How much money would you have paid for tickets for this concert at the Cow Palace in San Francisco today in 1964:
No comments on Presty the DJ for Aug. 19
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The Cato Institute released its latest Freedom in the 50 States study, which …
… presents a completely revised and updated ranking of the American states based on how their policies promote freedom in the fiscal, regulatory, and personal realms.
This edition again improves upon the methodology for weighting and combining state and local policies in order to create a comprehensive index. Authors William Ruger and Jason Sorens introduce many new policy variables suggested by readers. More than 230 policy variables and their sources are now available to the public on a new website for the study. Scholars, policymakers, and concerned citizens can assign new weights to every policy and create customized indices of freedom, or download the data for their own analyses.
In the 2016 edition, the authors have updated their findings to:
- Improve estimates of the “freedom value” of each policy (the estimated dollar value of each freedom affected to those who enjoy it);
- Provide the most up-to-date freedom index yet, including scores as of December 31, 2014;
- Include citizen choice among local governments as an important factor modifying the freedom value of more locally based taxation;
- Significantly expand policies affecting business and personal freedom, including new variables for occupational licensing, tort liability climate, land-use regulation, entry and price regulation, alcohol laws, and civil asset forfeiture;
- Analyze how the policies driving income growth and interstate migration have changed pre– and post–Great Recession.
And what can be said about Wisconsin, which is, you’ll note, 27th of the 50 states?For all the talk about Scott Walker’s “radical reforms,” we find that economic freedom has been more or less constant since 2011, relative to other states, whereas personal freedom has grown substantially.
The Badger State has relatively high taxes, which have fallen only marginally since 2012. State taxes are projected to be 5.8 percent of personal income in FY 2015, while local taxes have risen since FY 2000 and now stand at 4.4 percent of income, above the national average. Wisconsinites have ample choice among local governments, with more than two and a half effective competing jurisdictions per 100 square miles. State and local debt has fallen somewhat since FY 2007, and government employment and subsidies are below average. Overall, Wisconsin has seen definite improvement on fiscal policy since 2010, but it hasn’t yet reached the national average.
On regulatory policy, we see little change in recent years, although our index does not yet take account of the 2015 right-to-work law. Land-use freedom is a bit better than average; local zoning has not gotten out of hand, though it has grown some. The state has a renewable portfolio standard, but it is not high. Apart from its right-to-work law, Wisconsin was already reasonably good on labor-market policy. Cable and telecommunications have been liberalized. Occupational licensing increased dramatically between 2000 and 2006; still, the state is about average overall on extent of licensure. Nurse practitioners enjoy no independent practice freedom. Insurance freedom is generally good, at least for property and casualty lines. The state has a price-gouging law, as well as controversial, strictly enforced minimum-markup laws for gasoline and general retailers. The civil liability system is above average and improved significantly since 2010, due to a punitive damages cap.
Wisconsin is below average on criminal justice policies, but it has improved substantially since 2010 because of local policing strategies. The incarceration rate has fallen, as have nondrug victimless crime arrest rates. The state’s asset forfeiture law is one of the stricter ones in the country, but equitable sharing revenues are a little higher than average, suggesting some evasion of the law. The state was required to legalize same-sex marriage in 2014. Tobacco freedom is extremely low, due to airtight smoking bans and high taxes. Educational freedom grew significantly in 2013–14 with the expansion of vouchers. However, private schools are relatively tightly regulated. There is almost no legal gambling, even for social purposes. Cannabis law is unreformed. Wisconsin is the best state for alcohol freedom, with no state role in distribution, no keg registration, low taxes (especially on beer—imagine that), no blue laws, legal happy hours, legal direct wine shipment, and both wine and spirits in grocery stores. The state is now about average on gun rights after the legislature passed a shall-issue concealed-carry license, one of the last states in the country to legalize concealed carry.
Next to last, to be precise. The only thing that could be said to be libertarian about this state is the aforementioned alcohol freedom. The existence of the minimum-markup law is an embarrassment to 21st-century commerce. Despite tax cuts, Wisconsin remains one of the highest taxed states in the U.S., in large part because Wisconsin doesn’t require an actually balanced budget, hasn’t really made actual state budget cuts and has no constitutional limits on spending and taxation.
Wisconsin in fact has never been remotely free, in large part because of, as you’ve previously read here, our toxic-to-freedom mix of “Yankee founders and northern European immigrants; combine Protestant reformers and a strong Roman Catholic presence; add the labor activism of the industrial era to agrarian roots; douse liberally with the “Social Gospel,” the Wisconsin Idea, and Progressive-era legislation,” which gave us the “moralistic” political tradition that “considers government ‘a positive instrument with a responsibility to promote the general welfare.’ This culture is predominant in 17 states that stretch from New England through the upper Midwest to the Pacific coast — what several observers of American history and politics have called ‘Greater New England.’” Including, unfortunately, this state, as well as Maine, Vermont, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Colorado, Utah and Oregon.
