Author: NewMexiKen

What have the Romans ever done for us?

From Rustbelt Intellectual via Brad DeLong, some thoughts for tax day.

NewMexiKen is reminded of the woman who wrote my office at the National Archives asking us to do research for her. We could make the records available I wrote her back, but we couldn’t actually do the research. Back came an irate letter culminating with the assertion that I was denying her “the only government service” she’d “ever requested.”

I wanted to write back and say then how the hell did I get your letters. (But I didn’t.)

Stupidest line of the day, so far

From MSNBC Live‘s Mika Brzezinski this morning:

“Less than an hour from now, John McCain will lay out a new plan to help Americans deal with high gas prices. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, McCain wants to eliminate the federal gas tax — that’s about 20 percent of the cost.”

The federal gasoline tax is 18.4 cents a gallon. Saturday I paid $3.209 a gallon. Let’s see Mika, three point two zero nine goes into point eighteen four — gee, it’s just 5.7%.

(Not to mention that the gasoline tax goes to repair roads and bridges and we all drive too much anyway.)

Item from Media Matters.

The O.C.

DataQuick’s final count of Orange County home-buying activity last month shows the median selling price for all residences at $506,000 — the lowest since March ‘04 and off 19.6% from a year ago. Buyers grabbed 1,663 homes last month down 46.9% from a year ago. It’s the 30th consecutive month where total sales failed to beat the year-ago level. 

OCRegister.com via Calculated Risk.

April 15th ought to be a national holiday

Bessie Smith

Bessie Smith was born on this date in 1894.

Bessie Smith earned the title of “Empress of the Blues” by virtue of her forceful vocal delivery and command of the genre. Her singing displayed a soulfully phrased, boldly delivered and nearly definitive grasp of the blues. In addition, she was an all-around entertainer who danced, acted and performed comedy routines with her touring company. She was the highest-paid black performer of her day and arguably reached a level of success greater than that of any African-American entertainer before her.
. . .

Some of her better-known sides from the Twenties include “Backwater Blues,” “Taint Nobody’s Bizness If I Do,” “St. Louis Blues” (recorded with Louis Armstrong), and “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” The Depression dealt her career a blow, but Smith changed with the times by adapting a more up-to-date look and revised repertoire that incorporated Tin Pan Alley tunes like “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” On the verge of the Swing Era, Smith died from injuries sustained in an automobile accident outside Clarksdale, Mississippi, in September 1937. She left behind a rich, influential legacy of 160 recordings cut between 1923 and 1933. Some of the great vocal divas who owe a debt to Smith include Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin. In Joplin’s own words of tribute, “She showed me the air and taught me how to fill it.”

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

And this from a review of The Essential Bessie Smith.

. . . Bessie could sing it all, from the lowdown moan of “St. Louis Blues” and “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” to her torch treatment of the jazz standard “After You’ve Gone” to the downright salaciousness of “Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl.” Covering a time span from her first recordings in 1923 to her final session in 1933, this is the perfect entry-level set to go with. Utilizing the latest in remastering technology, these recordings have never sounded quite this clear and full, and the selection — collecting her best-known sides and collaborations with jazz giants like Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, and Benny Goodman — is first-rate. If you’ve never experienced the genius of Bessie Smith, pick this one up and prepare yourself to be devastated.

allmusic

There are no lyrics today that surpass “Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl” for sexual imagery.

And, there is no more important recording in American musical history than Smith and Armstrong’s “St. Louis Blues.”

In listening to the earliest recordings, keep in mind there were no microphones until 1925. The artists sang or played and the sound was recorded acoustically, i.e., without electrical amplification.

Thomas Hart Benton

… was born on this date in 1889.

TrailRiders.jpgNamed after his great-uncle, Missouri’s first senator, Thomas Hart Benton was born on 15 April 1889 in Neosho, Missouri, an Ozark town of 2,000 people. … In 1935 they moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where Benton directed the Art Institute until 1941, and where he contiued to live for the rest of his life. Albert Barnes, the Philadelphia collector, purchased some of his paintings, which raised the level of public success for the artist. Benton published his autobiography, An Artist in America, in 1937. He completed several murals in the midwest and on the east coast. Shortly before Harry Truman’s death in December 1972, Benton finished a portrait of the former President. Thomas Hart Benton died on 19 January 1975 in Kansas City, the day he completed a large mural for the Country Music Foundation of Nashville.

National Gallery of Art

Click on the painting to see larger version.

Taxes

In the 1950s and early 1960s the top tax rate — on taxable incomes over $400,000 — was 91%.

Ninety. One.

[Caveat: $400,000 in 1960 dollars would be about $2,800,000 in 2007 dollars.]

The Revenue Act of 1964 reduced the top rate to 70%.

Today’s top rate is 35%.

Tax Day

An income tax was first collected during the Civil War from 1862 to 1872. During the administration of President Grover Cleveland, the federal government again levied an income tax, enacted by Congress in 1894. However, the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional the following year. Supporters of an income tax were forced then to embark on the lengthy process of amending the Constitution. Not until the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified in 1913 was Congress given the power “to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census of enumeration.”

