Today in 1959, the four members of the Platters, who had been arrested in Cincinnati Aug. 10 on drug and prostitution charges, were acquitted.
Still, unlike perhaps today, the acquittal didn’t undo the damage the charges caused to the group’s career.
The number one single on both sides of the Atlantic today in 1964:
The number one single on both sides of the Atlantic today in 1966:
The number one British album today in 1983 was the first “Now That’s What I Call Music” compilation:
The short list of birthdays begins with Chad Stuart of Chad and Jeremy:
Ralph Tavares of Tavares:
Producer and one-hit-wonder Paul Hardcastle:
Two deaths of note: Sam Cooke, killed in a motel at 33 today in 1964 …
… and Otis Redding, Jimmy King, Ron Caldwell, Phalin Jones and Carl Cunningham of the Bar-Kays, whose plane crashed into Lake Monona in Madison the afternoon before their scheduled concert today in 1967, leaving trumpet player Ben Cauley as the lone survivor:
Sports Business Daily reports that the National Football League is in the process of renewing its over-the-air broadcast contracts with Fox (for NFC games, including most Packer games), CBS (for AFC games and games where the AFC team is the road team, such as Sunday’s Packer game) and NBC (for Sunday Night Football).
The league is close to renewing TV deals with all of its broadcast partners that will result in massive rights fee increases of more than 60 percent across the board, underscoring the unrivaled strength of NFL programming.
For the first time, each of the broadcast networks will pay an annual average of at least $1 billion for the rights to carry NFL games. The expected windfall from CBS, Fox and NBC will be worth more than a combined $24 billion over the next eight years. …
Combined with ESPN’s annual average of $1.8 billion a year for “Monday Night Football,” DirecTV’s out-of-market “Sunday Ticket” deal, the league’s planned Thursday night game package that it is preparing to shop, Sirius Satellite Radio, Westwood One radio and Verizon’s mobile deal, the NFL could wind up generating close to $7 billion annually in national media revenue starting in 2014. That represents a whopping 64 percent increase over the $4.28 billion that the NFL received from national media before the most recent round of renewals.
As part of the contracts, there is one innovation I’d like to see: the fans’ opportunity to choose their own announcers for the CBS and Fox broadcasts. The technology is available, because it’s been done well before now.
The first NFL-wide TV contract was with CBS in 1963; before then, CBS and NBC had contracts with individual teams after DuMont exited broadcast TV. (NBC briefly exited the NFL after it replaced ABC in covering the American Football League for the AFL’s final six years of existence.) Until 1963, the NFL only had a contract for the NFL championship, which led to the odd spectacle of CBS’ covering the NFL regular season, but NBC’s carrying the Packers’ first three appearances in the NFL title game.
When CBS took over NFL coverage (and remember this was well before computers or anything digital), CBS hired a set of announcers for each team. Packers fans (except in Green Bay and Milwaukee for home games, which were blacked out) watched Ray Scott and Hall of Fame halfback Tony Canadeo announce their team, while fans of the Packers’ opponent watched their own announcers call the same game. (For the rest of the country, CBS chose one of the two announcer teams. In one season, 1964, one team’s announcers called one half and the other’s announcers called the other half.) This was, remember, back in the days when none of what you watched had any computer contribution at all. (Video was sent by land line from the game site to CBS in New York to the individual stations.) The tech needed to send two different audio signals to TV stations was more complicated than it is in today’s era of the Second Audio Program and digital subchannels.
The advantage for viewers of specific teams is that that their announcers became more knowledgeable about their teams because, like the teams’ radio announcers, they watched them every week. Fans did not have to put up with name mispronunciations, inaccurate facts, or faulty analysis because, in the Packers’ case, Scott and Canadeo saw every play of every game.
