The Beatles were never known for having wild concerts. (Other than their fans, that is.) Today in 1960, the Beatles played their first of 48 appearances at the Indra Club in Hamburg, West Germany. The Indra Club’s owner asked the Beatles to put on a “mach shau.” The Beatles responded by reportedly screaming, shouting, leaping around the stage, and playing lying on the floor of the club. John Lennon reportedly made a stage appearance wearing only his underwear, and also wore a toilet seat around his neck on stage. As they say, Sei vorsichtig mit deinen Wünschen.
Four years later, the council of Glasgow, Scotland, required that men who had Beatles haircuts would have to wear swimming caps in city pools, because men’s hair was clogging the pool filters.
Today in 1968, the Doors had their only number one album, “Waiting for the Sun”:
Today in 1974, this 1½-hit wonder had the number one song in Britain:
(What do I mean by “1½-hit wonder?” The Three Degrees sang at the end of MFSB’s instrumental hit “The Sound of Philadelphia,” another great late Motown song.)
Birthdays today start with John Seiter of Spanky and Our Gang:
Gary Talley played guitar for the Box Tops:
Boston drummer Sib Hashian:
Kevin Rowlands sang for one-hit wonder Dexy’s Midnight Runners (hey, that rhymes):
WEAC’s Executive Director Dan Burkhalter confirmed today that layoff notices are being issued to 42 WEAC employees today, approximately 40 percent of the state-level organization’s workforce. The following statement can be attributed to Dan Burkhalter:
“Obviously WEAC is affected by Governor Walker’s union-busting legislation, and our organization is responding on many fronts. Layoffs and budget cuts are a reaction to the legislative action that was taken. …”
The “union-busting legislation” Burkhalter refers to is the provision that prohibits automatic payroll deduction of WEAC or local teacher union dues. As a poster on Fairly Conservative puts it:
Why would WEAC receive significantly less money under the new budget and Act 10. We know that the vast majority of school districts have not been forced to make layoffs and some have even hired more teachers. In addition to this, gross salary cuts were not part of Act 10.
This leaves the most likely source of the WEAC budget difficulties: teachers are taking advantage of Act 10 and choosing not to pay dues or are paying less in dues now that it is voluntary.
Before state law was changed, according to the Lakeland Times, state teachers working full-time paid $295.o1 in dues to WEAC, plus $19.99 to WEAC’s political action committee, plus $166 to the National Education Association, plus their local union dues. That $295.01 per full-time teacher generated $23.4 million in revenue for WEAC. Unlike their members, public employee unions, and particularly management of unions, contribute absolutely, positively nothing of value to this state.
On the other hand, perhaps WEAC wouldn’t have had to lay off 40 percent of its employees (and I wonder what their union thinks) had it made better use of those union dues instead of, say, spending $500,000 in failing to capture Democratic control of the state Senate. Or, for that matter, employing, with six-figure salaries, a president and an executive director. In fact, according to WEAC’s 2008 IRS 990 form, six WEAC management made more than $100,000, substantially more than any of WEAC’s members. (The average WEAC employee — as in $14,382,812 in compensation divided by WEAC’s 151 employees in 2009 — made $95,250, which is also more than any WEAC member.) Five management of the Wisconsin State Employees Union made more than $100,000 in 2008, and 19 management of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees made more than $100,000 in 2009.
Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent. …
I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off. And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what’s happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation. …
I know well many of the mega-rich and, by and large, they are very decent people. They love America and appreciate the opportunity this country has given them. Many have joined the Giving Pledge, promising to give most of their wealth to philanthropy. Most wouldn’t mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering. …
I would leave rates for 99.7 percent of taxpayers unchanged and continue the current 2-percentage-point reduction in the employee contribution to the payroll tax. This cut helps the poor and the middle class, who need every break they can get.
But for those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more — there were 8,274 in 2009 — I would suggest an additional increase in rate.
My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.
