)
Reed Kailing of Milwaukee was a guitarist for The Grass Roots, Badfinger and Player. (The Grass Roots had a story like Waylon Jennings’ story about Buddy Holly’s ill-fated last plane ride: Because of a lost coin flip, Jim Croce got the last chartered plane at a Natchitoches, La., airport instead of the Grass Roots; the plane crashed into a pecan tree at the end of the runway, killing Croce and everyone else aboard.)
George Frayne, who lived in Winneconne, was in Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, which recorded a song about neither air nor space nor sea:
The next contribution to rock music from Wisconsin to reach national renown may be Bon Iver, whose front man, Justin Vernon, is from Eau Claire. For your first album to finish 29th in Rolling Stone’s Top 50 Albums of 2008 is a good start.
A husband-and-wife duo in the Christian rock genre who are getting secular radio airplay is Skillet, John and Korey Cooper, who are also Sconnies.
The Radio Rumpus Room has a long list of what it calls “Wisconsin ’60s garage and rock’n’roll bands,” including Lord Beverly Moss & The Mossmen, The Hinge, The Private Property of Digil and The Society of Appleton, The Centurys and The Zakons of Green Bay, The Faros of Neenah, Raylene and the Blue Angels and Seltaeb of Oshkosh, The Love Society of Plymouth, and a number of bands from unnamed Wisconsin locations, including the Fendermen.
Wisconsin is the location of some tragic irony as well. On Dec. 10, 1967, a plane carrying Rock and Roll Hall of Fame singer Otis Redding and members of his backing band, The Bar-Kays, crashed into Lake Monona in Madison, with just one Bar-Kay surviving. Redding and his band were to play at The Factory in Madison that night. (Another Bar-Kay was on a commercial flight.) Redding had recorded “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay” three days earlier, and it became his only number one hit and the first ever posthumous number-one hit.
Butch Vig of Viroqua and the group Garbage …
… produced the Nirvana album “Nevermind.”
To demonstrate that it’s a small world after all: According to the Wisconsinology blog, Vig was in a group called Firetown, along with Lomira’s Tom Lavarda. Lavarda started his musical career as the bass player for Vilas Craig and the Vicounts. Another member of Craig’s band was Keith Knudsen, who went on to the Doobie Brothers.
Further proof in the small world department can be found in the punk band Bad Religion, whose cofounder and vocalist Greg Graffin was born in Racine and lived in Madison while I was growing up there. (Which makes me wonder whether our paths ever crossed, since Graffin is seven months older than I am, similar to Chris Farley).
No discussion of ’80s rock is complete without discussion of hair bands, a group that, accurately or not (some argue their music went beyond heavy metal), includes Dokken, whose bassist, Jeff Pilson, grew up in Whitefish Bay. Pilson now plays bass for Foreigner.
C.J. Snare, lead singer (not drummer despite his perfect last name) of FireHouse, didn’t grow up in Wisconsin, but he lives in Milwaukee now:
Also found in the ’80s was the all-female group The Go-Gos, whose guitarist, Jane Wiedlin, reportedly splits her residence between Madison and Los Angeles. (And if you’d like to get married, we have just the minister for you.)
The Racine area is the home of a one-hit wonder, Chi Coltrane, whose “Thunder and Lightning” reached number 17 in 1972. Coltrane has released 11 albums and according to her Web site went on a European tour in 2009 and is working on her next album to be released in 2012.
I’m not sure if the Righteous Brothers belong in “pop” or “rock,” but they did record the ultimate rock and roll tribute, “Rock and Roll Heaven,” where you know they got a hell of a band, probably led by Les Paul on guitar. Unfortunately, Righteous Brother Bobby Hatfield, who lived the first four years of his life in Beaver Dam, is now in that band, having died in 2003.
