Today in 1925, RCA took over the 25-station AT&T network plus WEAF radio in New York, making today the birthday of the NBC radio network:
Today in 1965, the Rolling Stones made their U.S. TV debut on ABC’s “Hullabaloo”:
Today in 1966, the Doors agreed to release “Break on Through” as their first single, removing the word “high” to get radio airplay:
The number one single today in 1980:
Today in 1990, Frank Farian, who “produced” Milli Vanilli, held a news conference to confirm that Fabrice Morvan and Rob Pilatus, the alleged Milli Vanilli, had in fact not sung on any of their records. And now, here is Milli Vanilli’s greatest work:
Birthdays begin with Bill Fries. Who is Bill Fries? He was the creative director for an Omaha ad agency who created a character for a bread company advertising campaign. The character (who was played by an actor in the ads) then started singing (with Fries as the voice), including this 2-million-seller:
Petula Clark:
Annifrid Lyngstad of Abba:
Steve Fossen of Heart:
Ab Bryant of Chilliwack:
The late Tony Thompson was the drummer for Chic and the Power Station:
For those who think Wisconsin has intractable political problems, I suggest you look west:
Yes, the cheesehead card has been played in the Vikings’ attempt to get the state of Minnesota to build a new stadium for them.
The short version of this drama: The Vikings’ lease for the Metrodome expires after this season. (Maybe. More on that later.) The Vikings have said they will not sign another long-term lease for the Metrodome, whose ’80s-level creature comforts (that is, lack thereof) and lease put the Vikings near the bottom of the NFL in revenue. There is more than one potential site for a new Vikings stadium — the Vikings’ favorite is a former munitions plant, now a Superfund site, in a St. Paul suburb — but Minnesota legislators are not hurrying to endorse the Vikings’ suggestions for funding said stadium: a 0.5-percent county sales tax, a sports-themed lottery game and new state taxes on satellite TV and sports-themed memorabilia. (The county sales tax apparently is dead since it would require a referendum.)
As with apparently all political arguments these days, class warfare is rearing its ugly head. The Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Patrick Reusse believes (as do others) that the only beneficiary of a suburban Vikings stadium will be Vikings owner Zygi Wulf:
The latest rough estimates are $900 million for a stadium at the Metrodome site (including demolition) and $1.1 billion at Arden Hills.
Which means, even if Zygi chooses to pout and cuts his offer to $300 million for a non-Arden Hills stadium, it still would be $100 million cheaper for the state to build at the current Dome than it would at the old ammunition factory.
Wilf is correct in his letter. Arden Hills is the best possible site for a Vikings stadium — if what we have as our main concerns is Zygi being able to collect $40 per car for thousands of cars on game Sundays, and for Zygi to be able to develop the rest of the large acreage with retail, lodging and offices.
You can’t blame Wilf for pushing this, not when remembering that Zygi might own a football team but in his chest beats the heart of a commercial real estate developer.
If the goal for the folks at the State Capitol is to give the Wilfs everything they would want in a stadium site as team owners and land developers, it’s Arden Hills in a walk.
On the other hand, who would benefit from building at the Metrodome? Apparently, Reusse’s employer:
I pay $45 to park in a Minneapolis owned lot three blocks from the dome and near the StarTribune. The lot and service is terrible. I don’t ride rail, ever. One hour traffic jams are common leaving games. Existing infrastructure stinks. Patrick’s viewpoint is skewed by his relationship to the StarTribune.
Everyone just remember that the Star Tribune has a vested interest in having a Stadium at the current Dome site so they will do what they can do derail the Arden Hills site. Think about it, have they written a positive story about the Arden Hills site?
Don’t forget that it would benefit Startribune the most because they own a lot of the buildings around the metrodome, woops was I supposed to mention that?
The Vikings should be playing outdoors like the Packers, but of course having played 30 seasons in the Metrodome, the Vikings assume their fans don’t want to freeze outdoors when the outdoors is freezing.
