The number one British single today in 1962 was based on Peter Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite”:
The number one single today in 1964:
The number one album today in 1970 was Crosby Stills Nash & Young’s “Déjà Vu”:
Think the “Super Bowl Shuffle” created the singing jocks genre of music? Then you haven’t heard the number one British single today in 1970:
Contrary to what my headline says, there is more than one dirty little secret of the recall of Gov. Scott Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch.
The two words you are unlikely to hear between now and June 5 out of the mouth of Tom Barrett is the words “collective bargaining.” We know that is what the recall is about, not job numbers, not state finances, not what Walker told one of his contributors (who happens to be a significant employer in the state), not the alleged “war on women,” not anything else. Anyone who says otherwise is … being disingenuous.
John Torinus lets us in on the other dirty little secret:
The impact of the election on Act 10 may be larger in the minds of some voters than political realities portend.
That is true even if the Democrats take back the state Senate and the governorship, because it takes a majority in both houses and the governor’s pen to make or reverse a law.
And, whatever happens on June 5, Jeff Fitzgerald will still be speaker of the assembly. He won’t be speaker after January 2013, because he is giving up his assembly seat to run for the U.S. Senate, but he will be speaker until then.
While he and the Republicans control that body, there is no way they are ever going to agree to undo the key elements of Act 10, especially the limits on collective bargaining at the state and local levels.
Further, with a 20-seat margin going into the fall elections, it is highly unlikely that the Democrats will regain control of that chamber in this cycle. The coattails of Barack Obama may or may not be long in November, but they need to take away 10 more seats. That’s a very tall order, especially since the GOP-controlled legislature wrote the district maps to their advantage.
Nor will there be another recall that involves the assembly. That house is mostly immune to recall, because the seats are only for two-year terms, and members must be in office for at least a year before recall process can start. Unions and Democrats could launch a recall of Republican assemblymen in 2014, but why do that when they are up for reelection in November 2014 anyway?
Thus, Act 10 looks to be around until at least January 2015, the earliest a Democratic majority could take over the Assembly.
Meanwhile, the savings from the escape from collective bargaining continue to mount. They have been estimated at more than $1 billion already in the 3000-plus units of local government. As that total climbs, and it will climb, the electorate will become more interested in its durability. …
In summary, a stampede has been unleashed in the management of public employee plans, mostly with no harm done to the quality of health care. Indeed, the argument can be made that the new model delivers better health care.
Could these massive savings and fundamental change in benefit management been accomplished with collective bargaining been in place? Highly unlikely. Change-resistant unions give ground only slowly.
So, whether Gov. Scott Walker survives his recall, or whether the state senate, now in a dead tie at 16-16, flips to the Democrats, Act 10 is going to get a chance to prove itself for at least more three years.
Torinus claims municipalities are only in the second of four rounds of cost savings in employee benefits. After forcing public employees to pay more for their benefits, and bidding out health insurance, school districts now will be switching to consumer-driven health plans, featuring high deductibles tied to health savings accounts, he predicts. Larger school districts may even follow large employers and set up their own on-site health clinics.
The other reason why the Act 10 reforms may be in place even beyond 2015 is that the reforms have allowed municipalities and their governing bodies to reestablish balance between management and labor. (In other words, as with nonunion employers, for which most Wisconsin taxpayers work.) Having been given authority over their employees’ employee benefits, I wonder how many city councils, village boards, town boards, school boards and those municipalities’ top administrators are going to want to give back that authority. In other words, whether or not Walker is recalled, Act 10 may not be recalled.
The number one British single today in 1959:
The number one album today in 1971 was Crosby Stills Nash & Young’s “4 Way Street”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPkGemZJXKg
Readers wondering how I introduced myself to my new readers at The Platteville Journal, head over to swnews4u.com … now that I’ve figured out how to post to swnews4u.com.
The number one British album today in 1983 (with the clock ticking on my high school days) was Spandau Ballet’s “True”:
The number one British album today in 2000 was Tom Jones’ “Reload,” which proved that Jones could sing about anything, and loudly:
The number one British single today in 1957 gave a name to a genre of music between country and rock (even though the song doesn’t sound like the genre):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRj8vwwsMgY
The number one single today in 1967:
The number one British album today in 1967 promised “More of the Monkees”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfuBREMXxts
(Interesting aside: “More of the Monkees” was one of only four albums to reach the British number one all year. The other three were the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the soundtrack to “The Sound of Music,” and “The Monkees.”)
