Today in 1955, “Rock Around the Clock” was played around the clock because it hit number one:
One year later, Dick Clark made his first appearance on ABC-TV’s “American Bandstand”:
Today in 1972, Paul McCartney and Wings began their first tour of France:
Geoffrey Norman delves into the world of Washington logic:
Washington needs more money and if it doesn’t get it, your morning commute will become:
a) more expensive
b) more unpleasant
c) both
The problem, you see, is that the Highway Trust Fund is “going broke,” by the Beltway’s curious definition of the phrase. It is sort of the way that after a round of painful “cuts,” spending somehow still goes up.
The Highway Trust Fund takes in more than 18 cents on every gallon of gasoline sold in this country, so there is plenty of revenue. Just not enough to meet Washington’s needs and desires. People are driving more fuel efficient cars and with gas already around $4 a gallon, not taking the trips they might otherwise take. So instead of having the $50 billion that Congress budgeted, the trust fund is looking at $34 billion.
So cuts are coming, possibly as soon as August, and, as Keith Laing of The Hill reports:
Those cuts could leave drivers facing congested or damaged roads, sparking anger ahead of November’s midterms.
Sort of like closing down the monuments during one of those government shutdowns. The idea being to inflict immediate pain. …
Gasoline is not a discretionary item in the budget of most Americans. Making it more expensive means there will be less to spend elsewhere. The people calling for urgent measures to keep the trust fund from going broke say they are concerned about jobs.” Theirs.
One wonders just how much pork a penny a gallon in new taxes would buy.
No talk, of course, of privatizing. Using the tolls mechanism.
Just more taxes. For jobs.
Tolls are controversial, to say the least. But if you’re not hearing about tolls, you’re also not hearing about the novel concept of actually spending transportation fund money on transportation-related expenses. Tom Gantert passes on this:
However, Jonathan Williams, director of the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force of the American Legislative Exchange Council, studied the Highway Trust Fund in 2007 and found that gas taxes have been spent on far more than just crumbling highways. This raises concerns over how Highway Trust Fund money would be spent if taxes are increased.
Williams found that Highway Trust fund dollars have been spent on things such as public education, museums, parking garages and graffiti removal. He said it is premature to increase gas taxes until Americans can be assured the money would be spent on legitimate road construction projects.
“There’s just so much diversion of funds,” Williams said.
Nothing has changed since Williams’s study. Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute, raised similar concerns in testimony in May to the Senate Finance Committee.
“There is no reason to raise the federal gas tax,” Edwards said. “You send the money to Washington, a lot of it gets lost in paper work and bureaucracy and pork-barrel politics.”
In his testimony, Edwards noted, since the 1970s, “fuel taxes have been siphoned off for non-highway purposes, particularly with the creation of the transit program in 1982. About one-quarter of HTF spending today is for non-highway purposes.”
O’Toole said in the last decade, Congress has diverted $55 billion of gas tax revenues to public transit.
“Congress has until the end of August to do something about the dwindling Trust Fund and until October 1 to reauthorize the gas tax,” O’Toole said. “Unless fiscal conservatives apply intense pressure, Congress is most likely to throw more General Funds at the Trust Fund and extend the current bad system another two years.”
Another way to spend less on road projects is to repeal the federal Davis–Bacon Act, which requires paying prevailing (that is, union-level) wages on road projects that receive federal funding, thus drastically increasing the cost of road projects. There is no reason for taxpayers to have to foot the bill for union wages.
The other thing that you won’t hear Obama parasites admit is that maybe gas tax revenues are down because people are taking fewer discretionary trips — for instance, vacations — in the Obama economy with gas prices heading back toward $4 a gallon. Of course, cutting back on vacations is a foreign concept to Barack and Michelle.
In the world of Barack Obama and his sycophants, nothing is ever Obama’s fault. Everything is the fault of the “do-nothing Congress,” George W. Bush, global warming, or even bad weather.
Think again, says John R. Lott Jr.:
The economy took a bad hit during the first quarter this year. It shrunk at an annual rate of 2.96 percent. Since the beginning of 1947, there are only 16 of the 268 quarters experienced worse growth.
The Obama administration blames the slow growth on the “historically severe winter weather, which temporarily lowered growth.” Jason Furman, the chair of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, made this assertion again on July 3rd and President Obama has made this claim several times.