Don’t tell the Vikings this, but the Vikings’ 30 seasons of indoor football mean that bad things happen to the Vikings outdoors:
The Vikings’ stadium situation is like a love triangle with Ragnar (the name of the Vikings’ wrongly horned mascot) trying to decide between his wife, Lena, and the temptress to the west, Angel. Los Angeles, the second largest media market in the country, hasn’t had an NFL franchise since the mid-’90s, when the Rams left for St. Louis and the Raiders returned to Oakland. Minnesota is one of at least four franchises (the others being Jacksonville, San Diego and Oakland, the latter two having previously been in L.A.) that are the apparent target of efforts to relocate one or two NFL teams to L.A.
An Associated Press story with seven writers handicaps who might be heading to L.A.:
The Vikings aren’t the only franchise on relocation alert, but the team’s tie to its current city appears to be the loosest in the near term.
The St. Louis Rams have a possible out after the 2014 season. The Oakland Raiders are under lease through 2013. The Buffalo Bills intend on staying put as long as the founding owner — 93-year-old Ralph Wilson — is alive. The Jacksonville Jaguars would need to exercise a special escape clause to leave Florida but would owe the city for lost taxes and parking revenue for years to come.
In San Diego, where the Chargers have been seeking a new stadium since 2002, the team has its eyes on a new downtown site but lack financing. The Chargers could get out of a lease starting in February if a better deal surfaces elsewhere, but the team is building toward a 2012 ballot measure.
The story adds this: “Vikings vice president Lester Bagley has told The Associated Press that both Los Angeles business groups have been in contact, but has continued to stress that the team’s main focus is securing a deal to stay in Minnesota.” Which is not exactly a we’re-staying-n0-matter-what statement, is it?
And unlike the moves of the Baltimore-to-Indianapolis Colts, Cleveland Browns-to-Baltimore Ravens, and Houston-Oilers-to-Tennessee Titans, whatever team(s) move(s) to L.A. isn’t likely to be replaced in its departed market. Even if the NFL was inclined to add an expansion franchise to replace the former Vikings, Jaguars, Chargers and/or Raiders, the experiences of Baltimore, Cleveland and Houston in getting teams to move or an expansion team demonstrate that getting a team is considerably more expensive than keeping the team you have.
I’m surprised the St. Paul Pioneer Press’ Bob Sansevere wasn’t hanged in effigy for this blasphemy:
So the worst worst-case scenario is the Vikings move to Los Angeles and Minnesota never gets another NFL franchise.
And … and then what?
Well, there’s always the Green Bay Packers.
The Packers filled the NFL void for many Minnesotans before the Vikings arrived and, if the Vikings leave, they become an option again. That will be difficult, at first, for many passionate fans of the Purple.
You can be stubborn and give the Packers the ol’ Heisman Trophy straight-arm, or you can accept the reality that the Vikings won’t be coming back and the Packers will be there for you. At least you’d be rooting for a winner. …
If abandoned Vikings fans started rooting for the Packers, they can be certain of this: The Packers are community-owned and never would crush their spirits and hearts by moving.
Proving that the term “Minnesota Nice” is an oxymoron, one reader commented:
Do all us Viking fans a favor Bob, drive in front of a train on the way home!
Much of the problem is the fact that Minnesotans have forked out plenty of money for stadium construction since the Metrodome opened, to wit: 1990: The $104 million Target Center in Minneapolis for the NBA’s Timberwolves. (Of course, 21 years later, it’s time for renovation.) 1993: The University of Minnesota’s $20 million Mariucci Arena for the hockey Golden Gophers. 2000: The $130 million Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul (at the site of the former St. Paul Civic Center) for the NHL’s Wild. 200?: The University of Minnesota’s $303.4 million TCF Bank Stadium for the football Gophers.
2010: The $412 million Target Field in St. Paul for the baseball Twins. (The Twins formerly played at the Metrodome, built in part to eliminate Twins rainouts. Target Field, however, has no roof. The Twins had two rainouts last April and another game delayed due to an hour-long hailstorm.)
A new Vikings stadium is expected to cost, depending on where it is, between $900 million and $1.1 billion, within range of the cost of all of those stadiums combined.
This is where one thinks how much better the state of Wisconsin did with Miller Park (no rainouts since it opened in 2002; five games have been moved to Miller Park due to a Cleveland snowstorm and a Houston hurricane) and Lambeau Field ($295 million renovation paid for by a voter-approved 0.5-percent Brown County sales tax). Hindsight says the Minnesotans should have figured out how to build a stadium for the Gophers and Vikings. It is inconceivable that Wisconsinites would allow the Packers to leave over their stadium, but support for the Vikings has been more lukewarm and more front-runnerish over the years.
