Today in 1949, RCA released the first 45-rpm record.
The seven-inch size of the 45, compared with the bigger 78, allowed the development of jukeboxes.
The number one single today in 1964:
The number one single today in 1969:
CNN warns:
Not even your fonts are safe.
If it feels like everything has become politicized in these hyper-partisan times, there’s more where that came from: Researchers have found that people perceive certain fonts and font styles as more liberal and others as more conservative.Serif fonts, or the ones with the little flourishes at the end of letters, are seen as more conservative, while sans serif fonts, the ones without the flourishes are seen as more liberal, according to a study published in the journal Communication Studies last month.
For example, study participants saw Times New Roman as more conservative than Gill Sans. Blackletter, which looks like it belongs on a newspaper masthead, was seen as the most conservative font, while Sunrise, a cartoonish-looking script, was seen as the most liberal.]
“If you think about serifs being used in more formal types of print or communications, maybe they’re viewed as more traditional and sans serifs are viewed as more modern,” Katherine Haenschen, an assistant professor of communications at Virginia Tech and the lead author of the study, told CNN. “There’s a small but significant difference in how people perceive these fonts.”
People also tended to view fonts that they liked as more aligned with their own ideology.
The more that Republicans liked a font, the more conservative they thought it was. The more Democrats liked a font, the more liberal they thought it was — a phenomenon known as “affective polarization.”
Haenschen decided to look into whether fonts can be seen as liberal or conservative after noticing something peculiar while driving through Virginia.
A candidate running for state legislature was using different signs in rural areas than he was in a more liberal college town.
Haenschen used to work on political campaigns, so she said she knew there had to be a reason behind the varying signs.
So she turned to her co-author Daniel Tamul, also an assistant professor of communications at Virginia Tech, and the two decided to test the theory to find out.
Turns out, there was something to it.
Haenschen and Tamul conducted two experiments to shed light on the topic.
For the first, 987 participants were shown the phrase “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” in one of six fonts and styles: Times New Roman regular, Times New Roman bold, Times New Roman italic, Gill Sans regular, Gill Sans bold or Gill Sans italic.
Because the phrase that participants were shown was neutral and didn’t contain a political message in itself, researchers were able to test whether the font itself was actually influencing people’s perceptions.
Participants then rated the various fonts as liberal or conservative, and answered questions about their political party affiliations, their political ideologies, age, gender and race.
For the second experiment, 1,069 participants were shown either the phrase “A large fawn jumped quickly” or the name “Scott Williams” in one serif font (Jubilat or Times New Roman), one sans serif font (Gill Sans or Century Gothic) and one display font (Sunrise, Birds of Paradise or Cloister Black Light).
Jubilat was the font that Bernie Sanders used in his 2016 presidential campaign, while Century Gothic was similar to a font that Barack Obama used in his 2008 presidential campaign, researchers said.
So naturally, Jubilat was viewed as more liberal than Times New Roman, even though they’re both serif fonts. And Century Gothic was viewed as more liberal than Gill Sans, even though they’re both sans serif fonts.
“Even within font families, there are differences in how voters are perceiving them,” Haenschen said.
Researchers didn’t look at why exactly people viewed certain fonts as more liberal or conservative, but Haenschen said that’s something that could be explored in future studies.
So what do we do with the knowledge that even fonts are seemingly no longer neutral?
If you’re someone who works on a political campaign, there are a few implications, Haenchen said.
For one, candidates running for political office should work with professional designers when designing their campaign materials to choose fonts that will be effective.
Secondly, designers should think about whether the fonts they’re using convey any sort of political quality, and whether that political quality aligns with that candidate’s message.
Generally though, the effect that fonts have on people’s perceptions is relatively small, Haenschen said.
For example, if Bernie Sanders changed the font on his campaign materials, there probably wouldn’t be much of a difference in how people see him because he’s already a widely known figure.
The choice of font could, however, make a difference for a new candidate, like someone running for school board, town council or state legislature, Haenschen said. While researchers don’t know for sure whether a font would change people’s perceptions of a candidate, that’s another question that could be explored in the future.
“Does support for something like the Green New Deal change if we market it in a conservative versus a liberal font? I don’t know, and that’s something worth exploring,” she said.
No, the Green New Deal is a stupid idea regardless of font choice.
For what it’s worth, I have switched two newspapers and one magazine from Times to New Century Schoolbook, because the latter has a larger X-height (size of each character) and is therefore easier to read.
