I was one day old when the Rolling Stones released “Satisfaction”:
Four years later, the Beatles released “The Ballad of John and Yoko”:
The short list of birthdays today includes Roger Brown, who played saxophone for the Average White Band …
Luke Hilgemann of Americans for Prosperity–Wisconsin wonders what is so progressive about Wisconsin.
Many on the Wisconsin Left like to beam with pride about the state’s “Progressive past.” Such a stance would imply the state has been an unenviable pillar of progress for over one hundred years.
Hardly.
Would you call it “Progress” that Wisconsin has one of the highest tax burdens in the country?
Where is the “Progress” when even after Illinois raises its income taxes by 66% as it did in 2011, it still has a lower tax rate than most Wisconsinites pay?
How is “progress” five tax brackets designed to punish success?
Is it “Progress” when earning $30,000 annually makes you eligible for a tax rate of over 6 percent?
How is it “Progress” when for over the past one hundred years, state politicians in both parties have felt the best way to achieve competitiveness for Wisconsin was to carve out tax credits for favored industries or connected lobbyists?
In reality, there is little about Wisconsin’s progressive tax code which helps aide it in being competitive for the 21st Century economy. It has stiffened growth. It has let opportunity be wasted. It has sent jobs packing, kept jobs away from the Badger State and only added to “Brain Drain.”
Remind me once again, where all the promised “progress” in that progressive agenda went exactly? …
It always amazes me how quickly – and solely for political gain – many Wisconsin liberals and progressive jump on the policies of Gov. Scott Walker and the Legislature for everything economically wrong with the state, but never seem willing to turn the examination table on themselves. We’re still living under tax rates passed by Jim Doyle in a system that dates back to the days of “Fighting Bob” La Follette.
That can’t have an effect on things, could it?
A hundred years later, it blows the mind how this kind of thinking and these kinds of policy are somehow still labeled as “Progressive.” Frankly, it’s time to be honest and call it for what it truly is: Antiquated.
I would have used the word “wrongheaded” instead of “antiquated.” The fact something is old doesn’t necessarily make it wrong. (See Constitution, U.S.) But for a state with an economy between 20th and 25th among the states to have the fifth highest state and local taxes makes it obvious that the way the state has been doing things since possibly the beginning of the Progressive Era isn’t working.
There is a specific event of note today. See if you can find it in this list of today in …
350 A.D.: Nepotianus proclaims himself emperor of Rome, backed up by the parade of gladiators who accompany him into Rome.
1083: Henry IV of Germany storms Rome, capturing St. Peter’s Cathedral.
1326: The Treaty of Novgorod determines the borders between Russia and the portion of Finnmark known as Norway.
1509: Henry VIII married Catherine of Aragon, his first (but not last) wife.
1539: Hernando de Soto lands at Ucita, Fla., and claims Florida for Spain.
1540: Having taken a year to get there, de Soto is the first European to cross the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina — a trip that now takes about 11½ hours by car.
1621: The Dutch West India Company receives a charter for New Netherlands, known today as New York City.
1781: Jack Jouett, not Paul Revere, begins his midnight ride to warn Virginia Gov. Thomas Jefferson and legislature, not Boston, and Thomas Jefferson of an impending raid by British Gen. Banastre “Bloody Ban” Tarleton.
1800: President John Adams moves to Washington, D.C., and lives in a tavern, because the White House isn’t finished yet. Adams moved in later in 1800, only to move out after he lost the 1800 presidential election to Thomas Jefferson.
1804: Richard Cobden, British economist and statesman known as the Apostle of Free Trade, is born.
1808: Jefferson Davis, the only president of the Confederacy, is born.
1851: The New York Knickerbockers baseball team wears a straw hat, white shirt and long blue trousers — the first recognized baseball uniform. (Presumably previous teams wore clothes, but not uniform clothes.)
