The Beatles had quite a schedule today in 1963. They drove from Liverpool to London through the night to appear on the BBC’s “Parade of the Pops,” which was on live at noon.
After their two songs, they drove back north another three hours to get to their evening performance at the Swimming Baths in Doncaster.
The number one song today in 1965:
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that a tax cut deal will be finished today:
Republicans reached a compromise late Tuesday on Gov. Scott Walker’s more than $500 million tax cut proposal, agreeing to $38 million in spending cuts in the final piece of a deal that paves the way for a key committee vote on Wednesday.
Along with two other modest changes, the cuts to take place in the next budget beginning in July 2015 were enough to win over a remaining Senate GOP holdout who had balked at passing tax cuts that would leave the state in a worse financial position in the future. The deal will preserve all of the property and income tax cuts that Walker proposed after new projections last month found the current state budget would finish in June 2015 with a $1 billion surplus. …
The deal would also keep a chunk of the surplus— more than $100 million — in the state’s main account rather than shifting it to a rainy-day fund. It would also drop a proposed sales tax exemption added by Assembly Republicans last week for construction companies doing work for local governments and churches. …
By Tuesday morning, the number of GOP holdouts in the Senate had come down to Sen. Rob Cowles (R-Allouez), who backed Walker’s tax cuts but was seeking an additional $38 million cut in state spending in the next budget to help pay for them. …
A lapse is a technical term in the state budget. It would amount to requiring agencies in the Walker administration to return that amount of money to the state’s main account during the fiscal year ending in June 2016.
The agencies could do that by dialing back their authorized spending or taking cash from separate pots of money that have built up over time.
Fitzgerald said the Walker administration was initially reluctant about the lapse, which can make it more difficult for agencies to budget because it introduces a level of uncertainty about what their actual spending will be. …
Republicans hold an 18-15 advantage in the Senate, but Sen. Dale Schultz (R-Richland Center) and all Senate Democrats are widely seen as no votes on the tax cuts. If they vote against the tax cuts, Cowles and every other GOP senator must vote for the bill to assure its passage. …
The move — and the additional $38 million cut — would also lower the shortfall expected in the 2015-’17 state budget under one way of estimating what is known as the structural deficit.
Before the new projections of unexpected new tax money last month, that shortfall had been estimated at about $707 million for the next two-year budget. Walker’s proposal would increase that projected shortfall by roughly $100 million to $807 million.
With the additional $38 million cut, the package would lower the expected shortfall to less than $660 million for the next budget.
First: Good for Cowles for insisting on more spending cuts. Even with the tax cuts, government in Wisconsin spends too much and taxes too much. (In addition to government’s other faults too numerous to list here.) There is no problem Wisconsin faces that more tax dollars will fix. The next time a unit of government in Wisconsin provides value that even matches your tax dollars will be the first time.
The aforementioned Schultz claims that no constituent of his told him they want tax cuts. (Which is a false statement, provably so if Schultz read his Senate district’s newspapers.)
In addition to their usual ranting about tax cuts for the “rich” (that is, those who actually pay income taxes), Democrats have been hypocritical about the issue of the rainy day fund, as Media Trackers reminds us:
On February 11, the state Assembly approved a $504 million property and income tax cut. The measure, promoted by Walker in his January state of the state address, also makes a payment of $117 million to the budget stabilization fund, better known in political vernacular as the “rainy day fund.”
While two Democrats joined a united Republican caucus in passing the tax cut, most Democratic members of the Assembly voted against the plan. More than a few Democrats publicly complained that the tax cut was irresponsible because more revenues were not deposited in the rainy day fund.
Rep. Penny Bernard-Schaber (D) called the tax cut package an “irresponsible and reckless plan.” As if on cue, other Democrats also called the measure “irresponsible.”
“When are we gonna stop doing irresponsible election year gimmicks?” Rep. Cory Mason, a Democrat from Racine, complained on the Assembly floor.
“Democrats believe we should take a balanced approach to the projected surplus,” Minority Leader Peter Barca said in a press statement outlining his side’s plan to double Walker’s requested contribution to the rainy day fund.