That is an interesting observation about “choice among local governments.” Wisconsin has 3,120 units of government, second highest in the U.S. behind Illinois. (That number will be decreasing by one in the next few years as the cities of Madison and Fitchburg swallow up what’s left of the Town of Madison.) “Choice among local governments” could be another way of saying “too many units of government,” given, for instance, the 15 separate municipalities between Neenah, Kaukauna and the Calumet County part of Appleton (the cities of Neenah, Menasha, Appleton and Kaukauna; the villages of Fox Crossing, Kimberly, Little Chute and Combined Locks; and the towns of Neenah, Menasha, Grand Chute, Greenville, Vandenbroek, Buchanan and Harrison), which could be said to be 14 too many, at least in police and fire and other governmental services. Merging municipalities should take out the salaries at the very top.
At least the trend is sort of going in the correct direction …
… though with no real speed. Wisconsin ranks worse than Indiana (fourth), Iowa (ninth) and Michigan (24th), but better than Minnesota (38th) and Illinois (44th) among our neighbors.
Mercatus suggests the state needs to …
- Fiscal: Reduce the income tax burden while continuing to cut spending on employee retirement and government employment.
- Regulatory: Abolish price controls.
- Personal: Eliminate teacher licensing and mandatory state approval for private schools.
It’s pretty clear the political will to make our state more free even in those three areas is lacking. (The authors probably don’t know the widespread loathing of property taxes in this state.) Republicans refuse to do the work to get voters to approve constitutional limits on spending and taxes, and won’t even get rid of the minimum-markup law.
And yet, Democrats do nothing but (seek to, given their out-of-power status) raise taxes and expand government, persisting in the mistaken belief that government is anything beyond a necessary evil, perhaps because they think it’s the 1920s and Fighting Bob La Follette is still alive. It’s impossible to believe that the creator of the federal government Golden Fleece Award denoting ludicrously wasteful government spending, Sen. William Proxmire, was a Democrat. Think Sen. Tammy Baldwin or former and possibly future Sen. Russ Feingold want to cut your taxes? How about the would-be Democratic governors out there?
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How can two songs be the number one song in the country today in 1956? Do a Google search for the words “B side”:
(Those songs, by the way, were the first Elvis recorded with his fantastic backup singers, the Jordanaires.)
Today in 1962, the Beatles made their debut with their new drummer, Ringo Starr, following a two-hour rehearsal.
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Heather Mac Donald has written about the unnoticed increase in urban crime, which got noticed last weekend:
The war on cops, ideological and sometimes lethal, may be expanding into a broader race war, in which only one side fights. The thugs who torched businesses and police cars, assaulted cops, and shot at firemen in northwestern Milwaukee on Saturday night went after “white bitches,” among other targets. (The riots were inspired by the fatal police shooting of Sylville K. Smith, a black man. Smith, who had an extensive arrest record, including for a shooting, fled from officers after a traffic stop while carrying a stolen handgun; he refused commands to drop the gun. Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has activated the state’s National Guard and declared a state of emergency, but violence continued into Sunday night, with four officers injured, three squad cars damaged, and multiple businesses burned down.) The Black Lives Matter-inspired assassin who murdered five police officers in Dallas in July 2016 said that he wanted to kill white people, as well as white cops. The vitriol that officers working in urban areas now encounter on a daily basis is inflected with racism.
And if the war on cops escalates into more frequent attacks on whites and their perceived interests, the elite establishment will bear much of the blame. For the last two years, President Barack Obama has seized every opportunity to advise blacks that they are the victims of a racist criminal justice system. We should not be surprised when that belief, so constantly inflamed, erupts into violence. Even in his remarks at the memorial service for the five murdered Dallas cops, Obama had the gall to trot out his usual racial vendetta against the police, even though he was fully on notice that cops were being killed because of it:
When African-Americans from all walks of life, from different communities across the country, voice a growing despair over what they perceive to be unequal treatment; when study after study shows that whites and people of color experience the criminal justice system differently, so that if you’re black, you’re more likely to be pulled over or searched or arrested, more likely to get longer sentences, more likely to get the death penalty for the same crime; when mothers and fathers raise their kids right and have “the talk” about how to respond if stopped by a police officer—“yes, sir,” “no, sir”—but still fear that something terrible may happen when their child walks out the door, still fear that kids being stupid and not quite doing things right might end in tragedy—when all this takes place more than 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, we cannot simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protest as troublemakers or paranoid.
Obama’s indictment ignored, as usual, the astronomically higher rates of black crime that fully explain racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Meanwhile, Obama hasn’t uttered a word in condemnation of the lawless behavior in Milwaukee, two days into the events.
