The number one British single today in 1961:
The number one single today in 1963:
Today in 1973, the Immigration and Naturalization Service ordered John Lennon to leave the U.S. within 60 days.
More than three years later, Lennon won his appeal and stayed in the U.S. the rest of his life.
Today in 1956, a car in which Carl Perkins was a passenger on the way to New York for appearances on the Ed Sullivan and Perry Como shows was involved in a crash. Perkins was in a hospital for several months, and his brother, Jay, was killed.
Today in 1971, members of the Allman Brothers Band were arrested on charges of possessing marijuana and heroin.
The number one single today in 1975:
The number one album today in 1975 was Led Zeppelin’s “Physical Graffiti”:
After one round of the NCAA basketball tournament, I’m pretty pleased.
Not only did Wisconsin win most convincingly, I picked four upsets correctly — ninth-seed Pittsburgh over eighth-seed Colorado (though that’s not much of an upset), 11th-seed Dayton beating sixth-seed Ohio State (“O!S!U!”), 12th-seed Harvard over fifth-seed Cincinnati, and 12th-seed North Dakota State (coached by former UW assistant Saul Phillips) over fifth-seed Oklahoma. Too bad Saint Joseph ran out of gas against Connecticut in overtime and North Carolina State lost to Saint Louis because the Wolfpack missed more free throws than the Billikens.
For those who didn’t know: Ohio State refers to itself as The Ohio State University, which is why the Dayton Daily News ran this headline:
A Facebook Friend (and actual friend) reports that fewer than 10 percent of brackets picked the Panthers, Flyers and Crimson correctly. And that was before the next upset:
Which means, in my usual case, that the rest of my bracket(s) are going to go to hell as soon as today.
As readers know from the 2012 Rose Bowl, the Ducks are known for colorful uniforms, at least in football. Wisconsin has a new uniform from adidas for the tournament, which appears to have fewer red parts than the regular-season uniforms and replaces “WISCONSIN” with “BADGERS.” No other changes are discernible.
As for the Ducks, as the lower seed they won’t wear white, so they’ll probably wear one of these:
Yes, you’re seeing correctly. Oregon has yellow, green, dark green and “midnight green” (“black” in the rest of the visual universe”) versions of their “Oregon” and “Fighting Ducks” uniforms, along with a throwback with yellow jersey and pants that, like the camouflage jersey, I assume won’t be used.
This is the second year in a row that the UW first-round game (and, last year, UW’s only game) was broadcast on truTV. The former Court TV isn’t available to very many cable TV customers, which means a lot of UW fans didn’t get to watch the game.
It’s unclear to me why CBS, which has five decades of experience regionally broadcasting simultaneous NFL games, cannot have Wisconsin CBS stations carry the Badgers, moving the other games to TBS, TNT and truTV. Wisconsin fans without cable or satellite TV haven’t been able to watch the Badgers in the Rose Bowl either since it moved from ABC to ESPN.
Meanwhile, if (and I don’t think it’ll happen, but it’s not impossible) UW gets to the Final Four, Badger fans may be in for a treat similar to my Choose Your Own Announcer idea, according to Sports Illustrated:
For starters, TBS will televise both national semifinal games, the first time in tournament history the semifinal games will be televised on a cable network. But here’s an even bigger nod toward the cable side of the partnership: The semifinals will air across three cable networks this year — TBS, TNT and truTV. TBS will air the traditional Final Four broadcast — aiming for neutrality — with Nantz, Anthony and Kerr. But here’s where it gets interesting: The telecasts on TNT and truTV will be team-specific broadcasts where a separate play-by-play announcer, analyst and sideline reporter (Turner and CBS will start negotiating with potential broadcasters after the Sweet 16) will be encouraged to call the game with as much homerism as their pom-poms can muster. The “Teamcast” productions will have separate production crews, a custom halftime show, and custom graphics and stats geared toward each team. Commercials will be the same for all three telecasts. The title game will air on CBS two nights later.
Isn’t this copying what ESPN did with its “Megacast” for the college football title game?
The Turner Sports brass says nyet. “We made that announcement prior to them doing the national championship game and it is going to be a lot different than what they did,” said Turner Broadcasting president David Levy. “They didn’t televise three different ways, so it’s a very different direction. The ultimate thing is how we are doing storytelling for these games.”
Who will be the announcers for these team-specific broadcasts?