(The list of ex-Packers or announcers with Green Bay or Wisconsin connections to have called Packer games is relatively small, compared to former Cowboys or Giants or 49ers. Besides Canadeo, the longest-serving ex-Packer announcer is Paul Hornung, who worked for CBS from 1975 to 1981, and did preseason games for several years afterward. Jerry Kramer worked for CBS in 1969. Bart Starr worked for CBS in 1973, including Super Bowl VIII, and 1974. Gary Bender was the Packers’ radio announcer before coming to CBS, where he worked NFL games from 1975 to 1981 and in 1986. Willie Davis worked for NBC from 1970 to 1975; his replacement for the next two seasons was his defensive linemate, Lionel Aldridge. Former Brewers announcer Merle Harmon called games for NBC from 1979 to 1983. Kevin Harlan, son of Bob — yes, that Bob — worked for NBC in 1991 and Fox from 1994 to 1997, and has worked for CBS since 1998. James Lofton called NBC games in 1997. Ron Pitts, a defensive back for the Packers in 1990 and the son of Packer running back Elijah Pitts, has called games for Fox since 1994. Bill Maas, who played nose tackle in 1993, called Fox games from 1998 to 2006. Sean Jones worked for Fox in 2001, and John Jurkovic worked for Fox in 2002 and 2003. Former Brewers TV announcer Matt Vasgersian worked for Fox from 2005 to 2009.)
CBS ended the team-announcer practice after the 1967 season. NBC never had team announcers while it carried AFL and AFC games, and neither has Fox since it began carrying the NFL in 1994. Since the Packers have been good for nearly 20 years, Packers games have been called by better announcers, usually Fox’s or CBS’ first or second announcer teams. (Fox’s lead team, Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, called the first six games of the Packers’ current 18-game winning streak; CBS’ lead team, Jim Nantz and Phil Simms, who called the Broncos–Packers game earlier this year, get Sunday’s Raiders–Packers game.) But Packer fans of the ’70s and ’80s teams (if that’s what you can call them) remember some truly awful CBS and NBC announcers assigned to cover, well, the Gory Years teams.
The nadir might have been during the 1994 season, Fox’s first on the NFL, when analyst Jerry Glanville said of a spectacular Brett Favre play that they were cheering in “Owosso.” (Glanville was Favre’s first coach before the Falcons traded Favre to Green Bay.) Harlan replied that he was a Wisconsin native, and he had no idea where “Owosso” was. (One state to the east, Jerry.)
This came to mind not because of Sunday’s Fox broadcast, but because of Saturday’s Fox broadcast — the Big Ten football championship game. Fox’s Gus Johnson is an acquired taste, to put it mildly …
… but I’m guessing Wisconsin Fox stations received complaints about Johnson and analyst Charles Davis for their apparent bias against Wisconsin, beyond mentioning the game-ending “Hail Sparty” play only about 4,966 times. (I write that as someone who doesn’t usually complain about announcer bias, and as someone who was once accused of bias against both teams I was covering that game.) Fox’s sideline reporter, former Minnesota coach Tim Brewster, was a case study of passive–aggressive behavior in the difference between how he talked about Michigan State vs. how he talked about Wisconsin. Fox host Kevin Frazier also said the UW Marching Band was directed by “Michael Leckron.” And how many times do Badger and Packer fans have to listen to “Wisconsin” with the emphasis on the first syllable (Bob Griese of ABC), and “Green Bay” pronounced as if it’s one word (ex-Packer Paul Hornung formerly of CBS, who should have known better)?
The alternative is to turn down the TV sound and listen to the radio, but that’s not an alternative in the digital age. Radio audio is several seconds ahead of TV video and audio (whether delivered over the air, by cable or satellite, or online), so you can’t really have a satisfying viewing experience mixing TV with either Matt Lepay and Mike Lucas or Wayne Larrivee and Larry McCarren.
These bigger TV contracts will mean increased costs to consumers. If you have cable TV or satellite, you’ll pay more. The networks will increase ad rates for their NFL advertisers, and since advertising is part of the cost of doing business, those advertisers’ products and services will cost more. So what added value can CBS and Fox provide their viewers for more expensive TV service and for more expensive products and services?
