Today in 1963, Paul McCartney was fined 17 pounds for speeding. I’d suggest that that may have been the inspiration for his Wings song “Hell on Wheels,” except that the correct title is actually “Helen Wheels,” supposedly a song about his Land Rover:
Today in 1984, John Lennon released “I’m Stepping Out.” The fact that Lennon stepped out of planet Earth at the hands of assassin Mark David Chapman 3½ years before this song was released was immaterial.
Today in 1967, the Who opened the U.S. tour of … Herman’s Hermits.
Today in 1986, Paul McCartney released his “Press” album:
NFL.com surveys the management structures of the NFC North teams, including, of course, the Packers:
Owner: N/A
General Manager: Ted Thompson, 9th Year
Head Coach: Mike McCarthy, 8th Year
Other front-office notables: Mark Murphy, President and CEO; Russ Ball, Vice President of Football Administration; Eliot Wolf, Director of Pro Personnel; Brian Gutekunst, Director of College Scouting; Alonzo Highsmith, Senior Personnel Executive.Who’s really in charge? Ted Thompson’s say-so in Green Bay is about as strong as any GM’s influence in the league. The Packers tried a coach-driven model after Thompson’s mentor, Ron Wolf, retired — giving the keys to Mike Sherman. Thompson left Green Bay to serve as the Seattle Seahawks‘ vice president of football operations for five years. But in 2005, the Packers brought back Thompson with the title of general manager and returned to the method they implemented through the 1990s. Thompson hired head coach Mike McCarthy in his second year on the job. McCarthy reports to Thompson, who reports to Mark Murphy. And Murphy is overseen by the board of directors for the publicly held club.
The Packers are considered a model NFL franchise, but they didn’t get there without some luck. The drafting of Aaron Rodgers, for instance, only occurred after Thompson’s attempts to trade down failed, leaving the club to take the highest-rated player on its board at a position that wasn’t of immediate need. But the system has been good in Green Bay, largely because those in charge of different departments are experts in those areas and are able to put egos aside.
Thompson can be a demanding boss. Standards are high and don’t bend much. But it has worked. Great success has led other clubs to raid Green Bay; Joe Philbin was hired away from McCarthy’s staff, and John Schneider, Reggie McKenzie and John Dorsey were poached from Thompson’s crew. Guys like Eliot Wolf, Alonzo Highsmith and Brian Gutekunst have been relied upon to step up. Russ Ball, who’s garnered some interest as another GM candidate, has become a right-hand man to Thompson in handling the contractual side. Suffice it to say, many teams envy how smoothly things run in Green Bay.
An outside perspective from an NFC general manager: “It’s all football, all the time there. The majority of the revenue goes right back into the team. There isn’t an owner saying, ‘OK, this year, if we make $7 million, I make $4 million, and $3 million goes back into it.’ It all goes right back into the organization, into improving the team, into hiring coaches, or, on the business side, investing in the building itself. There’s no owner, but there’s a successful group of businessmen that the president and GM have to sit with, and talk about their direction. The only way it goes bad is if the committee feels like they have a lot of juice in football decisions. But normally, they’re just a great resource in how they grow the business, and also to keep a gauge on Ted and Mark and Mike and whether they’re doing a good enough job.”
As an owner who knows some Executive Committee members, it seems obvious to me that the Packers are run the right way in every visible way. The Executive Committee represents much of the best of Wisconsin’s business acumen, so for Murphy to not listen to them would be stupid. And the Packers do not make stupid moves.
Murphy’s predecessor, Bob Harlan, was not a football guy, and wasn’t hired to be a football guy. His job was to hire the football guys and let them do their work until Harlan determined they weren’t working out. (Harlan fired Wolf’s predecessor, Tom Braatz, and signed off on Sherman’s hire as coach, promotion to general manager, demotion from general manager, and firing as coach.) Harlan’s more important role was to shore up the Packers’ business end, because the Packers were not necessarily a model franchise from the business end. The results are obvious, and things have not slipped on the business end under Murphy.
CNN published this piece about the Corvette on the 60th anniversary of the production of the first Corvette, which this blog presents to you on Collector Car Appreciation Day:
The pounding of her heart, the adrenaline racing through her system, the vibrations buzzing through her bones: At 16, Andrea Interlicchia got hooked on the idea of owning a Chevrolet Corvette.
