Rockin’ around N.Y.C. (thanks to Marshall Crenshaw)

We are in New York for a short, post Christmas visit, and once again the great city casts its magical spells. My wife, in her typical display of brilliance, bought me a copy of E. B. White’s “Here is New York.” Now I know E.B. White mainly from studying the indispensable Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style,” a book that should still be considered required reading for all writers and speakers of our language (not that I consider myself in any way a paragon of either practice!). His “Here is New York” is a wonderful essay on the nature and character of New York City written during the sweltering summer of 1948. Whites prose is elegant and graceful and a joy to read, and while virtually none of the landmarks he discusses still exist it still felt to me like White touched the very heartbeat of America’s great city.


White writes about that great urban paradox of being alone in the crowd; “New York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation; better then the most dense communities it succeeds in insulating the individual (if he wants it, and almost everybody wants or needs it) against all the enormous and violent and wonderful events that are taking place every minute.” He also elucidates New York’s greatest gift to its admirers, the gift of possibility; “although New York often imparts a feeling of great forlornness and forsakenness, it seldom seems dead or unresourceful; and you always feel that either by shifting your location 10 blocks or by reducing your fortune 5 dollars you can experience rejuvenation. Many people who have no real independence of spirit depend on the city’s tremendous variety and sources of excitement for spiritual sustenance and maintenance of moral. In the country there are a few chances of sudden rejuvenation – a shift in weather, perhaps, or something arriving in the mail. But in New York the chances are endless.”

White discusses the 3 types of New Yorkers, the natives, the commuters and third, the person “who was born somewhere else and came to New York in a quest for something.” He writes that it is “this third city that accounts for New York’s high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements.”

Vivian Leigh said that when she got a script she looked for the key line of dialogue for her character, she felt that in a good script there would be a line that encapsulated the essence of her part, a line that best illuminated the character she was being asked to play. If New York City was a character my line will always be that great room in the Metropolitan Museum that is full of Rembrandt paintings. This large room says to me everything about NYC, if any other major museum has 2 or 3 Rembrandts, New York City is going to have a room full, wanna see Robert DeNiro do live theatre or Dustin Hoffman in “Death of a Salesman” or Kevin Spacey do Eugene O’Neill you gotta come to New York. In a way that is part of the character of New York City; bigger, better, best. When I first took my wife to New York we visited the MOMA, she was staggered to see one landmark painting after another, in room after room - art that she had seen a million times in books all in one place, that is New York City.

As we walked around New York City these few days I often thought of E.B. White’s New York; when I saw the slim young man standing in the subway engrossed in his reading of Tennessee Williams “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” or when we ran into the fine actress Jennifer Carpenter (who plays Deb on the TV show “Dexter”) on a subway platform at midnight in Times Square. When I had a wonderful corned beef and pastrami sandwich at 10pm, during a blizzard at Juniors deli in Brooklyn. When we took a much needed lunch break (and escaped the insane crouds on 7th Ave.) at the elegant Warwick hotel in Manhattan. When we left the theatre (after seeing Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth in the delightful musical “The Addams Family”) at around 11PM and found ourselves enveloped in the massive flow of people out and about in Times Square.

E. B. White wrote “A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, this heightening it meaning. The city is like poetry: it compresses all life; all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines. The island of Manhattan is without any doubt, the greatest human concentrate on earth, the poem whose magic is comprehensible to millions of permanent residences but whose full meaning will always remain elusive. At the feet of the tallest and plushiest offices lie the crummiest slums. The genteel mysteries housed in the Riverside Church are only a few blocks from the voodoo charms of Harlem. The merchant princes, riding to Wall Street in their limousines down the east River Drive, pass within a few hundred yards of the gypsy kings; but the princes do not know they are passing kings….”

Thank you New York, my life would be far less then it is if had not been touched by your greatness, grace and passion.

Food in Land of Plenty – a Holiday Essay on the (Un-Holy) Trinity

Being a lifelong fatso I find the subject of food is endlessly fascinating, and certainly no one can doubt that America (like me) has a somewhat warped relationship with food. Half the population is obsessed with the subject and study food labels like they were Holy Scriptures and the other half doesn’t give a shit and will eat anything put in front of them. Several weeks ago Lisa Miller wrote a fascinating piece in Newsweek examining the class divide around food called “Divided We Eat.” Ms. Miller examined 3 Brooklyn families and their approach to food and diet. One of her starting points was the fact that one of her subject families, obsessed with bestselling author Michael Pollan and his thesis regarding eating local and organic foods (the so called “locavore” movement), lived just 5 miles from families whose children went hungry. One of the more telling passages;


