The argument for free enterprise is won at “free”. And the thing that enterprise must be liberated from is, of course, government.
When people are free (from government) to produce, own, exchange, store, transport, invest, save, buy, sell, invent, work, and consume in any manner they see fit, the most possible prosperity is delivered to the widest possible number of people in the shortest possible time. This is the lesson that economic history teaches to those who will observe and learn.
And it is not difficult to understand why it is so – 310 million distributed brains focused on rational self-interest have a higher aggregated IQ than do a few dozen civil-service central planners whose priorities are more time off and early pension. …
As much as it might like to, the socialists’ evil nemesis Walmart can’t raise prices on a whim – not because there is a government, but because there is a Target. Meanwhile, the sugar cartel can charge three times world market price because of U.S. government protection. …
In fact, most of the material things that we find indispensable to modern living were unavailable to all but the last seven or less generations of humans. Why? What happened to suddenly turn the fight for survival into the pursuit of happiness?
America happened, with its free enterprise system and its Constitutionally-limited government. For the first time in history, people owned themselves and the fruits of their labors. They kept what they produced instead of turning it over to a king, priest, dictator, warlord, tribal chief, colonial governor, general, emperor, commissar, or entire village.
People who can keep the surplus they produce, produce in surplus; those who can’t, don’t. The word economists use to describe this phenomenon is “duh”.
And America would not have happened but for two other seminal events – the Protestant Reformation and the invention of the printing press. Religious freedom and freedom of speech were the necessary precursors for the establishment of political and economic freedom. More freedom is good, less freedom is bad and yes, it is really that simple. …
Free enterprise has raised the average manufacturing wage in China from 58 cents per hour in 2000 to nearly $6 per hour today. Let’s connect the dots for the UW grads: government lets go of the rope, 43 million new businesses are formed, the economy is 70% liberated, and wages go up 10-fold in a decade. Get it?
Meanwhile, our government is tying us up with more rope, business start-ups have slowed to a trickle, government takes a bigger share of GDP each year, and wages (measured in tangible value, like ounces of gold) have plummeted over the last decade. The Chinese are not kicking our butts; we are sitting on their foot. …
Free enterprise doesn’t care who wins and by how much. It lets each of us discover how high is up for us. And when our enterprise is free from government, most of us discover that up is a lot higher than we could have ever possibly imagined.
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Barack Obama understands none of this, of course.No comments on The “free” in “free enterprise”
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The number one song today in 1965:
Three years later, the singer of the number one song in Britain announced …
Today in 1976, Chicago released what would become its first number one single:
Darrell “Dash” Crofts, the latter half of Seals and Crofts …
… was born one year before David Crosby of the Byrds and Crosby Stills Nash (and occasionally Young):
Tim Bogert of Vanilla Fudge:
Today in 1992, Tony Williams, the first singer of the Platters, died:
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I’d first like to thank Mitt Romney for publicly proving me wrong.
Some time ago on Wisconsin Public Radio, I said I didn’t think any Wisconsinite — Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, Ron Johnson or anyone else — would be Romney’s vice presidential candidate. Wisconsinites (at least a majority thereof who vote) have gone for Democrats for the White House since Michael Dukakis in 1988.
Even though Ryan has been successful in what used to be considered a swing district (as recently as the 1990s Ryan’s First Congressional District was represented by Democrats Les Aspin and Peter Barca), it seemed, and seems, unlikely that adding Ryan to the Republican ticket would put Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes in Romney’s column. There therefore seemed little value to adding Ryan to the presidential ticket.
In my lifetime, the only vice presidential choice that could be argued to have made a difference among voters was Dick Cheney in 2000. Cheney provided the gravitas that George W. Bush seemed to lack, which may have swung undecided voters toward Bush. John McCain’s 2008 selection of Sarah Palin generated enthusiasm among Republicans, but McCain wasn’t going to beat Barack Obama anyway. Walter Mondale’s 1984 selection of Geraldine Ferraro briefly generated enthusiasm among Democrats, but it’s hard to see how picking Ferraro improved what turned out to be a 49-state juggernaut. Ronald Reagan’s 1980 selection of George Bush, his main primary rival, served to unify the GOP, but given what the economy was doing, Jimmy Carter would have lost (and deserved to lose) to nearly any candidate not named Carter.
