Two anniversaries today in 1965: The Beatles’ “Beatles VI” reached number I, where it stayed for VI weeks …
… while the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” was their first number one single:
No comments on Presty the DJ for July 10
-
-
My appearance on Wisconsin Public Radio Friday might have set a record for use of the term “libertarian Republican,” at least within the Week in Review segment.
As far as I know, Gov. Scott Walker has never called himself a small-L libertarian, and he is certainly not a large-L Libertarian. (Nor was my counterpart.) So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Libertarians and libertarians have views about the 2013–15 state budget similar to, well, mine, as reported by the Wisconsin Reporter:
In the libertarian wing of the Republican Party, the $70 billion, two-year budget signed by Walker over the weekend is another example of big government getting bigger.
Todd Welch, state coordinator for Campaign for Liberty, a 501(c)(4) organization, and a member of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, ran off a laundry list of complaints with the Republican-crafted budget.
“This budget grows government spending $2 billion. It includes DNA collection at arrest — a policy item that shouldn’t even be in the budget. It exempts a balanced budget requirement, which Republicans implemented two years ago. It adds government employees,” Welch said in a phone interview Monday.
“If you could explain to me how it’s a conservative budget, I’d be all ears,” he said. …
The budget, however, increases overall spending $4 billion, or 6.2 percent, from the 2011-13 state budget, according to the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance. That includes a 1.5 percent jump in general fund spending next year, an increase of more than $200 million, and a 3.4 percent increase, or $500 million more the following year.
“The spending increases under the early (former Democratic Gov. Jim) Doyle budgets and the latest Walker budget aren’t radically dissimilar,” said Todd Berry, Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance. “The increases are 3 or a little more than 3 percent per year.”
However, Doyle’s more than $2 billion in tax hikes are still fodder for Republicans debating in the Legislature or pounding the pavement on the campaign trail. The near $1 billion in tax cuts in the Republican-led budget offer a stark contrast.
Still, libertarians look at spending as a better indicator of the size of government than the amount of tax cuts. Walker’s budget, for example, cuts taxes at the same time it increases borrowing. It also returns a structural deficit to the state’s books.
Rep. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, doesn’t label himself as a tea party or libertarian Republican, but he voted against the budget, in part due to the projected $545 million structural deficit. He also cited increased borrowing for his ‘no’ vote. …
Welch, who considers himself a libertarian-conservative in the vein of a Rand Paulor Mike Lee, and a number of other tea party types and libertarians, also decry a loss of constitutional protections embedded in Walker’s budget.
Leaders of more than 40 tea party groups sent a letter to Republican legislators asking for a removal of the DNA-at-arrest provision before the Assembly passed the budget. Several county-level members of the Republican Party urged Walker to veto the measure. The provision remained in the budget.
“I’m not going away from the Republican Party,” Welch said,” but I wouldn’t be opposed to someone running against (Walker) in a Republican primary.” …
Graul reminds naysayers the tax relief in this budget could not have happened without Walker’s leadership enacting structural reform in Act 10 and the choices made to fill a $3.6 billion hole in the previous budget.
“There’s no question this is a good budget to run on next fall,” he said.
Republicans, though, might have some company on the ballot, on what’s typically considered the right.
“There’s a real serious momentum of people who are ready to look outside the two-party system,” said Bob Burke, chairman of the Libertarian Party Pierce St. Croix. “I think at the very least we’ll mess up the election in ways they don’t see coming.” …
Burke says his party’s focus on civil liberties and coalition-building policies — such as ending the war on drugs — could help disrupt the 2014 elections, and libertarians could possibly pick up a seat or two. Political observers say that optimism may be a stretch.
Burke, who voted for Walker for governor twice, including in last year’s recall election, said he’s not sure he’ll vote for him a third time.
“We can clap our hands and say they do all these great things, but in essence the problem is it’s still too difficult to do business in Wisconsin,” he said. “The GOP has voted like Democrats, and we’re willing to let them back themselves into the wall.”