Adam Drewnowski, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington, has spent his career showing that Americans’ food choices correlate to social class. He argues that the most nutritious diet—lots of fruits and vegetables, lean meats, fish, and grains—is beyond the reach of the poorest Americans, and it is economic elitism for nutritionists to uphold it as an ideal without broadly addressing issues of affordability. Lower-income families don’t subsist on junk food and fast food because they lack nutritional education, as some have argued. And though many poor neighborhoods are, indeed, food deserts—meaning that the people who live there don’t have access to a well-stocked supermarket—many are not. Lower-income families choose sugary, fat, and processed foods because they’re cheaper—and because they taste good. In a paper published last spring, Drewnowski showed how the prices of specific foods changed between 2004 and 2008 based on data from Seattle-area supermarkets. While food prices overall rose about 25 percent, the most nutritious foods (red peppers, raw oysters, spinach, mustard greens, romaine lettuce) rose 29 percent, while the least nutritious foods (white sugar, hard candy, jelly beans, and cola) rose just 16 percent.


This statement highlights the way cheap, unhealthy processed food has become blight on American culture, health and waistline. Another author, Dr. David Kessler has written brilliantly about the way food is carefully designed and processed in this country to make it inherently unhealthy and fattening. Kessler’s book “The End of Overeating” is a dazzling account of how the food industry carefully manufactures food that essentially promotes and exacerbates overeating. The use, by the food industry, of its unholy trinity of fat, sugar and salt has made Americans fatter by design. His interview with the creator of the Dorito is stunning. I actually went out a bought a small bag to experience the almost delicate pattern of unfolding flavors and textures and to understand how scientifically calculated they all were. While much of Dr. Kessler work centers around the fast food industry (an easy target) it is important to realize that these problems exist across the full spectrum of products found in the American grocery store.

I am certainly not trying to underplay individual responsibility in Americas obesity problem, but as anyone will tell you the abundance of cheap, fattening and unhealthy foods certainly makes healthy eating and dieting very difficult for millions of American fatsos, and the fact that the very thing that makes the quest for healthy eating so difficult is actually meticulously designed into the food we encounter every day is somewhat shocking.

Much was made of personal choices during the healthcare debate and how the American diet adds to the cost of medical care in this country, and I could not agree more, but let’s add a little corporate responsibility to that equation. Maybe as part of our healthcare system American needs to examine how food is processed, marketed and sold in this county, especially to children and the poor. This might do as much to elevate the health of our country as anything any insurance company or government agency is going to do.

Wishing you all a (reasonably) healthy holiday this year!



Go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200

Once again I am reminded of the bizarro world as sketched out so brilliantly in the Seinfeld TV show, or better yet maybe it’s Wimpy from Popeye who will "gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today," either way we’re fucked!


The Republican Party, remember them - the party (largely supported by the Tea Party) who has been so strung out with deficit anxieties, fights Obama to the mat (believe me this was no heavyweight bout!) to maintain the Bush era tax cuts. The deal is that Democrats get an extension of unemployment benefits and a payroll tax cut and the whole steaming pile of shit adds $900 billion directly to our deficit over the next two years.

To quote the New York Times yesterday:

The package would cost about $900 billion over the next two years, to be financed entirely by adding to the national debt, at a time when both parties are professing a desire to begin addressing long-term fiscal imbalances.

Our public debt orgy is often credited to the tendency of human nature to not address a problem until it absolutely has to, i.e. as long and the Chinese are willing to fund the orgy we will continue on, but I am not so sure it is as simple as that.

On a memorable Bill Moyers show back in 2004 Kevin Phillips, author and political strategist to U.S. President Richard Nixon, argued that the United States is a plutocracy in which there is a "fusion of money and government." This unholy alliance between government and business interests (which can now count the Supreme Court in its club) must feel that when our drunken debt party ends and austerity hangover arrives they will not be touched by it. That remains to be seen, but make no mistake austerity is coming and it is going to be painful, but the plutocrats are certainly correct that austerity will be directed first and hardest on the poor and less fortunate in our society and they will be spared at least for a little while.

The phrase “no man is an island” kept coming back to me as I wrote this, the feeling that one cannot, no matter how much money and power you possess, fully or permanently insulate yourself from the pains of your fellow citizens. So I decided to find out the origin of that great aphorism, it is from John Donne (1572-1631);

All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

The Unemployment Debate or the new Congressional Turkey

OK, so this is not one of your cheerful thanksgiving blogs espousing the joys of feasting, family and friends. At the excellent Tannery Reading Series in Newburyport last Saturday author Rishi Reddi summed it up about best for me when she said “Thanksgiving sucks.”


