The number one country and western single today in 1956 was the singer’s number one number one:
The number one British album today in 1984 was the Thompson Twins’ “Into the Gap”:
The number one single today in 1984 was adapted by WGN-TV for its Chicago Cubs games …
… a good choice given that the Cubs that season decided to play like an actual baseball team:
The number one single today in 1973:
Today in 1976, the Eagles’ “Their Greatest Hits” became the first platinum album, exceeding 1 million sales:
Today in 2000, Carlos Santana won eight Grammy Awards for “Supernatural”:
Earlier this year, Wisconsin’s senate majority leader, Devin LeMahieu (R), introduced a flat-tax proposal to reduce the top personal state income-tax rate to 3.25 percent from 7.65 percent, marking one of the boldest tax plans ever put forth by state leadership. Assembly speaker Robin Vos (R), for his part, has gone on record acknowledging the reality that we must compete with states such as Florida for jobs and people. And senate president Chris Kapenga (R) has outlined a vision of fully eliminating the income tax, a concept supported by the Institute for Reforming Government (IRG), the state’s chamber of commerce, and industry groups across the state.
The momentum for transformational tax reform could not come soon enough. With the country’s ninth-highest top-income-tax rate, Wisconsin has an economy that is on the brink of decline in the wake of the pandemic, economic shutdowns, and inflation. Paired with an aging population and growing workforce shortages, economic projections do not paint a rosy picture for the future of our state, and small fixes at the margins have not reversed the trend of economic malaise. If state lawmakers want the next generation of Wisconsinites to have a shot at the American dream, they need to dramatically course-correct — and fast!
Fortunately, the political climate for transformational tax reform has never been — and possibly never will be — better in the Badger State. Thanks to the groundwork laid by Governor Scott Walker and his administration’s limited-government and pro-growth policies — which have already seen taxes cut by $22 billion — Wisconsin is sitting on an unprecedented $7 billion budget surplus just waiting to be returned to its rightful owners: the people of Wisconsin.
A recent poll by the State Policy Network and Morning Consult showed that nearly six in ten Wisconsinites think state taxes are too high. A plurality of Wisconsin voters — across partisan lines — support eliminating the income tax entirely. Only 3 percent of respondents said state taxes are too low, compared to 59 percent who said they’re too high. In a hyperpolarized purple state such as Wisconsin, it’s remarkable that there is such strong support for tax reform.
Furthermore, in 2022, IRG staff members drove more than 5,200 miles across Wisconsin, hosting more than 40 listening sessions to hear directly from the people on the issues impacting them. Reducing the tax burden — and finding a way to eliminate the income tax — was discussed at nearly every single event. One manufacturer in northeast Wisconsin told us that merely simplifying the tax code in any meaningful way would save the company thousands of dollars per year in compliance costs.
The positive effects of Senator LeMahieu’s flat-tax proposal are clear. Nine out of ten small-business owners in Wisconsin pay the individual income tax, so a flat tax would help them by simplifying the tax code and therefore reducing compliance costs. It would also help the average taxpayer better understand his or her obligations, thus reducing the need for expensive tax-preparation services — a necessary burden for too many individuals and small businesses. This would be especially beneficial for middle-income individuals who would no longer have to bear the burden of this hidden tax.
Moreover, in an era of unprecedented competition between states for jobs, families, and capital, LeMahieu’s plan would reduce Wisconsin’s income-tax rate below that of our neighbors in Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, and Iowa.
Unfortunately, Governor Tony Evers (D) has already vowed to veto the LeMahieu flat-tax plan. Nonetheless, it is a fight worth having. Wisconsin will either continue down the path of a progressive tax system, forcing businesses and workers to flee the state for greener pastures, or join the ranks of states across the country competing to slash their tax rates. If conservatives are ever going to govern again in Wisconsin, they need to offer a clear contrast.
Ultimately, state policy-makers shouldn’t stop at a flat tax. And Wisconsin should aim higher than simply competing with our neighbors — we should lead the Midwest. But a flat tax is a step in the right direction. That said, if Wisconsin is going to succeed in the hyper-competitive economy of the 21st century — and be on the same playing field as states such as Florida, Tennessee, and Texas — income-tax elimination cannot be a question of “if” but “when.”