1861: Stephen A. Douglas, who defeated Abraham Lincoln for the U.S. Senate in 1858 after the Lincoln–Douglas debates, but was defeated for president by Lincoln in 1860, dies. (Here’s a historical what-if for you: Douglas, the Northern Democratic candidate for president, received just 12 electoral votes, finishing fourth. But what if Douglas had won, and then died three months after taking office, in the midst of tensions that led to the Civil War? The Civil War began before Douglas’ death, but one wonders if an insurrection wasn’t inevitable regardless of who was elected president, given that Southern Democrats bolted both Democratic conventions — the first one was adjourned after 57 ballots for the presidential nomination — and nominated their own candidate, Vice President John Breckinridge. The 1860 northern Democrats’ vice presidential candidate was Georgia Gov. Herschel Vespasian Johnson, chosen to balance the ticket.)
1864: On Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ 56th birthday, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee wins his last victory of the Civil War at the Battle of Cold Harbor, Va., where more than 6,000 Union soldiers were killed or wounded in one hour. (Perhaps that’s why June 3 is Confederate Memorial Day in Kentucky, Louisiana and Tennessee.) That same day, Ransom Eli Olds, who created the Oldsmobile car and REO truck (for which the rock group REO Speedwagon) was born.
1876: Harper’s Weekly publishes a front-page cartoon by Thomas Nast about Congress’ attempt to impeach President Ulysses Grant. Congress had just impeached Grant’s war secretary, William Belknap, despite the fact that Belknap resigned before the impeachment vote. Other Congressional attempts to impeach Grant focused around an accusation that Grant had used public funds for his 1872 reelection campaign, an accusation that foundered when the accuser was discovered to be an escapee from an insane asylum, and a complaint that Grant had been out of Washington an excessive number of times. (You cannot make these things up.) A century later, Richard Nixon was impeached in committee, an impeachment attempt was made against Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton was impeached, and impeachment attempts were made against George W. Bush.
1880: Alexander Graham Bell transmitted the first wireless phone message from the top of the Franklin School in Washington, D.C., on his new “photophone,” which transmits sound via light beams.
1881: A 55-year-old Japanese giant salamander, believed to have been the oldest amphibian, dies in a Dutch zoo.
1886: Charles Lwanga, a Catholic catechist, 11 other Catholic men and boys and nine Anglicans are burned alive by the orders of King Mwanga II of Uganda. Pope Paul VI canonized Lwanga and the other Catholics in 1964 and named June 3 the Feast Day of Charles Lwanga and Companions.
1888: Ernest Lawrence Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat” is published in the San Francisco Examiner.
1904: Charles Richard Drew, who pioneered blood plasma research, is born.
1906: Singer Josephine Baker is born.
1911: Actress Ellen Corby, Grandma of The Waltons, is born in Racine.
1925: Actor Tony Curtis is born, presumably not wearing women’s clothes.
1929: Producer Chuck Barris, creator of The Gong Show, is born. (If you’ve never heard of The Gong Show, or you think TV is bizarre now, watch this and this.)
1937: Edward VIII marries American Wallis Warfield Simpson. That same day, Negro Leagues baseball player Josh Gibson hits a 580-foot home run at Yankee Stadium.
1939: Steve Dalkowski, on whom the Nuke LaLoosh character in “Bull Durham” and the Steve Nebraska character in “The Scout,” is born. In an era before radar guns, the left-handed Dalkowski could regularly throw over 100 mph, but not necessarily over the plate, which is why Dalkowski never pitched in the majors. He did have the reported distinction of having the highest number of strikeouts and walks per nine innings of any pitcher in pro baseball history.
1940: While the German Luftwaffe bombs Paris, Allied forces exit Dunkirk, France, saving their troops but losing all their equipment.
1943: In Los Angeles, Navy sailors and Marines fight Latino youths in the Zoot Suit riots.
1944: Italians say “Arrivederci” as German forces exit Rome.
1946: Members of three iconic classic rock groups are born today — Ian Hunter of Mott the Hoople, bassist John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin, and drummer Michael Clarke of The Byrds.
1949: “Dragnet” premieres on radio in Los Angeles, the start of a franchise that included four TV series and two movies, and those are just the facts.
1954: Dan Hill, who foisted the horrifyingly bad “Sometimes When We Touch” on radio listeners, is born.
1957: Howard Cosell’s first TV show premieres. Complaints about Cosell begin approximately 12 seconds after the show begins.