That won’t be decided until after the Sweet 16. Turner Sports senior vice president Craig Barry said he has a spreadsheet in his Atlanta office with a list of 120 potential announcers depending on the teams that advance. Ideally, Barry said he wants broadcasters with a level of professional experience who have called games in some form for those schools. It’s not inconceivable a team’s radio broadcasters would freelance for Turner Sports for the day. “If we can create an extended experience that really generates a lot of excitement and differentiates itself from our national telecast, then we have done our job,” Barry said.
Is this a good idea?
Absolutely. Why? Because it offers viewers more options. Whether the teamcasts come off as Wayne World is anyone’s guess. “I want to see how it works,” [Charles] Barkley said. “It’s going to be very interesting. Some of those local guys are such homers. You have to be careful. Some of these guys are ridiculous, it makes you laugh sometimes.”
The choice will probably not be Wisconsin basketball announcer Matt Lepay, since he would be doing the game on radio. (Imagine that conversation at Learfield headquarters.) There are, however, two Wisconsin-based announcers who have considerable basketball experience. One is Brian Anderson, who will be doing Brewers’ TV games next month, but is announcing tournament games this week. The other is Wayne Larrivee, the Packers’ announcer, who used to call Chicago Bulls’ games and has done a lot of college basketball as well.
There’s another obvious choice, someone who has a quarter-century of basketball play-by-play experience, including college, on radio and TV, and who, unlike Anderson and Larrivee, is a UW grad. That would, of course, be me.
A few weeks ago I chronicled the interesting alternate uniform history of the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers.
Assuming spring takes place this year (and yesterday afternoon’s weather and today’s forecast notwithstanding, I have my doubts), the Rattlers will have, reports announcer Chris Mehring, these alternate jerseys this season, arrayed from semi-conventional to not so much:
I’m not sure how conventional this is, but this is for the Military Appreciation Series July 1-3.
Camo and orange have been done before, believe it or don’t.
Normally this would be the most out-there jersey (Out there? Star Wars? Get it?), except for …
… the jersey for Salute to Cows Night June 12. Really. I’m sure you’re all moooooved by this.
Today in 1965, the Beatles replaced themselves atop the British single charts:
Today in 1973, the BBC banned all teen acts from “Top of the Pops” after a riot that followed a performance by … David Cassidy.
The number one single today in 1981:
First, some theme music …
… that signifies it’s time for the three weeks of March Madness. (Which actually started with the “first-round” games in Dayton, Ohio, Tuesday and Wednesday, but never mind that.)
For those who have managed to miss the brackets, here’s one for your own use:
I have tried various systems over the years. You may be familiar with the Blue Jersey Theory, which holds that a team that wears blue jerseys will defeat a non-blue team. Given that the list of traditional basketball powers includes Duke, North Carolina and UCLA, it’s not a bad theory. Indeed, number-one seeds Arizona, Florida and Virginia are all blue schools, as are number-two seeds Michigan, Villanova and Kansas. (What you do if two blues face each other? Good question. And what do you do if two not-blues face each other? Is green blue? Is purple blue? What about black?)
There’s also the Favorite, or Most Fierce, Mascot Theory, in which teams are picked because of their mascots. That in some cases is about as sophisticated as rock/paper/scissors. (What is more fierce — a badger or a wolverine?)
The one rule I have applied over the years is to discount Big Ten teams because the Big Ten is overrated as a basketball conference. Big Ten teams have been the victims of some of the most unbelievable upsets over the years, including Illinois’ loss to Austin Peay (“Let’s go Peay!”) and Indiana’s loss to Cleveland State. It may be heresy to say this, but I think the quality of Big Ten coaching is worse than it used to be. Does anyone seriously think Tom Crean is a better coach than Bob(by) Knight was?
Truth be told, the only year I get the picks mostly right is when an absolutely obvious team — Kentucky in 2012, for instance — wins the national championship. In such situations, everyone picks the same national champion, so I will win no pool.
The fun part is trying to figure out where the jaw-dropping upsets will be. (To wit: 2000 after Wisconsin won its first NCAA team. I guarantee you that no one predicted Wisconsin to play in the Final Four that year.) I have picked a 15-over-2 upset, a 14-over-3 upset, and a few 13-over-4 and 12-over-5 upsets. The problem with those is (1) by nature, upsets are unpredictable, and (2) if you pick one and you’re wrong, you’ve lost not only the next round, but however many rounds the non-upset team goes.