To that, Pat Buchanan (of whom I’m not usually a fan) has a suggestion: “Why doesn’t he set an example and send a check for $5 billion to the federal government? He’s got about $40 billion. … You know, you had a plan up there … where the superrich could contribute an extra amount, and it was something like one-tenth of 1 percent did it. You get all this noise from these big rich folks; let them send checks and set an example instead of writing op-eds.”
For that matter, nothing is stopping Buffett from telling his tax professionals to stop finding ways for him to (legally) avoid taxes. Clearly, Buffett’s not doing that, either, which makes him, regardless of his fortune, another tax hypocrite. (You don’t suppose that Buffett favors estate taxes because he owns six life insurance companies and 10 percent of life insurance company revenue comes from those avoiding estate taxes, do you?)
Perhaps Buffett isn’t writing that $5 billion check because of the real reason to oppose Buffett’s tax proposal: Because government at every level wastes our tax money, every day. Buffett cannot possibly be naïve enough to believe that more tax dollars won’t get sucked into some patronage-fueled hole in Washington. (Remember the word “earmark”?)
Buffett also has a selective memory about tax legislation, as does Bloomberg BusinessWeek:
In 1982, amid a punishing 16-month recession, Reagan approved the largest peacetime tax increase in U.S. history. A booming economy followed in 1983 and 1984, enabling him to sail to re-election.
In 1993, President Bill Clinton forced a tax increase through Congress that Representative Dick Armey, then chairman of the House Republican Conference, condemned as a “job killer” that would push the economy into recession. That increase was succeeded by the creation of 23 million new jobs, and the Clinton Administration left a budget surplus of about $236 billion. By contrast, President George W. Bush pushed through two rounds of tax cuts and created just 3 million jobs. He also turned the surplus he inherited into a $1.2 trillion deficit.
Obviously, today’s economic crisis is vastly more severe than anything Reagan or Clinton faced, thus the timing and scope of tax increases must be carefully calibrated.
What neither Buffett nor Bloomberg told you is that one year before the 1982 tax increase (or, as Reagan called it, “revenue enhancement”), Congress passed a substantial tax cut. Congress also passed tax reform with substantially lower rates in 1986. Congress also passed tax reform in 1997. And a business magazine editorial writer should be smart enough to know that no president and no politician creates jobs; businesses create jobs, and every dollar a business spends on taxes is $1 less to spend on anything else.
Today in 1962, the Beatles replaced drummer Pete Best with Ringo Starr. Despite those who claim Starr is the worst Beatle musically, the change worked out reasonably well for the group.
Today in 1975, Peter Gabriel announced he was leaving Genesis. Despite those who claim Genesis was better with Gabriel in the group, the post-Gabriel Genesis outsold the Gabriel Genesis by an order of magnitude:
Today on her birthday in 1986, Madonna had the number one album, “True Blue,” and the number one single:
To begin our birthday selections, one asks: Who is Edithe Gormezano? She is the wife of Sidney Liebowitz; they are better known as (in backward order) Eydie Gormé and Steve Lawrence.
Gary Loizzo, the lead of the American Breed …
… was born one year before Gordon Fleet of the Easybeats (too bad his birthday wasn’t on Monday):
Barry Hay of Golden Earring:
Tim Spooner of The Tubes:
It’s James Taylor’s birthday, but not that James Taylor — the member of Kool and the Gang:
Tim Farriss played guitar for INXS:
Robert Johnson did not perform rock music. But he influenced countless rock musicians after his death at, yes, 27:
But the most famous rock music death today came in 1977, when, while sitting on the “throne” reading The Scientific Search for Jesus, Elvis Presley got to meet, we assume, Jesus personally:
At last, our long Wisconsin nightmare will be over with the recall elections in the 12th and 22nd Senate districts Tuesday.
Except that, of course, it won’t be over. Regardless of the results, the communofascists who have the Democratic Party of Wisconsin by the short hairs will say something like Bluto’s famous line “Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor” and look forward to invalidating the Nov. 2 election results with a recall effort against Gov. Scott Walker.