Also in rock and roll heaven is Madison’s Joe Schermie, bass player for Three Dog Night, the most popular band in the land between 1969 and 1974 if you define that by their 21 consecutive Top 40 singles and their 12 consecutive gold albums. (Three Dog Night had seven members, three of whom alternated singing.) Three Dog Night’s number one singles were their first, “Mama Told Me Not to Come,” followed by “Joy to the World” and “Black and White.” Interestingly, Three Dog Night became popular by singing other songwriters’ songs, including Randy Newman, who wrote “Mama”; Hoyt Axton, who wrote “Joy”; Laura Nyro, who wrote “Eli’s Coming” (my favorite of hers and theirs); Russ Ballard, who wrote “Liar”; Harry Nilsson, who wrote “One”; John Hiatt, who wrote “Sure As I’m Sittin’ Here”; Leo Sayer, who wrote “The Show Must Go On”; and Paul Williams, who wrote “Just an Old Fashioned Love Song,” “Out in the Country” and “Easy to be Hard.” Schermie was just 56 when he died in 2002.
Betty Everett was born in Mississippi, not Wisconsin, but she died in Beloit in 2001:
Clyde Stubblefield was James Brown’s drummer, and wrote what supposedly is the most sampled drum piece of all time:
It seems to me now that, between the various rock and pop offerings, enough Wisconsin product is available that a rock or oldies radio station could devote a day — perhaps May 29, the anniversary of our statehood — to playing songs with some kind of Wisconsin connection.
Today in 1969, the Northern Star, the Northern Illinois University student newspaper, passed on the rumor that Paul McCartney had died in a car crash in 1966 and been impersonated in public ever since then. A Detroit radio station picked up the rumor, and then McCartney himself had to appear in public to report that, to quote Mark Twain, rumors of his death had been exaggerated.
(Thirty-five years to the day later, in 2004, Slipknot’s Corey Taylor issued a statement denying his death after a Des Moines radio station announced he had died from a drug overdose, then correcting to say Taylor had died in a car crash.)
The number one song today in 1972:
Today in 1980, Bob Marley collapsed during a concert in Pittsburgh:
That was Marley’s last concert. He died of cancer the following May.
The number one song today in 1989 was Milli Vanilli’s “Girl I’m Gonna Miss You.” But I’m not going to play it because Milli Vanilli didn’t actually exist.
The number one British single today in 2001:
Birthdays begin with Ray Charles, with whom, as you know, my father once played:
One-hit wonder Toni Basil …
… was born the same day as Steve Boone of the Lovin’ Spoonful:
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R–Wisconsin) is not a member of the Congressional super duper alleged-deficit-reduction supercommittee.
So, of course, Johnson has a better plan to reduce the deficit than the supercommittee is likely to create. The Wall Street Journal reports:
… the Senator has identified $1.4 trillion in savings over 10 years for any Congressional “Super Committee” members looking to make sensible cuts on behalf of taxpayers. Reasonable people can argue over the details, but what’s encouraging about the plan is that it shows how much leaner the federal government could be without even cutting back on services that many voters demand.
Relying heavily on the work of Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn as well as independent groups like Third Way, Mr. Johnson has found impressive savings across federal operations. The biggest item takes $248 billion out of salaries for most federal workers, but no one gets fired or suffers a pay cut. The cuts are achieved through attrition and a pay freeze for civilians through 2015. Mr. Johnson reports that federal workers are now making 30% to 40% more in combined wages and benefits than comparable workers in the real economy. His plan therefore gives taxpayers a fighting chance to catch up with the public servants they’re supporting.
The Johnson plan also has at least one element that President Obama should love: eliminating federal reviews on transportation projects whenever state and local rules meet or exceed federal standards. Cutting this duplicative red tape and streamlining approvals would save $50 billion. Mr. Obama should sign this—if we may borrow a phrase—right away.
Johnson’s proposal, which can be read here, has the advantage of not being particularly partisan or ideological for the most part. These proposals do not include, for instance, eliminating cabinet departments whose functions are not mentioned in the Constitution. Whether you agree or not with the existence of the departments of Energy, Education and Veterans Affairs, the fact is that there is not nearly enough support in Washington to kill those departments. That requires another election.