But that doesn’t square with the historic data. The five worst winter storms or winters with the coldest temperatures do not match economic downturns.
In a list of the worst United States winter storms since 1888, Epic Disasters, using National Weather Service data, lists five of the ten worst occurring since 1947. Four of the five saw economic growth. Only during the fifth worst storm did the economy shrink. The average annualized GDP growth during the quarters when those storms struck was 1.8 percent.
The Obama administration suggests measuring the severity of weather in terms of the U.S. temperature for the first quarter of the year. But, again the data doesn’t support their claim. There is absolutely no relationship between how cold it was and GDP growth. In fact, if there is anything, unusually warmer winters are associated with slightly less economic growth.
The Obama administration graphs out the “Deviation from Normal Temperatures, 1954-2014,” correctly show that this past winter was unusually cold. But what is missing is any evidence that GDP growth indeed gets slower when it is cold.
Economic growth has been abysmal during the Obama recovery, growing just 1.8 percent. The average growth since 1965 has been over 3.1 percent. Normally, during a recovery, economic growth is so fast for a while that lost economic growth during a recession is made up for quickly. But the opposite is true during the Obama recovery, where we are falling further and further behind the average growth rate.
As proof that the economy is growing strongly, the administration points to five months in a row above 200,000 job growth. But what they fail to mention is that since the beginning of the year, full-time jobs have actually declined. The added number of jobs has entirely been in part-time jobs and over 80 percent of them have been in the relatively low paying service sector. …
But the ultimate test for whether the Obama administration is right will come on July 30th, when the initial estimates for the second quarter’s GDP will be released. If the drop were just a temporary blip due to cold weather, we would need GDP growing at an annual rate of 3.1 percent just to dig ourselves out from the first quarter drop. But even that would mean effectively no growth for the first half of the year.
Second-quarter economic growth of 3.1 percent? You have to be seriously deluded to believe that will happen.
It is generally not considered a good career move to be indicted for drug trafficking, as Jonathan “Chico” and Robert DeBarge were today in 1988:
Birthdays begin with Jaimoe “Johnny” Johanson, drummer for the Allman Brothers:
Those who pay attention to the correct economic things know that our economic “recovery” is a recovery only by the loosest possible definition.
The jobs report the feds released Wednesday has even less bearing on reality. The most important number, the U6 — unemployed, underemployed and stopped looking — actually went up from May. Given the Obama administration’s proclivity to quietly revising downward economic news — the economy did not just shrink in the first quarter, it shrunk by 2.9 percent, halfway to an actual recession — you can assume whatever good news you read is not fact.
Some blind Obama-booster last week claimed more Americans are going on vacation. That assertion without facts is belied by, as I pointed out one three-day weekend ago, the visual evidence of adult toys — campers, boats, motorcycles and other non-essential transportation — for sale by owner. You don’t sell something like that after you bought a new toy; you sell them because you can’t afford to use them anymore.
The latest piece of evidence of our craptacular economy, which encompasses the entire Obama presidency (if that’s what you want to call what’s happened since Jan. 20, 2009) comes from Against Crony Capitalism:
For a family of 4 it takes roughly this much money per year to live the “American Dream” (Most families don’t come close.)
Answer: $130,000/year.
In places like Washington DC, New York, and San Francisco it costs a heck of a lot more than that. Life is not inexpensive. The median income per household in the USA by the way is about $51,000/year. So good news everyone, you’re almost halfway there!
Wages adjusted for inflation are actually in decline and have been since the beginning of the Great Recession. This is what happens in a crony economy. The connected get wealthier, and those on the outside have to hustle that much harder.
Are you a banker with access to Federal Reserve funds or a government employee who has a guaranteed COLA built into your taxpayer funded job (And ridiculous pension), or a government contractor which has ridden the wave of warfare over the last 10 years? Well, then things haven’t been so bad for you over the past few years. The productive part of the economy? Well, we live in reality.
And I sure am glad the Middle Income Healthcare Redistribution Act aka Obamacare went through. (And don’t forget the health insurance corporations wrote a bailout for themselves into the law.) Middle class folks have plenty to spare. Yeah, Obamcare is “fair.”
I am about done with the word “fair.”
The $130,000 figure comes from a USA Today story, which includes this conclusion from Marketwatch’s Howard R. Gold:
It sounds like a lot — and it is in a country where the median household income is about $51,000. Add one more child and another vehicle and you could easily reach $150,000
There are big regional variations, too. It costs a lot less to live the American dream in, say, Indianapolis or Tulsa than it does in metro areas like New York and San Francisco, where housing prices and taxes are sky high.