Hillary Clinton has been just as quick to enflame black hatred of cops and, by inevitable extension, of “white” society. She said during a January 2016 Democratic presidential debate that it was “reality” that police officers see black lives as “cheap,” adding that “there needs to be a concerted effort to address the systemic racism in our criminal justice system.” (In fact, there is no government agency more dedicated to the proposition that black lives matter than the police; tens of thousands of black lives have been saved thanks to data-driven, proactive policing.) The July 2016 cop assassinations had no more deterrent effect on Clinton’s determination to keep anti-cop tensions at a boil than they did on President Obama. Speaking at the NAACP after the Baton Rouge assassinations, which followed the Dallas massacre, Clinton said that “we cannot rest until we root out implicit bias and stop the killings of African-Americans.” Showing herself to be as statistically challenged as Obama, she continued: “Let’s admit it, there is clear evidence that African-Americans are disproportionately killed in police incidents compared to any other group.” (Blacks are actually killed at alower rate than their crime rates would predict. And at least four studies this year have shown that police officers are less likely to shoot blacks than whites, whether armed or unarmed.)
Last week, the Justice Department emitted yet another mendacious indictment of alleged cop racism, declaring the Baltimore Police Department guilty of a pattern or practice of systemic civil rights abuses. Baltimore officers accost and arrest blacks in Baltimore at higher rates than their proportion in the population, the Justice Department’s civil rights division wrote, carefully avoiding any notice of the crime that brings cops to black neighborhoods. The Justice Department report was ecstatically received in the media, and no doubt word of the confirmed racism of Baltimore police—and by extension, all police—trickled down into northwestern Milwaukee.
These nonstop rhetorical sorties against police officers and the criminal justice system inevitably expand into a broader indictment of the society that the criminal justice system defends. The Black Lives Matter riots of the last two years are inseparable from a hatred of what is perceived to be “white” society and civilization.
And as important as the political stoking of that hatred is the academic race industry that keeps black victimology at a fever pitch. The 2015–2016 school year saw an outbreak of delusional self-pity among black college students across the country. They claimed to be discriminated against by faculty, administrators, fellow students, and academic standards. Never mind that many allegedly disparaged students were attending the colleges in question only because ofracial preferences, despite having test scores that would automatically disqualify white or Asian applicants. Never mind that nearly every waking hour of a college administrator is devoted to the cultivation of a separatist racial consciousness among black students and to dreaming up new racial sinecures for faculty and other administrators.
The academic version of Black Lives Matter was not as physically destructive as the Milwaukee riots, but it had as corrosive an effect on civilizational norms.Last fall, a group of black students at Yale surrounded and screamed insults at their college master. (His sin was to be married to a Yale professor who had sent out an email suggesting that Yale students could select their own Halloween costumes without policing from Yale’s diversity bureaucrats.) One student was caught on video shrieking at the master to “be quiet” and calling him “disgusting.” Other students were just as savage, but their behavior was not recorded. The shrieking girl and her classmates have never been reprimanded for their uncivil behavior. To the contrary, Yale’s president, Peter Salovey, penned a sycophantic missive to the Yale “community” after the incident, gushing that he had never been as proud of Yale students as in the last few weeks of protests. Even the college master who had been screamed at by his charges expressed contrition for his failure to understand the oppression experienced by Yale’s coddled minority students.
Yale was hardly the only college to excuse racial attacks on basic manners and decency. Black Dartmouth students stormed into the library spitting on and cursing at white students. The administrators let it pass.
The rioters in Milwaukee have likely not attended Yale or Dartmouth, but they have absorbed the same narrative that originates with university race-mongers and is then adopted by the media and government. Perhaps the narrative’s biggest lie is that white people are the most powerful source of racism today—a lie embraced by elite white society itself. When that society is not twisting itself into knots trying to hire or promote as many blacks as possible, it is in a constant state of anguish trying to track down those deep, if invisible, pockets of white racism that supposedly explain ongoing racial disparities. Black racism, however, is far more pervasive than any vestigial white racism, as anyone who has spent time in inner-city black neighborhoods knows. I have been warned by residents of one Harlem housing project not to venture into a neighboring project because the hatred of whites is even more acute there. A resident of the Taft Houses in East Harlem told me of the abuse she took as a child because her mother was Irish. Black flash mobs and participants in the “knock-out game” are motivated by anti-white animus, though the media strive frantically to ignore both the violence and the emotion generating it. Blacks are the primary source of interracial violence. In 2012, blacks committed 560,600 acts of violence against whites, and whites committed 99,403 acts of violence against blacks, according to data from the National Crime Victimization Survey provided to the author by a Bureau of Justice Statistics statistician. Blacks, in other words, committed 85 percent of the interracial crimes between blacks and whites, even though they are less than 13 percent of the population. It would be naïve to think that some of that black-on-white violence does not have a racial tinge to it.