It must be really fun to be a Wisconsin Democrat these days. Based on my appearance on Wisconsin Public Radio Friday, I conclude that Wisconsin Democrats need not bother with election results (see Nov. 2) or even math, because in their world 17 is not more than 16. And they certainly need not be concerned with economics, because to them money for government grows in the pockets of the evil “rich” or on marijuana plants or something. I assume they will continue with Protestarama daily until the end times because being a Wisconsin Democrat means never admitting fault or apologizing for, say, the wretched state of state finances the last time you controlled Madison.
Ever since I started writing opinions on a regular basis, I have always maintained that when voting for a candidate, the voter must consider what comes with the candidate. That has been my main objection to voting for presidential candidates Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, because, regardless of what you think personally of Clinton or Obama, when you vote for a presidential candidate you get the baggage of his or her party. At the federal level, that baggage includes the lying traitor Sen. John Kerry (D–Massachusetts), the mediocre yet shrill Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D–California), and others of your choice.
So it is with Sen. James Holperin (D–Conover), who my counterpart Friday asserts is one of the most moderate Democrats in the Senate. The problem, of course, is that when you vote for Holperin you also get Democratic Party loudmouths Mike Tate and Graeme Zielinski, plus Sen. Dave Hansen (D–Green Bay), who believes that government employees who cost $71,000 in average compensation are middle-class, and Senate Minority Leader Mark Miller (D–Monona), who claims complete justification for costing Wisconsin taxpayers $9 million in Protestarama and Recallarama.
One wonders which Holperin 12th Senate District voters will be voting for Tuesday. Will it be the Holperin who admitted to a constituent that the 2009–11 state budget had “enough little tax and fee hikes in that budget of his to sink a good sized battleship,” or the Holperin who voted for that budget? Does Holperin represent his constituents, or the Democratic Party? Where is Holperin’s moderating influence on the Madison–Milwaukee axis within his party?
Holperin and his campaigns have also slandered every business person in Wisconsin by criticizing Republican Kim Simac for running her business like a business:
Rep. Mary Williams (R–Medford), small-business owner: “Holperin’s latest campaign trick is as low as it gets: attacking Kim Simac because her business dared to suffer during the recession. The Democrats tried this dirty campaign trick on me years ago, and it just shows us all how anti-business these politicians really are.”
Rep. Tom Tiffany (R–Hazelhurst), small-business owner: “In 2008, Jim Holperin used this same line of attack against me, by going after my family’s business. That crosses the line between politics and attacking my family, and it’s just not the way you treat people. Jim Holperin will say anything to win, and we deserve better.”
From a Simac news release: Sen. Holperin’s attack, on a business in his own district, centers on losses Simac’s company suffered during the past decade. As Holperin should know, as a member of a business council in 2007-2008 and as Jim Doyle’s tourism secretary, these losses affect a taxpayer’s bottom line, and a poor economy can lead to a zero net liability.
Simac: “My husband and I work hard every single day to scratch out a living for our family. We struggle at times to make money, but Jim Holperin hasn’t made it any easier. There are many other small business owners and individuals in this district who are in similar situations. Jim Holperin has become so disconnected from this district he doesn’t even realize he is attacking many small business owners and people in his district just trying to make a living.”
Nothing moderate there, is there?
The word “moderate” has never applied to Sen. Robert Wirch (D–Kenosha), but even if it had, Wirch is a Democrat, and Democrats have not represented taxpayers for a long, long, time, and certainly not in 2011. Everything that has happened in Madison so far this year is the direct result of the fiscal disaster Wisconsin Democrats perpetuated on our state when they last controlled state government. Moreover, Wisconsin legislators cannot represent their constituents from Illinois.
As with last Tuesday, the choices are obvious — Simac in the 12th Senate District and Jonathan Steitz in the 22nd Senate District. That is, unless you approve of overcompensated government employees and overtaxed Wisconsin taxpayers.