In fact I’ve never used Gill Sans for anything, just because I don’t like how it looks. My preference for headlines is a Franklin Gothic variant, in part because it may be named for my favorite Founding Father.
There may be something to this serif vs. sans serif thing, though.
The headline is a serif font. The subhead isn’t, but it’s in authoritative ALL CAPS.
Fifty years after Jack Buck announced Super Bowl IV, featuring the Kansas City Chiefs (coached by Hank Stram, Buck’s future radio partner), for CBS …
… Buck’s son Joe is announcing Super Bowl LIV for Fox Sunday.
The younger Buck (whom sports fans love to hate, because, you know, he hates every team) writes of both:
The Super Bowl has never ended in a tie, but my dad’s Super Bowl began with one. It was a beautiful striped necktie, and I would wear it for the Super Bowl LIV broadcast if I could find it. It was his attire that first caught my eye last week when I sat in my home office and clicked on the link that led me to that grainy, black-and-white footage from Super Bowl IV in New Orleans precisely 50 years ago.
I refer to that as my dad’s game because it was the only Super Bowl that my late father, Jack Buck, ever called on TV, even though he did years of them on radio. It was also the last time the Kansas City Chiefs appeared in the Super Bowl, and the only one they won. So this is a full-circle game not just for Kansas City, but for my dad and me.
I noticed the necktie because its kind of funny fashion has come all the way around. So it’s taken 50 years for my dad’s style to be relevant again. When I think of him, I think of how he dressed when he was 70. He was colorblind, and he used to joke that he was one of those guys that got dressed in the dark. Things didn’t match. He needed my mom to lay out his clothes for him, and it started to trend into loud blazers. He looked like Judge Smails in “Caddyshack.” He kind of looked like Ted Knight anyway, but that’s how he dressed, kind of country-club chic, even though he didn’t belong to a country club.
Looking at my dad and Pat Summerall, I see two guys coming off a big night on Bourbon Street. They’re sweaty, my dad’s a little bloated, and I can tell they had fun. They weren’t stressed about doing the broadcast like I will be before this year’s Super Bowl. I’ll be tucked in my bed with eye pillows on, and his eye pillows were coasters at a bar. I’ll try to go to bed by 10 or 11, and I’ll probably lay there for an hour and a half. I’m sure he probably knocked himself out with four Manhattans and went to sleep whenever he laid down.
My dad’s wearing a monstrous headset that goes entirely over his ears — my dad and I were blessed with rather large ears — but they’re tucked in there. And the neck contraption holding up a stick microphone just doesn’t look comfortable. You’re already on national TV and trying to do a Super Bowl, and you’ve got two guys that are crammed into a tight space. They look like they’re on top of scaffolding on the roof of Tulane Stadium. It looks makeshift to me.
Troy Aikman and I will be at Hard Rock Stadium, and we’ve already scouted it out. We’ve got a green screen and all sorts of snacks laid out, a Keurig machine, and we’ll both have thick rubber mats beneath our feet because we’re standing the majority of the game. My dad and Pat look like they’re fishing off the bridge at Lake Pontchartrain down there.
If I count the monitors in front of Troy, I’ve probably got 10 screens I can look at. I’m sure they had one tiny, grainy monitor that was hooked up to the truck. The picture quality probably felt like it was from “The Flintstones,” with a pterodactyl inside carving it out of stone.
They do not have the “best seat in the house.” They’re in the “Uecker seats” up there. This Sunday, I’ll be splitting the 5 and the 0 of the 50-yard line, and I will be midway up. I’ll have the best seat in the house in a place where the get-in price is $5,000.
Also, I’m sure my dad doesn’t have a bathroom nearby. That’s my No. 1 fear and the first thing I check out before I’m doing a big game. How close is the bathroom? In this case, in Miami, it’s just outside our booth door. I think for him, he probably had to go through a “Mission Impossible”-type pulley-and-lever system to get down to the main press box so he could go to the bathroom.
The commercial breaks are longer in the Super Bowl, so I don’t have to regulate my fluid intake before the game. If the bathroom is easily accessible, I don’t worry about it. But in places like Cleveland, it’s a dead sprint to get to the bathroom and back. My dad told me when I was just starting my career at 19, “Don’t ever run to a microphone, because you’re going to be out of breath, and you’re never going to catch up. You just start talking right away.” It’s virtually impossible in some stadiums to get back to the microphone in time. There, if I didn’t run, you wouldn’t hear me on first or second down. Sunday, I’m good to drink as much tea and coffee as I need. I’ll probably go through about six hot teas, two bottles of water and at least two coffees.
