October 10, 2012 archive

Today on The Stars Hollow Gazette

Our regular featured content-

And these featured articles-

These special events-

Coming up this evening-

Both the Oakland A’s and the San Francisco Giants face elimination tonight.

Write more and often.  This is an Open Thread.

The Stars Hollow Gazette

A List Of One

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Obama Ad About Big Bird Cannot Find One Prominent Wall Street Criminal Prosecuted By Administration

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Tuesday October 9, 2012 7:00 am

There’s only one thing that sticks out to me about this ad, though the casual viewer probably won’t notice it. Let’s look at that litany of Wall Street “criminals” and “gluttons of greed,” which later get juxtaposed with Big Bird. You have Bernie Madoff, Ken Lay and Dennis Kozlowski. So two CEOs prosecuted and convicted by George W. Bush’s Justice Department, and Madoff, whose son turned him in before Obama took office, in December 2008, and who pleaded guilty.

So the Obama campaign could not fill a list of three Wall Street criminals that the Obama Justice Department actually sent to jail. Heck, they couldn’t fill a list of one!

This is despite Eric Holder telling students at Columbia University in February of this year that his Justice Department’s record of success on fighting financial fraud crimes “has been nothing less than historic.” But not historic enough that his boss could point to, well, one Wall Street criminal behind bars as a result of DoJ’s actions.

That’s painfully telling. Nobody from Bank of America or Wells Fargo or Citigroup or JPMorgan Chase or Goldman Sachs or Bear Stearns or Morgan Stanley or Merrill Lynch or even Countrywide or Ameriquest was available to stand in as a “glutton of greed” in this advertisement. Literally no major figure responsible for the financial crisis has gone to jail. So the campaign has to use two CEOs from a decade-old accounting scandal, and a garden-variety Ponzi schemer. The financial crisis plays no role in this advertisement trying to juxtapose cuts to PBS with the financial crisis!

Sen. Schumer Rejects Tax Reform Compromise

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

In a speech to the National Press Club, Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) rejected the current compromise for a bipartisan deficit reduction plan that would prevent the trigger of tax increases and automatic spending cuts that go into effect on January 1. He stated that the compromise could not bring in more revenue by lowering the top tax rate and still protect the middle class from tax increases:

Specifically, he’s publicly urging Democrats to abandon a tax reform model that calls for ending tax expenditures, many of which benefit middle income earners, in order to finance a large tax rate cut for wealthier people. It’s a framework that’s popular among economists, particularly conservative ones, but that a group of Democrats negotiating with Republicans to avert large tax increases and sharp spending cuts next year have also embraced.

Instead, he proposes targeting tax loopholes and deductions that benefit top earners and raising their top income tax rate, while simultaneously narrowing the tax code’s preference for capital gains by ratcheting up the capital gains rate from its current, historically low rate of 15 percent. Taken altogether it’s a call for significantly more revenue from high-income earners than Dems have sought by proposing to allow the Bush tax cuts for top earners to expire; and an attempt to strengthen Dems’ negotiating posture, lest they get lured into conceding another large income tax cut for the wealthy.

Sen. Schumer proposes to freeze the top two tax bracket, cut the loopholes and deductions that benefit the top earners and raise the capital gains tax.

David Dayen at FDL News Desk notes that this would be a “major blow” to the Simpson-Bowles plan that would see the tax rates reduced to 23% for the top earners.

So how would Schumer get the Republicans to sit down at the table? As David point out, simple by dangling “entitlement” reform:

But there’s a giant caveat to all of this, based on the excerpts (haven’t yet found the full speech):

  But he says that Republicans should be drawn to such a deal by the prospect of a bipartisan bargain that also includes changes to improve the sustainability of entitlement programs. Those programs – such as Social Security and Medicare – are expected to run substantial shortfalls in the future, adding dramatically to budget deficits.

   “The lure for Republicans to come to the table around a grand bargain should be the potential for serious entitlement reform, not the promise of a lower top rate in tax reform,” Mr. Schumer is expected to say, according to excerpts of his speech.

So Schumer wants to trade unworkable “tax reform” for deeply unpopular “entitlement reform.” That’s not really a great trade. It’s good to acknowledge that tax reform will never work the way its most passionate advocates suggest. But if that doesn’t exist as a “get” for Republicans in a grand bargain, and entitlement cuts are the substitute, we have a whole different problem.

While Schumer claims that the concession on “entitlement” reform would not include privatization or a voucher program,  Atrios noted the Republicans have no interest in “reform” of entitlements unless it includes privatization and tax cuts for the wealthy. In other words, the chances of getting anything done have greatly increased.

Cartnoon

For no particular reason, this story is set in the stone age, millions and billions and trillions of years ago, probably before some of you were even born.  Originally posted July 1, 2011.

Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur

On This Day In History October 10

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

October 10 is the 283rd day of the year (284th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 82 days remaining until the end of the year.

On October 10, 1935, George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess premieres on Broadway.

Porgy and Bess is an opera, first performed in 1935, with music by George Gershwin, libretto by DuBose Heyward, and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward. It was based on DuBose Heyward’s novel Porgy and the play of the same name which he co-wrote with his wife Dorothy Heyward. All three works deal with African American life in the fictitious Catfish Row (based on the real-life Rainbow Row) in Charleston, South Carolina, in the early 1920s.

Originally conceived by Gershwin as an “American folk opera”, Porgy and Bess premiered in New York in the fall of 1935 and featured an entire cast of classically trained African-American singers-a daring and visionary artistic choice at the time. Gershwin chose African American Eva Jessye as the choral director for the opera. Incorporating a wealth of blues and jazz idioms into the classical art form of opera, Gershwin considered it his finest work.

The work was not widely accepted in the United States as a legitimate opera until 1976, when the Houston Grand Opera production of Gershwin’s complete score established it as an artistic triumph. Nine years later the Metropolitan Opera gave their first performance of the work. This production was also broadcast as part of the ongoing Saturday afternoon live Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts. The work is now considered part of the standard operatic repertoire and is regularly performed internationally. Despite this success, the opera has been controversial; some critics from the outset have considered it a racist portrayal of African Americans.

Summertime” is by far the best-known piece from the work, and countless interpretations of this and other individual numbers have also been recorded and performed. The second best-known number is “It Ain’t Necessarily So“. The opera is admired for Gershwin’s innovative synthesis of European orchestral techniques with American jazz and folk music idioms.

Porgy and Bess tells the story of Porgy, a disabled black beggar living in the slums of Charleston, South Carolina. It deals with his attempts to rescue Bess from the clutches of Crown, her violent and possessive lover, and Sportin’ Life, the drug dealer. Where the earlier novel and stage-play differ, the opera generally follows the stage-play.

The Porgy and Bess original cast recording was included by the National Recording Preservation Board in the Library of Congress, National Recording Registry in 2003. The board selects songs on an annual basis that are “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

On July 14, 1993, the United States Postal Service recognized the opera’s cultural significance by issuing a commemorative 29-cent postage stamp, and in 2001 Porgy and Bess was proclaimed the official opera of the State of South Carolina.

Conspiracy Theory

Muse in the Morning

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Muse in the Morning


Art Glass 39