The Ryan pick means the Republicans are going all-in on Ryan’s economic plan, which mere existence shows that the Republicans are serious about the deficit, the debt and entitlement reform, unlike the Obama administration. It also helps reinforce the GOP’s stance on the poor state of the economy, as in …
… and making the case that the deficit is a cause of the bad economy, not merely a result of it. Voters will not be able to argue that they don’t have a choice, because Romney–Ryan represents doing things differently from how they have done since Jan. 20, 2009.
(Obama and his parrots argue that we tried the Romney–Ryan approach in the 2000s. No, we didn’t. There was nothing approximating fiscal discipline — as in not spending more than you have — in the George W. Bush administration. There was no fiscal discipline in the Clinton administration either; the “surplus” — which was actually from counting more revenue than should be counted, in their case the Social Security surpluses of the day — was the result of the economy, not of policy.)
This pick might also prove that a sea change in Wisconsin’s politics really has taken place. Until Scott Walker became governor Wisconsin’s contribution to national politics was on the left side — the Progressive Era, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and Earth Day, to name three.
But in the 2010 election, the party of the governor, state treasurer, one U.S. Senate seat, two House of Representatives and both houses of the Legislature all switched. The (illegitimate) state Senate recalls flipped the Senate back to the Democrats until Nov. 6, when control is likely to revert back to the GOP. Walker is arguably the best known governor in the U.S. now, and other governors are following Walker’s lead on putting public employee unions in their proper place. Wisconsin has brought welfare reform (Tommy Thompson), government and fiscal reform (Walker) and fiscal and entitlement reform (Ryan) to the political debate, and that has to make Democrats grind their molars into dust in disgust.
The Republican Party has always claimed the mantle of fiscal responsibility, often in theory more than practice. Maybe the GOP is finally living up to its own words.
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Boston University economist Lawrence Kotlikoff and columnist Scott Burns, authors of The Clash of Generations (as reported by Bloomberg):
Republicans and Democrats spent last summer battling how best to save $2.1 trillion over the next decade. They are spending this summer battling how best to not save $2.1 trillion over the next decade.
In the course of that year, the U.S. government’s fiscal gap — the true measure of the nation’s indebtedness — rose by $11 trillion.
The fiscal gap is the present value difference between projected future spending and revenue. It captures all government liabilities, whether they are official obligations to service Treasury bonds or unofficial commitments, such as paying for food stamps or buying drones. …
The U.S. fiscal gap, calculated (by us) using the Congressional Budget Office’s realistic long-term budget forecast — the Alternative Fiscal Scenario — is now $222 trillion. Last year, it was $211 trillion. The $11 trillion difference — this year’s true federal deficit — is 10 times larger than the official deficit and roughly as large as the entire stock of official debt in public hands. …
When fully retired, 78 million baby boomers will collect, on average, more than 85 percent of per-capita gross domestic product ($40,000 in today’s dollars) in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. Each passing year brings these outlays one year closer, which raises their present value. …
The answer for the U.S. isn’t pretty. Closing the gap using taxes requires an immediate and permanent 64 percent increase in all federal taxes. Alternatively, the U.S. needs to cut, immediately and permanently, all federal purchases and transfer payments, including Social Security and Medicare benefits, by 40 percent. Or it can mix these terrible fiscal medicines with honey, namely radical fiscal reforms that make the economy much fairer and far stronger. What the government can’t do is pay its bills by spending more and taxing less. America’s children, whose futures are being rapidly destroyed, are smart enough to tell us this.
Two thoughts: (1) Perhaps the winners Nov. 6 will be the real losers. (2) Don’t bother making retirement plans. You won’t be able to.
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The number one song in Britain today in 1964 (a song brought back to popularity by the movie “Stripes”):
That same day, the Kinks hit the British charts for the first time with …
This was, of course, the number one song in the U.S. today in 1966:
That same day, the number one album in the U.K. was the Beatles’ “Revolver”:
That same day, the Supremes hit the charts for the first time by reminding listeners that …
Speaking of the Beatles: Today in 1971, John Lennon left on a jet plane from Heathrow Airport in London to New York, and never set foot in Britain again. (Despite Richard Nixon’s efforts to deport Lennon.)
Today in 1980, four masked burglars broke into the New York home of Todd Rundgren, tied him up, and stole audio equipment and paintings. According to reports, during the break-in one of them was humming …
The only birthday of note today is Dan Fogelberg:
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Today in 1968, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham played together for the first time when they rehearsed at a London studio. You know them as Led Zeppelin:
Today in 1972, this was the number one song in Britain, which is odd since school was indeed out at the time:
(That, by the way, is a song that will be played as long as school exists.)