Complicating matters further is the disagreement between the Vikings and the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission over whether this is the final year of the Metrodome lease or not. The MSFC claims that the lease has a “force majeure clause” provision that extends the lease should the Metrodome be unable to host a game — for instance, a snowstorm-caused roof collapse. I don’t know whether that’s commonplace in commercial real estate, but that seems bizarre to me — your lease gets automatically extended, whether you want it or not, because of a problem with the building for which its owner, not renter, seems responsible. The Vikings reportedly have until Feb. 15 to tell the NFL they’re leaving.
Were I a Minnesota legislator (and I am a third-generation ex-Minnesotan), I would not be happy with the box into which the Vikings have put the state. On the one hand, the Metrodome is now an NFL stadium in name only, and no new stadium, no more Vikings. And yet polls indicate Minnesotans, while wanting to keep the Vikings, don’t want public money used to keep the Vikings. Whether or not the various bailouts of late last decade were necessary, they were and are extremely unpopular with voters and taxpayers.
The question is whether the views of (according to the aforementioned Minnesota Poll) the wishes of 67 percent of Minnesotans (who want to keep the Vikings) override the view of 56 percent of Minnesotans (who don’t want tax increases to fund a new stadium). Yes, there are Minnesotans in both groups. Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton and the Republican-controlled Legislature get along so well that state government shut down earlier this year after the fiscal year began without a new budget. Dayton, meanwhile, now says the Minnesota Capitol might fall apart without hundreds of millions of dollars in renovations. What a Hobson’s choice for Minnesota legislators: Raise taxes or lose the Vikings.
Can former Vikings fans become Packer fans? I predict we’ll find out next season.
The number one British album today in 1981 was “Queen Greatest Hits”:
The number one album today in 1987 was the soundtrack to “Dirty Dancing”:
Sometimes, one sentence says all you need to know: Today in 1990, record producer Frank Farin fired Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan because the members of Milli Vanilli insisted on singing their next album. Need I write more?
The number one single today in 1992:
The number one British album today in 1998 was “U2: The Best of 1980–1990 and B Sides”:
Today in 2000, Chris “Limahl” Hamel, former lead singer of Kajagoogoo, was nearly killed when his bus crashed and caught fire on the way to a concert:
The number one British single today in 2004:
Birthdays begin with Cornell Gunter of the Coasters:
Today in 1968, Britain’s W.T. Smiths refused to carry the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s “Electric Ladyland” …
… with its original album cover …
… although a different cover was OK:
The number one single today in 1983:
Today in 1990, Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones crashed his car on the M4 motorway near Marlborough, England. Wood got out of his car and was waving traffic around his car when another car hit Wood, breaking both his legs.
Birthdays begin with Ruby Nash Curtis of Ruby and the Romantics:
Brian Hyland …
… was born the same day as John Maus of the Walker Brothers:
Booker T. Jones of Booker T and the MGs:
Neil Young of the Buffalo Springfield, Crosby Stills Nash & Young and his own voluminous solo career:
Last month, I wrote about my 20-plus-year avocation, sports announcing, which has provided me with volumes of stories even though I’ve never worked in broadcasting full-time.
I wrote that I haven’t really patterned myself after any announcer that I’m aware of. But if you listened to, for instance, Jim Irwin call Packer and Badger games and Bob Uecker call Brewer games for decades, you are likely to unconsciously emulate them unless you make a conscious effort not to.
Packer fans today get to hear the outstanding work of Packer announcer Wayne Larrivee, known for …
The contrast to Larrivee is the other announcer at Lambeau Field Monday night, the Vikings’ unprofessional Paul Allen:
The example of working to not sound like someone applies to the announcing Carays, Harry …
… and Skip, who did not want to sound like his father, and almost never did …
… except for this October 1992 moment:
Jack and Joe Buck don’t sound alike, but Joe gave a great tribute to Jack in crazy game 6 of the World Series:
Harry Caray and Jack Buck called Cardinals games from the late 1960s until the Cardinals fired Caray in 1970. Note the differences between their styles:
Buck then took over and announced the Cardinals and NFL football until his death:
The younger Buck now announces baseball …
… and football (where he almost became the Packers’ personal announcer, calling their last six games of the 2010 season):
Team announcers have two priorities: (1) Get people to watch or listen to the broadcast, and (2) get people to come to the team’s home games. Some team announcers claim to call games down the middle, but that’s not necessarily what their listeners want to hear. And when your team does well, that tends to help the announcer’s career too:
The number one task of an announcer is to call the game — score, down and distance, balls and strikes, etc., and of course in-game commercials and sponsor mentions. The announcers I like best are those who besides that make you watch, whether you have a rooting interest in the game, and regardless of the score.