And the academic discourse of white privilege, microaggressions, institutional racism, and “intersectionality” promotes its own effete version of anti-white animus, eagerly promoted by white professors and administrators.
The exculpations of the Milwaukee riots started up immediately. “Do we continue—continue with the inequities, the injustice, the unemployment, the under-education, that creates these byproducts that we see this evening?” Milwaukee alderman Khalif Rainey asked portentously. “The black people of Milwaukee are tired. They’re tired of living under this oppression.” The website Vox informed its readers: “Historians and experts say these types of violent outbursts are typically rooted in longstanding anger toward a system that has in many ways failed them. . . . Compounded with the racial disparities in the criminal justice system, people were clearly furious—and lashed out.”
The rioters were not so furious about the five blacks who were fatally shot in Milwaukee by other blacks in the 24 hours prior to Sylville Smith’s shooting or about the overwhelmingly black victims of Milwaukee’s 73 percent surge in homicides in 2015, the result of what I have called the Ferguson effect.
The Milwaukee riots were low on the topic totem pole of Sunday morning talk shows and have almost disappeared from sight on cable news channels on Monday. Racial violence is becoming normalized, like Islamic terrorism. More attention was devoted to the Baltimore Justice Department report and to Donald Trump’s war on the press than to the breakout of anarchy in a major American city. The shootings of cops on Sunday—a police officer in Eastman, Georgia, killed following a traffic stop; a police officer north of Atlanta shot on Sunday morning after responding to a call—also got little media notice. (Did race play a role in those shootings? The media is not interested in the question. Thesuspected killer of Eastman officer Tim Smith, Royheem Delshawn Deeds, is black; Smith was white. Had Smith killed Deeds, the media would have been all over the story. Yet the relationship between victim and killer in the Smith death is far more typical of fatal encounters between blacks and police officers. Police officers are 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.) Fatal shootings of cops this year are up 68 percent through August 15 compared with the same period last year. Chicago cops now operate under a death sentence, with the pact among Chicago gangbangers to take out a cop in retaliation for the Paul O’Neal shooting.
If we continue to look the other way at racial violence and the hatred that fuels it, we may find ourselves in a state of anarchy. The Milwaukee rioters chanted “black power,” a clear evocation of the 1960s. This time, however, the “establishment” is only a rhetorical target. In point of fact, it is an enabler and coconspirator.
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Bernie Quigley has perhaps the most optimistic view of Evan McMullin in this strange presidential race:
Pundits have said that one more is too late, and not enough—that backing someone other than New York tycoon Donald Trump or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is “throwing away your vote.” But this is a special election at a special moment in history. There are actually four parties today, the Democrats, the Republicans, the Greens, with the willful and positive Jill Stein at the helm, and the Libertarians. Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president, brings forth the Jeffersonian vision of libertarian Ron Paul out of the discussion stages, and into the streets. Meanwhile, Stein brings a more comprehensive, relevant, and timely approach to true left dissent.
She should have been the recipient of the Bernie Sanders “revolution.” Had the Vermont senator not folded in with the Clinton Democrats, and thrown in instead with Stein, it really might have been a revolution; she would have gathered the 15 percent that would have allowed her to be on the debate stage in October with Clinton and Trump. Very likely Johnson could garner enough support to get onto that stage as well.
The two-party system is much like the Ford guys and the Chevy guys, before other cars—better cars—appeared in the streets. The two-party system is a generic model of politics for a generic model of culture, personality and citizenship. Throwing in with the Ford guys and Chevy guys would be throwing away your vote. One has more inspired and humane options in this remarkable time of new political beginnings.
The rise of these new parties to greater influence clearly suggests that we are at an important turning point, possibly one as great as any since 1860. It was presaged by the overnight rise of Sanders, it was presaged by Ron Paul, but most of all if this turning of events are to be understood in the most primary anthropological terms, it was presaged by Trump.
I said a year ago that Trump was “the Trickster who churns the ages, and the others’ fate depends on where they stand in relation to the Trickster. He is the one necessary component in the campaign so far. Without Trump, there is nothing.”
Other commentators made a similar observation: Corey Pein in The Baffler, “I propose that Donald Trump is the personification of a Norse god named Loki.” And Esther Goldberg in The American Spectatorsays Trump is best explained and illuminated by Friedrich Nietzsche in an allegory from Thus Spoke Zarathustra of a tightrope walker moving intrepidly between the ages.
For those who didn’t get the reference, think musically:
Or …
Midway across to the new age just ahead, the tightrope walker classically reaches a crisis, and so have we today. Trickster is presage to every important movement in history. Without the half-mad John Brown, the New England Transcendentalist preachers would never have awakened to the vision of Abraham Lincoln. Without the rustic, iconoclastic, and original troubadour Bob Dylan, The Beatles would never have found their way to the greater Vedic aesthetic (“I am he . . . “) of the Sgt. Pepper era. They would not have been allowed by the wider culture.