The number one single today in 1958:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKn6h2x5IcY
Today in 1963, the producers of CBS-TV’s Ed Sullivan Shew told Bob Dylan he couldn’t perform his “Talking John Birch Society Blues” because it mocked the U.S. military.
So he didn’t. He walked out of rehearsals and didn’t appear on the show.
The number one album today in 1973 was Led Zeppelin’s “Houses of the Holy”:
Minnesota Vikings fans are breathing a sigh of relief, reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
After a grinding week of late nights and marathon floor sessions, the state Senate granted final approval to a new Minnesota Vikings stadium on the final day of the legislative session. …
The Senate approved the $975 million project on a vote of 36-30 amid cheers from Vikings fans in the gallery. The House gave final approval to the bill at 3:30 a.m., after the team agreed to kick in an extra $50 million.
Foes and supporters predicted Senate passage, although not without a bumpy ride. The plan to build a new stadium on the site of the Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis, with the state share funded by a huge expansion of bar-gambling, still has many critics.
But they don’t appear to have the support to stop the bill from reaching Gov. Mark Dayton, the stadium project’s most ardent supporter at the Capitol.
Amazing what the junction of sports teams threatening to leave and election years can accomplish, isn’t it? The project is supposed to be funded by electronic bingo and pull-tabs, and, should those revenue sources be insufficient, a 10-percent admissions tax on “stadium luxury seats” and a sports-themed lottery game.
The amazing thing is that Leif Ericson Field, or whatever it’s going to be called, will cost more than every stadium project in the Twin Cities since 1990 combined — the $412 million Target Field in St. Paul, the $303.4 million University of Minnesota TCF Bank Stadium, the $130 million Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. the $104 million Target Center in Minneapolis, and the $20 million University of Minnesota Mariucci Arena,
This will bring to an end the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, built on the cheap in the early 1980s because Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington was falling apart. (And was never really designed for major league sports anyway.) There is unquestioned convenience with not having to deal with the elements when at a game. The Metrodome was not a bad place to watch football. It was a horrible place to watch baseball, but the Twins won two World Series because they had an unparalleled home field advantage due to the noise a full Metrodome would generate.
Note that the Vikings have never been to a Super Bowl since they left the Met, but a generation of Vikings fans apparently believes it’s too cold to sit outside to watch Vikings games in December. Wisconsin, I think, will be fine with keeping Miller Park (100 percent fewer rainouts and snowouts than Target Field) and Lambeau Field.
If the Vikings think a new stadium will automatically mean more wins, though, recent history shows they’re mistaken. It obviously will mean more revenue for one of the lowest revenue franchises in the NFL, but that also means more revenue for the 31 other NFL teams. Being awash in money is no substitute for competent general managers and coaches, as the Dallas Cowboys can attest.
The other thing is that home field advantage appears to be fading in the NFL. Note that the Packers won Super Bowl XLV despite playing three road games. The Packers went 15–1 but lost in the playoffs to the Super Bowl XLVI winner, which won two road playoff games three years after winning a Super Bowl with, as with the 2010 Packers, no home playoff games.
I’ve heard coaches say their players concentrate on things better on the road, which is the opposite of what you might think given that home games feature a familiar floor and home cooking. It’s possible that the various stadium player accouterments have taken away some of the opponent road disadvantage. (No more cold showers in cramped locker rooms, for instance.) Travel certainly is not as onerous as it was in the days when players took trains or propeller planes to games. the fact the Packers haven’t won a home playoff game since Brett Favre was the quarterback might have prompted the ideas behind the Lambeau Field South End Zone renovation, one clear purpose of which is to increase the volume level inside the stadium.
With the domed Thor God of Thunder Stadium, the Vikings can no longer stand on their own sidelines, not even wearing gloves, and watch their opponents focus more on the cold than on the game. Vikings coach Bud Grant was a great coach, and the Vikings had some of the better players in the NFL in the ’70s, but the December home field advantage couldn’t have hurt.