A couple thoughts come to mind, beginning with the simple reality that there is no way that Walker will lose the 2014 GOP primary. Someone may run against Walker, either seriously or as happened in the (illegitimate) recall primary election one year ago. That person will not win. Period.
If libertarians are upset to discover that Walker is a politician, they shouldn’t be. A politician’s goal is to (1) get into office and (2) stay in office. For a libertarian to say that a budget created by Republicans isn’t fiscally better than a budget created by Democrats is, well, foolish. Politics is, after all, the art of the possible.
I’ve argued before here that Wisconsin is a libertarian state on no issue other than alcohol. Instead of letting restaurant and bar owners decide whether or not to allow smoking in their premises, this state simply banned smoking in restaurants and bars, which, among other things, eliminated the competitive advantage the owners of smoke-free bars and restaurants had. You cannot be top five in the nation in state and local taxes and claim to be libertarian at all. You cannot have a state in which one of six workers work for government and even pretend to be remotely libertarian. In fact, our vaunted Progressive Era is as anti-libertarian — in fact, as anti-freedom — as possible short of being a communist. Get government out of people’s lives? That thud you heard was the Fighting Bob La Follette bust in my high school’s library falling over in disbelief.
Democrats and Republicans veer in a libertarian direction only when it is politically convenient for themselves. One of the pet libertarian issues, legalizing marijuana for at least medical use, has gotten exactly as far with a Democratic governor and Legislature as with a Republican governor and Legislature — nowhere. (That specific issue is one that politicians tend to bring up when they’re in the minority and tend to forget when they’re in the majority.)
As a conservatarian, I believe the Republican Party needs to embrace its inner libertarian. It is logically inconsistent to say (correctly) that government doesn’t belong in our wallets, but does belong in our bedrooms. I think the Republican Party is more libertarian than the Democratic Party when the GOP is cutting (not merely decreasing the increase in) government, because economic issues are far more important than personal-lifestyle issues. The Democratic Party, remember, is where nearly all of the Progressive Party went after the La Follettes pulled the plug after World War II.
What about the big-L Libertarians? The fact is that this state has never really had a successful third-party movement, including the Progressive Party. That’s because the Progressive Party, which split off from the Republican Party, essentially replaced the Democratic Party during its heyday in the 1930s. The Democratic Party didn’t resurge until the Progressives joined up.
The best way for libertarian principles to be enforced is not by electing libertarian candidates, but to require libertarian principles to be enforced. That means constitutional changes to require, among other things, a budget balanced on Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, and strict limits on year-to-year spending and tax increases at every level of government. If the state Constitution had limited spending increases to the rate of inflation plus population growth since 1977, according to the Tax Foundation, state and local governments would spend half what they spend now. The drug war is a chicken-or-egg story — the drug war has fueled government spending, but government spending has also fueled the drug war.
The thing, however, is that the Wisconsin GOP is unlikely to head in a more libertarian direction for the foreseeable future. That’s because what they’re doing now is working in the sense of a political party’s number one priority — getting its members elected and reelected. When all but two statewide elected officials (Secretary of State Douglas La Follette and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers) are Republicans, and when both houses of the Legislature are controlled by the GOP, you don’t mess with political success, until you stop having political success.
-
Time.com last week passed on valuable information for those interested in the Founding Fathers — how they talked:
alphabeted (adj.):arranged in alphabetical order. This is a prime example of a “verbed” noun that is more economical than spelling the whole thing out. Washington didn’t arrange ledgers in alphabetical order in 1771; he alphabeted them.blackguardism (n.):abusive or scurrilous language; swearing. Blackguard was shorthand for a villainous attendant or follower, so by extension bad language got this name. “The public,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1799, “wish to hear reason instead of disgusting blackguardism.”