The Trickster destroys the past. But without the Trickster, there is no possible future. And when his work is done, Trickster returns to the forest. Or, as Trump says he might do if he does not achieve his White House goal, he then takes “a very nice long vacation.”
Which I think is where we are today, waiting again for the “new man” presaged by the Trickster; the singular pilgrim, warrior, holy man, the “one good man; a spirit who would not bend or break who would sit at his father’s right hand” as Johnny Cash and U2 so well described him, who enters us into the millennium.
But we have yet to see him. And that is why Evan McMullin is important.
McMullin appears to have come to us from nowhere, having emerged out of the darkest corners of the collective unconscious, that otherworld which undercover CIA agents inhabit. And he comes alone. Those of us outside the Beltway know little about him, but first impressions bring intuitive hunches. A 16-minute TedX talk at the London Business School, “Why saying ‘never again’ to genocide is not enough,” reveals an astonishingly singular man, fearless in his daily walk and resolute in a kind of personal piety that we rarely see in our time.
McMullin is on the ballot in Colorado, and will be in Utah, along with many other states, as he lays out his 50-state strategy.
The presence of McMullin opens a path which will widen in October. He makes the fledgling Greens and Libertarians suddenly irrelevant—now they won’t get the 15 percent needed to be on the stage at the debates with Trump and Clinton. McMullin will. He may even have his 15 percent by summer’s end.
He does not come alone. Earlier this month, 50 GOP officials publicly turned away from the candidate of the Republican party. More will follow. This is, in effect, an “intervention,” similar to how the Iraq Study Group of 2006 brought an “intervention” to the Bush/Cheney Oval Office and its War in Iraq. New policy and personnel would soon follow. A bipartisan group of venerable party elders gathered to trump the authority of the rank and file Republicans in the White House by bringing dominance through their own, inherently greater, authority. The elders won.
And that is an intervention arising. The Iraq Study Group was an ad hoc“council of elders” brought together to change the course of political events. That’s what is gathering here.
McMullan is, or will be, the single combat warrior to this rising, spontaneous “intervention.” He will easily get the 15 percent which allows him to be on stage with Trump and Clinton. It will change everything. Again. And in this new environment, McMullin could quite possibly be the last man standing in this long and winding political journey to 2017.
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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”:
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M.D. Kittle reports on the weekend riots in Milwaukee:
Protesters – angered after a Milwaukee police officer shot and killed an armed, black robbery suspect – burned six businesses, threw rocks and bricks at police injuring four officers, and damaged or destroyed seven police vehicles, according Barrett.
“Last night was unlike anything I’ve seen,” Barrett said. “I hope I never see it again.”
Killed was 23-year-old Sylville K. Smith, a man with a long and violent rap sheet. Body camera footage showed Smith was carrying a handgun loaded with 23 rounds, police said. He out-armed the officer who shot him. The officer appeared to have acted according to procedure in discharging his weapon
“He had the gun with him and the officer fired several times,” Barrett said. Smith was shot in the arm and chest, the mayor said during a press conference.
Police said the handgun he carried was stolen during a burglary in nearby Waukesha in March, according to CNN
“The victim of that burglary reported 500 rounds of ammunition were also stolen with the handgun,” police said.
His police record includes a charge of first-degree recklessly endangering safety. The charge was dismissed after the victim refused to go to court. Smith was charged with victim intimidation in 2015. That charge also was dismissed.
Barrett tried to placate angry community members, who called for the release of the officer’s body camera. But the investigation is now in the hands of state investigators. Wisconsin was the first state in the nation to put on the books a law requiring an independent investigation anytime there is a law-enforcement related shooting.
[Gov. Scott] Walker, Barrett and others commended police, saying they showed remarkable restraint in not firing any shots during the riots. A 16-year-old was injured when a stray round from a crowd struck her. The teen’s injuries were described as non-life threatening.
Mike Crivello, president of the Milwaukee Police Association, said the union denounces the suggestion by community members, and some city leaders, that the department is teeming with racism. Police say the officer who shot the armed suspect is black. They had not released his name as of Sunday afternoon.“
Our ranks are broad and diverse; derived from all God’s children. These officers deserve respect and support. Support which must begin with leadership – mayor/alderpersons, police chief, and community!” Crivello wrote in a statement.
“Leadership must denounce violent riotous behavior! There can be no appropriateness in rationalizing terrorist-like actions,” the union chief added. “The good families, beautiful young children, living in the neighborhoods where police were attacked and buildings burned certainly did not sleep well last night; how could they, when will they? The thugs that caused this are certainly terrorists and must be held accountable.”Saying Milwaukee police are “under siege,” Crivello in his press release included a video clip of angry, black men shouting at Milwaukee police.