The Packers will still have the oldest stadium in the NFL. The gap between Lambeau Field and the next oldest stadium will grow when the 49ers move out of Candlestick Park, built in 1960. Next oldest are the stadium originally known as the Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum and San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium, both housing teams rumored to be heading back to Los Angeles. The Packers demonstrate you don’t have to keep building stadiums if you do them right the first time, and remodel appropriately thereafter.
College and high school graduations will be taking place nationwide beginning this weekend. UW–Platteville’s commencements are Saturday, and Ripon College’s is Sunday.
I admit that I have no idea what any speaker said at my La Follette High School graduation in 1983 or my UW graduation in 1988. It may have been the echo in the UW Fieldhouse in the first case, or the speeches blowing in the wind in the latter (back when UW graduations were at Camp Randall Stadium).
I wrote a graduation speech several years ago that I’ve given once at a high school academic awards banquet. It got a standing ovation, either because of its brilliance or as recognition that I was finally done talking. It certainly had more words than the graduation speech inaccurately attributed to Kurt Vonnegut, the complete content of which is the last two words in this headline.
Charles Wheelan, who graduated from college the same year I did, wrote a graduation speech with interesting advice in the Wall Street Journal:
… the saccharine and over-optimistic words of the typical commencement address hold few of the lessons young people really need to hear about what lies ahead. Here, then, is what I wish someone had told the Class of 1988:
1. Your time in fraternity basements was well spent. The same goes for the time you spent playing intramural sports, working on the school newspaper or just hanging with friends. Research tells us that one of the most important causal factors associated with happiness and well-being is your meaningful connections with other human beings. Look around today. Certainly one benchmark of your postgraduation success should be how many of these people are still your close friends in 10 or 20 years.
2. Some of your worst days lie ahead.Graduation is a happy day. But my job is to tell you that if you are going to do anything worthwhile, you will face periods of grinding self-doubt and failure. Be prepared to work through them. …
3. Don’t make the world worse. I know that I’m supposed to tell you to aspire to great things. But I’m going to lower the bar here: Just don’t use your prodigious talents to mess things up. Too many smart people are doing that already. …
8. Don’t model your life after a circus animal. Performing animals do tricks because their trainers throw them peanuts or small fish for doing so. You should aspire to do better. You will be a friend, a parent, a coach, an employee—and so on. But only in your job will you be explicitly evaluated and rewarded for your performance. Don’t let your life decisions be distorted by the fact that your boss is the only one tossing you peanuts. If you leave a work task undone in order to meet a friend for dinner, then you are “shirking” your work. But it’s also true that if you cancel dinner to finish your work, then you are shirking your friendship. That’s just not how we usually think of it.
9. It’s all borrowed time. You shouldn’t take anything for granted, not even tomorrow. I offer you the “hit by a bus” rule. Would I regret spending my life this way if I were to get hit by a bus next week or next year? And the important corollary: Does this path lead to a life I will be happy with and proud of in 10 or 20 years if I don’t get hit by a bus.
10. Don’t try to be great. Being great involves luck and other circumstances beyond your control. The less you think about being great, the more likely it is to happen. And if it doesn’t, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being solid.
In a different vein, WTMJ radio’s Charlie Sykes has 11 rules, which include:
Rule 1: Life is not fair — get used to it!
Rule 2: The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself. …
Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. He doesn’t have tenure. …
Rule 6: If you screw up, it’s not your parents’ fault so don’t whine about your mistakes. Learn from them.
Rule 7: Before you were born your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way paying bills, cleaning your room, and listening to you tell them how idealistic you are. So before you save the rain forest from the blood-sucking parasites of your parents’ generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades, they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This, of course, bears not the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.
The problem, of course, with all this advice is that advice is wasted on those who aren’t listening to it. College graduates may think they know everything, but they don’t even know what they don’t know, to channel Donald Rumsfeld. (Similar to new newspaper editors after two days.)
The number one British single today in 1958 was a cover of a song written in 1923:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9FZeNOouMM
The number one British album today in 1963 was the Beatles’ “Please Please Me,” which was number one for 30 weeks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsgWfAilIEM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p41xLRmEPoY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQG8fGXQBYo
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 