Bloody Bones (n):a bogeyman or bugbear, especially invoked to frighten children. In some tales, Bloody Bones skulks in ponds, waiting to drown kiddies; he was often mentioned along with “Raw Head,” a scary skull-faced thing. TJ used the metaphor to talk about fellow politicos: “Hancock and the Adamses were the raw-head and bloody bones of Tories and traitors,” he wrote in 1817.
crapulous (adj.):characterized by gross excess in drinking or eating; intemperate, debauched. In the year that the U.S. Constitution came to be, Jefferson took time to write about other men’s “crapulous habits.” (We might reprise this today as a word meaning approximately “so bad, it’s good.”)
frowzy (adj.):ill-smelling, fusty, musty; having an unpleasant smell from being dirty, unwashed, ill-ventilated or the like. In all his various pursuits, Benjamin Franklin was bound to come across some frowzy — also frouzy — things. “It is the frouzy, corrupt air from animal substances,” he declared in 1773.
hatchet man (n.):a pioneer or axeman serving in a military unit. Back in Washington’s day, a hatchet man was exactly what it sounded like. Later, the term was used in the U.S. to refer to hired Chinese assassins. And today a hatchet man is typically a person employed to attack and destroy other people’s reputations.
huskanoy (v.):to subject someone to the ceremony, formerly in use among the Indians of Virginia, of preparing young men for the duties of manhood by means of solitary confinement and the use of narcotics. The real question, of course, is how such a thing ever fell out of practice. In 1788, Jefferson wrote that a man was “so much out of his element that he has the air of one huskanoyed.” …
milk-and-water (adj.):something feeble, insipid or mawkish. “I had heard him say that this constitution was a shilly shally thing of mere milk and water, which could not last,” Jefferson wrote in 1792. Shilly-shally means irresolute and undecided. Tomorrow, Americans will celebrate “him” being wrong on both accounts. …
red-heeled (adj.):wearing shoes with red heels, figuratively used to suggest foppishness or ostentatious display. In 1780, Franklin derided a “red-heeled” commissioner, who was presumably not wearing Christian Louboutin pumps.
Septemberize (v.):to murder for political reasons. “The warhawks talk of Septembrizing,” Jefferson wrote in 1798. The word comes from the French “Septemberists” who advocated the massacre of political prisoners that took place in Paris in September 1792.
tippling house (n.):a house where intoxicating liquor is sold and drunk; an ale house, a tavern. As far back as 1757, Washington was relating stories about “Instances of the villainous Behavior of those Tippling-House-keepers.” Villainous behavior notwithstanding, who would want to go drinking when you could go tippling instead?
I’m amused by this in part because, independent of the vocabulary, the less formal writings of the Founding Fathers strike me as similar to the Episcopal Church’s Rite 1 Mass. (Which has nothing to do with a “tippling house” except that, as the joke goes, where there are four Episcopalians, there’s a fifth. In a bottle, for those who don’t get the joke.) Rite 1 is the older, more formal form of Mass that dates back to the original Episcopal church Book of Common Prayer, published in 1789, and before that to the Church of England, to which more than half of the Founding Fathers belonged. (The Episcopal Church split off itself from the Church of England after independence. More presidents have been Episcopalians than members of any other religion, including, most recently, George H.W. Bush. The National Cathedral in Washington is Episcopalian.)
Many Episcopal churches that wouldn’t be caught dead using Rite 1 during the regular year (too traditional, you know) use that form of Mass during Lent, which is, after all, supposed to be a penitential season. And so when the priest says “The Lord be with you,” when the answer is usually “And also with you,” the Rite 1 answer is “And with thy spirit.” The preface to the Eucharistic Prayer begins with “It is right, and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere” in Rite 2, but “It is meet, right and our bounden duty” in Rite 1.
I have threatened to try to write a column or blog in Rite 1 English, although I don’t know where I’d go beyond the likely opening of “It is meet, right and our bounden duty to …” whatever I’m trying to advocate. Most readers probably would wonder what the hell I was trying to do.
-
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:
-
We start in chronological order with Victor Davis Hansen:
Next year could be a frightening one, in the fashion of 1979–80.