Skip Caray was worth watching to see what he’d say next, including:
Until Braves owner Ted Turner made him stop, upon reaching the bottom of the fifth inning: “We’ve come to the bottom of another fifth.”
During a late at-bat of a Braves hitter during a game in Los Angeles: “He has twice grounded to short. [After the swing] He has thrice grounded to short.”
During a period where Turner prohibited CNN announcers from using the word “foreign,” mandating “international” instead, a batter called time out and stepped out of the batter’s box because, Caray explained, “he had an international object in his eye.”
Caray described one poorly attended Braves home game as “a partial sellout.” Another home game, with entire sections of empty seats, was called “Blue Seat Night, folks — you dress up like a blue seat, you get in free.” In another game, he announced, “The stadium is filled tonight, but many fans have come disguised as empty seats.”
Caray once mispronounced the name of Philadelphia Phillies third baseman Mike Schmidt, omitting the M and adding a Z sound at the end. After coming back from commercial, his partner, former Milwaukee Braves pitcher Ernie Johnson, asked, “What was the name of the Phillies third baseman again?”
When you’ve been announcing games since 1974, as Reds announcer Marty Brennaman has, you can get away with being critical during games:
Whether or not he can call games as well as he used to, CBS’ Verne Lundquist (who had a couple of problem calls in the LSU–Alabama game Saturday) is enjoyable to watch, particularly on basketball with Bill Raftery, which is kind of like watching your two great-uncles argue with each other:
The best hockey announcer right now is probably NBC’s Mike Emrick:
One announcer whose very voice is college football is ABC’s Keith Jackson …
… although he could do other sports too:
My favorite sports announcer was Dick Enberg of NBC and CBS:
The announcer that makes every other sound like a rank amateur is, of course, the transcendent Vin Scully …
… who, though best known for baseball, could announce football too:
Scully’s opposite in career is NBC’s Al Michaels, best known for football …
… and one hockey game …
… but who also did baseball well:
One more thing: The exciting aspect of calling sports is that the announcer is never 100 percent sure what’s going to happen. Watch the bizarre finish of the 2010 Stanley Cup Finals, for which no announcer could properly prepare:
Besides the end of the War to End All Wars (which didn’t end all wars but led directly to the next war) and the day Americans remember and honor those whose service and sacrifice allow me to freely write this and you to freely read this, what else happened Nov. 11?
Today in 1954, Bill Haley got his first top 10 single, “Shake Rattle and Roll,” originally a Joe Turner song. Haley had changed the name of his band, the cowboy-motif Saddlemen, to His Comets.
Imagine what the Transportation Security Administration would have done with this: Today in 1969, the FBI arrested Jim Morrison for drunk and disorderly conduct on an airplane. Morrison and actor Tom Baker had been drinking and harassing stewardesses on a flight to Phoenix. Morrison and Baker spent a night in jail and were released on $2,500 bail.
Today in 1972, an era when pretty much everything would go in rock music, listeners got to hear the first example of what might be called “yodel rock”:
Continuing our Elton John theme of the past few days, John had the number one single today in 1973:
Today in 1978, Donna Summer had the number one album, “Live and More,” and single, which counted as “more” more than “live”:
The number one British single …
… and album today in 1989:
The number one album today in 1995 was the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness”:
Birthdays begin with Roger Lavern, who played keyboards for the Tornadoes:
Jesse Colin Young of the Youngbloods …
… was born one year before Vince Martell of Vanilla Fudge …
… and Chris Dreja of the Yardbirds …
… who were born one year before Pat Daugherty of Black Oak Arkansas:
Jim Peterik of the brass-rock band The Ides of March …
… and then Survivor:
Paul Cowsill of the Cowsills:
Mike Mesaros of the Smithereens:
Andy Partridge of XTC:
One death of note: Today in 1972, Allman Brothers bass player Berry Oakley hit a bus with his motorcycle and died at the same intersection where bandmate Duane Allman had died in a motorcycle crash a year earlier.