Or, for that matter, the Fleeing Fourteen. As someone on Facebook put it early this morning:
Walking away from your job is sometimes the right thing to do. However, walking off your job just because you don’t want to do it for a month does not make you a hero. In the real world it makes you fired, and rightly so.
We begin with an interesting non-musical anniversary: Today in 1945, Major League Baseball sold the advertising rights for the World Series to Gillette for $150,000. Gillette for years afterward got to decide who the announcers for the World Series (typically one per World Series team in the days before color commentators) would be on first radio and then TV.
This was quite a day for concerts. Today in 1965, the Beatles (along with Brenda Holloway, The King Curtis Band, The Young Rascals and Sounds Incorporated) played at Shea Stadium in New York, setting a world record for attendance at 55,000, including Mick Jagger and Keith Richards:
Today in 1969, on a farm in Bethel, N.Y, Woodstock began:
Birthdays start with Bill Pinckney of the Drifters:
Peter York played drums for the Spencer Davis Group:
Thomas Aldrich, who played drums for Black Oak Arkansas …
… was born the same day as Bill Griffin of the Miracles:
Who is Adam Yauch? Some know him as MCA of the Beastie Boys:
This was the number one song in Britain today in 1964 (a song brought back to popularity by the movie “Stripes”):
That same day, the Kinks hit the British charts for the first time with …
This was, of course, the number one song in the U.S. today in 1966:
That same day, the number one album in the U.K. was the Beatles’ “Revolver”:
That same day, the Supremes hit the charts for the first time by reminding listeners that …
Speaking of the Beatles: Today in 1971, John Lennon left on a jet plane from Heathrow Airport in London to New York, and never set foot in Britain again. (Despite Richard Nixon’s efforts to deport Lennon.)
Today in 1980, four masked burglars broke into the New York home of Todd Rundgren, tied him up, and stole audio equipment and paintings. According to reports, during the break-in one of them was humming …
Last week, I wrote about the Facebook page “If you grew up in Madison you remember …” which last week was attempting to take over Facebook like dandelions in your lawn.
As of today, the group, which is not even two weeks old, has more than 6,100 members and nearly 17,000 posts. Not surprisingly, the growth and post rate has slowed down since last week; otherwise it eventually would have taken over the entire Internet, not merely Facebook. It’s also getting media attention of its own, with WIBA radio (Madison’s first commercial radio station) having done a segment last Friday.
Why this popularity? Two posts on Facebook give answers:
This page brings us all back to a more simpler, carefree, happy time. Before all the “trials and tribulations” of adult life took over. And before all the pain and sorrows , that I’m sure most of us have endured. Life was pretty easy then . Such little things gave us such enormous joy. I think this is healthy reliving it all.
What’s telling is that so many people have so many fond memories of childhood in Madison. Clearly, for a lot of people, it was a great place to grow up.
One example of that “simpler, carefree, happy time” is all the movies I saw at East Towne Cinema, rated from G to R. (This entire old Madison thread started with media, as you know.) All the movies — from “Benji” to “First Blood” to “Raiders of the Lost Ark” to “The Spy Who Loved Me” — started with the funky open that you see here.
On Thursday, the subject of Tedd O’Connell, described as WISC-TV’s “hipster newsman” in a Madison Magazine article, came up. O’Connell was WISC’s City Hall reporter (and I know that because I first met him when he was in the City–County Building coffee shop during a ridealong with my Scoutmaster, a Madison police officer) and news anchor for 15 years. He left Wisconsin but returned in the mid-1990s to become the first news director at WGBA-TV in Green Bay. He died of cancer three years ago.
While doing a search for information on O’Connell, I came upon this video, from which come these images that brings you the ’70s in all their funky color glory, followed by the much more buttoned-down ’80s:
This is the second iteration of WISC’s checkerboard set. (O’Connell is in the middle; John Digman, who used a 1949 Cadillac antenna to do the weather, was on the right, and a sports guy, possibly Jim Miller, is on the left). The glass panels you see were originally used to superimpose graphics behind the anchors. The original set had no desk; the anchors sat on low-back chairs with their scripts in their laps.