She became hung up on the classic American sports car after her father nonchalantly tossed the keys to his 1975 “vette” at her and asked if she could go to the local store to grab a loaf of bread. The car’s acceleration, the smell of its exhaust and the feel of its engine made that grocery trip like none other.
The Chevy Corvette has left years of memorable experiences for many drivers, and now the American sports car is in its seventh generation and celebrating its 60th anniversary since it first went into production.
Throughout those years, the famous two-seater sports car has found its way onto American driveways, racing tracks and pop culture. The Corvette was selected as the pace car 11 times fCaror the Indianapolis 500, has been featured in songs like Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” and even made some big screen appearances like the 1978 “Corvette Summer.” Corvettes are even anticipated to show up as Autobots in Michael Bay’s “Transformers 4.”
(They had to mention “Corvette Summer.”)
CNN asked Corvette owners why the Vette, and came up with nine different reasons (two more than the seven generations of Corvette, but you knew that) to own one:
1. It’s the accessible sports car
50 years ago, Gene Beenenga found himself on a Chevrolet showroom floor in LaSalle-Peru, Illinois, and the 1963 Split-Window Sting Ray Corvette caught his eye. A memory rushed back to him as he recalled the exhilaration he felt driving around with his high school friend in a Corvette years earlier. When he saw the Sting Ray’s sleek body and design, pure desire made him take the plunge to pay the listed showroom price of $4,875. Throughout the years he has gotten offers from sellers to buy up the classic model, but the 72-year-old says the car gives him too much pride to let go of. “Doesn’t every youngster want the mystique of owning a high-performance car?” he asked. “This model of car, being the Corvette, was accessible for the average-income buyer, and still could deliver on that thrill of a high-powered sports car.”
Bizarrely, this is seen by some as a negative. No car on this planet comes close to matching Corvette’s performance-for-price formula. A lot of that has to do with Chevrolet’s sticking with the comparatively low-tech approach of a front-engine rear-drive car powered by a pushrod V-8. It’s not all-wheel-drive, it’s not mid-engined, and only the C4s with the LT-5 V-8 had four cams and four valves per cylinder. The Corvette’s competitors with those features are significantly more expensive. Car magazines keep complaining about the Corvette’s subpar (in their opinion) interior. Somehow I doubt any Corvette sale has been squashed (except possibly a C4 sale given its hideous digital instrument panel) by the quality, or perceived lack thereof, of the interior. (At least Chevy doesn’t put Vega steering wheels in them anymore.)
2. It’s a car for men and women
Interlicchia was a stay-at-home mom for 15 years before she got her first job, her first paycheck and then her first Corvette, a 2001 Pewter Convertible. After falling in love with her father’s Corvette in her teens, she knew she had to have one. During the months of April through October, when she is driving around Webster, New York, with the top down, she says she and her car know how to turn heads. “Most people are surprise when they see a woman driving it. It has long been known for older men driving this model car. That is why my license plate reads ‘IPAY 4IT,’” she said.
An ironic point given the Corvette non-fan I know (or perhaps she isn’t a fan of Corvette owners) who referred to them as “extenders.” Actually, she described them in two words; the first had five letters, the first of which was P and the last of which was S.
3. It melts the stress away
Agnes Grubbs’ son, Mack, introduced her to his first Corvette back in 2000 and took her out for a spin. “The next thing I know, he had me take the wheel. It was silver with a black convertible top and the top was down at the time. I guess that is when I got hooked,” she said. The 58-year-old has been driving Corvettes for the past four years. Between them, she and her son own three Corvettes now, and she says there is just something about cruising in one that melts her stress away. “Sometimes I drive them to work and if I have a stressful day, I can get in these cars, take off, and my stress level goes way down.”
As I asked here before, do you have a bad day if it begins and ends in a Corvette? You cannot say the same thing about a Toyota Prius.
5. It represents the American Dream
Matthew Colver and his wife decided to get a sports car after their kids moved out of their California home back in 2001. After seeing the top down on a Corvette, he says there was no other car as beautiful around. He and his wife decided to order a customized 2002 Corvette Convertible. “I remember driving it across the desert on I-40 and getting it up to 120 mph before my wife noticed how fast I was going and she yelled at me to slow down. That was fun,” he said. He says owning and driving the Corvette is like fulfilling a dream. “I remember when the ’66 Stingray came out when I was a kid and I thought that was the coolest car I ever saw,” he said.
