The number one single today in 1960:
Today in 1969 the number two single on this side of the Atlantic was the number one single on the other side …
… from the number one album:
No comments on Presty the DJ for Sept. 19
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Former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm and Mike Solon:
Who owns the vast wealth of America? Old folks. According to the Federal Reserve, households headed by people over the age of 55 own 73% of the value of domestically owned stocks, and the same share of America’s total wealth. Households of ages 65 to 74 have an average of $1,066,000 in net worth, while those between ages 35 and 44 have less than a third as much on average, at $288,700.
A socialist might see injustice in that inequality. But seniors know this wealth gap is the difference between the start and the finish of a career of work and thrift, making the last mortgage and retirement payments rather than the first. Seventy-two percent of the value of all domestically held stocks is owned by pension plans, 401(k)s and individual retirement accounts, or held by life insurance companies to fund annuities and death benefits. This wealth accumulated over a lifetime and benefits all Americans.That means it’s your life savings on the line—not the bankroll of some modern-day John D. Rockefeller—when Democrats push to limit companies’ methods of enriching their shareholders. Several Democratic congressmen and presidential candidates have proposed to limit stock buybacks, which are estimated to have increased stock values by almost a fifth since 2011, as well as to block dividend payments, impose a new federal property tax, and tax the inside buildup of investments. Yet among all the Democratic taxers and takers, no one would hit retirees harder than Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Her “Accountable Capitalism Act” would wipe out the single greatest legal protection retirees currently enjoy—the requirement that corporate executives and fund managers act as fiduciaries on investors’ behalf. To prevent union bosses, money managers or politicians from raiding pension funds, the 1974 Employee Retirement Income Security Act requires that a fiduciary shall manage a plan “solely in the interest of the participants and beneficiaries . . . for the exclusive purpose of providing benefits to participants and their beneficiaries.” The Securities and Exchange Commission imposes similar requirements on investment advisers, and state laws impose fiduciary responsibility on state-chartered corporations.
Sen. Warren would blow up these fiduciary-duty protections by rewriting the charter for every corporation with gross receipts of more than $1 billion. Every corporation, proprietorship, partnership and limited-liability company of that size would be forced to enroll as a federal corporation under a new set of rules. Under this new Warren charter, companies currently dedicated to their shareholders’ interest would be reordered to serve the interests of numerous new “stakeholders,” including “the workforce,” “the community,” “customers,” “the local and global environment” and “community and societal factors.”
Eliminating corporations’ duty to serve investors exclusively and forcing them to serve political interests would represent the greatest government taking in American history. Sen. Warren’s so-called accountable capitalism raids the return that wealth provides to its owners, the vast majority of whom are present or near retirees. This subversion of capitalism would hijack Americans’ wealth to serve many new masters who, unlike shareholders, don’t have their life savings at stake in the companies that are collectivized.
After dividing retirees’ rightful earnings eight ways to serve the politically favored, the Warren charter goes on to require that “not less than 2/5 of the directors of a United States corporation shall be elected by the employees.” With a mandate to share profits with seven other interest groups and 40% of the board chosen by non-investors, does anybody doubt that investors’ wealth would be quickly devoured?At best, every U.S. company with gross revenues over $1 billion would be suddenly coerced into operating like a not-for-profit. But unlike legally recognized Benefit Corporations, the companies would be redirected to multiple competing purposes. A new Office of U.S. Corporations would decide—and lawyers would sue to determine—whether those interests are satisfied, and only then would retirees receive the remaining crumbs. Only in Sen. Warren’s socialist heaven would workers continue to sweat and sacrifice while their rewards go to publicly favored groups.
It is the fiduciary responsibility of every investment adviser, pension fund, 401(k), IRA and life insurance company to tell its clients what would happen to their investments under Sen. Warren’s bill. Her plan would devastate the income-generating capacity of every major company in America and decimate their market value in the process.
If the bill were passed, retirement plans and investors could attempt to sell their stocks and find new investments where their money would still work for them. They could sell their shares in the large companies subject to Sen. Warren’s dispossession and buy into smaller companies with receipts below the $1 billion threshold, or look for investments abroad.