The answer is to give viewers their choice of announcers. It’s hard for fans to complain about bad announcers if they have more than one choice, particularly for announcers who follow one team all season.
The networks would have to hire more announcer teams, since CBS and Fox broadcast up to eight NFL games per weekend. (There are 16 games in all but the bye weeks; NBC does Sunday Night Football, ESPN does Monday Night Football, and the NFL Network does Thursday night games the second half of the season.) This would be less expensive than it seems, because most NFL announcers on CBS and Fox are part-timers, paid by the game.
Both networks already have some natural teams to which to assign their analysts. Fox could assign either ex-Cowboys Troy Aikman or Daryl Johnston to Dallas (or both, since they used to work together on Fox), former Viking assistant coach Brian Billick to Minnesota, ex-Buccaneer John Lynch to Tampa Bay, ex-Bear Tim Ryan to Chicago, and Jim Mora Jr. to either Atlanta or Seattle, since he coached the Falcons and Seahawks. CBS could assign ex-Charger Dan Fouts to San Diego, ex-Raider Rich Gannon to Oakland, Solomon Wilcots to either Cincinnati or Pittsburgh since he played for the Bengals and Steelers, ex-Bill Steve Tasker to Buffalo, and ex-Jaguar Steve Beuerlein to Jacksonville. Perhaps an announcer trade or two could be arranged to allow ex-Raven Tony Siragusa to call Ravens games for CBS, or ex-49er Randy Cross to call San Francisco games for Fox.
Assuming Larrivee couldn’t be persuaded to move to TV (and he has considerable TV experience with WGN-TV, ESPN and the Big Ten Network), the natural play-by-play guy for Packers games would be Harlan (who sounds nothing like his father; Bob had no explanation for Kevin’s voice when I once asked him), since he grew up in Green Bay. There is also a natural color commentator choice, someone who started doing college games this fall … Brett Favre. (He’s going to be announcing games for someone someday.)
Technology today makes this much simpler to do than in the 1960s, when CBS did it, or in the 1990s, when ESPN Plus had separate announcers for Big Ten games carried on over-the-air TV. For all the innovations TV’s seen over the past couple of decades — stereo sound, continuous score-and-time graphics, first-down lines superimposed on the field, HD video and now digital TV and subchannels — this seems like a natural next step. (And if Fox or CBS is interested in me, you know how to reach me.)
What are the Packers’ secrets? First, the personnel:
• Great players: All championship teams must have a few. Rodgers and Charles Woodson will be Hall of Famers. If they continue to perform at their current levels, Clay Matthews and B.J. Raji could be, too. Donald Driver and Chad Clifton have had great careers, and Greg Jennings is getting into that territory.
• Undrafted players: The Packers have 16 on their roster … Football is a team sport, and for team sports, little-known role players are as important as great players. Unlike highly drafted crybabies who think the rules don’t apply to them — Exhibit A, the Detroit Lions — undrafted players listen to the coaches and give you what they’ve got.
• Home-grown: Since Ted Thompson took over as general manager in 2005, he has rarely traded away draft choices. All NFL general managers say they want to build through the draft, then many blink and give up picks. Thompson never blinks, holding his picks and trading for others. In Thompson’s seven drafts, he has selected an average of nine players per draft, versus seven that the league hands each club. He has had 17 first- or second-round choices in that period, versus the 14 the league hands out. And the Packers scout the sixth and seventh rounds as intently as the first. Many Green Bay players were late choices, selected by a point in the draft where many teams were just winging it.
• Green Bay won the Brett Favre mess: Had the Packers not shown Favre the door, Rodgers would have departed. Offloading the franchise’s most accomplished player was wrenching. Leaders make decisions for the future rather than the present — if only those in Washington, D.C., thought this way — and Green Bay made a smart decision for the future regarding Favre.