6. It’s a perfect fit for two
Allen Lineberry, 57, and his family were doing their last family vacation with his wife before his two daughters were to move out and start college. They were heading to Chicago, but stopped at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Lineberry decided to make a little gamble while touring the museum and bought a raffle ticket for the just released C6 Corvette. “My wife and girls could not believe I would spend a $100 on a small piece of paper … but I figured it was as close to a ‘vette as I would ever be,” he said. After their road trip, Lineberry got a phone call that he had won the car in the raffle drawing. “This was perfect timing, it just has two seats and its just enough,” he said.
I have seen mention elsewhere of Mr. Lineberry’s incredible luck, so this is a legitimate story. You may not think it’s legit given the presence of the word “vacation” in the Obama economy, a term that applies only to the Obama family.
7. ‘It’s a piece of American history’
After graduating Grantham University with an MBA, Jim Zingg decided to reward himself with a C7 Corvette, which he named Lailani. When he was stationed in Germany for work, he decided to bring his Corvette with him to Europe so he could travel around with a piece of American history. “I’ve always liked Corvettes. My high school buddies own a couple and I was at a place in my life where I wanted one. I searched for almost two years to find the perfect one,” the 41-year-old said. “They have the best of both worlds — style and beauty.”
8. It’s a social experience
At 12, Eddie Hicks would see his friend’s uncle, Harry, drive around town in a Corvette, a new model every two years. “Everyone in town would wait with anticipation to see what the next one was like,” he said. It was his lifelong dream to own a car like Uncle Harry’s. Upon retirement, Hicks, 71, finally got a red 2013 coupe. “I drive it around town, a much bigger town. I can see people pointing and talking about my Corvette and I wonder if they are pointing at me, like Uncle Harry, and saying ‘One of these days I am going to get me one of those,’” he said. “All sports cars look good, but a Corvette is truly ‘America’s sports car.’ The history, the clubs, the events and most importantly just the fun of driving it,” Hicks said.
9. It’s a car you can pass down for generations
Dave DiVito, 40, was introduced to his first Corvette when he was 5 years old. His father took him to see a yellow one. From then on, he and his father worked on restoring, detailing and participating in Corvette shows with the Corvette club, forging a relationship and hobby between the two. He owns a 2004 Corvette Z06 Commemorative Edition now, and when he had his own two daughters he shared with them a passion for Corvettes. “They enjoy helping me wash the car. They pick out Corvettes when we are driving, and they have numerous Hot Wheels Corvettes and a Barbie Corvette,” he said. “The Chevrolet Corvette has been a part of the family for over 35 years. Keep on vettin!”
Today is the anniversary of the Rolling Stones’ first public performance, at the Marquee Club in London in 1962. They were known then as the “Rollin’ Stones,” and they had not recorded a song yet.
If you’re going to record just one song that gets on the charts, ending at number one would be preferable, whether in 1969, or in the year 2525:
Today in 1979 was one of the most bizarre moments in baseball history and/or radio station history:
Attorney Alexander “Sandie” Pendleton notes an anniversary yesterday:
July 10 is the 160th anniversary of the abolition of the death penalty in Wisconsin. This sets Wisconsin apart from other jurisdictions. Nationally, Wisconsin law has been completely without the death penalty longer than the laws of any other state. Wisconsin also has been without the death penalty longer than any European country (even longer than the Vatican).
It may be that Wisconsin has been without the death penalty longer than any jurisdiction that has the ability to impose the death penalty (or if there is such a jurisdiction, no one has yet identified that jurisdiction to me, since I first mentioned that possibility about 20 years ago).
The 160th anniversary is a remarkable achievement for Wisconsin and its residents, one worth at least commemorating, if not celebrating. Other jurisdictions that have had the death penalty, and have frequently used the death penalty, have gone through remarkably violent upheavals over the past 160 years (think Germany, Russia, China, or Mississippi, for example). In such jurisdictions, the rule of law has been ignored or broken down for extended periods of time, and violence has swept through those societies.
In contrast, Wisconsin through this period has managed to be “that City on a Hill,” a society remarkable for its mostly law-abiding residents, who resolve their disputes and differences not through mob violence, vigilantism or insurrection, but through a system and set of laws that does not include legally imposed death as a penalty.
I think Pendleton congratulates the state too much, but his column brings up an interesting point. The death penalty divides small-government conservatives from law-and-order conservatives. The latter believe in the death penalty as, among other things, a deterrent to crime. The former questions trusting government with someone’s life.