1963: Pope John XXIII dies, taking one pope off St. Malachy’s list. (Four more have been taken off the list since then. Pope Francis is the last pope on Malachy’s list.)
1964: The Rolling Stones begin their first U.S. tour with Johnny Rivers and Bobby Goldsboro. (Putting the Stones and Goldsboro in the same concert would be like putting Korn and Michael Bolton in the same concert today.)
1965: Body-builder Suzan Kaminga, actor and singer Jeff Blumenkranz, actor Daniel Selby and Phish bass player Mike Gordon are born. American astronaut Edward White, having flown into space on Gemini 4 earlier in the day, makes the first U.S. spacewalk.
In a hospital room in Madison, a nun shoos the people watching the spacewalk out of the only room on the nursery floor with a TV, so that the new mother inside can get some rest before her constantly hungry newborn son wants to eat again.
1967: Anderson Cooper of CNN is born.
1969: The last, and arguably worst, episode of “Star Trek” airs on NBC.
1973: The Soviet supersonic jet era ends shortly after it begins when the Tupolev TU-144 crashes at an air show in Paris:
1980: Seven tornadoes hit the Grand Island, Neb., area, killing five, injuring 357 and causing $300 million in damages. A movie, “Night of the Twisters,” is made based on the tornado outbreak.
1989: Chinese troops kill hundreds of pro-democracy students in Beijing. The same day, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran dies.
1992: A newspaper geek celebrates his 27th birthday by buying half of the Tri-County Press in Cuba City.
1997: Dennis James, the host of TV’s first game show and TV’s first telethon, dies.
2001: Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” wins a record 12 Tony Awards. CBS-TV, which carries the Tony Awards, anticipates the big day for “Springtime for Hitler” by having Bialystock & Bloom (actually, Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick) emcee the awards. That same day, actor Anthony Quinn dies.
2009: “Kung Fu” actor David Carradine dies.
2011: Actor James Arness, brother of actor Peter Graves, dies on the same day that singer Andrew Gold, formerly Linda Ronstadt’s guitar player, dies.
And let me be the first to wish you a Happy Opium Suppression Movement Day.
What, you ask, was the number one song on this day in 1972? Your Lincoln dealer is glad you asked:
Birthdays today include Monty Python’s favorite saxophonist, Boots Randolph:
Curtis Mayfield:
Today in 1958, Alan Freed joined WABC radio in New York, one of the great 50,000-watt rock stations of the AM era.
Birthdays include Captain Beefheart, known to his parents as Del Simmons:
Charles Miller, flutist and saxophonist for War:
One of Gladys Knight’s Pips, William Guest:
An eclectic group of music anniversaries today:
1963: The number one song is Ray Baretto’s “El Watusi”:
1967: The Beatles release “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”:
1968: The number one song is Simon & Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson”:
With the new Star Trek movie out, Wired.com decided to create a list of what it considers underrated episodes of the original series of Star Trek.
I take issue at Wired’s definition of “underrated,” because several of these episodes are well thought of by Trek enthusiasts. I can name some overrated episodes. (Not third-season episodes, because nearly all of them sucked.) It may be that I feel these are overrated because they don’t fit my template of a great Star Trek episode. In order of appearance:
• “The Naked Time,” in which a disease is passed from crewman to crewman that makes each afflicted person overact. Actually, it forces to the surface their innermost emotions, which include Sulu’s inner desire to be D’Artagnan from “The Three Musketeers,” Spock to cry, and Kirk to feel like an emotionally abused lover.
• “This Side of Paradise,” where instead of crying, Spock illogically falls in love due to spores. (Spock’s love interest was Jill Ireland, so you probably should cut him some slack.)
• “City on the Edge of Forever,” the most award-winning episode in TOS. Around a planet with a time machine conveniently located, the overdosed McCoy jumps into the 1930s U.S., and Kirk and Spock have to find him, because McCoy inadvertently destroyed the Enterprise. That’s because of a long chain of events that begins with a social worker Kirk falls in love with, of course, upon arrival in the Great Depression.
• “Amok Time,” where we learn how Vulcan reproduction occurs. And Kirk dies. Sort of.
• “A Private Little War,” Gene Roddenberry’s (apparently obligatory) Vietnam War commentary.