Transformational tax reform is Wisconsin’s next Act 10. It’s how Wisconsin can compete for jobs nationally. It’s how we can keep retirees and children from leaving the state. And it’s how we can help solidify Wisconsin’s standing as the absolute best place in the Midwest to live, work, and raise a family.
We must take advantage of this once-in-a-generation opportunity. The time for transformational tax reform is now.
The reason this won’t happen is because Wisconsin voters stupidly reelected Evers, and the GOP doesn’t have a supermajority in the Legislature to override his veto. Evers’ sycophants in local government throughout this state also are banging the drums demanding more state money despite their unwillingness to consider serious proposals to reduce spending and combine services for more efficient use of our tax dollars.
There is also a difference between Wisconsinites believing their taxes are too high (and they are) and Wisconsinites believing their income taxes are too high. The perennial tax complaint since statehood has been about property taxes (especially every time a municipality reassesses its property). The income tax was created more than 100 years ago ostensibly as property tax relief (though sticking it to “rich” people has always been popular in Wisconsin). The sales tax was instituted at 3 percent, increased to 4 percent and then 5 percent, and expanded for a 0.5-percent county sales tax, all supposedly for property tax relief. That was the purpose of instituting shared revenue, too.
Irrespective of the unlikeliness of a flat tax until Wisconsinites get rid of Democratic governors, any tax cut remains at the mercy of legislators’ and governors’ fiscal restraint, because Wisconsin still lacks constitutionally mandated spending and tax limits.
The number one song today in 1991:
Today in 1998, the members of Oasis were banned for life from Cathay Pacific Airways for their “abusive and disgusting behavior.”
Apparently Cathay Pacific knew it was doing, because one year to the day later, Oasis guitarist Paul Arthurs was arrested outside a Tommy Hilfiger store in London for drunk and disorderly conduct.
The most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of respiratory illnesses — including Covid-19 — was published late last month. Its conclusions, said Tom Jefferson, the Oxford epidemiologist who is its lead author, were unambiguous.
“There is just no evidence that they” — masks — “make any difference,” he told the journalist Maryanne Demasi. “Full stop.”
But, wait, hold on. What about N-95 masks, as opposed to lower-quality surgical or cloth masks?
“Makes no difference — none of it,” said Jefferson.
What about the studies that initially persuaded policymakers to impose mask mandates?
“They were convinced by nonrandomized studies, flawed observational studies.”
What about the utility of masks in conjunction with other preventive measures, such as hand hygiene, physical distancing or air filtration?
“There’s no evidence that many of these things make any difference.”
These observations don’t come from just anywhere. Jefferson and 11 colleagues conducted the study for Cochrane, a British nonprofit that is widely considered the gold standard for its reviews of health care data. The conclusions were based on 78 randomized controlled trials, six of them during the Covid pandemic, with a total of 610,872 participants in multiple countries. And they track what has been widely observed in the United States: States with mask mandates fared no better against Covid than those without.
No study — or study of studies — is ever perfect. Science is never absolutely settled. What’s more, the analysis does not prove that proper masks, properly worn, had no benefit at an individual level. People may have good personal reasons to wear masks, and they may have the discipline to wear them consistently. Their choices are their own.
But when it comes to the population-level benefits of masking, the verdict is in: Mask mandates were a bust. Those skeptics who were furiously mocked as cranks and occasionally censored as “misinformers” for opposing mandates were right. The mainstream experts and pundits who supported mandates were wrong. In a better world, it would behoove the latter group to acknowledge their error, along with its considerable physical, psychological, pedagogical and political costs.
Don’t count on it. In congressional testimony this month, Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called into question the Cochrane analysis’s reliance on a small number of Covid-specific randomized controlled trials and insisted that her agency’s guidance on masking in schools wouldn’t change. If she ever wonders why respect for the C.D.C. keeps falling, she could look to herself, and resign, and leave it to someone else to reorganize her agency.
That, too, probably won’t happen: We no longer live in a culture in which resignation is seen as the honorable course for public officials who fail in their jobs.