In the Super Bowl IV broadcast, if they were any closer to the camera, their noses would be smudging up against the lens. Troy and I have plenty of room in the booth. If my dad’s camera shot is indicative of how much room they had, there weren’t a lot of people up in the booth with them. We’ll have at least 10 people in the booth to make us look smart, including editorial consultant Steve Horn, who has been my right-hand man for 25 years.
Then you have a makeup person. I’m sure my dad and Pat just pulled up their ties and went on national TV. We’ll have makeup “artists” come in and try to defend us against high-definition television. I’m sure my dad put no thought into his outfit or looking “shiny” on air, and yet it’s perfectly fine. There’s nothing that appears out of the ordinary. It works.
There’s a beauty to the simplicity of the broadcast, a nice pace to it. It’s more of a radio commentary because both guys were coming over from radio, and people’s pictures at home were not high-definition, 65-camera shoots. Back then, you had to buttress the pictures with words to try to describe the action, because the video wasn’t what we present today.
The differences are in technology, and how crisp the pictures are in 2020, and how fuzzy it was back then. The audio is so much better now too. But overall, what Pat and my dad did back in 1970 is not a whole lot different than what Troy and I will do Sunday. They were two guys watching a game and giving their observations.
I’m seeing my dad at his best. Before age set in. Before Parkinson’s took hold. Before he went through lung cancer. Before he had diabetes and a pacemaker. Even the stresses of life. I’m seeing my dad at his peak. And I didn’t know him then. I was 8 months old, but I never knew him as that man. It’s crazy to sit in my office, turn on YouTube, and in some ways do research about the Chiefs and their Super Bowl history, and have my dad brought to life for me by people who restore this old footage. I’m so thankful because they’re presenting my dad to me like he’s broadcasting last week. It’s a lot of things that are brought to a head with one click of a mouse.
My dad makes a small mistake right at the beginning of the broadcast, then corrects himself. That gets me. It hits me like, “Oh my God, he makes a mistake.” These days, you try to be perfect in large part because of social media. You try to be fluid and brilliant, and never say something stupid. And in the case of a Super Bowl, you’re on the air for four hours on live TV in front of 115 million people, and you’re going to say stuff that people don’t like. You’re going to say stuff that people think is stupid. You’re going to misspeak and correct yourself.
Back then, without the pressure of social media ready to eviscerate you from people who have no idea what it feels like to be in that spot, I think they were just freewheeling and having fun. More than anything, I hear my dad and Pat relaxed. Even though national television broadcasts back then were still relatively new, and I’m sure there was an element of fear and unknown, those two still were able to be themselves.
Today, whether you’re an official or Jimmy Garoppolo, who has taken his team at 15-3 to the Super Bowl, all you hear is criticism. All you hear is, “Yeah, but he can’t do this…” I hear it too. Eventually, that stuff takes the fun out of it. I think for my dad, and certainly for Pat, they had fun. They felt little stress going into a game.
Stress is all I feel. It’s this weird pressure to try to be perfect on something that isn’t perfect, on a live event. It’s impossible to be perfect, and yet that’s the standard I hold myself to, and it takes a lot of the fun out of it.
After every game, I take two Tylenol. That’s pressure. It’s why I see a chiropractor. It’s why at the end of the game, the tension is in the back of my head at the top of my neck, because I’m standing up the entire broadcast, and I’m almost hunched over looking down over the ridiculous number of monitors we have to try to see the near sideline, to try to see the entire field. You’re almost holding your breath while you do it. I broke my neck in high school playing football, and I guarantee you whatever atrophy or disintegration I have in my spine is where the tension sits.
I remember my dad sitting at the kitchen counter, coffee steaming, cigarette lit. He would be writing the names and jersey numbers of players onto an 8-by-10-inch piece of paper he would Scotch tape to a corkboard. In the booth, a spotter hired just that day would push thumbtacks into whichever names were on the field for each play.
Using a program developed by Troy, I have a color-coded, spiral-bound spreadsheet I fill out on for each game. My spotter and stat guy, Bill Garrity and Ed Sfida, are so important to me that if they didn’t make their flights from Atlanta and Philadelphia, I might not be able to do the game.