And many people achieve the dream on much less. Some immigrants, for example, have extended families and other support systems to help bear the burden.
Nonetheless, it’s clear that though the American dream is still alive, fewer and fewer of us can afford to live it.
There are those who believe the Great Depression was ended by the Franklin Roosevelt alphabet-soup agencies. They are wrong. The next believe is that the Great Depression was ended by World War II. They are also wrong. What ended the Great Depression was the end of World War II, and thus the end of rationing and forced saving, instead of consumer spending.
Our future will probably not include a world war. But then what will end the Great Recession? Anything? Nothing?
Today in 1967, the Beatles released “All You Need Is Love” …
… which proved insufficient for the Yardbirds, which disbanded one year later:
Can one wish a happy birthday to an entire band? If so, wish Jefferson Airplane a happy birthday:
Today is the anniversary of the Beatles’ first song to reach the U.S. charts, “From Me to You.” Except it wasn’t recorded by the Beatles, it was recorded by Del Shannon:
Five years later, John Lennon sold his Rolls–Royce:
Sharing my daughter’s birthday are Smiley Lewis, who first did …
Thomas Jefferson:
“Societies exist under three forms sufficiently distinguishable. 1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2. Under governments wherein the will of every one has a just influence, as is the case in England in a slight degree, and in our states in a great one. 3. Under governments of force: as is the case in all other monarchies and in most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep. It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that the 1st. condition is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population. The second state has a great deal of good in it. The mass of mankind under that enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has it’s evils too: the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing. Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem. Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
Jefferson has more to say today:
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
My favorite basketball player of all time, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, explains why soccer will never really score, so to speak, in the U.S.:
I’m reminded of the end of Man of La Mancha, when Don Quixote lies dying, but is suddenly inspired to rise once more and proclaim, “Onward to glory I go!” And then he drops dead. Soccer has been proclaiming this impending U.S. glory for years, and while there are signs of life in the body, the prognosis is not good.
Once the World Cup is over, soccer in the U.S. will return to its sick bed and dream of glory. This dire diagnosis probably seems crazy in the face of the current World Cup TV ratings success. Between Univision and ESPN, 25 million viewers tuned in to watch the U.S. play Portugal last Sunday. Compare that to 15.5 million viewers that the NBA finals averaged this year, or the 14.9 million averaged in last year’s baseball World Series. Worse, the NHL playoffs averaged only 5 million viewers. Only NFL football consistently beats soccer’s best rating.
The problem with those statistics is that it’s like using the ratings of bobsledding during the Winter Olympics to declare a new renaissance for bobsledding in America. The World Cup, like the Olympics, happens every four years, so the rarity factor alone will account for inflated ratings. For a more realistic view of its popularity as a professional sport, we need to look at how many people watch on a regular basis. Major League Soccer (MLS) averages a mere 174,000 viewers (compared to the NBA’s average of 2 million and NFL average of 17.6 million), while their equivalent to NBA Finals, the MLS Cup, averaged only 505,000 viewers.
The MLS points out that more people on average attend one of their games (18,807) than attend either NHL (17,455) or NBA (17,408) games. While that may be true, the reasons for that appear to be pretty simple: cheaper tickets and fewer teams playing fewer games. Add that to the fact that comparatively few people watch it on TV, and you have a sport that produces much less revenue than other major American sports. Like it or not, in the end that is the measure of a sport’s popularity.
The obvious question is why hasn’t soccer taken off in the U.S. as it has throughout most of the rest of the world? After all, youth soccer has exploded over the past few decades. In 1974, only 103,432 youth were registered players. In 2012, registered players amounted to over three million. In all, 13 million Americans play soccer (compared to 26.3 million who play basketball). When you look at those figures, you notice that twice as many people play basketball as play soccer, yet ten times as many people watch basketball on TV. This is important because the more people watching a sport translates into more people wanting to play that sport. That’s the money-making cycle. Watch. Play. Repeat.