But the costs go deeper. When people say they “trust the science,” what they presumably mean is that science is rational, empirical, rigorous, receptive to new information, sensitive to competing concerns and risks. Also: humble, transparent, open to criticism, honest about what it doesn’t know, willing to admit error.
The C.D.C.’s increasingly mindless adherence to its masking guidance is none of those things. It isn’t merely undermining the trust it requires to operate as an effective public institution. It is turning itself into an unwitting accomplice to the genuine enemies of reason and science — conspiracy theorists and quack-cure peddlers — by so badly representing the values and practices that science is supposed to exemplify.
It also betrays the technocratic mind-set that has the unpleasant habit of assuming that nothing is ever wrong with the bureaucracy’s well-laid plans — provided nobody gets in its way, nobody has a dissenting point of view, everyone does exactly what it asks, and for as long as officialdom demands. This is the mentality that once believed that China provided a highly successful model for pandemic response.
Yet there was never a chance that mask mandates in the United States would get anywhere close to 100 percent compliance or that people would or could wear masks in a way that would meaningfully reduce transmission. Part of the reason is specific to American habits and culture, part of it to constitutional limits on government power, part of it to human nature, part of it to competing social and economic necessities, part of it to the evolution of the virus itself.
But whatever the reason, mask mandates were a fool’s errand from the start. They may have created a false sense of safety — and thus permission to resume semi-normal life. They did almost nothing to advance safety itself. The Cochrane report ought to be the final nail in this particular coffin.
There’s a final lesson. The last justification for masks is that, even if they proved to be ineffective, they seemed like a relatively low-cost, intuitively effective way of doing something against the virus in the early days of the pandemic. But “do something” is not science, and it shouldn’t have been public policy. And the people who had the courage to say as much deserved to be listened to, not treated with contempt. They may not ever get the apology they deserve, but vindication ought to be enough.
David P. Rivkin and Lee A. Casey:
Headlines last week claimed that the Congressional Budget Office had warned the U.S. “could default on its debt” as early as July if Congress didn’t raise the statutory debt limit. What the CBO director actually said was that “the government would have to delay making payments for some activities, default on its debt obligations, or both.” In reality, the U.S. can’t default on its debt.
Section 4 of the 14th Amendment is unequivocal on that point: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, . . . shall not be questioned.” This provision was adopted to ensure that the federal debts incurred to fight the Civil War couldn’t be dishonored by a Congress that included members from the former Confederate states.
The Public Debt Clause isn’t limited to Civil War debts. As the Supreme Court held in Perry v. U.S. (1935), it covers all sovereign federal debt, past, present and future. The case resulted from Congress’s decision during the Great Depression to begin paying federal bonds in currency, including those that promised payment in gold. Bondholders brought an action in the Court of Claims demanding payment in currency equal to the current gold value of the notes. The justices concluded that Congress had violated the Public Debt Clause and that its reference to “the validity of the public debt” was broad enough that it “embraces whatever concerns the integrity of the public obligations.”
That means the federal government can’t legally default. The Constitution commands that creditors be paid. If they aren’t, they can sue for relief, and the government will lose and pay up.
Those who warn of default confuse debt payments with other spending obligations. “A failure on the part of the United States to meet any obligation, whether it’s to debt holders, to members of our military or to Social Security recipients, is effectively a default,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in January.
That’s nonsense. Authorized and even appropriated spending isn’t “the public debt.” For constitutional purposes, promised benefits from Social Security, Medicare and other entitlements aren’t even property, as the Supreme Court held in Flemming v. Nestor (1960), and Congress has as much authority to reduce them as to increase them. When lawmakers were drafting the 14th Amendment, they revised Section 4’s language to replace the term “obligations” with “debts.” If the Treasury ran out of money, the constitutional obligation to pay bondholders would trump all statutory obligations to spend.
Ms. Yellen also said that “Treasury’s systems have all been built to pay all of our bills when they’re due and on time, and not to prioritize one form of spending over another.” But as the Journal has reported, department officials conceded in 2011 that the government’s fiscal machinery certainly could prioritize payments to bondholders, and the Federal Reserve prepared for such a contingency. There’s no question enough money would be available: The government collects roughly $450 billion a month in tax revenue, more than enough to cover the $55 billion or so in monthly debt service.