The problem is that everybody else would be trying to do the same. Investments built over a lifetime would be sold in a fire sale, with limited alternatives purchased in panic buying. While no econometric model could give a reliable estimate of the wealth destruction, no knowledgeable observer could doubt that an economic cataclysm would follow such a policy. “Accountable capitalism” would hit present and near-retirees first and hardest, followed by American workers and the rest of the economy.
Sen. Warren would roll back the economic Enlightenment that gave us private property and economic freedom, and plunge us back into the communal world of the Dark Ages. Like the village, guild, church and crown of yore, government-empowered special interests would once again be allowed to extort labor and thrift. When capital is no longer protected as private property and is instead redefined as a communal asset, prosperity and freedom will be the greatest casualties.
Socialism always destroys wealth; it doesn’t redistribute it. Unfortunately, this great truth is far from self-evident. Whether current and near-retirees will stand up and fight for their retirement savings will effectively gauge the survival instinct of our country, and our willingness to preserve the economic system that built it.
Mr. Gramm, a former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Solon is a partner of US Policy Metrics.
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We begin with the National Anthem because of today’s last item:
The number one song today in 1961 may have never been recorded had not Buddy Holly died in a plane crash in 1959; this singer replaced Holly in a concert in Moorhead, Minn.:
Britain’s number one album today in 1971 was The Who’s “Who’s Next”:
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After the New York Times published their latest smear of Brett Kavanaugh, the left began foaming at the mouth, claiming that the article proved that Brett Kavanaugh lied during his confirmation hearing, that he is a proven rapist, etc., etc., etc. Those of us who actually read the article saw it for what it was: another unsubstantiated smear. Well, it looks like even the New York Times is admitting their article was fake news.
The article, “Brett Kavanaugh Fit In With the Privileged Kids. She Did Not” was adapted from The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation, the forthcoming book from Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly. Most of the article focused on Deborah Ramirez’s accusation against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and attempted to make it sound corroborated, even though it has not been. But, the most significant part of the article was the revelation of a new accusation by Max Stier, a former classmate of Brett Kavanaugh. Stier claims he saw Kavanaugh “with his pants down at a different drunken dorm party, where friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student.”
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On “No Interruption,” Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren sat down with Andrew Pollack, father of Parkland shooting victim Meadow Pollack.
Pollack became an outspoken advocate for school safety since the Parkland shooting, and he has now written a new book detailing his own investigation into the events that led to the massacre.
“I wanted to look into it, I wanted to honor my daughter to see what happened, and how it could happen that I put my daughter in a school, in a nice neighboorhood, and then I’m never going to see her again,” Pollack said. “I wanted to know the facts. I didn’t just listen to mainstream media, I didn’t jump on that bandwagon — and I found out that there was a multitude of failures and policies that lead up to my daughter getting murdered, that the mainstream media didn’t want to cover.”
In Why Meadow Died: The People and Policies That Created The Parkland Shooter and Endanger America’s Students, Pollack discusses his views on gun control, why he blames Democratic policies for his daughter’s murder, and precautions that parents can take to ensure the safety of their children.
Pollack argued that new gun control laws are an ineffective solution to the school shooting epidemic, in part because current laws are not being enforced. For example, the Parkland shooter had a violent record, but he was not arrested and therefore able to obtain a weapon legally.
“To me, gun control would’ve been if they arrested him for punching his mother’s teeth out and he got a background,” explained Pollack. “Democrats put these policies in place that don’t believe in holding kids accountable or arresting them while they’re juveniles…so if they don’t arrest them and they don’t get a background, then they’re able to purchase weapons legally and a background check is useless,” he said.
In an interview with “Fox & Friends” Monday, Pollack said that banning guns is not the solution, and he encouraged people to look at the “underlying causes for these shootings.”
“They’re not addressing mental health…or arresting these people when they make threats…those are the real issues,” he explained.
Responding to a recent video featuring 2020 Democratic candidates promoting tighter gun control as a safety precaution in schools, Pollack said it made him “ill.”
“My daughter paid the ultimate sacrifice because of those Democratic policies and I’ve been hurt by the Democrats more than anybody in this country — and I hold them responsible,” Pollack said.
Pollack met with President Trump five times, he explained, and applauded the President’s initiation of a federal school safety commission to investigate what steps need to be taken to ensure safety in schools across the country.