Is there something fundamentally different about watching soccer that turns people away by the millions? Apparently so. For one thing, there’s a lot of movement but not much action. American audiences see people kicking the ball to a teammate, only to have it intercepted by the other team. A lot. To the average American used to the hustle of basketball, the clash of titans in football, the suspense of the curve ball in baseball, or the thrilling crack of the slapshot in hockey, the endless meandering back and forth across the soccer field looks less like strategy and more like random luck. It lacks drama. Of course, that’s not true at all, but that is certainly the perception.
Why aren’t those millions of youth soccer players since 1974 watching? Perhaps another perception is that it is a kid’s game. Kids get to run around, kick something, and generally wear themselves out to the gratitude of parents. Parents who dutifully and diligently attend their kids’ games don’t seem inclined to tune in to professionals on TV.
Soccer is counting on the growing U.S. Latino population to raise its popularity. Between 2002 and 2012, the Latino population increased from 13.3% of the U.S. population to 17%. I’m certain that will be a factor, but perhaps not a huge one — this line of thinking doesn’t account for children seeking more traditional American sports in order to assimilate. As many parents will attest, some children refuse to follow in their parents’ sweaty sneakers.
Finally, soccer doesn’t fully express the American ethos as powerfully as our other popular sports. We are a country of pioneers, explorers, and contrarians who only need someone to say it can’t be done to fire us up to prove otherwise. As a result, we like to see extraordinary effort rewarded. The low scoring in soccer frustrates this American impulse. We also celebrate rugged individualism, the democratic ideal that anybody from any background can become a sports hero. We like to see heroes rise, buoyed by their teammates, but still expressing their own supreme individual skills. Certainly soccer has its celebrated stars, from Pele to Beckham, but those skills seem muted on TV where we’re often looking at small figures on a large field and therefore these feats appear less impressive than they really are. In football, basketball, baseball, and hockey, team effort is rewarded with points and individual greatness is as instant and immediate as a one-handed snagged football pass, a three-pointer from the corner, stealing home base, or a snap-shot of the puck into the goal.
Clearly, there are many dedicated soccer fans in the U.S. They play the sport, they watch the sport, they love the sport. But that group, though slowly growing, is not nearly enough to overcome the traditional favorites. To do that, it’s not enough that you’re as good as one of the popular sports, you have to bring something better. More excitement. More skill. More entertainment. For most Americans, soccer just doesn’t do that.
Abdul-Jabbar’s last four sentences also sum up why baseball — for which today is a traditionally big day — has been passed up by basketball among Americans interested in pro sports. Basketball has action and scoring, because an NBA team has to score within 24 seconds (35 in college, and it probably should be 30) or risk losing possession. In contrast, baseball has been slowing down for decades — batters step out of the box to adjust their batting gloves and other uniform parts, pitchers think the way to beat batters is to lull them to sleep by slow play — and as far as fan interest goes, basketball appears to have passed baseball.
Hockey has also grown in interest, and that was predicted when high-definition TV started to become popular, allowing TV viewers to actually see the puck clearly. HDTV hasn’t seem to have helped soccer much, though, given that TV directors feel the need to show the entire width of the field, which means that, unlike hockey, which is played on a 200-foot-long rink, you have tiny players and a tinier ball on a 120-yard-long field. Abdul-Jabbar’s point about excitement, skill and entertainment is also proven by the existence of soccer’s offside rule, in which a one-on-one clash between would-be scorer and goalkeeper is banned by the rules.
I also think many Americans see soccer as a technologically backward sport. In every other timed sport in America, fans know exactly how much time is left in a period, down to tenths of a second in basketball and hockey. Soccer has 45-minute halves plus whatever the referee thinks is appropriate for “stoppage time” — balls kicked out of play, fouls, injuries or substitutions. (It would be interesting to watch the second half of the USA-Portugal match, in which Portugal scored to tie the match, and see whether there should have been as much time added to the half due to stoppages as the referee added.) Soccer has one referee for a 120-yard-long game, which seems an invitation for abuse by officials who have less-than-required integrity. (Either that, or there is so little action in soccer that more than one official is not needed.)
There are ways to fix many of these problems, but FIFA, the most arrogant sport governing organization in the world, refuses to change the game to try to increase its interest in the most important country in the world.
Abdul-Jabbar posted a link to his Time column on his Facebook page, and got hammered by people who disagree with him without having ability to explain why his points are wrong. The appeal to authority, or perhaps majority — it’s the world’s most popular sport! — is particularly annoying. Slavery is still in existence on much of the planet, and many cultures treat women like cattle, so let’s be just like them!
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 