These are not rock music birthdays, but since country music is one of the fathers of rock, I’ll note that Buck Owens and Porter Wagoner are celebrating birthdays today.
Today’s first birthday is the writer of “Hit the Road Jack,” Percy Mayfield:
Cliff Fish of one-hit-wonder Paperlace:
Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits:
Jerry Speiser of Men at Work:
Roy Hay of Culture Club:
Today in 1985, Kyu Sakamoto died in a plane crash in Japan. He was the first Japanese artist to have a U.S.-number-one song, in 1963:
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We begin with a non-musical anniversary: On Aug. 11, 1919, Green Bay Press–Gazette sports editor George Calhoun and Indian Packing Co. employee Earl “Curly” Lambeau, a former Notre Dame football player, organized a pro football team that would be called the Green Bay Packers:
Today in 1964, the Beatles movie “A Hard Day’s Night” opened in New York:
Two years later, the Beatles opened their last American concert tour on the same day that John Lennon apologized for saying that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus. … Look, I wasn’t saying The Beatles are better than God or Jesus, I said ‘Beatles’ because it’s easy for me to talk about The Beatles. I could have said ‘TV’ or ‘Cinema’, ‘Motorcars’ or anything popular and would have got away with it…”
Today in 1976, the Who drummer Keith Moon collapsed and was hospitalized in Miami.
You might have the knack for music trivia if you can identify the number one today in 1979:
Today in 1984, President Reagan either forgot or ignored the dictum that one should always assume a microphone is open:
Birthdays start with Manfred Mann drummer Mike Hegg:
James Kale of the Guess Who …
… was born the same day as Denis Payton, one of the Dave Clark Five:
Joe Jackson:
Who is Richie Beau? You know him better as Richie Ramone:
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The second Big T1e2n football meeting between Wisconsin and Nebraska will be in Lincoln Sept. 29.
The Cornhuskers will be attired thusly for the game (from Omaha.com):
Their opponents, the Badgers, will wear these special uniforms:
The Madison.com story understates by beginning:
Say this about the “special” jerseys the University of Wisconsin football team will wear Sept. 29 for their prime-time game at Nebraska: They’re going to generate a reaction.
Indeed they will. My reaction is: They suck. Both sets.
To review from my previous writing on the Cardinal and White vs. the Scarlet and Cream: The first error here is that the Badgers are wearing the wrong shade of red. Cardinal is darker than the red shown here. (I blame Nebraska alumnus Barry Alvarez, although the red has been too bright since the Dave McClain days. Ironically, before coming to Wisconsin McClain coached the Ball State … Cardinals.)
This photo of the 2000 Rose Bowl shows the “road” team, Stanford, wearing the correct cardinal, not the “home” team, Wisconsin:
The only UW game in which the Badgers have successfully worn an alternate uniform (that is, worn it and won) was when UW was paying tribute to its 1959- and 1962-season Rose Bowl teams:
This is the correct shade of cardinal. Not what they are wearing now.
The issue is not with the helmet by itself. UW has worn white helmets for so long most people forget that the Badgers have worn red helmets in the past …
… most recently in 1969 (the back-row far right helmet). That was the season UW’s 23-game losing streak ended. (That 23-game losing streak, during the reign of error of coach John Coatta, who changed the helmets from white to red, is probably why they were switched back to red by his replacement, John Jardine.) During the 1950s the Badgers wore both red and white helmets (the back-row left pair).
You’ll notice, however, that in the two schools’ colors, cardinal and white and scarlet and cream, that the word “black” is nowhere to be seen. I don’t consider outlining numbers or logos in black to make them stand out to be an unnecessary use of black. I do consider a black helmet (and facemask) and a black logo to be an unnecessary addition of black. So are black socks.
This is also a lazy design on Adidas’ part. The W is supposed to remind you of the 1960 and 1963 Rose Bowl teams (both of which, by the way, lost). The Badgers’ Motion W would be more appropriate, but neither the N nor the W belongs on the front at that size. These are football jerseys designed like hockey jerseys, particularly with the red shoulders on UW’s uniform.