I have had the opportunity to call some of the iconic plays in Super Bowl history, including the David Tyree helmet catch, when the New York Giants beat New England the first time. My call of that catch makes me cringe, because people said, “You weren’t over-the-top crazy on the air about how good that catch was.” The simple reason was, I couldn’t see it. It was really hard to see clearly from my angle. The last thing you want to do is to pull a groin muscle calling the Tyree catch, and then they come back and blow the whistle and say incomplete. Then you look like the idiot, and that’s all people remember.
Troy and I are on camera at the beginning of the Super Bowl broadcast. When Troy’s talking, I’m thinking: “Remember to smile so I don’t look like I’m nervous. Look back at the camera because that’s who you’re talking to.” A lot of times, I’ll picture my kids on the other side of that camera. Back when I did my first major event, in 1996 doing the Yankees’ World Series, I pictured my dad on the other end, like I was talking to him.
When Troy and I were paired in 2002, we would almost write out our on-cameras segments like we were doing a scene from “Hamlet.” Now, even though we’re going to be doing this game for over 100 million people, we really won’t talk about what we’re going to say in the “open” until we actually do it. We’ll rehearse it once, maybe twice, but we don’t have exact words. And if you don’t have exact words, then that forces you to really listen to the other person.
The other thing I try to do is try to get Troy to smile. If there’s one thing Troy has over everybody doing TV football is he’s got a great laugh. If we make a mistake in the game, we’re going to try to laugh at it. We’re going to enjoy each other’s company.
Troy will tell you that it’s just as intimidating when that red light comes on as it was for him to throw his first pass. And then you just kind of settle in. Back then, he was worried about a wet football in his first Super Bowl, at the Rose Bowl. He didn’t sleep the night before. He was deathly afraid of a wet football. We don’t have to worry about wet footballs or wet microphones, or wet anything. We’ll have a good grip on everything.
I wouldn’t even have realized that my dad called Super Bowl IV, but for CBS’ Jim Nantz mentioning it at the end of the AFC championship game between the Chiefs and Tennessee Titans. I’m appreciative beyond words that Jim pointed that out. Because for some reason over the years, it’s almost like you don’t really talk about the other network. Whether it’s CBS, NBC, ESPN … and yet we’re all friends. Everybody knows that CBS just did the championship game, and they’re finishing up and they know that the next game is on Fox. Things have changed over the years, and that’s refreshing.
I don’t know him that well, but I know him well enough to know how genuine he is. He did that because he knew it would be cool for me. I sent Jim a text saying, “That meant the world to me, but you brought my mom and my sister to tears. I’ll never be able to repay that on air.” That was a gift from a guy at another network who had nothing to gain.
If I could find that necktie my dad wore, I’d wear it. I think I’ll wear his watch this Sunday. He gave it to me one day at breakfast when we were broadcast partners on St. Louis Cardinals radio. I was 23. He said, “Let me see your watch.” I took my watch off, he took his off and said, “I want you to have this.” It was a gift from his employer for his years of hard work, and he wanted me to have it.
I think my dad would be proud Sunday and glued to the TV.
If he were alive, I’d call him after the game and ask him about the job I did. When I dialed him in October of 1996, after calling Game 6 of the World Series, he acted like he didn’t know what time the game was coming on, as if he didn’t watch any of it. Then, after a pause, he said: “It was great, Buck. It was great.” And he handed the phone to my mom.
The next day, I called home and said, “What was with Dad last night?” And she said, “He was crying so hard that he couldn’t talk.”
Back when I had ambitions for the big time in my career, I would have been envious. I have figured out over the years that doing sports broadcasting as a side thing is more enjoyable, given what I’ve seen about radio management. TV announcers today get pilloried for bias that isn’t necessarily there. (In my experience announcers sort of root for the team that’s behind because they’d like a good game.) Fans don’t necessarily like to hear bad news about their team. And certainly social media will, as the younger Buck points out, jump on announcers for things viewers don’t like.
The Super Bowl IV broadcast is also interesting because of the announcers’ (future) history. Jack Buck had just been promoted to the St. Louis baseball Cardinals’ top announcer position after Harry Caray was fired after the 1969 season. Buck had been hired to announce Cardinals games, then was fired (to make way for Joe Garagiola), then was rehired. At the same time, Buck was working for KMOX radio, the Cardinals’ flagship (owned by CBS), while announcing American Football Leagues (and at least one college basketball game) for ABC-TV.
After the AFL moved from ABC to NBC, Buck moved to CBS-TV in the era when CBS had announcers dedicated to teams. He announced not the Cardinals, but the Bears for two seasons, then the Cowboys, which made him part of the Ice Bowl announcing team.