Barca subsequently expressed horror when Republicans voted down his plan and voted for what he called an ”irresponsible election-year ploy.”
What Barca, Mason and other Democrats are conveniently ignoring is just how much money Walker and legislative Republicans have put into the rainy day fund. Today, the fund has more money in it than at any other time since its creation in 1985.
According to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the rainy day fund had $279.3 million in it as of January 16, 2014. If the Senate agrees with Walker’s tax cut package, the $117 million sent to the fund in that legislation will boost the reserve to $396.3 million.
That’s a far cry from when Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, took $57 million out of the fund in 2008, leaving it with only $1.3 million.
Prior to the 2001-2003 budget, which established a funding mechanism for the rainy day account, the fund had a paltry $35 in it: a testament to the abundant political intentions that led to its creation and the lack of political will to meaningfully fund it.
The leftwing Wisconsin Budget Project on January 15th called on Walker and lawmakers to spend the budget surplus on yet more government programs. After Walker announced his tax cut, the group blasted him for not earmarking more money for the rainy day fund. Calling tax cuts a “shortsighted move” they said lower taxes “could come back to haunt the state during future economic downturns.”
While throwing together a chart that claims the state needs around $2.25 billion in a rainy day fund, the group never credited Walker with growing the account far more than his predecessors in either party.
The tax cut remains too small because it doesn’t even match the $2.2 billion tax increase Doyle enacted in the late 2000s. That tax increase didn’t solve the state’s fiscal problems of the time, but it did wreck the state’s economy. The tax cut is not larger because Walker and legislative Republicans have refused to make actual cuts — not merely decreases in increases, but a budget in which the last number, total spending, is less than the previous budget’s number — probably because they want to remain in power. So this apparently is as good as Wisconsinites will get, and better than yet another Democratic tax increase.
EPA Abuse passes on Jonathan Chait:
The State Department Friday released its long-awaited environmental impact analysis of the Keystone XL pipeline. The analysis is key because President Obama announced last summer he would not approve the pipeline unless it was found to have no significant impact on climate change. And that’s what the analysis finds. It argues, as many other analysts have concluded, that if we block the pipeline, Canada will just ship the oil out by rail.
So, what public policy reason is there to block the pipeline? There really isn’t one. Indeed, the environmentalists’ obsession with Keystone began as a gigantic mistake. Two and a half years ago, the environmentalist James Hansen wrote a blog post alerting his readers to the pipeline, which he concluded would amount to “game over” for the climate, as it would lead to the burning of enough new oil to moot any effort to limit runaway greenhouse gases. His analysis was based on a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation that turned out to be wrong in several respects, the most important being the assumption that blocking the pipeline would keep the oil in the Canadian oil sands in the ground.
Put another way: The Canadians intend to sell their oil, whether to Americans or someone else. Pipelines have a better safety record than tankers or the railroad carrying oil. But apparently environmentalists are just fine with forcing Americans to use immensely more expensive forms of energy than oil, coal and natural gas.
On the other hand, it is amusing to watch the envirowackos spin themselves into the ground trying to justify such forms of “green” energy as wind turbines that kill birds, and now solar panels that fry birds dumb enough to fly by.
Today in 1956, Elvis Presley performed three shows at the Fort Homer Hesterly Armory in Tampa, Fla. Presley closed the final show by announcing to the crowd of 14,000, “Girls, I’ll see you backstage.”
Many of them took Presley at his word. Presley barely made it into his dressing room, losing some of his clothes and his shoes in the girl gauntlet.
The number one single today in 1961 posed the question of whether actors can sing:
(Answer: Generally, singers act better than actors sing. Read on.)