It must be difficult to be a business publication editor in the People’s Republic of Madison.
Either that, or Joe Vanden Plas, senior editor of In Business, has fallen victim to the Stockholm Syndrome. Vanden Plas claims “I don’t really mind a gubernatorial recall” against Gov. Scott Walker, who is only the most pro-business Wisconsin governor of the 21st century:
Before I get into my reasoning, let me state the following: I voted for Walker because I thought the policies he spelled out during the 2010 campaign would improve the business climate in Wisconsin. While there is always room for improvement — we still need to enact a Wisconsin-centric approach to boosting venture capital deployment — I believe the governor has delivered on that promise.
Walker also promised to get the state’s fiscal house in order, and even though we have more challenges with future budgets, we now have a balanced budget. Here’s the rub: he never told us, while campaigning in 2010, that he would limit collective bargaining in order to get there. That little bomb was dropped a couple of days after the election, after victory had been secured.
This is where Vanden Plas’ entire argument falls apart before it really gets going. Readers of this blog know that Walker has done exactly what he said he was going to do, as reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in June and August 2010, and as repeated by a teacher union publication last fall.
That fact makes Vanden Plas’ next assertions dubious:
Republicans calling for recall reform want malfeasance in office to be the main criterion under which recall elections can be considered. That should certainly be one of them, but what about politicians who promise one thing during a campaign and do just the opposite while in office? Or those who camouflage their real intentions during a campaign and then spring a surprise once the votes are counted?
As much as I appreciate the Governor’s attempts to help job creators, he was guilty of the latter and it was immensely unfair to voters.
Let me amend that: Vanden Plas’ assertions are not dubious if the governor he’s referring to is Walker’s predecessor, James Doyle, who said, “We should not, we must not and I will not raise taxes,” and then raised taxes by $2.1 billion. Voters never got a chance to vote on that since the tax increase was passed right after the 2008 election … except that that tax increase added on to Democrats’ gross incompetence helps explain the 2010 election results. Perhaps Vanden Plas was thinking of the 2009–10 Legislature in his last sentence, “A defeat would send a message to people in both parties — no post-campaign surprises or you could also be recalled.” And as for camouflaging “real intentions,” as far as I know not a single Democratic candidate in Recallarama uttered the words “collective bargaining,” which was disingenuous at best.
I have to wonder why a business magazine would take the side of (1) government employees over those whose (excessive) taxes pay their salaries and (2) government employee unions over the magazine’s own readers, but that’s what Vanden Plas does:
We will have an opportunity to weigh the benefits of a balanced budget and more taxpayer-friendly property tax bills this December (another Walker promise) versus what I hope will be Walker’s opponent outlining an alternative fiscal path.
I have no problem negotiating with public employees, during a budget crunch, to have them contribute more to their health care and pension benefits, so long as they have the opportunity to recoup what has been lost through collective bargaining when economic conditions improve. Diminishing collective bargaining power removes that possibility.
Voters had an “alternative fiscal path” to choose from in November 2010. That path included multi-billion-dollar tax increases, and multi-billion-dollar state budget deficits. Voters emphatically chose the path Walker and Republicans represented. Since January, opponents of Walker have responded by (1) denying that grotesquely large deficits (as in the second largest per capita deficits in the nation) are a problem and (2) proposing to raise taxes.
Vanden Plas’ praise of public employee collective bargaining belies the fact that unions are seen as a negative in nearly every state business climate comparison — comparisons in which Wisconsin has advanced from bad under Doyle to mediocre under Walker and will undoubtedly slide back toward the basement should Walker lose a recall election.
The correct time to object to an elected official’s or party’s political direction is at the next regularly scheduled election, which is less than a year from now. Voters can throw out the entire Assembly and switch control of the Senate back to Democrats if they like. The current path guarantees that the next Democratic governor and members of a Democratic-controlled Legislature will be recalled at the first politically expedient opportunity, which will make this state ungovernable for anybody. (Unless something far worse happens.)