• The only NFL roster with five tight ends, as TMQ has noted before: Green Bay has five tight ends, and has won 18 straight games. Why don’t other NFL teams notice this rudimentary fact? Multiple tight ends allow for multiple offensive sets that confuse defensive game plans. All contemporary defensive coordinators have some experience dealing with multiple wide receiver sets. Most don’t have experience dealing with multiple tight end sets.
• Aaron Rodgers: Quarterback is the most important position in football, and Rodgers is football’s best quarterback. Accuracy and decision-making are the key attributes of an NFL quarterback — practically all of them have strong arms — and Rodgers excels at both. He throws accurately while moving, creating roll-out opportunities. He runs, but only in an efficient manner, mainly when he sees a clear lane to the sidelines. On a third-and-5 against the Giants, Rodgers saw a clear lane to the sidelines and ran for the first down, then stepped out of bounds. This is the way Joe Montana used to run. When the quarterback consistently picks up first downs by efficient runs that don’t expose him to hard hits, the offense prospers. …
Now Green Bay’s tactical secrets:
• Sideline passing: Both Manning brothers excel at hitting receivers along the sidelines; for Rodgers, this has become his forte. Twice against the Giants, Rodgers hit Jordy Nelson with perfect strikes smack on the sideline for big gains. On the Packers’ touchdown drive that made the score 35–27 Green Bay, both big plays were sideline receptions.
The deep sideline pass is the hardest throw in football, so only the best offenses feature this action. When a receiver is smack at the sideline, the quarterback knows there will be only one defender — by definition, there’s no defender on the sideline side. Working the sideline is a way to create one-on-one matchups. The throw must be perfect. If it is, the sideline route is the hardest for even the best cornerback to defend.
• Pass first, then rush: Victory can happen with a rush-first offense, as the Broncos are showing. But passing plays gain more yardage per attempt than rushing plays. Green Bay employs this simple insight to start most games pass-wacky; once the Packers have a lead, they switch to rushing to grind the clock. Passing early to build a margin, then running late after the opposition defense begins to tire, is an ideal formula. It’s the Packers’ formula.
• Canadian influence: Green Bay quarterbacks coach Tom Clements played quarterback for Ottawa, Hamilton, Saskatchewan and Winnipeg of the Canadian Football League. In the CFL, it’s move the chains or lose. First downs matter more than deep strikes. The Packers’ offense operates as though it assumes only three downs, like in Canada. Plus Joe Philbin has been the offensive coordinator in Green Bay for eight years. The Indianapolis Colts and New England Patriots offenses of the past decade were successful partly because of coaching stability.
• Funky defenses: Pittsburgh, Baltimore, the Ryan Brothers and others have been using oddball fronts with two or one defensive linemen, married to a zone rush. Green Bay employs this tactic too. In a zone rush — a better term than zone blitz — five to eight defenders are in a position to rush. Only four actually do, but the offense doesn’t know which four will be coming. At least one defender who looked like a rusher before the snap drops into one of the slant lanes, since every quarterback’s standard anti-blitz tactic is the quick slant.
Against the Giants, on one down Green Bay showed a conventional 3–4 front. Then two defenders walked up for what appeared to be a six-man blitz. At the snap only four rushed, with Matthews dropping into a slant lane that Eli Manning thought would be uncovered. The Giants had a receiver open deep, but because a rusher was in Eli’s face — after the choreography, Jersey/A had five to block four but lost track of one rusher who came toward Manning unopposed — he never looked deep. Manning threw what he thought would be a safe quick out; Matthews intercepted the pass and returned it for a touchdown.
Lots of funky fronts and jumping around pre-snap cause Green Bay to surrender yardage — statistically, the Packers’ defense is not flashy. But these tactics also generate defensive touchdowns, against [the Giants], against the Steelers in the Super Bowl and in other games. Nothing drops a 16-ton weight on your head like watching the opponent’s defense score.