The pairing of Buck and Summerall ended during the 1974 season, when CBS Sports president Robert Wussler decided that Buck and Summerall sounded too much alike. (That is curious since arguably Summerall and Ray Scott, Summerall’s first play-by-play guy, sounded even more alike.) Summerall, who had worked for years on WCBS radio in New York before going to TV, said he wanted to do play-by-play, so he was paired with Tom Brookshier, with whom he had worked for NFL Films. Buck was paired with Wayne Walker (later a long-time San Francisco TV sports anchor and 49ers announcer), then left for NBC, only to return to CBS two years later … all the while announcing Cardinals games.
The number one British single today in 1963:
The number one single today in 1970:
The number one British single today in 1976 replaced a single that had the title of the new number one in its lyrics:
Today in 1917, the first jazz record was recorded:
The number one British single today in 1959:
The number one single today in 1961 was the first number one for a girl group:
Today in 1969, the Beatles held their last concert, on the roof of their Apple Records building:
The prevailing attitude among Wisconsin Republicans seems to be against a recall of Gov. Tony Evers on the grounds that Gov. Scott Walker shouldn’t have been recalled.
Republicans might want to rethink that as the toxic mix of incompetence and antipathy to anything but the most extreme left-wing positions (i.e. higher taxes and gun control) continues to fester in Madison.
On Friday, Evers spoke to the Wisconsin Association of School Boards convention, saying that spending more money on schools was more important than lowering property taxes. (To be precise, he said, “What’s a higher property tax if little Billy can get ahead?”) Evers obviously believes, as do teacher unions and government-employee unions, that the role of the taxpayer is to (1) pay taxes and (2) shut up.
Evers created a “nonpartisan” (which is not a synonym for “nonideological,” by the way) redistricting commission. Perhaps Evers can create whatever he wants, but Article IV, section 3 of the state Constitution says:
At its first session after each enumeration made by the authority of the United States, the legislature shall apportion and district anew the members of the senate and assembly, according to the number of inhabitants.
Evers is apparently too lazy to do the work of creating a constitutional amendment and getting that through two sessions of the Legislature before a statewide referendum.
Evers also is violating state law, specifically the Open Records Law, with the added feature of threatening reporters. M.D. Kittle reports:
Gov. Tony Evers’ assault on the First Amendment and open government continues, with one of his agencies threatening an NBC journalist with criminal charges for doing his job.
National investigative reporter Mike Hixenbaugh exposed the unchecked power of child welfare agencies — with the assistance of physicians — to take children away from their parents. His special report was met with silence and silencing orders from the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office and the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families.
“Authorities in Wisconsin did not want you to read this story,” Hixenbaugh tweeted Monday. “First a prosecutor sought a gag order after I reached out seeking comment. Then a state agency sent me a cease and desist order warning of potential criminal charges.”
Authorities in Wisconsin did not want you to read this story. First a prosecutor sought a gag order after I reached out seeking comment. Then a state agency sent me a cease and desist order warning of potential criminal charges.
Proud of @NBCNews for publishing it anyway. https://t.co/Gd2QoK54wS
— Mike Hixenbaugh (@Mike_Hixenbaugh) January 27, 2020
In his story, the journalist noted Evers’ DCF cited a state law that prevents the agency from disclosing details about child welfare investigations. When NBC News followed up with “specific questions” about the case, the agency warned Hixenbaugh that he could be charged for “publishing information obtained in a child abuse investigation file,” the story states.
Twitter followers of the story expressed their disgust with the agency — and an administration that has earned a reputation for keeping secrets.
“This is unbelievable. This continues a disturbing trend of secrecy among some in the Evers administration,” Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke (R-Kaukauna) wrote. “The @WisDCF must answer to why they are utilizing intimidation tactics to cover this up and more importantly why they continue to persecute this family.”
Steineke called for an investigation into DCF, and that the results should be made public.
The investigative report features a couple whose adopted baby was removed from the home on allegations that her new father, a doctor, abused her, despite the fact that multiple physicians concluded the child was not intentionally injured. Child Protective Services took the girl from the home and placed her in foster care. Eight months later, she remains separated from her family and her father faces felony charges and possibly six years in prison, if convicted.
Eric Bott, director of Americans for Prosperity-Wisconsin, likened the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office gag order to its use of John Doe secrecy orders in Wisconsin’s infamous John Doe investigation. The politically-motivated probes into dozens of conservative groups silenced subjects and witnesses on penalty of jail time and costly fines.