Newscastic thinks every real journalist would like to be one of these five fictional journalists:
Carl Kolchak/”Kolchak: The Night Stalker” (1974)
Kolchak, played by Darren McGavin on the eponymous TV series, was a talented reporter in Chicago that tackled tales of the strange and supernatural with equal parts tenacity, instinct and guts. The TV show was an early forerunner to “The X-Files” and had a healthy mix of horror, crime procedural and humor. Unfortunately, Kolchak’s proof of zombies, ghosts and other creatures committing crimes around the city often went missing or was destroyed, just as deadlines hit. We’ve all been there right? Either way, plenty of journalists would love to spend their days chasing those kinds of stories rather than calling the public relations officer back for a second or third time.
Spider Jerusalem/ “Transmetropolitan” (1997)
The things Spider Jerusalem does to his body in the comic series “Transmetropolitan” would make Hunter S. Thompson blush. Almost every issue finds him popping pills, killing drinks and smoking anything and everything. Still, he manages to be the smart-ass journalist we all want to be, battling corruption and injustice with one hand on the keyboard and the other giving the bird. He also thrives on being hated, often back talking the public and sources in ways that have real world journalists grinning.
Howard Beale/”Network” (1976)
Comparing yourself to a journalist that was very likely crazy and was killed on air is not something most of us strive for, but many reporters wish they could speak as honestly and passionately as Beale, played by Peter Finch, does in his “mad as hell speech” from the movie “Network.” Many journalists struggle with dark issues like homelessness they see everyday that are of little to no interest to the main population, and while they may not have the answers, they want the people to know what is going on.
Mackenzie McHale/ “Newsroom” (2012)
The easy pick for the HBO TV series would be host Will McAvoy, but McHale is the brains behind the whole operation. She is incredibly smart and a talented journalist in her own right, covering Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq on the ground. Her arrival on the fictional “News Night” changed the way the show delivered the news. Under her guidance, the coverage shifted from gossipy material to real time stories with national and global implications that the average viewer should know and care about. In short, it is the newsman’s news show. The show can be preachy and can over simplify what a journalist does on a day-to-day basis, but it also makes you want to write a [Freedom of Information Act] request with gusto and call a source out in front of a crowd.
Tintin/”The Adventures of Tintin” (1929)
VIA http://www.bleedingcool.com
Tintin gets around. The Dutch comic book reporter has adventure after adventure in exotic locations ranging from the Orient to the bottom of the ocean and even the moon. He has an incredible eye for detail, has a deep knowledge of automobiles and aircraft and can take care of himself in a fist fight. In later issues, he became more of a private detective and explorer and, if we are being honest, he was rarely seen turning a story in before that, but what reporter doesn’t fantasize about their talents taking them on great adventures? Especially with no editor breathing down their neck.
Well, the first problem with this is that this list doesn’t include …
The second thing, as I’ve written here before, is that watching journalism take place isn’t interesting. Much of it is either rote or at least routine. Watching someone stare into a computer screen and then type, well, you can see that in any modern office. Interviewing people can be interesting (or not), but in truth the only people interested in watching depictions of journalism are journalists. There are no satisfying payoffs, only the next thing to cover.
The other thing is that it fails to acknowledge that journalists are not normal people. Other than TV news (which some argue isn’t really news), the best looking reporter is average looking at best. More likely reporters are ugly, fat, badly dressed, possessed of poor eating habits, drivers of poor quality vehicles, and often ill-mannered in public. The next journalist who can defend himself in a fight, or run two blocks without finding there isn’t enough air in the air, will be the first. (You’d think journalists would be bigger fans of concealed-carry for that reason.)
News takes place any time of the day or night, any day of the week; therefore it has to be covered wherever and whenever it happens. Journalists are overworked (except those who work only 40 hours a week, in which case you’re not doing enough work) and, unless your name is Matt Lauer, underpaid. A proper journalist is cynical. (The old saw goes that if your mother says she loves you, check it out. The truth is that most reporters today aren’t nearly cynical enough and spend far too much time sucking up to power.) The old joke is that newsrooms put the word “fun” in “dysfunctional.”
Consider John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. Some reporters cried while reporting the story, which is inappropriate at least and appalling at worst. Some years later — notably Fort Worth newspaper reporter Bob Schieffer, now at CBS — sound strangely giddy talking about their experiences. Major breaking news is an adrenaline rush, as horrible as that sounds. (If you assume all journalists are going to Hell after this life, you’ll be right more often than not.)