The proposed cuts include:
Close federal government computer data centers. … By reforming federal information technology management and closing computer data centers, the government could realize major cost savings in the management of its IT workforce. Better technology enables computers to run at far higher levels of efficiency and utilization than in previous years, doing more tasks with fewer computers and fewer data centers.
Eliminate locality pay for rest of United States. … Through locality pay, employees living outside a metropolitan statistical area receive a 14.61% increase in base pay purely for being a federal employee. Given that locality pay was meant to offset the cost of living in more expensive urban and suburban areas, there is no reason why these employees need an additional boost.
Use accurate COLA formula to estimate inflation. … The current cost of living adjustment formula for Civil Service Retirement System recipients is calculated under the Consumer Price Index – Wages (CPI-W), based on changes in wages, not on changes in the cost of living. A newer, more accurate model based on urban consumer prices, not wages (CPI-U), would more accurately link adjustments to retirees’ actual living costs by estimating COLA with CPI-U instead of CPI-W.
Eliminate unneeded federal properties. … The federal government now manages more than 63,000 unneeded real estate holdings and other federal properties. This number continues to increase. American taxpayers foot the bill for the operational costs of these buildings, such as utilities and maintenance.
Eliminate duplicative offices at the Department of Homeland Security. … While billions of dollars have been spent toward consolidating 22 different components into a single department, there are still management inefficiencies, such as the approximately 60 Department of Homeland Security offices at the component level that duplicate activities at the headquarters level. Eliminating these separate offices, with separate staffs and budgets, and streamlining the chain of command and number of staff would result in significant cost savings both in terms of real salaries and in increased efficiencies.
Cut federal vehicle fleet by 20%. … It is estimated that federal agencies own or lease more than 662,000 vehicles. These vehicles require maintenance and service, whether they are being driven or simply sitting on a parking lot, unused.
Cut federal advertising by 50%. … It is estimated that the government spent nearly $1 billion on advertising in 2010. While this may be necessary in some instances (for instance, recruiting for federal jobs), it often can be controversial and unnecessary.
Reduce and restrict government printing. … As document technology improves, there is less and less need for costly printing. Many government documents are printed regardless of whether someone actually has requested a printed document. With better managerial controls, via more deliberate policies on when printing is and is not appropriate, significant savings could be realized.
Five-year freeze on constructing or buying new federal buildings. … With the federal government managing so many thousands of underused properties, a freeze on new acquisitions and construction of federal buildings should not constrain agencies’ missions.
End direct subsidy to U.S. Postal Service for non-profit mail discounts. … The Postal Service (USPS) has been ordered to grant non-profit mail discounts and received a direct federal appropriation in compensation. The appropriation was authorized to compensate USPS for lost revenues that occurred in the early 1990s and ended in 1998, and is not related to any current USPS activities. From a management standpoint, then, the appropriation makes little sense. President Obama’s 2012 budget proposed an end to appropriations to USPS for non-profit mail discounts.
Cut number of limousines owned by the government. … In recent years, the fleet of limousines under federal agency management has grown by 73%. In an era of fiscal austerity, there is no need for so many limousines. This is government excess at its finest.
The largest chunk of potential savings, more than $800 billion, comes in, not surprisingly, employee compensation, not by cutting positions, but by, as in Wisconsin, making federal employees pay their fair share of their extremely generous employee benefits, along with a 10-percent workforce cut by attrition. The proposal also freezes pay for both federal employees and members of Congress through 2015.
Whether you believe the federal government is too small or not, or does too much or not enough, the fact is that if the government wastes money in any area, it cannot spend money in whatever area in which you think spending is insufficient. That is why most of Johnson’s proposed cuts need to be enacted immediately, unless, that is, the Democrats are fine with being painted as the Government Waste Party.