After the Wisconsin Supreme Court declared the investigations unconstitutional, the Republican-led Legislature reformed the state’s John Doe laws.
“I thought WI sent a message to DAs that unconstitutional gag orders wouldn’t be tolerated when it passed John Doe reform,” Bott tweeted. “Perhaps it’s time to revisit these laws.” He then tweeted this question to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Molly Beck: “now that reporters are targeted do you understand the importance of John Doe reform?”
A Milwaukee County judge on Tuesday issued an order prohibiting all parties involved in the case from discussing it publicly, according to NBC Milwaukee affiliate WTMJ.
The DCF case is just the latest example of the Evers administration’s trouble with transparency.
Last month, Fox6 News sued the governor for failing to turn over even one day of Evers’ emails sought through an open records request. He eventually told the reporter that such emails would be “pretty boring,” and that if he sent out one email a day, “that’s an extraordinary day.”
Earlier this year, the MacIver Institute sued Evers in federal court for barring the conservative news agency from a budget briefing with fellow Capitol reporters. The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty has also sued the state Department of Public Instruction and the agency’s handpicked successor of the governor, who previously served as DPI superintendent. That lawsuit, too, involves transparency problems. Empower Wisconsin’s executive director is a plaintiff in that lawsuit.
It’s not clear if the Evers administration will seek to enforce its cease-and-desist order against the NBC reporter. A spokeswoman for the governor did not return Empower Wisconsin’s request for comment. Hixenbaugh was still reporting on the story as of Tuesday afternoon.
In a tweet, Hixenbaugh alluded to the challenges he faced in reporting his investigative piece.
“This was one of the most difficult stories I’ve ever worked on, and not just because it’s emotional,” the NBC reporter wrote.
Evers is also a weasel. Kittle again:
By golly, folks, turns out Gov. Tony Evers is a political coward.
The Democrat apparently was so busy Tuesday he didn’t have time to welcome Vice President Mike Pence to the Statehouse. Evers and his spokespeople originally wouldn’t say what kept the governor away. But golly gee, wouldn’t you know it, after taking some heat the Evers’ team came up with an excuse Tuesday, insisting he had “meetings outside the building.”
The governor’s spokeswoman, Melissa Baldauff, claims the vice president, who appeared at the Capitol for a school choice event, hadn’t reached out to Evers and that the governor’s office learned about the visit from state Capitol police.
Really?
That sounds odd. But even it that was the case, isn’t it kind of customary for the governor to at least acknowledge a vice president when he comes to the Capitol — a special occasion that hasn’t occurred in more than 60 years?
Evers apparently couldn’t move his schedule around to accommodate the vice president. Instead, the governor asked the media to do his bidding for him.
On Monday, he told reporters he hoped someone would ask the vice president if he agrees with U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, who suggested smaller dairy farms will have to adapt and compete on an economy of scale in order to survive. Democrats, particularly Evers, have pushed a faulty narrative that President Trump doesn’t care about the plight of small farmers and the troubled dairy industry.
Sounds like the governor thinks that’s an important question, though. Just not important enough for him to personally ask Pence.
The truth of the matter is, school choice-hating Evers didn’t want anything to do with Tuesday’s rally. He has worked to undo Wisconsin’s successful voucher program since his days as state superintendent. He sought to freeze statewide enrollment in his last budget proposal.
Instead, Evers’ liberal activists turned out to shout “Shame! Shame!” at the vice president and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, a staunch proponent of school choice. And his lieutenant governor, Mandela Barnes, injected racially charged comments into Pence’s stop.
“In case this hasn’t been mentioned, the rally in the Capitol today was the most interaction many of those adults will ever have with black and brown children,” Barnes tweeted.
In case this hasn’t been mentioned, the rally in the Capitol today was the most interaction many of those adults will ever have with black and brown children.
— Mandela Barnes (@TheOtherMandela) January 28, 2020
That’s not only wrong-headed, it’s wrong. Many of the adults who attended the Capitol rally are in education, daily striving to make better the lives of children of color and all students hungering for a better education — a way out of poverty and the public schools that have failed them.
The governor could take his lieutenant governor to task for such offensive sentiments,but he won’t. That would take courage. And that’s not an attribute you’ll find in a political coward.
In contrast, notice former Gov. Scott Walker presenting …
… Barack Obama with Packers …
… and Brewers jerseys upon the former president’s visits to Wisconsin.
Speaking of Barnes, Kittle writes:
Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes believes we must “stymie capitalism” if we want to save the world from the threats of climate change.