So after a quarter-century of doing this, why am I still doing this? Because I figured out (and maybe it’s a case of necessity becoming a virtue) that you should not do what you love (and you should never love your job, because neither your job nor your employer love you); you should do what you’re good at doing.
The number one single today in 1956:
Today in 1962, the Everly Brothers, on leave from the U.S. Marine Corps, appeared on CBS-TV’s Ed Sullivan Shew:
The number one British single today in 1965:
National Review’s Jim Geraghty passes on an interesting comparison by Ace of Spades:
People will hate me for saying this, but I think the gun-grabbers are similar to the pot prohibitionists in one way.
That way is this: Essentially both impulses come from distrusting a specific population. There is distaste for a culture, and distrust.
The gun-grabbers think that ordinary citizens with no criminal history will become kill-crazy madmen if they carry a gun.
This is because they generally find rural people and conservatives distasteful, and dislike their culture, and oppose their culture.
Similarly, people who insist on keeping pot illegal have distaste for potheads, and do not like the pot culture, and distrust pot smokers
Either of these distrusts/dislikes is permissible; people can have their own opinions. But cultural disdain should not have the force of law.
Geraghty and Ace both point out one major difference: Gun ownership is protected by the Second Amendment, whereas marijuana has no constitutional protection. (Alcohol is sort of protected given that the 21st Amendment eliminated the 18th Amendment, which started Prohibition.)
But the similarities are certainly there. To stereotype for a moment, liberals seem to believe that gun-owners are wild-eyed mouth-breathers who would blow away an entire room full of people upon the first flash of temper. Non-libertarian conservatives seem to believe that pot-smokers are lazy, ambition-free lumps of flesh, or that if you smoke one joint, you’ll be mainlining heroin, freebasing and/or manufacturing methamphetamine tomorrow.
Regular readers know that, as a never-user, I am skeptical of claims of marijuana’s benefits and harm. The claim that marijuana is a gateway drug to harder drugs is more likely an observation about the user than the substance. Those who claim marijuana should be legalized, regulated and taxed need to explain why the experience with tobacco, where higher taxes have led to a black market in tobacco, should be duplicated.
If we took personal freedom and personal responsibility more seriously as a society, this would not be a controversial subject. Instead, we have the steadily growing nanny state, in which the founding principle is that anything that is not specifically allowed is prohibited.
Right Wisconsin subscribers can read my thoughts about retiring Sen. Dale Schultz (R–Richland Center), which include …
This might fit a definition of political courage today: According to one of the tributes in a newspaper in his Senate district, Schultz stood up at a meeting on the proposed Lac du Flambeau Chippewa casino in Shullsburg and announced he was opposed to expanding gambling in Wisconsin. He also voted against the bill to reform the process of reviewing school tribal nicknames, despite the presence of seven high schools with Indian nicknames within his Senate district.
The Act 10 and tribal nickname votes are freebies in a sense, since both passed without Schultz’s vote. On the other hand, Schultz’s vote against the2012 mining expansion bill killed the bill, since Schultz voted with all 16 Democrats against the bill. Schultz appears to be against Walker’s Road to Prosperity tax cuts, claiming not a single constituent of his favored tax cuts as the first use of the state surplus. That makes one think Schultz has stopped listening to his constituents who are more conservative than he is, or those constituents have decided to stop talking to Schultz.
The number one single today in 1962:
The number one British single today in 1966:
Today in 1969, Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash recorded the album “Girl from the North Country.”
Never heard of a Dylan–Cash collaboration? That’s because the album was never released, although the title track was on Dylan’s “Nashville Skyline” album.
Today in 1964, the Beatles appeared on CBS-TV’s Ed Sullivan Shew, for the first time since last week.
The number one British single today in 1967 was written by Charlie Chaplin:
Today in 1974, members of Emerson, Lake and Palmer were arrested for swimming naked in a Salt Lake City hotel pool. They were fined $75 each.
VIA 
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 