For that reason, it’s considerably easier to pick games by round than to start from today and pick every game. If you pick a team to win the national championship that loses in the regional semifinal (as Duke did one season), well, you can kiss your entry fee goodbye.
This year features, once again, Wisconsin, as well as UW–Milwaukee. It does not include UW-Green Bay, though the Phoenix probably should have been picked, and it doesn’t include Marquette, which also failed to get a National Invitational Tournament and then declined a College Basketball Invitational berth. (As did Indiana, current employer of former Marquette coach Tom Crean.)
The Badgers are perfect under coach Bo Ryan in getting into the NCAAs, unlike the previous decades under Ryan’s predecessors. Once they’re in, well, they haven’t gotten farther than the regional final, and at that just once, 2005. They have five first-round punchouts, including last year to Ole Miss, which ended a two-season streak of getting through the regional semifinal, and a six-season streak of winning at least one tournament game.
The Badgers appear to be an early favorite, at least in the minds of some at ESPN, according to Jeff Potrykus:
If you watched Sunday night as ESPN’s analysts dissected the 2014 NCAA men’s basketball tournament field, you were left with the impression Wisconsin has a legitimate chance to reach the Final Four.
“I love Wisconsin’s draw here,” Jay Bilas said. “I think as a two seed they got a fabulous draw.”
UW, seeded No. 2 in the West Regional, opens Thursday at the Bradley Center against No. 15 American University of the Patriot League.
The winner gets either No. 7 Oregon or No. 10 BYU.
Bilas believes UW is the best defensive team of the four.
“What is the best ball-control, defensive team there?” he asked. “Wisconsin, they haven’t protected the lane as well as they have in the past. But I think they’re the best defensive team out of this group.
“Wisconsin is better offensively than they are defensively but they’re better defensively than anybody else there.”
Bilas, Jay Williams, Digger Phelps, Seth Greenberg and Dick Vitale offered their views on the 68-team field.
Of that quintet, Bilas and Williams picked UW to reach the Final Four for the first time since 2000 and the first time ever under Bo Ryan.
Bilas sees UW defeating No. 4 San Diego State in the regional final but losing to defending champion Louisville, which must fight through the loaded Midwest Regional, in the national semifinals.
“I think this is the Badgers’ year,” he said, referring to a Final Four berth. “They’ve had better teams but I like their draw.”
Bilas likes Louisville better.
“Louisville was mis-seeded in this tournament,” he said. “I think they are playing exceptional basketball right now.”
Williams believes UW will oust Arizona in the regional final. Coincidentally, No. 8 UW upset No. 1 Arizona in the second round of the 2000 NCAA tournament en route to winning the West Regional.
“I love the way this Wisconsin team passes the ball,” Williams said. “The Badgers, with their veteran guards and Frank Kaminsky down low is going to be a handful.”
Alas, UW fans, Williams sees the Badgers falling to Louisville in the national semifinals.
“Louisville is able to change pace,” he said. “They can (turn) Wisconsin over. Montrezl Harrell can be the difference in that ball game down low.”
Phelps and Vitale picked UW to reach the regional final in Anaheim.
Phelps expects sophomore guard Marcus Smart will lead No. 9 Oklahoma State past No. 1 Arizona in the third round and then past UW in the regional final.
“Oklahoma State is the team that’s going to surprise a lot of people,” Phelps said.
Vitale picked Arizona to end UW’s season in the regional final.
“I like their defense,” he said. “I think too much for Wisconsin.”
Greenberg was the only analyst who didn’t pick UW to reach the Sweet 16. He picked No. 7 Oregon to upset UW in the third round in Milwaukee.
All five analysts picked Big Ten tournament champion Michigan State, seeded No. 4 in the East, to win the title.
Call me skeptical (“You’re skeptical!” “No, I’m Steve”), but I’m not on the Badger bandwagon. The last time UW played in Milwaukee, 2004, the Badgers lost to third-seed Pittsburgh at the supposedly friendly Bradley Center. (Truth is, UW plays there only once every other year, against Marquette.) More to the point, I see Saturday opponent Oregon giving Wisconsin problems with its tempo, which is a problem when UW is not a good defensive team by usual Dick Bennett/Bo Ryan standards. Which is too bad, since this team is an order of magnitude better on offense than usually seen with Slow Bo.