The developing circumstances of our withdrawal from Afghanistan conjure up Vietnam 1975, with all the refugees, reprisals, humiliation, and emboldened enemies on the horizon, though this time there is no coastline for a flotilla of boat people to launch from. The Obama administration is debating no-fly zones over Syria; more likely, it will have the same discussion over Afghanistan soon, once the Taliban drops the diplomatic veneer and comes back into town.
Because of the failure to negotiate a single residual base in Iraq, Iran has appropriated a vast air corridor to the Middle East. John Kerry speaks sonorously to Russia and China, but apparently assumes that diplomacy follows gentlemanly New England yacht protocols, the right of way given to the more sober, judicious, and pontificating.
When Obamacare comes on line full bore, I think the American people could be quite depressed over the strange things they encounter. The economy offers only marginal encouragement, given that unemployment is still high and growth low; printing money at a record pace is not sustainable. Only gas and oil production is encouraging — and that is despite, not because of, administration efforts.
The Snowden extradition affair in and of itself could be small potatoes, but it takes on enormous iconic importance when the Chinese and Russians feel no compunction about publicly snubbing the administration — with North Korea, Iran, and many in the Middle East watching and drawing the conclusion that there are no consequences to getting on the bad side of the United States. Or perhaps they no longer see a bad side at all and consider us complacent neutral observers. Red lines, deadlines, ultimatums, “make no mistake about it,” “let me be perfectly clear,” the Nobel Peace Prize — all that is the stuff of yesteryear, its currency depleted by the years of speaking quite loudly while carrying a tiny stick. …
We are back to the future, with the same old, same old sort of Carteresque engineered malaise.
Happily, the 1980 voters punted Jimmy Carter back to Plains, Ga. Ronald Reagan inherited a bad economy from Carter, as Barack Obama inherited a bad economy from George W. Bush. And there the stories diverge, as Investors Business Daily shows:
On Friday, the Labor Department announced that unemployment stayed at 7.6 percent in June. This is supposed to be good news. It’s not. Among other things, the U6 rate — unemployment plus underemployment — jumped from 13.7 percent to 14.3 percent.
With that unemployment report, Barack Obama became the first president in the history of unemployment measurements to have a national unemployment rate beyond 7.5 percent for 54 consecutive months. As an added bonus, if you want to call it that, only 47 percent of U.S. adults have full-time jobs. If you are an adult, and you have a full-time job, you are in the minority in this country.
The reason for the U6 jump ties not just to our Recovery In Name Only, but to the Obama administration’s announcement last week delaying for one year the employer-mandate provision of ObamaCare. Someone getting a federal paycheck must have noticed that businesses are not hiring — indeed, are cutting back their employees’ hours — because of their legitimate concerns of the negative effects of ObamaCare’s costs on their bottom lines. If the Obama administration thought things were going just fine economically, there would be no reason to delay the mandate; businesses would just have to suck it up.
And what of those providers of jobs? The U.S. Daily Review quotes William C. Dunkelberg, chief economist of the National Federation of Independent Business:
“Small firms are continuing to shrink as small employers in June reported an average gain of negative 0.09 workers per firm-essentially zero. We only have to look to Washington for reasons why our economy can’t seem to maintain steam and is on a painfully slow journey towards job creation. …
“Uncertainty about the health care law continues to have a negative impact on small business. Small employers are still trying to figure out what labor will cost and what firm size will have to comply with which rules. As long as Washington is continues to create rolling disasters- exemptions, special deals, delays, confusion, contradictory regulations, small businesses will not be ready to bet on their future by hiring lots of workers with uncertain cost.”
The other obvious ObamaCare issue is the fact that 2014 is a Congressional election year, and the White House appears to have deluded itself into believing it has a chance, despite history and economic reality, of capturing Democratic control of the House of Representatives. With the economy really in the tank in an election year, how likely is that?
Obama voters should be really, really proud of themselves.
-
From the Huffington Post:
Beer’s ingredients of yeast, hops and water make up its deliciously golden hue. But the one cost that makes beer hardest to swallow might just be the taxes on it.