“We cannot cohabitate with white people,” one unidentified speaker said. “We want blood. We don’t want peace or justice.”
Alderman Khalif Rainey blamed the “powder keg” of Milwaukee on rampant racism.
“Something has to be done to address these issues,” he said. “The black people of Milwaukee are tired; they are tired of living under this oppression, this is their life.”
Crivello said he, Milwaukee’s peace officers, and law-abiding citizens have had enough excuses. He called on Milwaukee voters to stop supporting any elected official who “does not unequivocally support the law as written, while ensuring enforcement.”
“Our police force is under staffed – our officers forced to work alone. We must be assured of Permanent Two-Man Squads. … We must adequately [immediately] address the staffing deficit!! Our family deserves to know their loved one has a fighting chance to come home after each tour of duty,” the police union chief wrote.
Smith’s father, Patrick, spoke to WITI-TV (channel 6) in Milwaukee, and started to say the expected things …
“What are we gonna do now? Everyone playing their part in this city, blaming the white guy or whatever, and we know what they’re doing. Like, already I feel like they should have never OK’d guns in Wisconsin. They already know what our black youth was doing anyway. These young kids gotta realize this is all a game with them. Like they’re playing Monopoly. You young kids falling into their world, what they want you to do. Everything you do is programmed. … They got us killing each other and when they even OK’d them pistols and they OK’d a reason to kill us too. Now somebody got killed reaching for his wallet, but now they can say he got a gun on him and they reached for it. And that’s justifiable. When we allowed them to say guns is good and it’s legal, we can bear arms. This is not the wild, wild west y’all. But when you go down to 25th and Center, you see guys with guns hanging out this long, that’s ridiculous, and they’re allowing them to do this and the police know half of them don’t have a license to carry a gun. I don’t know when we’re gonna start moving.
… only to say something unexpected:
I had to blame myself for a lot of things too because your hero is your dad and I played a very big part in my family’s role model for them. Being on the street, doing things of the street life: Entertaining, drug dealing and pimping and they’re looking at their dad like ‘he’s doing all these things.’ I got out of jail two months ago, but I’ve been going back and forth in jail and they see those things so I’d like to apologize to my kids because this is the role model they look up to. When they see the wrong role model, this is what you get. … I’ve gotta start with my kids and we gotta change our ways, to be better role models. And we gotta change ourselves. We’ve gotta talk to them, put some sense into them. They targeting us, but we know about it so there’s no reason to keep saying it’s their fault. You play a part in it. If you know there’s a reason, don’t give in to the hand, don’t be going around with big guns, don’t be going around shooting each other and letting them shoot y’all cause that’s just what they’re doing and they’re out to destroy us and we’re falling for it.”
Sylville Smith’s sisters said similar things:
“I lost my brother. I can’t get him back. Never. Never. That’s pain. I can’t look him in the eye no more,” Smith’s sister Sherelle said.
“At the end of the day, acting out ain’t gonna solve it. Ain’t gonna solve nothing for Sylville. The city went crazy (Saturday) night over Syville. We tired of it. We tired,” Kimberly Neal, Smith’s sister said.
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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 1970 was the second day of Woodstock:
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Ripon College president Zach Messitte, a former CNN producer before he entered the academic world:
As a political scientist and president of a liberal arts college in Wisconsin, I’m looking forward to the fall. I’ll have a chance to teach 18- to 22-year-olds during the run-up to a historic presidential election. It’ll likely dominate discourse in the classroom, cafeteria and even keg parties.
This raises the question — how should professors talk about Donald Trump? Is there a way to teach this subject in a thoughtful way, pushing beyond the name-calling and apocalyptic predictions? I believe there is.
In conversations with my faculty colleagues, I’ve come to a few conclusions.
First, I think it’s fine for professors to acknowledge Trump’s narrow-minded rhetoric. If Trump were a student, he would have already been called into the dean’s office to explain comments about women, minorities, immigrants, veterans and people with disabilities. My college’s core values celebrate and protect differences of perspective, background and heritage. Relationships on college campuses are supposed to be friendly, welcoming and supportive. (In Trump’s worldview, however, it is precisely this kind of academic environment that has led to the United States’ general decline. “I don’t, frankly, have time for total political correctness,” he said. “And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time, either.”)
Second, I hope our faculty spends some of the fall semester explaining Trump’s political rise to their students, because the real story lies beyond political science. Understanding Trump and his supporters means having a deep knowledge of words like “empathy,” “tolerance,” “power” and “narcissism.” History, literature, economics, philosophy, religion, communications and sociology all offer important insights. One of my psychology department colleagues told me that students will be very tempted to take their newfound knowledge and apply it to the Republican nominee’s bizarre behavior, though the American Psychiatric Association just warned its members not to do so. Another professor in the communications department said she plans to hold a class discussion on Trump’s discourses, focusing on how he speaks to people’s fears and creates an illusion of identification and credibility for voters.* There will be assigned readings.