That’s what the Democrat told a gathering of fellow doom-and-gloomers last month during a panel discussion at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Madrid.
Barnes was joined on stage by a bevy of North American bureaucrats, including Canada’s “Climate Ambassador” and Mexico’s “Climate Change Director.”
The “side event,” as it was described on the conference agenda, was on “subnational strategies in North America for meeting Paris Commitments.” It was oozing with liberal politics. The session’s smug host, blasting President Trump for pulling the United States out of the Paris Agreement, wondered aloud how the administration could fail to recognize the climate crisis facing the world. “How stupid can humanity be?”
“Why do we fail to act in the face of such obvious danger when the stakes are so high?” he asked.
It’s not a question of stupidity, Barnes answered. It’s a matter of greed. American capitalistic greed.
“The reason why we’re in this mess is the pursuit of greed, it’s capitalism run amok,” the lieutenant governor said. “That’s the same reason gun violence is so rampant in America, the same reason why we deal with all these other issues that have common-sense solutions but don’t have a common-sense approach.”
What’s the solution? First, get money out of politics, said the liberal who became the youngest lieutenant governor in Wisconsin history thanks to money in politics.
“The second answer is stymie capitalism, the way it is in America,” Barnes told the audience.
To do that, communities have to organize, he declared. But only left-wing communities that buy into radical, redistributionist ideas, like climate change hysteria. Barnes boasted about his time as a community organizer, and blamed “larger corporations” for many of the world’s ills.
“Until money is less of an issue, we’re going to continue on this path of destruction,” he warned.
But money really is the issue. The U.N. Climate Change Conference called for more drastic measures in the left’s war on fossil fuels. Democrats in congress and on the campaign trail are calling for trillions of dollars for a Green New Deal, on top of the trillions of dollars taxpayers and businesses have already spent on the climate change cash cow. Barnes heads up Gov. Tony Evers’ task force on climate change with a very expensive — and unrealistic — goal of making the Badger State carbon-free by 2050.
Craig Rucker, co-founder of the Washington,D.C.-based Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) was at the Madrid conference and reported on the panel discussion.
“We’ve truly entered a new era in American governance when a top state elected official finds it worthwhile to travel to an international diplomatic event to proclaim what this world needs is to ‘stymie capitalism,’” wrote Rucker, whose organization has spent the better part of the past 35 years trying to bring some balance and common sense to an issue long ago hijacked by radical environmentalists.
He confronted Barnes after the session. He found the lieutenant governor pleasant but his rhetoric shocking.
“Just making that comment is absolutely preposterous,” Rucker told Empower Wisconsin. “He’s enjoying the free market, and all of the attendees were enjoying their Christmas shopping in Madrid, which is a lovely town to shop in. And they’re all flying on jet planes, thanks to capitalism.”
The political calculus may well be that not enough Wisconsinites want Evers booted out of office. One has to wonder, though, at what point enough will be enough with a governor who makes former Gov. Tony Earl look competent and former Gov. James Doyle look like a nice guy.
Today in 1942 premiered what now is the second longest running program in the history of radio — the BBC’s “Desert Island Discs”:
What’s the longest running program in the history of radio? The Grand Ole Opry.
Today in 1968, the Doors appeared at the Pussy Cat a Go Go in Las Vegas. After the show, Jim Morrison pretended to light up a marijuana cigarette outside. The resulting fight with a security guard concluded with Morrison’s arrest for vagancy, public drunkenness, and failure to possess identification.
The number one British single today in 1969 was its only British number one:
South Texas College of Law Prof. Josh Blackman:
The way things look, President Trump will almost certainly not be removed from office. The precedents set by the articles of impeachment, however, will endure far longer. And regrettably, the House of Representatives has transformed presidential impeachment from a constitutional parachute — an emergency measure to save the Republic in free-fall — into a parliamentary vote of “no confidence.”
The House seeks to expel Mr. Trump because he acted “for his personal political benefit rather than for a legitimate policy purpose.” Mr. Trump’s lawyers responded, “elected officials almost always consider the effect that their conduct might have on the next election.” The president’s lawyers are right. And that behavior does not amount to an abuse of power.
Politicians pursue public policy, as they see it, coupled with a concern about their own political future. Otherwise legal conduct, even when plainly politically motivated — but without moving beyond a threshold of personal political gain — does not amount to an impeachable “abuse of power.” The House’s shortsighted standard will fail to knock out Mr. Trump but, if taken seriously, threatens to put virtually every elected official in peril. The voters, and not Congress, should decide whether to reward or punish this self-serving feature of our political order.