The seriousness of the deficit supercommittee will be measured by the number of Johnson’s proposals the supercommittee approves. And the seriousness of Congress’ interest in reducing the deficit will be measured by the number of Johnson’s proposals for which members of Congress vote.
Well, I’m for the rich, and not just because the top 1 percent of earners in America paid 38 percent of income taxes in 2008. And not just because I suspect that attempting to tax the rich more will only lead to more tax avoidance, not more tax revenues for the federal government. I’m for the rich because, with some exceptions, they’ve earned their money. A Prince and Associates study found that only 10 percent of multi-millionaires had inherited their wealth.
In the process of earning their wealth, the rich have created products, services, and whole industries that have dramatically improved my work life, my family life, and my health. I’m so grateful to them for the GPS, iPads, non-drowsy antihistamines, smartphones, XM radio, and The Teaching Company courses — to name only a few advances of the past decade or two.
I’m for the rich because nearly all of the rich people I’ve met are extremely public-spirited. They volunteer. They form committees to improve things in their communities. And they are incredibly generous with their money. As Arthur C. Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute notes, “The top 10 percent of households in income are responsible for at least a quarter of all the money contributed to charity, and households with total wealth exceeding $1 million give about half of all charitable donations.” In general, I think they probably make wiser choices in their charitable giving than the federal government would make if it took their money and spent it.
I’m for the rich because they create the dynamism and energy of a growing economy. The rich create businesses and hire people.
A wealthy person gave me my first job. And I’ll bet the same is true of you.
I’m for the rich and for all the people who simply want an opportunity to become rich — opportunities that are becoming scarcer with every passing day of Mr. Obama’s presidency.
Today in 1967, a few days after their first and last appearance on CBS-TV’s “Ed Sullivan Show,” the Doors appeared on the Murray the K show on WPIX-TV in New York:
Today in 1969, ABC-TV premiered “Music Scene” against CBS-TV’s “Gunsmoke” and NBC-TV’s “Laugh-In”:
The number one British album today in 1973 was the Rolling Stones’ “Goats Head Soup,” despite (or perhaps because of) the BBC’s ban of one of its songs, “Star Star”:
Gary Numan had Britain’s number one single and album today in 1979:
Today is an anniversary for two notable concerts. Today in 1979, the first of the two No Nukes concerts was held at Madison Square Garden in New York:
Today in 1985, the first Farm Aid concert was held at the University of Illinois:
Birthdays begin with David Coverdale of Whitesnake:
Richard Fairbrass of the one-hit-wonder Right Said Fred:
One would not expect that President Obama’s stick-it-to-the-“rich” plan — I mean, his jobs plan — to get good reviews from those who lean conservative, such as the Tax Foundation, which doesn’t mean the Tax Foundation isn’t correct:
A review of the economic research suggests that “jobs” incentives tend to be ineffective in spurring new hiring, while the three most recent “demand-side” tax cut plans failed to induce new consumer spending. The business-expensing provision, while a good idea, will only have a modest impact on economic growth because of its temporary nature. …
While it is likely that the tax incentive portion of Pres. Obama’s plan would deliver few jobs and little economic growth, the permanent tax increases that “pay for” the tax cuts can do permanent harm to the economy. …
By and large, these measures are not motivated by sound tax policy, but rather as a means of punishing politically unpopular groups such as the “rich,” hedge fund managers, and oil companies.
While limiting tax deductions for high-income taxpayers is certainly less harmful economically than raising their marginal tax rates, the provision would still mean a substantial tax increase for America’s most successful private business owners. For example, more than 60 percent of taxpayers in the 33 percent tax bracket have business income while more than 82 percent of those in the top 35 percent bracket have business income. While they may be few in number, high-income taxpayers earn the vast majority of all private business income. It’s hard to imagine that these business owners would increase hiring in the short term in the face of a permanent tax hike.