These basic facts should inform decisions by credit-rating agencies in establishing the U.S. government’s creditworthiness. Those agencies have traditionally acted favorably when heavily indebted countries have significantly cut public spending rather than default on their debt.
Like Ulysses binding himself to the mast, the Public Debt Clause ties the government’s hands in a way that ultimately serves its interests. Around the world, public defaults are ubiquitous. Since 1960, 147 governments, including some Western democracies, have defaulted—many repeatedly—on their sovereign debt. The U.S. isn’t among them, in large part because of the Constitution’s restriction, buttressed by the rule of law. That’s why the nation is able to borrow so easily, and so much, at such favorable rates. If the Biden administration and other default doomsayers convince the world that U.S. debt isn’t secure, they will drive up the cost of borrowing—at least until the courts set things straight.
Rather than issue baseless warnings of default, the Treasury should tout the Public Debt Clause as a reason why investments in U.S. bonds are rock solid and entail no meaningful risk of default. That could help secure more-favorable credit terms for Treasury instruments than those paid by other Western countries. The strategy is well worth pursuing, given the sharp increase in rates at which Treasury is currently selling its benchmark 10-year notes—from 2% to 3.6% over a single year—resulting in a major escalation in U.S. debt-servicing obligations.
The real risk we face is out-of-control federal spending, not default. But spending cuts and tax hikes are politically unpopular. That leaves borrowing, which explains the recurring tumult over the debt ceiling. How the U.S. covers its spending tab is a debate worth having, as is whether that tab should be so high. Fear-mongering about default is a way to avoid these debates and avoid confronting the hard choices we face as a result of decades’ worth of overspending.
Those who vote against raising the debt ceiling will take a political risk, perhaps a substantial one, as payments many Americans reasonably anticipate may not arrive. Whether to proceed with this strategy if the Biden administration persists in refusing to accept any deal on future federal spending is a difficult question. But it should be debated honestly, unclouded by specious warnings of default.
So the debt crisis is political theater as much as government “shutdowns”? I’ll buy that. Republicans in Congress should remember that.
The number one single today in 1960 was perhaps aspirational given the time of year:
Its remake 16 years later — which I had never heard of before writing this blog — finished 12 places below the original:
The number one British single today in 1962:
The number one single today in 1975
Proving there is no accounting for taste, even among the supposedly cultured British, I present their number one single today in 1981:
The number one British single today in 1997:
The short list of birthdays begins with one-hit-wonder Ernie K. Doe (whose inclusion certainly does not express my opinion about my own mother-in-law):
Bobby Hendricks of the Drifters:
Michael Wilton of Queensryche:
One non-musical death of note today in 1987: The indescribable Andy Warhol, who among other things managed the Velvet Underground:
One musical death of note today in 2002: Drummer Ronnie Verrell, who drummed as Animal on the Muppet Show:
The number one British album today in 1970 for the first of eight times on top of the British charts:
The number one British single today in 1976 was about a supposed event 12 years earlier:
The number one single today in 1981 was from a movie in which the singer was one of the leads:
Artist Andy Thomas created pictures of historical Republican presidents …
… one just hanging around …
… one playing poker …
… and one playing pool.
A Facebook Friend posted the poker photo a decade ago, and that prompted me to write dialogue:
REAGAN: “You’re not bluffing about a tax increase, George? There you go again …”
TR: “Make up your mind, Abe. It’s four score and seven years later …”
GEORGE BUSH: “Not going to raise. Wouldn’t be prudent. Not at this juncture.”
FORD: “That’s all I’m going to raise. I’m a Ford, not a Lincoln.”
LINCOLN: “Yes, I know.”
EISENHOWER: “Are you cheating, Dick?”
NIXON: “If the president does it, it’s not illegal.”
EISENHOWER: “That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard you say, Dick.”
TR: (falls off chair)
NIXON: “So, Ron, how did you get elected governor of California when I couldn’t?”
REAGAN: “Well …”
EISENHOWER: “Dammit! I forgot to invite Churchill! Winnie would have loved this!”
DUBYA: “So what’s your strategery, Mr. President?”
REAGAN: “Simple. We win, they lose.”
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 