I know some professors and students think it might be easier to just avoid the subject of Trump altogether. But we need to resist that urge. Professors should dive right into the big question: How can we be open-minded in the face of Trump’s bigotry? How can we extend that empathy and thoughtfulness even to those we disagree with?
We need to extend these qualities to the victims of Trump’s bigotry. But we also need to listen and respect those students and professors who support Trump. That 19-year-old supporter just starting his sophomore year shouldn’t be dismissed automatically as a racist for supporting Trump. He’s a stand-in for our next-door neighbor, your child’s softball coach and my cousin’s spouse. Keeping the classroom open for discussion slows a student retreat to the anonymous online world of Yik Yak, where college-aged Trump supporters troll hate without ever directly engaging their classmates. That means that the possibility of ever broadening their perspectives organically will be lost.
There will be tense points and tempers may well flare. Why are Trump’s most ardent supporters rural whites without a college degree? Why does he belittle those he disagrees with? Where does his worldview and his preoccupation with Vladimir Putin come from? But there is a way to have these discussions in the classroom with respect. It will be up to our professors to defend the right to hold an unpopular position, even one that we strongly disagree with. Because if colleges and universities want to remain a training ground for future leaders, an incubator for new ideas or a place where a future political consensus is forged, civil discourse is a fundamental part of that higher calling.
This will not be an easy task, but it is a crucial one. While professors and administrators need to do everything they can to make sure that their campuses promote free speech, they also need to maintain civility and basic decency. And that’s tricky. Beyond higher education, how the nation wrestles with this same conundrum is important — and not just in the run-up to the election. In the weeks and months after Nov. 8, the country is going to have to understand what Donald Trump and Trumpism means going forward. Win or lose, it is critical that we study and interpret what his candidacy signifies beyond American politics. How the nation’s teachers integrate understanding Trumpism into their classrooms this fall, regardless of discipline, will go a long way toward finding some common ground with the 40-something percent of the voting population that supports him.
Campus Reform took what Messitte wrote and put a substantial negative spin while adding:
Despite his apparent hostility toward Trump, Messitte does urge students and faculty to listen respectfully to their classmates and colleagues who support Trump, though according to a Harvard survey, only 25 percent of Millennials say they are likely to vote for Trump, whereas 61 percent would vote for Hillary Clinton in a head-to-head contest.
Faculty support for liberal candidates is even more staggering, with 99.51 percent of political contributions at top liberal arts colleges going to Democrats. Among those who donated to presidential campaigns, contributions averaged $1,043.75 for Hillary Clinton and $323.73 for Bernie Sanders.
Messitte’s most objectionable statement is his assertion that “If Trump were a student, he would have already been called into the dean’s office to explain comments about women, minorities, immigrants, veterans and people with disabilities.” (Where to begin?) There can be a fine line between free expression and being a jerk. Such an experience could bring home the real-world lesson that the First Amendment need not apply to the private sector, and sometimes it’s better to keep your mouth shut and express your opinions in the polling booth than in public.
On the other hand, to put on my cynical face for a moment, one wonders if as a tuition-dependent college (as most private colleges are) Ripon College would really expel from campus one of its students who, using this example, comes from a rich family of potential future college donors.
Beyond that, perhaps it’s because, unlike the Campus Reform writer, I have actually spoken face to face with Messitte, but I have a hard time getting wound up about this. Perhaps it’s that in five years at UW–Madison I argued, when I thought it was worth doing, non-liberal points of view in classes and was not expelled from the university. I know present and former Ripon professors, and yes, many are quite liberal. It is safe to assert as a 13-year resident of Ripon that Ripon College is certainly the most liberal thing in Ripon.
If you actually read Messitte’s column, or previous opinions he’s written, you’d read that he is actually a defender of free speech, unlike some other college administrators. (See Shalala, Donna, “speech codes.” By the way, Shalala was mostly great for UW–Madison with one major exception, along with not firing football coach Don Mor(t)on immediately upon arriving in Madison.) Is the objection that professors are liberal (and they mostly are), or that they hate Trump? If it’s the latter, the population of Trump haters is much, much larger than college professors.
Readers know that I am not a believer in the echo chamber. I have made appearances in such non-conservative places as Wisconsin Public Radio, the Sly radio show(s), and The Scene tabloid. I don’t think your viewpoint gains anything by talking only to people with whom you mostly agree. Your views do not necessarily make you correct, and you certainly won’t find that out unless you find someone with whom you don’t generally agree and try your persuasive skills.