But Obama’s jobs “plan” isn’t even getting good reviews from Democrats, reports the Chicago Tribune:
Elizabeth Warren is a staunch Democrat who recently left the Obama administration to run for the Senate in the unusually liberal state of Massachusetts. When asked if she would vote for the jobs plan proposed by her former boss, Warren didn’t hesitate. “I’m my own person, and I’ve been talking about my set of issues for a very long time.” Translated: Don’t try to hang that one on me.
The president wants to show the country he’s serious about boosting employment, which he proposes to do with a $447 billion package that bears an eerie resemblance to his 2009 stimulus effort. But the country isn’t buying. A recent Bloomberg poll found that 51 percent of Americans don’t think the jobs bill would have the desired effect.
They may never find out, since it faces strong opposition in Congress. Conservative Democrats say they have no interest in voting for Obama’s proposed new spending. Among liberals, there is some resistance to cutting employer payroll taxes. Republicans are, shall we say, even less receptive to Obama’s demands.
The skeptics are on solid ground. When he signed the original $787 billion stimulus measure, the president said it would create or save 3.5 million jobs. Instead, employment has dropped by 1.7 million. The administration is not wholly at fault: The economy was weaker then than anyone realized. But the spending measures simply didn’t have anything like the payoff that was promised. …
The folly here is trying to juice up the job market in the short run at the expense of what the economy needs in the long run. House Speaker John Boehner‘s Thursday speech to the Economic Club of Washington had a less jazzy but more realistic formula.
One big piece: “broad-based tax reform that will lower rates for individuals and corporations while closing deductions, credits and special carveouts.” Another is addressing the spending binge of the last few years, a job that, as Boehner acknowledges, will require curbs in entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. Curbing excessive regulation is also needed to reduce the uncertainty that hangs over business owners, discouraging them from hiring.
When the Tribune says “curbing excessive regulation,” perhaps its editorial writers have in mind these proposals from Future of Capitalism, which is in the process of rolling out 30 “Cost-Free Job-Creating Ideas”:
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 5: Repeal the regulatory burdens of Sarbanes Oxley for all companies with less than $1 billion in sales, and index that number to inflation. …
Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 7: Moratorium on significant new regulations until unemployment rate returns to pre-Obama level of 7.7 percent. …
The regulatory moratorium idea comes from U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R–Wisconsin):
It is the Regulation Moratorium and Job Preservation Act, which provides that no federal agency “may take any significant regulatory action until the unemployment rate is equal to or less than 7.7 percent.” “Regulatory Action” is defined in the bill to mean “any substantive action by an agency that promulgates or is expected to lead to the promulgation of a final regulation, including notices of inquiry, advanced notices of proposed rulemaking, and notices of proposed rulemaking.”
A press release from Senator Johnson explains: “During the Obama Administration, the unemployment rate has never been lower than it was the day the President was sworn in, when it was at 7.8%. Johnson’s legislation prohibits federal agencies from implementing any new significant regulatory actions until the nation’s unemployment rate falls to 7.7%. It allows the President to waive the rule for regulations dealing with national security, or national emergency.”
Those opposed to defanging the feds as Johnson proposes obsess over what they claim are the record profits of publicly traded corporations. Independent of the facts that no profit is bad profit and that business profits are always preferable to government tax revenues, the number of publicly traded U.S. corporations totals only 15,000 — one-third on stock exchanges, the rest over-the-counter — with another 7,000 grey-market firms, whose stock is available publicly but not sold on exchanges. The number of publicly traded companies on major stock exchanges is dropping, according to CFO.com, for reasons that include the impetus for aforementioned idea number 5.
The number of businesses with employees, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, totaled in 2007 6,049,655. The number of businesses without employees (in other words, sole proprietors) totaled in 2007 21,708,021. So when considering cuts in corporate taxes and regulations, opponents are interested only in the effects of corporate taxes and regulations on 0.1 percent of businesses, instead of the effects of corporate taxes and regulations on 99.9 percent of businesses.