The first article of impeachment turns on President Trump’s request that President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine announce an investigation of Hunter Biden’s role with the energy company Burisma. Mr. Trump wanted to learn about potential financial corruption concerning Hunter, realizing that such an investigation would, perhaps, yield greater scrutiny of Joe Biden. The House argues that this request to potentially harm Mr. Trump’s political rival was an “abuse of power.”
Mr. Trump’s lawyers respond that the call was “perfectly normal.” Yes, that phrase actually appears in the brief. Regrettably, parts of the brief are written in a far-too-political tone. But the president’s lawyers have raised an important threshold issue.
“In a representative democracy,” they write, “elected officials almost always consider the effect that their conduct might have on the next election.”
President Trump did not stand to receive any money or property from the Ukrainian president. (The House wisely chose not to charge Mr. Trump with bribery.) As a policy matter, I disagree with Mr. Trump’s decision to ask for an investigation of the Bidens. Even if warranted, it should have been avoided at all reasonable costs. The Republic would have been fine if we never learned more about Burisma. But receiving a “personal political benefit” does not transform an otherwise legal action — requesting an investigation — into impeachable conduct.
Mr. Trump is not the first president to consider his political future while executing the office. In 1864, during the height of the Civil War, President Lincoln encouraged Gen. William Sherman to allow soldiers in the field to return to Indiana to vote. What was Lincoln’s primary motivation? He wanted to make sure that the government of Indiana remained in the hands of Republican loyalists who would continue the war until victory. Lincoln’s request risked undercutting the military effort by depleting the ranks. Moreover, during this time, soldiers from the remaining states faced greater risks than did the returning Hoosiers.
Lincoln had dueling motives. Privately, he sought to secure a victory for his party. But the president, as a party leader and commander in chief, made a decision with life-or-death consequences. Lincoln’s personal interests should not impugn his public motive: win the war and secure the nation.
Consider a more recent example. In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson sought to put Thurgood Marshall, the prominent civil rights advocate, on the Supreme Court. But there were no vacancies. Not a problem for Johnson, who nominated as attorney general Ramsey Clark, the son of Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark. Johnson knew that this move would, as Wil Haygood wrote in “Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America,” raise questions “about a perceived conflict of interest because [Ramsey] Clark’s father sat on the high court.” Indeed, Johnson hoped that Justice Clark would retire to avoid having to recuse from cases in which Attorney General Clark was a party.
The stratagem worked. Justice Clark soon retired, and Johnson appointed Thurgood Marshall to fill the vacancy. Here, Johnson engineered a move that would have created conflicts that would keep a sitting Supreme Court justice from deciding countless appeals, where the primary purpose was to create a vacancy on the court. (Imagine if President Trump selected Chief Justice Roberts’s wife as attorney general!) Ultimately, Johnson did not run for re-election in 1968, but appointing the first African-American justice could have improved his popularity, and perhaps his party’s electoral standing.
Politicians routinely promote their understanding of the general welfare, while, in the back of their minds, considering how those actions will affect their popularity. Often, the two concepts overlap: What’s good for the country is good for the official’s re-election. All politicians understand this dynamic, even — or perhaps especially — Mr. Trump. And there is nothing corrupt about acting based on such competing and overlapping concerns. Politicians can, and do, check the polls before casting a difficult vote. Yet the impeachment trial threatens to transform this well-understood aspect of politics into an impeachable offense.
What separates an unconstitutional “abuse of power” from the valorized actions of Lincoln and Johnson? Not the president’s motives. In each case, a president acted with an eye toward “personal political benefit.” Rather, Congress’s judgment about what is a “legitimate policy purpose” separates the acclaimed from the criticized. Preserving a unified nation during the Civil War? Check. Creating a vacancy so the first African-American can be appointed to the Supreme Court? Check. But asking a foreign leader to investigate potential corruption? Impeach.
An impeachable offense need not be criminal. But our Constitution does not allow Congress to take a vote of “no confidence” for a president who pursues legal policies that members of the opposition party deem insufficiently publicly spirited. Presidents who take such actions with an eye toward the ballot box should be judged by the voters at the ballot box.
Today in 1956, Elvis Presley made his first national TV appearance on, of all places, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey’s “Stage Show” on CBS.
The number one album on both sides of the Atlantic today in 1978 was Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours”:
The number one single today in 1984 was banned by the BBC, which probably helped it stay on the charts for 48 weeks:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 