The current Legislature appears to lack a death penalty advocate as enthusiastic as former Republican state Sen. Alan Lasee, who introduced a death penalty bill in every session of the Legislature while he was in it. You may notice that Wisconsin still doesn’t have the death penalty. Gov. Tommy Thompson once said that he’d sign a death penalty bill if it got to his desk, but no death penalty bill ever got close to his desk.
Interest in the death penalty appears to grow every time there is a particularly infamous crime in this state — Jeffrey Dahmer, for instance. Frankly I’m surprised that I haven’t heard calls for the death penalty over the past 10 months, given what I got to cover in Argyle last September.
While obviously the executed commit no more crimes, the evidence that the existence of the death penalty deters crime in general is lacking. (The last time I checked, the states with the death penalty had higher crime rates than the states that did not have the death penalty.) The two main reasons to question the death penalty’s deterrent value are, first, the amount of time between conviction and execution, and second, the crimes to which the death penalty is applied.
During the 1992 presidential campaign, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton dramatically left the campaign trail to return to his state to sign the death warrant for Ricky Ray Rector, who was convicted for the murder of a police officer 11 years earlier. Two years before he ran for president, Texas Gov. George W. Bush signed the death warrant for Karla Faye Tucker, who was convicted for hacking two people to death in 1984. The appeals process being what it is not only reduces the deterrent value of a sentence being carried out a decade after the crime, but it also makes the death penalty more expensive than life imprisonment, given the usual lifespan of those convicted of capital crimes.
The obvious answer is to shrink the appeals process. That, however, should make libertarians queasy. Because the criminal justice system is run by human beings, mistakes are made. Some states have a long and inglorious history of convicting the wrong people, or convicting people based on their skin color instead of their actual guilt of the crime for which they were charged. The first proven case of wrongly executing someone for a crime they did not commit will be a bad day in whichever state that happens. Wrongly imprisoned people can be released. There is no way to undo an execution.
The death penalty’s lack of deterrence value is also the result of, ironically, its lack of application. Proponents of capital punishment usually want it applied only to the most heinous crimes — murder of children, or of law enforcement officers, or murder with what usually is called “special circumstances.” (Which means that three of the five murder trials I’ve covered in whole or in part would have been capital cases in most states with the death penalty. I think none of the convicted in those three cases considered the potential penalties for what they did. Criminals usually do not consider either crime or punishment when they commit crimes.)
The death penalty might have deterrent value if it were applied to crimes beyond murders. (Beyond various kinds of murder and acts causing death, the federal death penalty applies to espionage, treason, and “Mailing of injurious articles with intent to kill.” The Uniform Code of Military Justice has 14 capital offenses, four of which apply only during wartime.) Executing drug dealers might do wonders toward reducing drug use. Executing those who commit sexual assault will probably have a significant deterrent effect upon sexual assault. But there is that sticky concept of punishment fitting the crime.
(Truth be told, there may be more deterrent value to, for instance, someone being shot to death by police during the commission of a crime, or a Wisconsinite using his concealed-carry weapon to end a criminal’s career. That’s assuming criminals think rationally about the potential consequences of getting caught committing a crime.)
This is not a call for more lenient sentences. It may be true that too many people are currently in prison because states and the federal government have created crimes that should not be crimes, or sentences that are out of proportion for the crime. It seems to me true, however, that there are people who are not in prison who should be. (Multiple-offense drunk drivers, for instance.) There are people who are sentenced to an insufficient amount of time in prison. (The defendant in the case I wrote about here, for instance, will be eligible for parole in two years, when he will be 45. The deputy sheriff he killed died at 39.) And there are people who cannot be rehabilitated and should never be allowed back into society. (Ask people who find out that a registered sex offender is moving into their community how they feel about that.)
Since I lack a belief in the perfectibility of government or mankind, I don’t have trouble with the concept that human beings may not be able to administer an appropriate punishment for a heinous crime. (I suspect at least of the two convicted in the murder trials I’ve covered will be headed toward a legendarily hot place once they depart the Earth.) A sentence of life without parole is as serious a sentence as we can have while still leaving an avenue to correct errors, accidental or intentional, in convictions and sentences.
If you have the correct level of suspicion of government, and if you believe that government should largely stay out of our lives, you should not want government to have the literal power of life or death over anyone, even those who by moral standards deserve to die for what they’ve done.