One would think it makes more sense to base government policy on 99.9 percent of businesses than 0.1 percent of businesses. Or, if you wish, the 99.64 percent of non-publicly-traded businesses with employees than the 0.36 percent that are.
Multiple choice: The Obama administration’s plan to reduce the never-ending deficit, released Monday, is:
Obama’s latest attempt to appeal to his base.
Obama’s latest attempt to stick it to Congressional Republicans.
Dead on arrival at the House of Representatives.
A serious effort to deal with the budget deficit and the debt and improve the economy.
Of those four choices, the wrong answer is option 4. Obama admitted himself Sept. 8 that raising taxes in the midst of a recession is crazy. So in a recession, Obama proposes to, yes, raise taxes and fees. There is no evidence — none, ever — that raising taxes will improve the economy.
Option 1, appealing to his base, and its corollary, option 2, are the result of his own increasingly bad poll numbers. Obama’s poll numbers are much more meaningful than Congress’ poll numbers because voters can vote for only one member of Congress, not all of them, so voters’ opinion of Congress is approximately 0.2299 percent meaningful. Control of the House has not switched parties in consecutive elections since 1954, so Democrats’ dreams of taking back the House one term after losing the House are not supported by history. Moreover, the demographics of the 2012 Senate elections (that is, the six Democrats elected to the Senate in 2006, and the five Democrats retiring, including Wisconsin’s Herb Kohl), mean that Republican capture of the Senate has a better than even chance.
Vodkapundit has some math questions for the administration:
The promise is to generate $3 trillion in savings. One third of that, $1T, comes from defense spending in Iraq and Afghanistan that isn’t going to happen anyway. The drawdowns are already in place. You can’t “save” money you were never going to spend. So already we’re down to $2T in deficit reduction.
Next, the President wants to wring $580 billion out of entitlements, by finding that many dollars worth of “waste and inefficiency.” Of course, we were already granted a boon of $500 billion in cost-free savings in Medicare when ObamaCare passed. If we pretend, like the President does, that those $500 billions were really saved, it’s hard to see where we’ll find another imaginary $580 billion. So now we’re down to a mere $1.42 trillion in deficit reduction — over the next ten years.
But don’t worry because Obama says we’re going to get $1.5T in deficit reduction from tax hikes on “the rich.” What’s the real number? Let’s use a little something I call the “Clinton Rule of Thumb.” When President Clinton and the Democratic Congress jacked up taxes in 1993, revenues only increased by about two-thirds of the expected amount — and that was in a booming economy. So using the CROT, we can expect Obama’s tax hikes to generate $1T in new revenues.
However, this economy is, shall we say, not booming. So let’s cut the number in half again: $500 billion dollars in new revenues. And unlike the rest of the malarky in the President’s plan, I expect the tax hikes to be as real (and as serious) as a hemorrhagic fever. Which leaves us with a deficit plan that “saves” half a trillion dollars over the next ten years — or by a little more than one-third of our deficit spending from just last year.
This isn’t a credible plan. This is yet another soak-the-rich/class-warfare scheme aimed solely at securing Obama’s reelection.
Obama’s reelection strategy, such as it is, increasingly appears to emulate the 1948 Harry Truman reelection campaign. Independent of the dubious wisdom of emulating a campaign strategy that is more than 60 years old when, to put it mildly, this country is different from 1948,
Forbes.com’s Janet Novack shows that the Obama administration’s definition of “millionaire” is someone with more than $250,000:
Indeed, most of Obama’s tax proposals will apparently repeat those he has made before. For example, $800 billion would come from letting the Bush tax cuts for families earning more than $250,000 expire at the end of 2012, meaning the top rate on ordinary income such as salary would rise from 35% to 39.6%. Last month, in a New York Times op-ed, [Warren] Buffett called for two higher tax rates—one on income over $1 million and the other on income over $10 million. Published reports over the weekend variously suggested Obama would endorse a new millionaire’s rate or release some sort of proposal for a minimum tax on millionaires—say to replace the current convoluted alternative minimum tax. But Sunday night, the Administration official said the Buffett rule was simply a principle for tax reform.