The anchors and reporters used their signatures for graphics, the reading of which may have been a challenge for viewers of those with more illegible signatures. The original version also had a high-tempo theme once described as sounding like angry bumblebees, which was followed by a slower synthesizer-heavy theme (and you can hear a small clip in the background on the video at 6 seconds). And for those who think Casual Friday is a ’90s concept, well …
Apparently WISC decided the checkerboard set was not colorful enough, so its replacement was rainbowish. (I remember the lighter tan being more orange.) O’Connell is pictured with meteorologist Marv Holewinski (unfortunately not wearing his banana-colored suit), who can still be heard on the radio doing weather and outdoor reports.
And then came the 1980s. O’Connell is in the middle with sports director Van “Mount Horeb toppled Verona” Stoutt on the left and, I believe, meteorologist Dana Tyler, now at WFRV-TV in Green Bay, on the right.
They also did their news (or at least news updates) from the newsroom for a while; this is O’Connell’s report of the shooting at the City–County Building in which Dane County Coroner Clyde “Bud” Chamberlain was killed.
You may have concluded from reading this blog and its predecessor that I have a love–hate relationship with my hometown. That’s actually not accurate — you can love neither things nor places, since neither is capable of loving you back. (That includes jobs, by the way.) I think I had a very nice, mostly uneventful childhood in a place that really doesn’t exist anymore, or at least exist in the way I remember it.
And all I needed for evidence was a drive through my old neighborhoods on Saturday — the first house I remember, the house we built, and my old grade school and high school. Both the houses were originally green; they are now gray. (My parents ruined the house I grew up in by changing its paint from green with yellow trim to gray with red trim. Something about resale value, I think.) I had a really difficult time recognizing the older house; the present owner of the one-story one-car-garage house somehow added two more garage spaces. (Which, my wife points out, makes the house look like more garage than house.) The trees are much bigger than I remember them, because, of course, they’ve grown in the 40 years since they were planted. (So have I, of course, both vertically and horizontally.)
This is how a young mind works: There was a Meadowlark Drive south of Cottage Grove Road and a Meadowlark Drive north of Cottage Grove Road, but they didn’t connect to each other. And I always wondered why that was. (A cul de sac road ended any chance of their linking.) The Heritage Heights neighborhood apparently was developed by an Anglophile, given that the road names included Kingsbridge, Queensbridge, Knightsbridge roads and Greensbriar and Vicar lanes. (Plus Inwood Way and Open Wood Way; the mnemonic device would require you go into Inwood Way to get to Open Wood Way.)
I don’t know if those who had positive childhoods remember their hometowns in such detail (even if occasionally inaccurate) as how the “If you grew up in Madison you remember” group does. (The contrast is that my parents grew up in small Southwest Wisconsin towns and left at the first opportunity, never to return except to visit their parents. Everyone votes with their feet.) I said last week that gauzy memories suggest either we remember things as being better than they were, or things were better then than we thought they were at the time. That makes me wonder how our three children will remember their childhoods where their parents chose to raise them.
Today in 1968, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham played together for the first time when they rehearsed at a London studio. You know them as Led Zeppelin:
Today in 1972, this was the number one song in Britain, which is odd since school was indeed out at the time:
(That, by the way, is a song that will be played as long as school exists.)
These are not rock music birthdays, but since country music is one of the fathers of rock, I’ll note that Buck Owens and Porter Wagoner are celebrating birthdays today.
Today’s first birthday is the writer of “Hit the Road Jack,” Percy Mayfield:
Cliff Fish of one-hit-wonder Paperlace:
Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits:
Jerry Speiser of Men at Work:
Roy Hay of Culture Club:
Today in 1985, Kyu Sakamoto died in a plane crash in Japan. He was the first Japanese artist to have a U.S.-number-one song, in 1963:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 