Today in 1969, David Bowie launched “Space Oddity” …
… and the Rolling Stones released “Honky Tonk Woman”:
The number one song, alone, today in 1987:
So you think Barack Obama’s siccing the Internal Revenue Service on his political enemies is just a ripoff of Richard Nixon?
Incorrect. Turns out Nixon wasn’t even being original, reports author James Bovard:
Many Republicans are enraged over revelations in recent days that the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative nonprofit groups with a campaign of audits and harassment. But of all the troubles now dogging the Obama administration—including the Benghazi fiasco and the Justice Department’s snooping on the Associated Press—the IRS episode, however alarming, is also the least surprising. As David Burnham noted in “A Law Unto Itself: The IRS and the Abuse of Power” (1990), “In almost every administration since the IRS’s inception the information and power of the tax agency have been mobilized for explicitly political purposes.”
President Franklin Roosevelt used the IRS to harass newspaper publishers who were opposed to the New Deal, including William Randolph Hearst and Moses Annenberg, publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Roosevelt also dropped the IRS hammer on political rivals such as the populist firebrand Huey Long and radio agitator Father Coughlin, and prominent Republicans such as former Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon. Perhaps Roosevelt’s most pernicious tax skulduggery occurred in 1944. He spiked an IRS audit of illegal campaign contributions made by a government contractor to Congressman Lyndon Johnson, whose career might have been derailed if Texans had learned of the scandal. …
President John F. Kennedy raised the political exploitation of the IRS to an art form. Shortly after capturing the presidency, JFK denounced “the discordant voices of extremism” and derided people who distrust their leaders—President Obama didn’t invent that particular rhetorical line. Shortly thereafter, JFK signaled at a news conference that he expected the IRS to be vigilant in policing the tax-exempt status of questionable (read: conservative) organizations.
Within a few days of Kennedy’s remarks, the IRS launched the Ideological Organizations Audit Project. It targeted right-leaning groups, including the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade, the American Enterprise Institute and the Foundation for Economic Education. Kennedy also used the IRS to strong-arm companies into complying with “voluntary” price controls. Steel executives who defied the administration were singled out for audits. …
After Richard Nixon took office, his administration quickly created a Special Services Staff to mastermind what a memo called “all IRS activities involving ideological, militant, subversive, radical, and similar type organizations.” More than 10,000 individuals and groups were targeted because of their political activism or slant between 1969 and 1973, including Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling (a left-wing critic of the Vietnam War) and the far-right John Birch Society.
The IRS was also given Nixon’s enemies list to, in the words of White House counsel John Dean, “use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.”
The exposure of Nixon’s IRS abuses during congressional hearings in 1973 and 1974 profoundly weakened him during the uproar after the Watergate hotel break-in. The second article of his 1974 impeachment charged him with endeavoring to obtain from the IRS “confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposes not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.” Congress enacted legislation to severely restrict political contacts between the White House and the IRS. …
In 1995, the White House and the Democratic National Committee produced a 331-page report entitled “Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce” that attacked magazines, think tanks and other entities and individuals who had criticized President Clinton. In the subsequent years, many organizations mentioned in the White House report were hit by IRS audits. More than 20 conservative organizations—including the Heritage Foundation and the American Spectator magazine—and almost a dozen individual high-profile Clinton accusers, such as Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers, were audited.
The Landmark Legal Foundation sued the IRS in 1997 after being audited. Its brief quoted an IRS official who had explained at an IRS meeting in San Francisco that audit requests from members of Congress or their staff had been shredded and also suggested how future requests from Capitol Hill could be camouflaged. The IRS told the court that it could not find 114 key files relating to possible political manipulation of audits of tax-exempt organizations.
One potential bombshell of the Clinton era that went relatively unrecognized was an Associated Press report in 1999 that “officials in the Democratic White House and members of both parties in Congress have prompted hundreds of audits of political opponents in the 1990s,” including “personal demands for audits from members of Congress.” Audit requests from congressmen were marked “expedite” or “hot politically” and IRS officials were obliged to respond within 15 days. Permitting congressmen to secretly and effortlessly sic G-men on whomever they pleased epitomized official Washington’s contempt for average Americans and fair play. But because the abuse was bipartisan, there was little enthusiasm on Capitol Hill for an investigation.
The IRS has usually done an excellent job of stifling investigations of its practices. A 1991 survey of 800 IRS executives and managers by the nonprofit Josephson Institute of Ethics revealed that three out of four respondents felt entitled to deceive or lie when testifying before a congressional committee.