As someone who worked in higher education for a college probably as liberal as Ripon College (and my former employer is my favorite employer in my career), I see complaints about liberalism in academia and education as reflecting a certain lack of faith in your own parenting skills and in your children’s reasoning skills. Just like when I was growing up, I have had discussions in the Presteblog world headquarters about things our kids have learned in school, and if they seem to me inaccurate I point that out. Ultimately it’s up to them to decide which views are correct, though I always have the ability to assign dishwashing duties until Armageddon.
One also wonders sometimes whether objections to the liberalism of college professors are motivated by concern over constitutional rights, or opposition to constitutional rights expressed differently from your own. Freedom of expression has to apply to everyone, or it means nothing.
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Calvin Coolidge famously said, “After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world.”
With that in mind, CNBC reports:
Apple CEO Tim Cook struck back at critics of the iPhone maker’s strategy to avoid paying U.S. taxes, telling The Washington Post in a wide ranging interview that the company would not bring that money back from abroad unless there was a “fair rate.
Along with other multinational companies, the tech giant has been subject to criticism over a tax strategy that allows them to shelter profits made abroad from the U.S. corporate tax rate, which at 35 percent is among the highest in the developed world.
The move complies with the letter of the law, if not the spirit, as a few particularly strident critics have lambasted Apple as a tax dodger. The nonprofit Citizens for Tax Justice estimates that big companies have parked more than $2 trillion offshore,which is subject to more favorable tax rates.
While some proponents of the higher U.S. tax rate say it’s unpatriotic for companies to practice inversions or shelter income, Cook hit back at the suggestion.
“It is the current tax law. It’s not a matter of being patriotic or not patriotic,” Cook told The Post in a lengthy sit-down. “It doesn’t go that the more you pay, the more patriotic you are.”
Cook acknowledged that Apple was effectively taking advantage of a massive tax loophole, which he said was perfectly legal.” “The tax law right now says we can keep that [profit] in Ireland or we can bring it back.”
Cook added that it was up to Congress and the president to enact tax reform, which he is “optimistic” will take place sometime next year.
The CEO’s comments are all but certain to stoke a new debate over taxation during an already contested election cycle. Republican White House contender Donald Trump recently unveiled an overhauled tax plan that, among other things, lowers the corporate rate to 15 percent from the current 35.
However, Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton—who enjoys the backing of Cook, Warren Buffett and other billionaires—has staked a case on higher taxes for the wealthy, but envisages a series of fixes that would try to discourage companies from moving abroad, or avoiding U.S. taxes.
It’s not as if the tech giant is exactly hurting for money. Apple is sitting on at least $200 billion in cash on hand, a massive accumulation that some investors have called on the company to re-invest.
Cook added that “when we bring it back, we will pay 35 percent federal tax and then a weighted average across the states that we’re in, which is about 5 percent, so think of it as 40 percent. We’ve said at 40 percent, we’re not going to bring it back until there’s a fair rate. There’s no debate about it.”
The U.S. corporate tax rate has been a subject of vigorous debate. Critics say the code rife with distortions that critics say discourages companies from repatriating capital, and lead to strategies like “inversions” that encourage firms to merge with foreign companies, and move operations abroad to avoid higher taxation.
Cook insisted Apple was no tax dodger, and pointed out that the company earns most of its money abroad.
“We pay our share and then some,” the CEO told The Post. “We didn’t look for a tax haven or something to put it somewhere. We sell a lot of product everywhere.”
The European Union has also taken aim at Apple for taking advantage of Ireland’s tax structure, which is the lowest in Europe, with the European Commission probing allegations that the tech giant landed a “sweetheart tax deal” with the country.
Many multinational companies have flocked to the Emerald Isle for tax purposes. Cook told The Post that Apple hasn’t done anything any other company hasn’t, and said the basic argument was really a matter of tax arbitrage.
Cook said there was a “tug of war going on between the countries of how you allocate profits,” saying people “really aren’t arguing that Apple should pay more taxes. They’re arguing about who they should be paid to.”
The correct answer to Cook’s last question is: No one. Whatever business spends its profits on — reinvestment into the business, more pay for employees, more dividends for shareholders or some combination thereof — is vastly preferable to giving money to Govzilla at any level. The benefit of business as a provider of goods and services, an employer and a community member should mean business should not pay any profit taxes at all.
Apple and every other business that avoids taxes is fulfilling their first duty as a business — to maximize returns for their owners. You want to get that money back into the U.S.? Cut their taxes. No taxes, no tax breaks, and no lobbying for tax breaks.
Cook’s statements reveal the wasted opportunity of the Republican Party in this election. Eight years of high taxes and Government Knows Better Than You regulation have created our current craptacular economy of minimal growth and unemployment and inflation the government isn’t telling you about. Every business person in America should be voting for Republicans, but they won’t because of the continuing clown show that is Donald Trump, an embarrassment to American business and politics. Silicon Valley should be sending millions of dollars in contributions to GOP candidates, but the party’s excessive focus on social issues means that won’t happen either.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 