Library of Congress

April 14th, but Ruination Day can’t be a holiday

Today we celebrate the birthday

… of Loretta Lynn. The coal miner’s daughter was born in Butcher Holler, Kentucky, 73 years ago.

Loretta Webb was born in a one-room log cabin and was the second of eight children. At thirteen she attended a pie social, bringing a pie she had baked using salt instead of sugar. The highest bidder not only won the pie but also got to meet the girl who had baked the pie. Mooney Lynn had just returned home after having served in the army. A month after they had first met, still three months short of her fourteenth birthday, Loretta and Mooney married.

Country Music Hall of Fame

… of four-time Oscar nominee for best actress Julie Christie. She’s 67. Miss Christie won the Oscar for Darling — and not in February for Away from Her but be sure to see the film.

… of Pete Rose. You can bet that Pete is 67 today.

… of Brad Garrett, 48. Garrett is 6-8½.

… of Greg Maddux, 42.

… of Adrien Brody. The Oscar winner (best actor for The Pianist) is 35.

… of Sarah Michelle Gellar. Buffy is 31.

… of Abigail Breslin. The Oscar-nominated actress is 12.

Three time Oscar-nominated actor Rod Steiger was born on this date in 1925. Steiger won for Best Actor for his portrayal of the sheriff in the movie In the Heat of the Night. He was nominated for best actor for The Pawnbroker and for best supporting actor for On the Waterfront. The Pawnbroker (1964) was one of the first films to deal with the emotional aftermath of the Nazi concentration camps. Steiger died in 2002.

James Cash Penney opened his first retail store, called the Golden Rule Store, in the mining town of Kemmerer, Wyoming, on this date in 1902. In 1913, the chain incorporated as J.C. Penney Company, Inc.

Penney Store

The first store, as seen in 1904.

RMS Titanic hit an iceberg at 11:40 PM (Titanic time) on this date in 1912. She was at 41° 46′ north latitude , 50° 14′ west longitude in the Atlantic. The ship went under at 2:20 AM on the 15th.

Best whole paragraph of the day, so far

Bitter? You ain’t seen nothing yet. And as much as people like Russert, Carville, Matalin, Schrum, and Murphy want to divert our attention from what’s really happening; as much as HRC and McCain seek to make political hay out of choices of words that can be spun cynically by the mindless spinners of the old politics; as much as demagogues on the right and left continue to try to channel the cumulative frustrations of Americans into a politics of resentment – all these attempts will, I hope, prove futile. Eighty percent of Americans know the nation is on the wrong track. The old politics, and the old media that feeds it, are irrelevant now.

Robert Reich.

Reich wrote seven paragraphs in all when he posted this yesterday. Go read the other six.

Best most of a paragraph of the day, so far

I was away from the Intertubes for several days and, therefore, I am just now catching up to the whole “Bittergate” controversy. (I actually heard a TV drone say that.) I also am just now catching up with the fact that the president of the United States is proud to have hosted meetings in which specific techniques of torture were discussed in the presidential mansion. Forgive me if I am not yet up to speed on the two stories, but having a candidate for the presidency say something that virually anyone who’s spent any time in the region in question knows to be true — which, I will admit, leaves out almost all of the people covering national politics these days — seems to me rather less of a story than the fact that a giggling unemployable spent time pretending to be Henry VIII down the hall from a gathering of bloodsoaked, pathetic wannabe tough guys.

Charles Pierce

Pierce also reminds us that Charlton Heston did march with Dr. King back in 1963, when it wasn’t a safe play.

Ruination Day

And the great barge sank.
And the Okies fled.
And the great emancipater
took a bullet in the head.

in the head…
took a bullet in the back of the head.

It was not December.
Was not in May.
Was the 14th of April.
That is ruination day.

That’s the day…
The day that is ruination day.

— Gillian Welch, “Ruination Day Part II”

Lincoln assassinated, the Titanic hit the iceberg, Black Sunday on the Great Plains.

April 14th.

Warning: Rant Alert!

Checking the ID of 60-year-old individuals before selling them beer seems to be back in vogue around Albuquerque. It’s happened to me twice in the past few days — at a restaurant and at Costco.

Here’s what I had to say about it two years ago:

NewMexiKen had to show ID last night at the Isotopes baseball game to purchase beer. Now I am 61 years old, have four children in their thirties and six granchildren. I was of legal age 40 f***ing years ago. There is no way, much as I might feel young on the inside, that I look like I could be under 21.

What kind of foolishness requires servers and vendors to check the age of every customer? Doesn’t that obvious overkill actually undermine the legitimacy of the liquor laws? (Sort of like “drug free zones” near schools — drugs are illegal but they’re really, really illegal around schools.)

When I was 17 or 19 I would have had no problem getting alcoholic beverages. I’m fairly certain today’s 17 or 19 year olds have little trouble if they really want it. What mis-guided moron thought up the policy of checking the IDs of grandparents?

And it’s just sad when the waitress or cashier says, “You don’t want me to get fired, do you?” Well, of course I don’t want them to get fired. I want them to quit and look for a job where they are enabled to use some common sense.

And you know what galls me the most? I was buying Michelob Ultra in both instances. (Don’t ask.) I mean that stuff is like making love in a canoe.

You know — f**king close to water.