Having said all this, I remind Badger fans that we are in an era of unprecedented Badger basketball success. The regular NCAA appointments started in 1994 under Stu Jackson, and picked up in earnest when Dick Bennett arrived in 1997. Before Jackson, the Badgers last played in the NCAA in 1947. My parents were in grade school at the time. In my five years at UW, the Badgers got to .500 exactly once. We thought that might be enough to get an NIT berth. It didn’t happen.
A couple years ago, I did a bracket based on Ken Pomeroy‘s efficiency rankings. Efficiency is an interesting concept, because it tries to create, through statistics whether team A might beat team B based on something other than offensive points per game and defensive points per game.
This year, I decided to do three of those — first based only on offensive efficiency …
… which has what would be a remarkable result — Creighton defeating Kansas to win the national championship.
Another bracket is based on defensive efficiency …
… with Arizona defeating Virginia Commonwealth (coached by Oregon native Shaka Smart) winning the national title.
Bracket number three is where the most efficient team — offensive efficiency minus defensive efficiency — wins.
This bracket has fourth-seed Louisville winning the national championship over Florida. This is not out of the realm of reality, given that at least the CBS Sports selection show experts thought the Cardinals got a ridiculously low seed.
Truth be told, I’m not sure I buy any of those brackets, even though I’m interested in the efficiency concept. It’s true that Wisconsin isn’t exactly a stellar defensive team under Ryan’s usual standards, but do you really think 15th-seed American is going to beat them? Creighton has, as Sports Illustrated will tell you, one player of note — Doug McDermott (son of coach Greg), currently averaging 26.9 points per game. I’m not sure very many NCAA tournament games are won by one player, unless McDermott has Danny Manning-style performances every night, when you know whoever the Bluejays play will be working overtime figuring out how to stop McDermott.
I started to do a bracket that took each team’s offensive and defensive efficiency and figured offense vs. defense for each team, but it came up with 16th-seed Weber State beating number-one-seed Arizona, and stopped. Some year a 16th seed will defeat a number one seed, but not this year.
The problem is that statistics as they currently exist are better explainers than predictors. They can show how a team did over an entire season or a stretch of games. They can’t really predict what happens if the star player gets into foul trouble, or the team suddenly goes cold from the field, or someone gets hurt. Statistics cannot predict intangibles, and intangibles often win games between relatively even teams.
What wins in the NCAAs, I’d argue, is coaching. Which is why I’m picking Louisville, despite its fourth seed, to win another national title over Florida, whose coach Billy Donovan has won two national titles, which is as many as Louisville coach Rick Pitino (former coach of player Donovan).
I have consumed a fair amount of online time (which sounds better than “addicted to,” doesn’t it?) taking online tests that claim to identify me as a fictional character or inanimate object.
Because I am a Myers-Briggs ESTJ, I am, most famously, Darth Vader. The Star Trek captains test says I’m James T. Kirk, but another test says I’m Commander Riker. A test of conservative presidents identifies me as Ronald Reagan. (I know, I know — there you go again.) I am also, according to other tests, Poseidon, a phoenix, the owner of a 1968 Chevy Camaro, and Led Zeppelin.
Thee latest online test I’ve found actually has a bit of personal relevance. The web site I Write Like claims to take a writing sample and from word choice, sentence structure and other things identify which famous writer the writer most emulates.
(The term “famous writer” appears to famous writers of fiction, which may be personally ironic since I have yet to successfully write fiction. More on that later.)
Well, clearly I have to try that. I took one of my more well read works from this blog, about an event the 32nd anniversary of which is today, and pasted that in. The site claimed I write like David Foster Wallace, a contemporary of mine (or at least he was until he killed himself in 2008 after dealing with depression for 20 years) and writer of such observations as:
- This is what the real, no-bull- value of your liberal-arts education is supposed to be about: How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default-setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone, day in and day out.
- The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.
- To be, in a word, unborable….It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.
- I’d like to be the sort of person who can enjoy things at the time, instead of having to go back in my head and enjoy them.
- You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
- (I’m not putting any of this well. I am not and never have been an intellectual. I am not articulate, and the subjects that I am trying to describe and discuss are beyond my abilities. I am trying, however, the best I can, and will go back over this as carefully as possible when I am finished, and will make changes and corrections whenever I can see a way to make what I’m discussing clearer or more interesting without fabricating anything.)