The Dane County economy is more influenced by government — state government, the University of Wisconsin, and the state’s second largest county and city government — then any other metropolitan area in this state. (Imagine if Walker, instead of requiring state employees to pay more for their benefits, had laid off a couple thousand state employees.) But businesses in the People’s Republic of Madison are not immune from the economic laws and forces that affect every other business in Wisconsin. Anything that makes businesses less profitable (as in excessive taxes to fund excessive government employee pay and benefits) is bad for the entire state.
These screenshots were what Charter Cable subscribers in Ripon saw, on WTMJ-TV (channel 4) at 1 p.m. …
… on WISN-TV (channel 12) at 1:03 p.m. …
… and on WCGV-TV (channel 24) at 1:04 p.m.:
I may be wrong about this, but I thought the EAS test was supposed to be simultaneous on every EAS-participating over-the-air and cable channel. I only got WISN and WCGV’s tests because I just happened to be flipping channels after the WTMJ test was over. Then, Telemundo (cable channel 17) had audio of a National Weather Service Required Weekly Test, which usually occurs Wednesdays at noon. Right day, but one hour and a few minutes late.
That wasn’t as strange as what apparently happened in Milwaukee, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
In our newsroom, we monitor four cable news networks. At 1 p.m., all of the stations interrupted their broadcasts. But instead of showing a test alert, our Time Warner Cable service switched all of the televisions to QVC.
We wondered whether it might be a local issue, but after turning to the social media network Twitter, we saw people complaining about the same problem on different cable systems across the country.
In the Washington, D.C., area, Twitter user @dmataconis wrote: “Did not see it on Comcast in northern Virginia. Instead, saw about 30 seconds of QVC (was watching MSNBC at test time)”
In Los Angeles, @123arnie wrote: “For the Emergency Alert test, Time Warner Cable changed my channel to QVC, so when the test was over I could buy things.”
In Milwaukee, Twitter user @marnerae01 wrote: “National Emergency Test turned TV to QVC. feel safer knowing if theres a disaster, I can purchase seasonal items for 3 EZ payments of $19.50.”
Beginning at 2:01 p.m., viewers and listeners in many states said they saw and heard the alerts at the scheduled time, but others said they did not. There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancies, but that was one of the purposes of the test — to find out how well the system would work in an actual emergency. …
Many of the reported failures affected cable and satellite television subscribers, and some were quite puzzling. Some DirecTV subscribers said their TV sets played the Lady Gaga song “Paparazzi” when the test was under way. Some Time Warner Cable subscribers in New York said the test never appeared on screen. Some Comcast subscribers in northern Virginia said their TV sets were switched over to QVC before the alert was shown.
In some cases the test messages were delayed, perhaps because they were designed to trickle down from one place to many. A viewer in Minneapolis said he saw the message about three minutes late. A viewer in Chattanooga, Tenn., said she saw it about 10 minutes late.
“We always knew that there would probably be some things that didn’t work and some things that did,” a FEMA official said an hour after the test. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the agencies had not publicly acknowledged the glitches yet.
This appears to have gone about as well as the ESPN Y2K test:
It also makes one think that technological change is not always positive. Now that we’re in the digital TV era, we’ve all seen instances in which, instead of a snowy or fuzzy analog signal, there is no signal at all, or, worse, the picture is frozen in place for minutes or even longer.
For the conspiracy theorists, here’s a comment from CBS in New York:
It was supposed to fail. This is part of the mission.
When it fails on TV and radio stations, the government gets the opportunity to argue it should also target cellphones, and the power grid, and Internet service providers so that every means of communication is interrupted and may be controlled.
I maintain what I wrote Tuesday, that I have a hard time imagining, when the EAS wasn’t used for 9/11, what national — as in nationwide — emergency would require the White House to have the ability to override every TV channel. (Except, apparently, QVC.)
The spin being put on this failure is, “well we had to test to learn were the weak spots in the system were.” Perhaps.
But, think of it this way: In a genuine emergency isn’t better that all of our notification eggs are not in one basket?!
Let’s retire the Emergency Alert System along with the TSA and put the money toward something useful like hardening our electrical system infrastructure. …
Of course, this being government, scrapping this deeply flawed and unnecessary system never occurs to them.
And some people still believe the government should take over health care and take a more active role in the economy.
The number one single today in 1983:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 