Most people earning more than $1 million are already taxed at a higher effective rate than their secretaries. In 2008, for example, taxpayers with adjusted gross income between $1 million and $10 million paid an average of 24.5% of their adjusted gross in federal income tax, compared with an average of 12.6% for those earning $100,000 to $200,000, and 8.4% for those earning $50,000 to $100,000. But the 400 highest income taxpayers do pay a lower effective rate than mere millionaires—an average of just 18.1% in 2008. That’s because the top 400 get the bulk of their income from capital gains, which are taxed at a top rate of 15%, scheduled to rise to 20% when the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of 2012. If tax reform is to insure that billionaires pay a higher effective rate than the upper middle and middle class it would have to reduce or eliminate the break for capital gains—something that was done in Reagan’s 1986 tax reform but that doesn’t sit well with most Republicans today.
National Review’s Kevin Williamson back in March identified the biggest problem with a soak-the-“rich” tax plan:
There are lots of liberal definitions of “rich.” When Pres. Barack Obama talks about the rich, he’s talking about people living in households with income of more than $250,000 or more, the rarefied caviar-shoveling stratum occupied by the likes of second-tier public-broadcasting executives,Boston cops, nurses, and the city manager of Lubbock, Texas (assuming somebody in her household earns the last $25,000 to carry her over the line). Club 250K isn’t all that exclusive, and most of its members aren’t the yachts-and-expensive-mistresses types.
Nonetheless, there aren’t that many of them. In fact, in 2006, the Census Bureau found only 2.2 million households earning more than $250,000. And most of those are closer to the Lubbock city manager than to Carlos Slim, income-wise. To jump from the 50th to the 51st percentile isn’t that tough; jumping from the 96th to the 97th takes a lot of schmundo. It’s lonely at the top.
But say we wanted to balance the budget by jacking up taxes on Club 250K. That’s a problem: The 2012 deficit is forecast to hit $1.1 trillion under Obama’s budget. (Thanks, Mr. President!) Spread that deficit over all the households in Club 250K and you have to jack up their taxes by an average of $500,000. Which you simply can’t do, since a lot of them don’t have $500,000 in income to seize: Most of them are making $250,000 to $450,000 and paying about half in taxes already. You can squeeze that goose all day, but that’s not going to make it push out a golden egg.
But like certain other exclusive clubs, Club 250K has an inner sanctum, a special club within the club, the champagne room of socioeconomic status. And that is Club 1: the million-dollar-a-year club. Not the millionaires’ club — lots of the people earning $1 million in any given year do not have $1 million in assets — but, still, a million a year, even in rapidly depreciating U.S. dollars, is not too shabby. But the trouble for liberals is, Club 1 is really, really exclusive: Only 0.2 percent of U.S. households have incomesthat high, meaning that there’s only about 200,000 of them. And like Club 250K, Club 1 is bottom-heavy: There are a lot more $1 million men than there are $6 million men. And there are a whole heck of a lot more $6 million men than there are $60 million men.
You want to tax Club 1 to get rid of the deficit, you have to hit each of those 200,000 households with an average tax hike — not an average tax bill, but tax increase — of $6 million. And a lot of those Club 1 households don’t have $6 million in income to start with, much less $6 million left after the taxes they’re already paying. …
Capital is sensitive — it just wants to be loved! — and it will go where the love is, where it can be fruitful and multiply. Setting trillions of dollars’ worth of it ablaze on the altar of Washington’s self-importance every year is not going to get it done, and there simply aren’t enough rich people for us to pillage or enough loot to make it all work. We have finally, as the lady predicted, run out of other people’s money.