There are two other big factors:
• Mystique: The Packers have won four Super Bowls, 13 conference and/or league titles. Green Bay has the oldest consistent winner in football. The place is Titletown. Vince Lombardi is looking down. The Packers exist in a college-town atmosphere — they are even the sole NFL franchise with college cheerleaders, not professional cheerleaders, on the sidelines. The aura around the Packers is unmatched by any other NFL organization.
• Bicycles: Packers players ride bicycles to the opening of camp, an annual summer ritual attended by thousands of children. Cheesy? Well, it is Wisconsin. Corny? Gets the season off on a fun note. And Packers faithful sure are having fun.
Imagine having the opportunity to see Johnny Cash, with Elvis Presley his opening act, in concert at a high school. The concert was at Arkansas High School in Swifton, Ark., today in 1955:
Today in 1961, the Beatles played a concert at the Palais Ballroom in Aldershot, Great Britain. Because the local newspaper wouldn’t accept the promoter’s check for advertising, the concert wasn’t publicized, and attendance totaled 18.
After the concert, the Beatles reportedly were ordered out of town by local police due to their rowdiness.
That, however, doesn’t compare to what happened in New Haven, Conn., today in 1967. Before the Doors concert in the New Haven Arena, a policeman discovered singer Jim Morrison making out in a backstage shower with an 18-year-old girl.
The officer, unaware that he had discovered the lead singer of the concert, told Morrison and the woman to leave. After an argument, in which Morrison told the officer to “eat it,” the officer sprayed Morrison and his new friend with Mace. The concert was delayed one hour while Morrison recovered.
Halfway through the first set, Morrison decided to express his opinion about the New Haven police, daring them to arrest him. They did, on charges of inciting a riot, public obscenity and decency. The charges were later dropped for lack of evidence.
The number one album today in 1972 was the Moody Blues’ “Seventh Sojourn”:
The number one single today in 1978:
Today in 1988, a poll was released on the subject of the best background music for sex. Number three was Luther Vandross …
… number two was Beethoven …
… and number one was Neil Diamond.
Neil Diamond?
The number one single today in 1989:
Today in 2003, Ozzy Osbourne crashed his ATV at his home, breaking his collarbone, eight ribs and a vertebra in his neck.
Birthdays begin with Sam Strain of the Imperials and the O’Jays:
In that speech Tuesday, Obama once again tried to build a case for his liberal, big-spending, tax-hiking, regulatory agenda. But as with so many of his past appeals, Obama’s argument rests on a pile of untruths. Among the most glaring:
• Tax cuts and deregulation have “never worked” to grow the economy. There’s so much evidence to disprove this claim, it’s hard to know where to start. But let’s begin with the fact that countries with greater economic freedom — lower taxes, less government, sound money, free trade — consistently produce greater overall prosperity.
Here at home, President Reagan’s program of lower taxes and deregulation led to an historic two-decade economic boom. Plus, states with lower taxes and less regulation do better than those that follow Obama’s prescription.
Obama also claimed the economic booms in the ’50s and ’60s somehow support his argument. This is utter nonsense. Taxes at the time averaged just 17% of the economy. And there was no Medicare, no Medicaid, no Departments of Transportation, Energy or Education, and no EPA. …
• Bush’s tax cuts on the rich only managed to produced “massive deficits” and the “slowest job growth in half a century.” Budget data make clear that Obama’s spending hikes, not Bush’s tax cuts, produced today’s massive deficits.
And Obama only gets his “slowest job growth” number by including huge job losses during his own term in office. Also, monthly pre-recession job growth under Bush was about 40% higher than post-recession growth has been under Obama.
• During the Bush years, “we had weak regulation, we had little oversight.” This is patently false. Regulatory staffing climbed 42% under Bush, and regulatory spending shot up 50%, according to a Washington University in St. Louis/George Washington University study. And the number of Federal Register pages — a proxy for regulatory activity — was far higher under Bush than any previous president.