• “The Omega Glory,” one of three episodes considered for the second pilot after NBC rejected the first pilot (more on that later), but asked for another. Think Red China vs. American Indians, complete with a garbled U.S. Constitution and burned-up U.S. flag. This would have been as bad a pilot as the other rejected second choice, “What Little Girls Are Made Of.”
Most of the aforementioned episodes have characters going far out of character. (Though not as much as the arguably worst episode, “Turnabout Intruder,” shown on my fourth birthday, in which Kirk and a woman trade bodies. That was the last episode of the original series.)
Similar to Looney Tunes (“Hair-Raising Hare” and “Operation: Rabbit”), I have favorites 1A and 1B. My favorite episodes in order of appearance:
• “The Corbomite Maneuver,” the first episode filmed, though the 10th shown. It feels like a pilot episode, and would have worked fine as one. It presents the theme that strange, even threatening-seeming, isn’t necessarily threatening. Ted Cassidy, previously Lurch on “The Addams Family,” was the voice of the scary Balok, while Clint Howard, Ron’s brother, was the actual Balok. (Bizarre trivia: The actor who plays the Most Interesting Man in the World in the Dos Equis commercials was an extra crewman.)
“The Menagerie,” how you use footage from your unused pilot …
… when you’re running behind in shooting and you’ve, well, run out of ready-t0-film scripts.
• “Balance of Terror,” favorite 1A. If this strikes you as a remake of the excellent World War II movie “The Enemy Below,” well, it probably is, along with another WWII sub movie, “Run Silent Run Deep.”
• “Arena,” featuring Kirk in a one-man battle against an opposing ship captain.
• “Tomorrow Is Yesterday,” where the Enterprise ends up in the late 1960s mistaken as a UFO. (Well, actually, the Enterprise would have been a UFO.)
• “Shore Leave,” where everyone’s dreams dangerously become reality. (For instance, a knight kills McCoy, Sulu is attacked by a samurai, two crewmen are shot at by a Japanese fighter, and Kirk runs into a nemesis and his ex-girlfriend. Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit and a tiger are also included.)
• “A Taste of Armageddon,” where Kirk stops a war between two planets by blowing up one’s computers.
• “Devil in the Dark,” in which Kirk and Spock chase, but don’t kill, a creature killing other humans. (Honestly, it looks like a giant lasagna to me.)
• “The Alternative Factor,” where the Enterprise encounters a being fighting the alternative-universe version of himself. (Based on some online comments, I may be the only person who actually likes this episode.)
• “Mirror, Mirror,” in which Kirk and his landing party accidentally end up in a mirror, and evil, universe.
• “The Doomsday Machine,” favorite 1B. Inspired by “Moby Dick” and “The Caine Mutiny.” Great tension, great conflict, and great music (used in several of my favorite second-season episodes).
• “Journey to Babel,” where we meet Spock’s parents.
• “Obsession,” where Kirk chases a poisonous cloud-appearing life form that killed his former captain, whose son is one of Kirk’s officers.
• “The Trouble with Tribbles,” which has a brilliant premise — Kirk could end up losing his command over an invasion of fuzzy, purring creatures that reproduce every 12 hours. And there be Klingons, which are allergic to tribbles.
• “The Immunity Syndrome,” where the Enterprise gets sucked into a giant planet-destroying single-celled life form.
• “Patterns of Force,” one of a series of episodes where the Enterprise visits Earth-like planets with Earth-like cultures — the Roman Empire from the 1960s, the gangster era, and, here, Nazi Germany. I think this one works the best of the three, largely because of Kirk and Spock, though to watch Kirk try to drive in “A Piece of the Action” is funny.
• “The Ultimate Computer,” where a great Starfleet idea to see if the Enterprise could be completely controlled by computer goes horribly wrong.
• “The Enterprise Incident,” a retelling of the U.S.S. Pueblo incident in 1968, but with a happy ending. Also the most spy-like episode of the series, and one of the few third-season episodes that is actually watchable.
Each of these episodes succeed because of their action and drama and their writing. The dialogue among characters is classic in every episode in this list. (In “A Taste of Armageddon,” Spock disables a bad guy by walking up to him and saying, “Sir, there is a multilegged creature crawling on your shoulder,” before giving him the Vulcan nerve pinch.)