- The fact that the most powerful and significant connections in our lives are (at the time) invisible to us seems to me a compelling argument for religious reverence rather than skeptical empiricism as a response to life’s meaning.
- I want to convince you that irony, poker-faced silence, and fear of ridicule are distinctive of those features of contemporary U.S. culture (of which cutting-edge fiction is a part) that enjoy any significant relation to the television whose weird pretty hand has my generation by the throat. I’m going to argue that irony and ridicule are entertaining and effective, and that at the same time they are agents of a great despair and stasis in U.S. culture, and that for aspiring fictionists they pose terrifically vexing problems.
Then I took another well read blog entry, about an event that occurred 24 years ago Tuesday. Now I Write Like H.P. Lovecraft, writer of “weird fiction” known for heavy use of adjectives.
I next selected a newspaper column. Now I Write Like Mario Puzo, author of the Godfather novels.
Next, a news story. Back to Wallace, whose Wikipedia listing says:
Wallace covered Senator John McCain‘s 2000 presidential campaign and the September 11 attacks for Rolling Stone; cruise ships (in what became the title essay of his first nonfiction book), state fairs, and tornadoes for Harper’s Magazine; the US Open tournament for TENNIS Magazine; the director David Lynch and the pornography industry for Premiere magazine; the tennis player Michael Joyce for Esquire; the special-effects film industry for Waterstone’s magazine; conservative talk radio host John Ziegler for The Atlantic Monthly; and a Maine lobster festival for Gourmet magazine. He also reviewed books in several genres for the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. In the November 2007 issue of The Atlantic, which commemorated the magazine’s 150th anniversary, Wallace was among the authors, artists, politicians and others who wrote short pieces on “the future of the American idea”.
Next, I tried a piece of unpublished (because it’s unfinished) fiction, and now I’m the next coming of P.G. Wodehouse.
I find all of this amusing because I’ve never been able to define my writing style. (A few years ago someone brought up my “personal brand,” and I had no answer for that either.) Some years back a version of Microsoft Word analyzed my business magazine writing as 12th-grade level, which is four grades ahead of the level newspaper writers are, or were, supposed to write. I try to not write sentences as complicated as (the translated version of) Paul’s New Testament letters, though sometimes my sentences run longer than, say, Ernest Hemingway’s.
If I’m known for anything writing-wise in this blog, it’s probably my affection for parenthetical remarks. (Now he tells me, the reader thinks.) Anyone from the ’80s is automatically tagged with “ironic,” although I’m convinced many people don’t know the difference between irony and sarcasm. (How about this: Barack Obama was recently named the second best president of all time. All the other presidents tied for best.)
Here’s another example of irony: I Write Like suggests I “Improve your writing skills by keeping a journal!” You’d think I get enough writing practice as it is.
The number one single today in 1961 was based on the Italian song “Return to Sorrento”:
Today in 1964, the Beatles appeared on the BBC’s “Ready Steady Go!”
During the show, Billboard magazine presented an award for the Beatles’ having the top three singles of that week.
Today in 1968, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Richie Furay and Jim Messina were all arrested by Los Angeles police not for possession of …
… but for being at a place where marijuana use was suspected.
This is a nice followup to this morning’s post about why tax and spending limits need to be in the state Constitution.
WalletHub reports the 10 states (plus the District of Columbia) with the lowest per-person state and local taxes, and the 10 states with the highest state and local taxes.
And where is Wisconsin?
| 46 | Wisconsin | $8975 | 29% | 39 |
Number 46 from the bottom in terms of total taxes ($8,975), and number 39 in “adjusted rank (based on Cost of Living Index).” Put another way, Wisconsin has either the sixth or 13th highest taxes in the U.S.
The map that accompanies this news …
… does not demonstrate the dominant university’s athletic team colors, a preference for a color of peppers, or anything else besides the fact that Wisconsin remains a tax hell. Nearly the worst in the Midwest, in fact, exceeded only by Illinois and Nebraska if you consider Nebraska to be in the Midwest.