In his new book, Pollack said he wanted to create a guide for parents to spot warning signs of potential shooters and to explain that Meadow’s death was avoidable.
“[The book is] like a manual or a guide for parents and grandparents to read it and actually look at what happened in Parkland and compare it — these policies are throughout the whole country,” Pollack told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto in an earlier interview.
“Uncovering all of this,” said Pollack, “it did a lot for me so other parents now can learn from it and that’s what brought me to this book. And the book started as just an investigation, but there was so many jaw-dropping failures that I had to educate other parents.”
Discussing the book, Cavuto “dared” viewers to “read this book without a box of tissues,” calling it “stunning and raw.”
Pollack is just getting started, he explained. He is committed to educating parents across the country on being alert and responsive to potential dangers surrounding their children, so no parent has to experience the pain and grief that continues to haunt him more than a year later.
“Every time that there’s a mass shooting,” he explained, “I think about these victims. Like the ones in Walmart or the ones in Virginia at the building where these animals are coming through and they’re shooting … and I picture my daughter being a victim.”
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Today in 1931, RCA Victor began selling record players that would play not just 78s, but 33⅓-rpm albums too.
Today in 1956, the BBC banned Bill Haley and the Comets’ “Rockin’ Through the Rye” on the grounds that the Comets’ recording of an 18th-century Scottish folk song went against “traditional British standards”:
(It’s worth noting on Constitution Day that we Americans have a Constitution that includes a Bill of Rights, and we don’t have a national broadcaster to ban music on spurious standards. Britain lacks all of those.)
Today in 1964, the Beatles were paid an unbelievable $150,000 for a concert in Kansas City, the tickets for which were $4.50.
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Thanks to the NFL schedule and the Packers’ suddenly developing a defense, blog readers get to examine another Packer win over an archrival from the archrival’s media point o’ view.
But first, here’s the sound of Vikings retreating:
Now start with the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Chip Scoggins:
There is a lot to unpack from the Vikings’ 21-16 loss to the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field.
The long list includes the Vikings’ horrendous start, Stefon Diggs’ overturned TD, a million penalties, OPIs galore, Dalvin Cook’s brilliance, the defense’s 180 and Kirk Cousins’ turnovers.
Cousins’ mistakes were killer, especially his final interception in the end zone with the Vikings in position to take the lead late in the fourth quarter.
Throwing into double coverage on first down was either a panicky or overly daring move that shouldn’t happen with a veteran quarterback in that critical situation.
Here are other key decisions that created an eventful game:
Scenario 1: Green Bay’s game plan early
Decision: Aaron Rodgers used play-action on the first play of the game to hit a wide-open Davante Adams for a 39-yard catch.
Reaction: Xavier Rhodes had coverage on Adams but released him so not sure if this was busted coverage/miscommunication or what. But it was the start of Rodgers’ masterful first half in which he exploited the Vikings’ thin secondary in building a 21-0 lead.
The Vikings were without nickel corner Mackensie Alexander and Mike Hughes, forcing Jayron Kearse to start at slot/nickel. Kearse gave too much cushion on a 21-yard completion to Adams on the second possession, which caused Mike Zimmer to insert Nate Meadors at nickel. Rodgers promptly went at him on a 12-yard TD catch by Geronimo Allison.
Rodgers completed eight of his first nine passes (the lone incompletion was a throwaway) for 119 yards and two touchdowns. …
Scenario 3: Cousins INT
Decision: Late in the first half, with the Vikings gaining some momentum, Cousins forced a throw to Diggs in the middle of the field with four Packers defenders around him. Four! The ball was deflected and then intercepted by linebacker Preston Smith, giving the Packers the ball back around midfield.
Reaction: That can’t happen. Period. Bad decision by Cousins. …
Scenario 5: Cook’s OPI
Decision: Stefon Diggs scored on a 3-yard TD catch at the end of the first half, but it was overturned when a booth review signaled Cook for pass interference at the goal line.
That pushed the Vikings back 10 yards and they settled for a field goal, cutting the halftime deficit to 21-10.
Reaction: Two thoughts: 1) I honestly didn’t know a PI could be called on a booth review in that situation; 2) I don’t agree with the call.
My colleague Mark Craig is the pool reporter and will get explanation from referee John Hussey after the game on the penalty.