• The “wealthiest Americans are paying the lowest taxes in over half a century.” Fact: the federal income tax code is now more progressive than it was in 1979, according to the Congressional Budget Office. IRS data show the richest 1% paid almost 40% of federal income taxes in 2009, up from 18% back in 1980.
Similarly lacking is any credibility in the assertion that Theodore Roosevelt and Obama are comparable, as Ron Radosh points out:
… a more substantive look at what Roosevelt really argued belies his argument. As Ben Soskis correctly notes at TNR.com, “there was another stratum of meaning in TR’s speech at Osawatomie — a more conservative one that has received less attention.” Roosevelt, he points out, “did not mean for his speech … to be a statement of radical beliefs. He had initially hoped that by championing progressive principles, he could take control of the potentially irresponsible insurgent forces within the GOP and orchestrate a reconciliation with the party’s more conservative wing. In fact, in the address itself, he did not merely define himself as a crusader against special interests; he also signaled his resistance to the excesses of radicalism as well.”
Roosevelt … had not become a socialist, still less a radical or populist. It seems more accurate, and more illuminating of both the substance and thrust of his political thinking, to describe his position …by 1910-1912 as that of a left-wing statist who was prepared to achieve play a leadership role in achieving significant changes in the “form of government…and the nature of property rights. … Roosevelt himself put the matter succinctly in his Osawatomie speech in the summer of 1910, when he said that in standing for the “square deal,” he meant “not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed,” and he wanted the rules changed in the direction of effecting “a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service.”
Does Radosh’s next paragraph read like anything Obama would espouse?
Sklar goes on to explain that in TR’s eyes, his “New Nationalism” meant an alternative to a corporate capitalism less subject to public control, as well as “an alternative to socialism…to the elimination of private property in large-scale enterprise and its replacement by state ownership.” Sklar argues that TR favored a limited statism confined to management of the economy and that TR did not favor “extending state power beyond that to the restriction of individual rights, political democracy, or civil liberties.” As he sees it, TR’s form of statism was “partial and libertarian, not totalistic and authoritarian.”
So, if we continue to look at and evaluate the Obama record and position today, it is precisely the opposite of what TR intended and believed in. Favoring equality of opportunity and reward for service are conservative positions; not those of today’s liberals or socialists. They favor equality of outcome, obtained in advance by forced redistribution of wealth by the state. As TR put it, he favored “the triumph of a real democracy…and, in the long run, of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.” He favored enlarging the possibilities for “equality of opportunity.” If that did not occur, then the possibility occurred of the kind of class war and revolution from below he sought to avoid.
Roosevelt believed Robert M. “Fighting Bob” La Follette, the patron saint of Wisconsin progressives, was a dangerous radical. (My source is “Fighting Bob and the Bull Moose,” a term paper written for UW’s U.S. History 1877–1914 course, written by UW student Steve Prestegard. Too bad the paper isn’t online.) Roosevelt also loved his country and believed in American supremacy. The love for the U.S. in the residential quarters at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is in direct proportion to its political fortunes.
Radosh gives Roosevelt the last word, words you’ll never hear coming out of Obama’s mouth:
When I say I want a square deal for the poor man, I do not mean that I want a square deal for the man who remains poor because he has not got the energy to work for himself. If a man who has had a chance will not make good, then he has got to quit.
Today in 1940, the first NFL championship game was broadcast nationally on Mutual radio. Before long, Mutual announcer Red Barber probably wondered why they’d bothered.
Today in 1963, Frank Sinatra Jr. was kidnapped from a Lake Tahoe hotel. He was released two days later after his father paid $240,000 ransom. The kidnappers were arrested and sentenced to prison.
The top selling 8-track today in 1971:
The number one single today in 1984 …
… on the same day that Patrick Cavanaugh, former manager of the Coasters, was convicted of the murder of Coaster Buster Wilson, whose partially dismembered body was found in Modesto, Calif., four years earlier.