The agency also has a long history of seeking to intimidate congressional critics: In 1925, Internal Revenue Commissioner David Blair personally delivered a demand for $10 million in back taxes to Michigan’s Republican Sen. James Couzens—who had launched an investigation of the Bureau of Internal Revenue—as he stepped out of the Senate chamber. More recently, after Sen. Joe Montoya of New Mexico announced plans in 1972 to hold hearings on IRS abuses, the agency added his name to a list of tax protesters who were capable of violence against IRS agents.
The Chicago Tribune takes an editorial stand against an Illinois income tax bill:
Democratic lawmakers who approved that 67-percent income tax rate increase on their night of infamy, 1/11/11, stuck themselves with three awful problems. For which they’re plotting a solution that would suck additional billions of dollars into Springfield — and would aggravate the anti-business tax climate that has helped Illinois achieve America’s second-highest unemployment rate.
Their plan — as with the 2011 vote, every sponsor is a Democrat — would replace Illinois’ flat-rate income tax with a progressive schedule. As with federal taxes, higher-income families would pay at higher rates. The sales pitch is “fairness.”
To which you should look Democratic legislators in the eye and ask: So this isn’t about lifting even more money out of taxpayers’ pockets? You guarantee this would be revenue-neutral for Springfield?
But if you want an answer, wear good running shoes so you can chase your fleeing legislators. Because imposing a progressive tax rate scheme on this economically teetering state is all about lifting more money from Illinois employers — especially small business operators and farmers — and from other taxpayers too.
Think of this as the ruling party’s Tax-Hike Plan B. It’s a new shiny ball, intended to steal your focus from Tax-Hike Plan A. That’s the huge 2011 increase that was sold as temporary — scheduled to start rolling back after 2014 — but which has buried Democrats under their humiliating heap of broken promises.
I am shocked — shocked! — to see that tax increases don’t solve government finance problems. (See Doyle, James, and Wisconsin Legislature, 2009–10.)
• Democratic leaders made many promises during their 1/11/11 floor debate: Raising individual and corporate tax rates by 67 and 46 percent, respectively, would ease pension problems, close future budget deficits — and cover billions in overdue bills. “We are going to have our bills paid,” Senate President John Cullerton pledged. “It’s going to absolutely boost our economy and create jobs when we pay those people what they’re owed.” Oops. Instead, lawmakers have grabbed the new billions, raised spending every year, and the state still has $6.1 billion in unpaid bills — a total projected to reach $7.5 billion next month, and to approach $9 billion in November or December.
• Honest backers of that tax increase no longer pretend it hasn’t helped make Illinois’ jobless rate the nation’s second-highest. The nonpartisan Tax Foundation rates Illinois’ business tax climate as only 29th best in the U.S. Illinois’ total state and local tax burden ranks ninth highest and, owing to a delay in some census statistics, that miserable ranking doesn’t yet reflect the tax increase of 1/11/11.
• Some Democrats have plotted all along to make their temporary tax hike permanent. Others fear casting that vote and won’t be able to hide: Whether to extend the hike will be a huge issue in the campaign for governor.
At least their idea is now out there for debate. If their earlier ideas hadn’t left Illinois so devastated — $200 billion in debts and unfunded pension liabilities — we might be open to this one. But we are where we are: Our jobless rate is stubbornly high as our lawmakers stubbornly spend their way to re-election.
This as employers hire in other states, some of which are cutting taxes: A new budget from Ohio’s Republican legislature and governor, signed into law last Sunday, reduces personal income taxes by a total of 10 percent over three years.
Illinois’ insolvency, meaning the state still can’t pay bills as they come due, has prompted public officials and agencies to adopt some economies, even as their total spending rises. But citizens need to see much more of that before they even consider giving lawmakers a license to raise rates and drive away more jobs. …
We’re happy to engage in this debate, early and often. One request, though, to supporters of a progressive income tax: Be honest. Admit to voters that for all your talk of “fairness,” you came up with this plan because you want private-sector workers and companies paying much more into your public sector.
Recall that during this state’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign, the Democratic response to Republican candidate Scott Walker’s correct statements about the disastrous state of state finances was that (1) the multiple nine- and 10-digit deficits didn’t exist, and (2) taxes should be raised. The Tribune’s last sentence could have been written three years ago for Wisconsin.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 