Scenario 6: Diggs’ celebration penalty
Decision: Diggs caught a 45-yard touchdown pass in the third quarter on a beautifully thrown pass by Cousins. One problem. Diggs took his helmet off to celebrate. The penalty moved the extra point back, and Dan Bailey’s kick was blocked, putting the score at 21-16.
Reaction: I hate the rule, but it is a rule.
Scenario 7: Cousins’ INT
Decision: With the Vikings at the Green Bay 8 on first down, Cousins scrambled to his right and floated a pass to Diggs into double coverage in the corner of the end zone. Packers cornerback Kevin King made a leaping interception with 5:10 remaining.
Reaction: Another poor decision by Cousins.
About the offensive pass interference call (one of four in the game, the most I have ever seen in a game), the Strib’s Mark Craig describes what happened:
The confusion began with John Hussey’s open mike catching the referee asking the league office in New York, essentially, “What the heck’s going on?”
“Can you tell me why we’re stopping the game?” Hussey said after Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins threw a 3-yard touchdown pass to Stefon Diggs with 1 minute, 8 seconds left in the second quarter of Sunday’s 21-16 loss at Lambeau Field.
Diggs clearly caught the ball. And he clearly crossed the goal line to presumably move the Vikings to within a touchdown of a Packers team that led 21-0 after 16 minutes.
But this is the NFL in 2019. Assume nothing. Delay jumping for joy or punching a wall. And put no points on the board until Alberto Riveron, the NFL’s senior vice president of officiating, checks to make sure there are no no-calls to be called.
When Hussey huddled in front of the replay monitor longer than usual, you knew Alberto had spotted an infraction.
“We saw clear and obvious visual evidence that No. 33 [Dalvin Cook] significantly hinders the opponent [safety Darnell Savage] while the ball is still in the air,” Riveron told this pool reporter after the game. “Therefore, we negate the score and call offensive pass interference here from New York and penalize them 10 yards.”
The Vikings settled for a field goal and a 21-10 deficit. Throw in Dan Bailey’s missed 47-yard field goal and a blocked point-after attempt from 48 yards — compliments of Stefon Diggs’ 15-yard personal foul for selfishly removing his helmet after a touchdown catch — and, well, the Vikings would have been leading with 5:10 left. And, who knows, Cousins probably doesn’t throw his second horribly forced interception of the day on first-and-goal from the 8.
But …
Don’t blame Riveron. Cook did help clear a path when he blocked Savage while the ball was in the air.
It was offensive pass interference, one of three on the Vikings and four in the game. And the new rule, adopted on a one-year trial basis, is PI calls and no-calls are reviewable from the booth when there’s a turnover, a score or the game is in the final two minutes of a half.
If you’re grumpy about the call, blame the Saints for getting hosed out of a Super Bowl trip on the mother-of-all no calls in last year’s NFC title game.
Coaches, of course, have been complaining about offensive pass interference on the goal line for years. As Star Tribune sports columnist Patrick Reusse points out, nobody complained more bitterly and regularly about pick plays on the goal line than Vikings Hall of Fame coach Bud Grant.
Sunday, the league office and the game officials weren’t shy about calling OPIs. Besides Cook, Diggs and Adam Theilen both were flagged.
“I feel like it was a point of emphasis this game,” said Diggs, who had an animated conversation with field judge Allen Baynes coming off the field at halftime. “I feel like they went the extra mile trying to emphasize it as a whole, so we’ve just got to watch the tape and figure out what’s what.
“I don’t know the call. I haven’t seen it on tape. I asked him at halftime. He said, ‘You can’t close [your] fist, use your shoulder. You can’t extend at all.’”
After the game, coach Mike Zimmer still wasn’t clear what happened on the negated touchdown. He said it was his understanding that it wasn’t on Cook but rather “the second guy that came through.”
But New York made it clear that it definitely was Cook. And that was news to Cook in the locker room after the game.
“That was the play call, we got out and I don’t know [what happened],” he said. “I can’t tell you. I didn’t even know it was on me, to be real. So I can’t respond. I can’t describe it.”
Welcome to the NFL, 2019. If you think you’ve gotten away with pass interference, just remember. Alberto is watching your every move from New York.
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Last week was quite a week for the gun control lobby.