The number one British single today in 2003:
Birthdays begin with Bobby Elliot, drummer of the Hollies …
… who was born one year before Jim Morrison of the Doors:
Graham Knight of Marmalade …
… was born one year before Geoff Daking, drummer of the Blues Magoos …
… and Gregg Allman:
Dan Hartman was in the Edgar Winter Group before his solo career:
Phil Collen of Def Leppard:
Paul Rutherford of Frankie Goes to Hollywood:
Two deaths of note today: Gary Thain, bass player for Uriah Heep, today in 1975 …
President Obama has now expanded his résumé to include economics instruction, reports the Washington Post:
Obama delivered a searing indictment of Republican economic theory, setting the stage for the coming presidential campaign. Summoning the image of a populist Theodore Roosevelt— in the same town (Osawatomie) where Roosevelt delivered a famous speech on economic fairness in 1910 — Obama deployed the language of right and wrong, fairness and unfairness, in a lengthy address that aides said he largely wrote himself.
The theory of “trickle down economics,” which holds that greater wealth at the top generates jobs and income for the masses below, drew some of Obama’s harshest criticism.
“It’s a simple theory — one that speaks to our rugged individualism and healthy skepticism of too much government. It fits well on a bumper sticker. Here’s the problem: It doesn’t work,” Obama said of supply-side economics, drawing extended applause. “It’s never worked.”
The Post does not report Obama’s explanation for the 92-month economic expansion from 1982 to 1990, third longest in U.S. history, spurred by the 1981 and 1986 tax cuts. Obama did not explain how the tax cuts spurred dramatic increases in tax revenues. Of course, had he done that, he probably would have thrown in a jibe about the deficits of the 1980s. Had he done that, though, he would have had to admit how much larger the deficit as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product is under his presidency than under Ronald Reagan’s presidency.
Nor did Obama explain his support for extending the George W. Bush tax cuts to the end of 2012, and his continued support for payroll tax cuts. If “it’s never worked,” then why did Obama support extending those supply-side tax cuts?
This paragraph is amusing:
Although the unemployment rate has been a constant shadow hanging over Obama’s presidency, the mechanics of job growth had only a small part in the speech, which dwelled as much on the need for infrastructure investments, better education and a tax code that Obama said “must reflect our values.”
That would refer back to the 2009 stimulus, featuring infrastructure investments and more money for education, which resulted in deficits of record size regardless of how you measure them, but failed to reduce unemployment to Obama’s promised 8 percent. (Recent improvement in the unemployment rate is the result of more than 300,000 people stopping looking for work. Admitting that would be as embarrassing as admitting that the unemployment rate during the Obama presidency is much higher than it was under the Reagan presidency.) That takes some nerve to double-down on the stimulus that was tremendously unpopular with independent voters, who the experts claim will decide the 2012 election, and who polls say are not impressed with Obama’s work to this point.
It is unlikely that, regardless of who their presidential nominee is, Republicans won’t be highly motivated to head to the polls in November 2012. But Obama’s big rhetorical middle finger to approximately one-third of the country who identify themselves as Republicans will certainly help.
Three items fit into the category of the headline today.
First, Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute, in the Wall Street Journal, on reports of how income inequality grew between 1979 and 2007:
A recent report from the Congressional Budget Office (CB0) says, “The share of income received by the top 1% grew from about 8% in 1979 to over 17% in 2007.”
This news caused quite a stir, feeding the left’s obsession with inequality. Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, for example, said this “jaw-dropping report” shows “why the Occupy Wall Street protests have struck such a nerve.” The New York Times opined that the study is “likely to have a major impact on the debate in Congress over the fairness of federal tax and spending policies.”
But here’s a question: Why did the report stop at 2007? The CBO didn’t say, although its report briefly acknowledged—in a footnote—that “high income taxpayers had especially large declines in adjusted gross income between 2007 and 2009.”
No kidding. Once these two years are brought into the picture, the share of after-tax income of the top 1% by my estimate fell to 11.3% in 2009 from the 17.3% that the CBO reported for 2007.