I suppose some would argue we should feel better about the 39th ranking given that we supposedly have a lower cost of living than other states. (Based on this year’s electric and heating bills, that’s incorrect anyway.) More importantly, though, the states in the worse levels of tax hell — New York, California, Nebraska, Connecticut and Illinois — are states with, except possibly Nebraska, higher incomes than Wisconsin. So Wisconsinites have less money with which to pay Govzilla every April 15.
WalletHub has additional bad news:
Economic mobility – that is, our ability to climb the proverbial ladder – has a strong correlation to where we live. Children from Seattle whose families are in the 25th percentile in terms of income, for example, end up at roughly the same economic stature as kids from the median family in Atlanta.
Why? State and local taxes. At least that’s what a group of Harvard and Berkeley researchers collaborating on The Equality of Opportunity Project have to say. They “found a significant correlation between both measures of mobility and local tax rates.”
That means, if you buy their conclusions, that Wisconsinites are prevented from making more money because of our higher state and local taxes. Wisconsin has few rich people of the Forbes 400 variety, and as you know from this blog, Wisconsin has trailed the national average in per-capita personal income growth since the late 1970s.
Here’s kind of a master-of-the-obvious graphic to go with this additional news:
The fact that Wisconsin currently has a Republican governor and Legislature does not make Wisconsin a red state. This is, remember, the state that has voted for Democrats for president since Michael Dukakis. Be that as it may, through Govs. Lee Dreyfus, Tony Earl, Tommy Thompson, Scott McCallum, James Doyle and Scott Walker, and through every possible combination of party control of the Legislature, Wisconsin was and is a tax hell. And the tax cuts Walker is about to sign into law won’t change that either.
You get what you vote for.
Jon Peacock of the Wisconsin (left-wing) Budget Project inadvertently gives reasons to support the constitutional amendment he opposes:
Under the amendment, a two-thirds majority of both houses of the Legislature would be required for legislators to pass an increase in the rate of the state individual income tax, corporate income tax or sales tax.
Although supporters argue that a supermajority requirement is necessary to hold down tax rates, history shows this not to be the case. The three tax rates that would be restricted by the proposed constitutional change have rarely been increased in Wisconsin. In fact, the state’s sales tax rate and corporate income tax rate have not been raised in 32 years. The only increase in the individual income tax in the past 28 years, which took place in 2009 during the recession, affected only about one out of every hundred tax filers. …
Another unintended consequence of creating a higher hurdle for tax rate increases is a shift to other types of state and local revenue. By holding down income tax revenue, the state will have less funding for property tax relief, which will put upward pressure on local property taxes.
In addition, when state policy-makers need to raise revenue to balance the state budget, they would be much more likely to raise fees, such as university tuition. Although the proposed amendment allows tax rates to be increased by referendum, the timetable for accomplishing that will generally make it an unworkable solution when it comes time for legislators to pass a biennial budget bill.
The proposed change in the state constitution also would make it more difficult for state lawmakers to pass legislation that makes comprehensive tax reforms. It wouldn’t be possible without a two-thirds vote for legislators to pass a revenue-neutral bill that raises income or sales tax rates in order to pay for a substantial cut in property taxes.
How can a supermajority not be necessary to hold down tax rates? When they are already too high. I wonder how Peacock thinks Wisconsin has been in the top 10 in state and local taxes forever, and number one some years. Peacock excuses the James Doyle $2.2 billion tax increase that (1) should never have become law, (2) wrecked the state’s economy, and (3) led to the defeat of Democrats left and, well, left in 2010 and 2012.
No one likes to pay higher fees, but at least it can be said that fees fund things that are to some extent optional. I wouldn’t like to not have a driver’s license, but there are people who don’t have driver’s licenses and don’t own cars. Of course, in Peacock’s world the choice is higher taxes or higher fees, instead of budgetary conservativism and fiscal prudence. (Spending limits on every level of government are overdue additions to the Constitution.)
Peacock also argues that “States with constitutional constraints on the options for balancing their budgets run a significant risk of getting lower ratings for the bonds they sell.” But states who budget responsibly don’t have problems with bond ratings. Wisconsin’s bond ratings would be even better if the state measured its budget correctly, by Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, but I doubt Peacock supports that either since that would stop future governors and Legislatures from profligate overspending.
If you do not support limits on taxation, you don’t support limits on government. Wisconsin is a tax hell because we don’t have significant (as in constitutional, not legislative) limits on government. Peacock’s opposition to limits on tax increases proves why we need permanent limits on taxation.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 