First, according to Magamedia:
Whether it’s NRA protests, anti-gun protests, live-streams protesting gun violence Alyssa Milano is front and center, attending them all. What she hasn’t revealed until just recently, is the fact that she owns two guns for self defense.
The debate was held in Cruz’s Capitol Hill office, where Milano and Fred Guttenberg — whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime was killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting in Parkland, Florida — pressed the senator on various gun control proposals.
Milano proposed universal background checks, restricting access to AR-15s, and background checks for bullet purchases, while insisting, “We all believe in the Second Amendment.” Despite that claim, she pleaded, “We have to try everything, and figure out what works. Isn’t that worth it?”
Around 13 minutes into the discussion, Guttenberg said he was offended by Cruz’s argument that these gun controls would erode Americans’ rights to self-defense. “That’s a load of BS,” he said. “Nobody’s trying to remove your right to self-defense.”
“By the way,” Milano interjected, “I have two guns in my household for self-defense, just so you know.”I guess she thinks she’s special because she’s a celebrity. She doesn’t have to practice what she preaches because she’s a celebrity. Gun control doesn’t apply to her because she’s a celebrity.
I’ve got news for you, Alyssa. It’s folks like you and David Hogg that continue to sky rocket gun sales all across the country.
Guttenberg claimed that “Nobody’s trying to remove your right to self-defense.” Which is not the same thing as saying “nobody’s trying to take your guns away.”
Which is also a lie, as reported by Jim Geraghty:
He almost certainly doesn’t realize it, but Beto O’Rourke is likely to be the worst thing to happen to the gun-control movement in decades — and, if he continues in this mode, he may turn out to be the worst thing to happen to the Democratic party in a long time, too. In Houston last night, O’Rourke abandoned his cloying euphemisms (“mandatory buybacks”) and delivered a deliberate, carefully scripted endorsement of gun confiscation, which, within minutes, his campaign began to sell on t-shirts. “Hell yes,” Beto said, “we’re going to take your AR-15.”
Thus, upon the instant, did two decades’ worth of Democratic rhetoric go up in a puff of smoke.
Beto’s increasingly unhinged rhetoric is not only at odds with political reality — is he unaware that the Democratic House failed this week to marshall enough votes for ban on the sale of “assault weapons,” let alone for confiscation? — it also chronically undermines the assurances on which the Democratic party’s more modest gun-control proposals have been built. For years, Democrats have insisted that “nobody is coming for your guns,” and they have used that line to explain why their coveted registry and desired licensing systems do not pose a threat to anyone but criminals. The current push for an expansion of the background check system rests heavily upon this assurance: “Don’t worry about the de facto registry,” advocates like to argue, “it won’t affect you at all.” With reckless abandon, O’Rourke just blew straight through that, screaming, “yes, it will!”
And in the worst possible way, too. When O’Rourke first decided that he was in favor of confiscation, he was at pains to promise that enforcement would be unnecessary because Americans would comply, and that the punishment would be a fine and nothing worse. With his “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15” language, O’Rourke has abandoned even that. And for what? So that he might increase a few percentage points in a poll that he is never, ever going to win, and then disappear from electoral politics forever?
A year from now, when O’Rourke is a contributor on MSNBC, the people who stayed in the arena are going to look back on this period and curse his name. “Did that guy help us?” they will ask. “Hell, no.”Then there is this video …
… which was (occasionally profanely) rebutted by this video:
This is why I do not reflexively thank veterans for their service unless I know whether their service was honorable (most) or not (John Kerry). The soldiers in the first video did not serve their country; they served the government. They do not respect the Second Amendment rights of anyone besides themselves. Like other liberals they are perfectly fine with being armed themselves, but not with anyone with different views being armed.
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The number one song today in 1972 is simply …
Britain’s number one album today in 1972 was Rod Stewart’s “Never a Dull Moment”:
The title track from the number one album today in 1978:
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Today in 1956, Elvis Presley had his first number one song:
Today in 1965, Ford Motor Co. began offering eight-track tape players in their cars. Since eight-track tape players for home audio weren’t available yet, car owners had to buy eight-track tapes at auto parts stores.
Today in 1970, Vice President Spiro Agnew said in a speech that the youth of America were being “brainwashed into a drug culture” by rock music, movies, books and underground newspapers.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 