When combining state, federal, excise and wholesale taxes, among others, around 45 percent of the cost of a beer is tax related, according to trade association The Beer Institute. State and Federal business taxes are among the most expensive, accounting for 36 cents of every dollar spent on beer.
When all those glasses, solo cups, cans and bottles of beer add up, the beer industry accounts for around $44 billion in tax revenue, with $10.8 billion of that being attributed just to the consumer, CNBC reports.
-
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:
-
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:
-
For some reason, online maps depicting things other than geographic features have become a popular online subject over the past few months.
Let’s start with the mother of all dialect maps:
The author of this monster divides Wisconsin into three dialectical groups — The North, North Inland and North Central. Click here for a selection of YouTube videos to bring sound to what we Wisconsinites supposedly sound like.
That may be a little dense for some readers. It’s easier to explain differences in language not only by how people pronounce words, but the words people use. That’s the idea behind these maps from North Carolina State University.
Our state’s most famous vocabulary divide is over water …
… followed closely by …
… pop vs. soda. However …
… would you believe this state is divided over pecan pie?
Here’s Steve Lovelace‘s map of the 50 states by their most prominent (according to him) corporation:
If you think about iconic brands, you could do much worse than Harley–Davidson.
Speaking of wheels, Jalopnik provides this map of the most-sold new car model:
If you think you see a lot of Ford F-150s, it’s not your imagination. (People who buy new cars often discover a lot of their own new car around. F-150 owners must be used to this by now.)
This map of Declan Cashin claims to pick a movie for each the 50 states:
Some of these are obvious — “The Blues Brothers” for Illinois, “Hoosiers” for Indiana, “The Wizard of Oz” for Kansas, “Forrest Gump” for Alabama, “Groundhog Day” for Pennsylvania, “Casino” for Nevada, and so on. (Washington’s “First Blood” was better than the other Rambo movies by an order of magnitude.) “Fargo,” despite its name, is a movie mostly set in Minnesota, not North Dakota.
What, however, is “American Movie”? The Internet Movie Database calls it a …
Documentary about an aspiring filmmaker’s attempts to finance his dream project by finally completing the low-budget horror film he abandoned years before.
This rings a bell in that I may have seen part of this on PBS. The movie’s website says (capital letters theirs):
It takes a village to make a movie, but when that village is Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin and not Hollywood, CA, the results are at times bizarre, comical, and very American. With the help of his mother, his 82-year old uncle, and local cast of hilarious and lovable characters, filmmaker Mark Borchardt fights his way through internal and external roadblocks to achieve his goal-to make his movie, his way.
Mark’s vision for his dream film is unlike most in independent filmmaking today. His inspiration comes from films as desarate as Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Seventh Seal, as well as his experiences growing up amidst the grey skies, rusty cars, and ranch houses of Milwaukee’s Northwest side.
AMERICAN MOVIE is the story of filmmaker Mark Borchardt, his mission, and his dream. Spanning over two years of intense struggle with his film, his family, financial decline, and spiritual crisis, AMERICAN MOVIE is a portrayal of ambition, obsession, excess, and one man’s quest for the American Dream.
My first thought is that I’m not sure why someone would want to chronicle his own “intense struggle” with “financial decline, and spiritual crisis.” My second thought is: This represents Wisconsin? Really? Pick one of these movies filmed in Wisconsin (yes, “American Movie” is on this list), or these movies set in Wisconsin.
Finally, here’s an interesting map, the Atlas of True Names, which has the English translations for our stew of American Indian, French and other place names.
It is ironic to be a native of Son of Combat Strength given Madison’s history of opposing “combat strength.” Fond du Lac likes to call itself “First on the Lake” instead of its more correct translation. As for Red River Land’s largest city, “Good Land” has, as you know, bad water every time the city spits out millions of “partially treated” storm water that the Deep Tunnel cannot handle. On the other hand, no more appropriate name has ever been created for Chicago.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 