We started and ended with jazz yesterday, so it’s worth noting that today is the anniversary of the release of the first jazz record, “Darktown Strutters Ball”:
The number eight single today in 1969 …
… the same day John Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded …
If I were a state legislator, I would certainly vote for the income tax cut plan introduced by Rep. Dale Kooyenga (R–Brookfield).
That sounds like faint praise, but there doesn’t seem anything wrong with Kooyenga’s plan besides the fact that the tax cuts are too small. Politics is the art of the possible, after all.
The MacIver Institute describes it in nicely graphic terms:
Paid for in part by …
In a previous interview with the MacIver News Service, Kooyenga said little used tax credits should be removed from the tax code. The refundable credits that Kooyenga eliminates in his plan include the Dairy Manufacturing Tax Credit, the Meat Processing Investment Tax Credit, the Film Production Tax Credit, and others.
The Representative deletes the Jobs Credit from the tax code as well, which some say was a way that government would pick winners and losers. The Jobs Credit provides a wage subsidy to employers of up to 10 percent and a subsidy for certain employee training expenses for new hires. By deleting the credit, expenditures are projected to decrease by $1.75 million in 2014-15 and is expected to reduce annual expenditures by $7 million in 2015-16 and up to $17 million in 2021-22.
Kooyenga told the MacIver News Service that the Jobs Credit actually hurts businesses that made tough decisions and retained employees during the recession. He said businesses that fired employees and are now hiring them back would see a tax credit, which shows the unfairness in the Badger State’s tax code.
The non-refundable credits that would be deleted from the tax code include the Dairy and Livestock Investment Credit, the Post-Secondary Education Credit, the Ethanol and Biodiesel Fuel Pump Credit, the Water Consumption Credit, the Relocated Business Credit, the Community Development Finance Credit, and others.
Some of the credits that are repealed in Kooyenga’s plan have not been claimed for many years or have had very few claimants.
If I were a state legislator, I would certainly vote for the smaller income tax cut plan included in the 2013–15 state budget, if Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal were the only option besides keeping our taxes the fifth highest in the U.S.
If I were a state legislator, however, I would have introduced a far larger income tax cut plan. Remember that Gov. James Doyle increased taxes by $2.2 billion. Simply repealing Doyle’s tax increases would be worthwhile.
Another possibility would be to cut taxes by an equivalent amount, though different from the taxes Doyle increased. As I’ve written in this space before, the correct corporate income tax rate is zero. In the 2010–11 fiscal year the state collected $852.9 million, which is just 6.6 percent of total state General Purpose Revenues. So the state could cut that much by eliminating corporate income taxes (for one thing: no taxes, no tax breaks), and use the remaining $1.3 billion or so as investor-friendly income tax cuts, which would be nearly twice the size of Kooyenga’s proposed tax cut.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that wealthy taxpayers would see the largest tax cuts. Independent of whether Wisconsin actually has wealthy people (not really, with about 10 exceptions), the fact is that wealthy people pay the lion’s share of state taxes — specifically, the top 10 percent in income pay half of state income taxes. It is impossible to give tax cuts to people with zero net tax liability. The purpose of taxes is to raise funds for government operations, not redistribute income.
There are inevitably claims that tax cuts produce deficits. That is only the case if the tax cut isn’t accompanied by spending cuts. (Although the increased economic activity from people having more money means that tax cuts produce more tax revenue, and the decreased economic activity from tax increases means that tax increases fail to produce expected revenue.)
It isn’t within the province of a state budget, but as I’ve also previously written here, passing tax cuts is not enough, since future editions of the Legislature can undo them. (As the 2009–10 Legislature, which passed Doyle’s tax increase, demonstrated. How the voters felt about that was demonstrated by the fact that the Legislature has been controlled by Republicans since the 2010 election.) This state continues to need permanent (as in constitutional) limits on spending and required voter approval for tax increases. Without them, state and local governments spend twice what they would have spent had their spending increases been limited to population growth plus inflation since the late 1970s. And since the late 1970s, this state trails the national average in per capita personal income growth.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 