If Obama was really interested in a centrist deficit and debt plan, it might look something like what David Frum posits:
1) In the short run, we need the federal government to continue to act in a stimulative way: spending on transportation infrastructure, cutting the payroll tax, and maintaining unemployment benefits.
2) We should not be postponing Medicare benefits for six years or 10. We should be starting now – but not by withdrawing coverage from beneficiaries. Instead, we should be squeezing America’s over-costly health providers. There’s a lot to be said in favor of a gradual shift to a premium support model for Medicare – the Ryan plan, but properly funded. But such a shift is a big and administratively complex project. In the interim, we should be doing as the Reagan administration did when it instituted Diagnosis-Related Group pricing in the 1980s: use the government’s monopsony power to force down prices.
3) Government needs additional revenue, but it should not be raising taxes on work, saving and investment. Instead of the taxes in the ACA and in the new Obama deficit plan, we should be planning carbon taxes and value-added taxes: consumption taxes, not production taxes. WIth the ACA, the spending side of the US government has become substantially more redistributive. It’s dangerous to finance redistributive spending programs with redistributive revenue sources – government loses all incentive to restrain costs. Back of the envelope: a 6% VAT would produce as much revenue as flat-out confiscation of 100% of the earnings of everyone who makes more than $1 million a year.
4) As the US government winds down commitments in Afghanistan (faster please) and Iraq (slower please), it must preserve a defense budget sufficient to respond to future contingencies. National defense, not healthcare, is the first and supreme responsibility of government.
But does the federal government really need more revenue? Do we have any assurance at all that additional revenue won’t similarly disappear into the federal cesspool? Do we have any assurance that energy taxes won’t turn today’s seemingly never-ending recession into an actually never-ending recession? I’m all for consumption taxes, but I am unalterably opposed to value-added taxes or national sales taxes unless they include the permanent elimination of federal income taxes, including the repeal of the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
How do we know Obama is fouling up again? Because a Democratic strategist, Mark Penn, says so:
He should be working as a president, not a candidate.
He should be claiming the vital center, not abandoning it.
He should be holding down taxes rather than raising them.
He should be mastering the global economy, not running away from it.
And most of all, he should be bringing the country together rather than dividing it through class warfare.
When Al Gore faced a close presidential race in 2000, he abandoned running on peace and prosperity in favor of the people vs. the powerful, only to see his lead evaporate. When John Kerry was facing a tough race in 2004, he spent the last few months after the convention tacking to the left on the Iraq war and other issues to stimulate the base, only to fall even farther behind.
But when Bill Clinton was facing the fight of his political life in his 1996 re-election, he got rid of all the class warfare language used by traditional Democrats, got behind welfare reform and the balanced budget, and supported a strong, activist government that spent and taxed less rather than more. As a result, Clinton trounced the Republican nominee and was the first Democrat to serve a full eight years since Roosevelt. And the country got behind the president. …
In Obama’s case, it is particularly damaging to his chances for re-election because of the unique coalition he put together in 2008 to win. The President won the lion’s share of everyone making under $35,000. He then did very poorly with middle class voters, but he got a remarkable half of the 26% of the voters whose households make over $100,000. Never before have so many voters fallen into that category and never before had so many of them voted Democratic. Even the so-called top 1% making over $200,000 is actually according to the exit polls 6%, and they mostly (52%) voted for Obama. Without similar support from those upper-income voters, Obama has no way to recreate the numbers that sailed him to victory. And while these voters have become far more socially tolerant, they have also become far more impatient when it comes to economic issues. …
America was mad at George W. Bush for increased spending, taking his eye off the economic ball and most of all for a war they thought should never have been fought. America is today just as upset with Obama, who they elected to bring the parties together in the Reaganesque style he championed as a candidate and bring a new generation to government. Instead, they see a tax and spend liberal trying to take taxes and spending to new levels. The independents and upper middle class voters who were with him last time are abandoning him in droves.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 