I already designed road uniforms for the Badgers, with choice of white …
… or cardinal helmet …
… that (1) are the correct color red, (2) use the correct Badger font (which you see on their basketball uniforms), (3) clean up some issues with UW’s current look (namely the jersey stripes, which look slapped-on) and (4) look neither as hopelessly old-fashioned and cheap as Penn State’s football uniforms nor look thoughtlessly futuristic.
Some argue that out-there uniform designs are designed to appeal to current and prospective future student–athletes, which means that 17-year-olds are choosing their college education based on a 17-year-old’s sense of aesthetics. (Insert acerbic comment about shallowness of today’s youth here.) Others argue uniform design is based on the marketers’ determination of what will sell.
As far as I’m concerned, these two criteria should be the only consideration: (1) how does it look on video, and (2) will the sports media be able to read the players’ numbers and letters. If the uniform doesn’t match criterion 2, then it is, to quote today’s vernacular, an epic fail.
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From a Dan Patrick Show interview with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell:
On the possibility of American football becoming an Olympic sport:
“Absolutely. We’re already taking steps to gain that IOC recognition. We have, I think it’s 64 countries that are playing American football now, and that’s one of the requirements. And that’s been growing dramatically. I think it was 40 just five years ago, so we’re seeing that kind of growth internationally. It’s being played around the world. We have a national federation under USA Football Federation, and those are the types of things you have to do to become an Olympic sport.”
On if there’s a timeline in place for that:
“No, again, those decisions are made by the IOC. They look at how the game is being played around the globe, and we’re trying to make sure we continue to broaden the scope of our game, and if they give us the opportunity we certainly would push for it.”
I assume Goodell is correct in his assertion that 64 countries are playing American football. The number of countries playing American football as well as the U.S. is likely to be 63 fewer than that. Only one country, Canada, could touch the U.S. in an international game, and of course Canada plays under different rules.
The history of Olympic baseball (demonstration sport in 1984 and 1988, played in the next five Olympics, now gone) and softball (four Olympics, now gone) are cautionary tales for American football. There is an International Federation of American Football with 62 member nations,
While football has had players from Argentina, Australia (former UW kicker Pat O’Dea, the “Kangaroo Kicker”), Austria, the Bahamas, Barbados, Britain, Cameroon, Canada (former Packer punter Jon Ryan), Colombia, the Congo, Cuba, (the late) Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Estonia, Fiji, Finland, France, Germany (former Packer John Jurkovic), Ghana, Greece, Haiti, Honduras, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica (former Packer safety Atari Bigby and Super Bowl XXXI defensive end Sean Jones), Japan, Lebanon, Liberia (former Packer defensive back Bhawoh Jue), Macedonia, the Marshall Islands, Mexico (former Packer kicker Max Zendejas), the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria (former Packer running back Samkon Gado), Norway (former Packer Jan Stenerud and Knute Rockne), Panama, Paraguay, Poland (former Badger Jason Maniecki and former Packer Chester Marcol), Russia (former Badger Charles “Buckets” Goldenberg, credited as the creator of the draw play), Saint Kitts and Nevis (former Badger defensive lineman Erasmus James), El Salvador, Samoa, Sierra Leone (former Badger defensive back B.J. Tucker), South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Tonga (former Packer kick returner Vai Sikahema), Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda and the Ukraine, that doesn’t mean any of those countries could beat a U.S. football team.
Consider also the fact that the Olympics takes place over 17 days, and football games are usually placed once per week. That leaves three rounds of games, which means a maximum of eight games — four the first weekend, two the next, and then the gold-medal (and perhaps bronze-medal) games. How would you find eight countries, even if you counted Puerto Rico as a country (which the Olympics does and the U.S. doesn’t)? And of those eight, at least three have to be at least somewhat competitive with the U.S. Otherwise, the games could end up looking like Stockbridge(enrollment 68) against Stevens Point (enrollment 2,251).
It would also be helpful if the U.S. would host a summer Olympics, which isn’t in the cards until 2024 at the earliest. (The 2020 Olympics will be held in Tokyo, Istanbul or Madrid.)
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Today, this would be the sort of thing to embellish a band’s image. Not so in 1959, when four members of The Platters were arrested on drug and prostitution charges following a concert in Cincinnati when they were discovered with four women (three of them white) in what was reported as “various stages of undress.” Despite the fact that none of the Platters were convicted of anything, the Platters (who were all black) were removed from several radio stations’ playlists.
Speaking of odd music anniversaries: Today in 1985, Michael Jackson purchased the entire Beatles music library for more than $45 million.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 