The larger truth is that recessions always destroy wealth and small business incomes at the top. Perhaps those who obsess over income shares should welcome stock market crashes and deep recessions because such calamities invariably reduce “inequality.” Of course, the same recessions also increase poverty and unemployment.
The latest cyclical destruction of top incomes has been unusually deep and persistent, because fully 43.7% of top earners’ incomes in 2007 were from capital gains, dividends and interest, with another 17.1% from small business. Since 2007, capital gains on stocks and real estate have often turned to losses, dividends on financial stocks were slashed, interest income nearly disappeared, and many small businesses remain unprofitable.
But hey, the top 1 percent had a smaller share of AGI between 2007 and 2009, so that’s a good thing, right? We’ve been better off because the evil rich had a smaller share, right?
The good news is that there is one Wisconsin Democrat who admits that Recallarama might not be the best thing, even if, as James Wigderson passes on, she’s concerned about what will happen to the Democratic Party:
… I am torn about whether this recall race is in the best interest of democracy, and about the precedent this recall could set.
I fear that crucial money and resources will go to this effort at the expense of the incredibly important Assembly and U.S. Senate races in the state. If Democrats re-take the Assembly, there will be a strong base of duly elected officials fighting for Democratic priorities, which will effectively take the Walker machine offline until the next election cycle. Tammy Baldwin is a strong Democrat, but she will need lots of money and soldiers to win; she is not a slam-dunk with statewide voters.
The recall will also draw out in force Republican voters who might not otherwise be motivated until November. In addition, Democratic party and interest money will have to spread across hundreds individual fronts nationwide in the coming year, not to mention the presidential election. Then there’s voter fatigue, and I assert that it is very real, especially since the state Senate recall elections.
Then there’s the question that no one seems to be asking: If we run record numbers of recall races against the currently elected legislature and governor, are we setting a precedent for permanent chaos? In state elections, Wisconsin is not truly Blue; the electorate is almost evenly split along party lines, with a particularly wild cadre of independents. No one side has a clear mandate from the people, at least not at the polls. Going forward, what’s to stop the Republicans from launching recall efforts of their own, countered by more counter-recalls? And if that happens, how long until the last vestiges of democratic process are swept away? …
Left to run its course, is there not a very good chance that the newly disenfranchised, including some Republicans, will rise up and naturally elect a new governing body that will serve the needs of the majority of the people? And if we don’t believe this, then maybe it’s time to ditch the whole idea that democracy is real.
Consider that Democratic supporters will be asked to donate money and time in the coming year for the Walker recall, plus any recalls of Republican state senators (those in odd-numbered Senate districts), plus the (legitimate) 2012 Assembly and Senate races, plus the Tammy Baldwin for U.S. Senate campaign, plus the campaigns against new U.S. Reps. Reid Ribble (R–Sherwood) and Sean Duffy (R–Ashland), plus the campaign for Baldwin’s House replacement … and, by the way, the Barack Obama reelection campaign. All that comes after a year in which more than $40 million was raised to drop the Republican state Senate margin from 19–14 to 17–16.
Those are the financial realities. Wigderson passes on a political reality:
It’s a real problem when one political party considers an election result to be illegitimate merely because it wasn’t the result that the party desired. Asking for a “do-over” over a policy difference undermines the idea of a elected representative government. Opening up the election process to continued “do-overs” will eventually make representative government untenable. When that happens, Willow asks the right question, “…how long until the last vestiges of democratic process are swept away?”
Finally, let’s say that Recallarama part deux is successful, Walker loses, and the public-sector unions get their precious collective bargaining and all their contribution-free bennies back. Should that happen, Big Government reports on Ohio cities’ laying off firefighters, school district support staff and security personnel, eliminating preschool and high school athletics, and closing fire stations. Ohio voters deserve all of this since they voted to overturn a state law similar to Wisconsin’s new public employee collective bargaining rules. Should Walker lose his recall election, Wisconsin will thoroughly deserve the same fate.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 