All holiday cheer aside congress will be tackling the extension of unemployment benefits in December. There has been much intellectual (and not so intellectual) debate on this issue by many leading economists and the Republican leadership. The argument centers on the idea that the extension of unemployment benefits effectively disincentivise work and actually further exacerbates the problem, and of course there is the “we can’t afford it” fallback position. Needless to say these economists can prove their cases using extensive historical data. I get it, the concept is rather simple, I am paid to stay home therefore I decide not to work, or I refuse work because my unemployment check is bigger than the pay at the job I was offered. I suspect the argument has some merit, in that there must be some drain on human incentive when a regular (free) check is coming in. That being said I have NEVER heard a client (in my office) receiving unemployment elucidate that thought; they would all rather be working. Very few people enjoy or derive pleasure in long term unemployment, it is demeaning and dehumanizing. Furthermore unemployment checks are not much more then subsistence and do not provide a comfortable living.

I see this issue in really simple terms, no need for any pie charts, graphs or historical data. Behind all these horrible unemployment numbers are real US citizens that are suffering, many with families, and these are folks that cannot find any job and (in many cases) cannot even move to a new part of the country to seek job opportunities because they cannot sell their house. Relocation has historically been a remedy for unemployment but these days that cure that been short circuited by our housing crisis. On the opposite side of this equation is a government that can spend millions of dollars defending Chinese workers busy in Afghanistan mining that countries national resources, spend millions on foreign aid and farm subsidies for corporate farms, support the obscene corporate welfare that is a significant part of our current defense budget and is willing to bail out all sorts of industries that have gotten themselves into trouble. Republicans passed the first bailout (TARP) under George Bush after only hours of “debate” but is perfectly willing to have a knuckle busting fight about helping its fellow citizens in trouble thru absolutely no fault of their own, are you fucking kidding me!

After all the economic analysis, good or bad, accurate or inaccurate we find our fellow citizens in trouble, how can we not help them? I feel like saying to all the economists that write on this subject with such alacrity, I really like your thesis and think there may be real merit in them but we still need to vote for the extension of unemployment benefits because at the end of the day we cannot continue the immediate suffering for our fellow citizens just to “bend the curve” of long-term unemployment a few points.

Weekend Music – Aimee and Zaney – local girl and boy makes good!

On Friday we took a short walk to see Amiee Mann at our own Nock Middle School here in Newburyport. I first saw Aimee Mann almost 30 years ago as the bass player in a band called “The Young Snakes” in Boston (she always laughs when I tell her that). She had a freak hit with “Voices Carry” in the band ‘Til Tuesday in 1985 and has gone on to a stellar career as a solo artist. She appeared in a trio setting Friday night with her playing acoustic guitar along with a bass and keyboard player. The resulting, rather short, set was somewhat of a mixed bag. In this spare setting you missed all the wonderful Brian Wilson/Beatles pop gloss that inhabits many of her records. The other outcome of this band was perhaps highlighting the somewhat limited nature of her melodic skill. All that being said it was a good show; her skills as a lyricist and singer are high even if she tends to return often too familiar chord changes and melodic hooks. Her set drew songs from many of her records, but favored her latest CD “@#%&*! Smilers” from which she drew 4 tunes. She also treated the audience with 3 new songs from a proposed musical based on her thematic disk about a boxer “The Forgotten Arm.”


On Saturday morning we when to the lovely Portsmouth Music Hall with our 6 year old to see Dan Zanes and Friends in concert. As parents of a 6 year old we have become acquainted with a lot of modern children’s music, and while much is junk there is a fair amount of stellar offerings, and one of those is Dan Zanes. NH native Dan Zanes rocked Boston back in the mid-1980’s with his band The Del Fugeos but 10 years ago launched his career as a children’s entertainer. I think if him as the Keith Richards of children’s music with his relaxed and scruffy rockers persona. Based in Brooklyn, his band tours the world with its enchanting mix of folk standards, traditional tunes mixed with great children’s music. There else are you gonna hear a Broadway tune by Frank Loesser along with Pete Seeger’s classic children’s song “All Around the Kitchen,” the traditional work anthem “Pay me my Money Down,” “Waltzing Matilda” and a few Spanish songs thrown in to boot! All are performed flawlessly by Zanes on guitar, mandolin and banjo and his friends which includes (gorgeous) Sonia de los Santoson on guitar, Elena Moon Park on violin and trumpet, Saskia Sunshine Lane on bass and Colin Brooks on drums. The band is all first-rate and has a wonderful organic vitality. They never played down to the many kids in the audience but simply treated them (and the adults) to a superb set of traditional and roots acoustic music performed with rollicking wit and energy. At the end of the day the fact that this wonderful show was a “children’s concert” became a moot point.

Rocking @ the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame or, the second line comes to Cleveland!

I have just returned from a weekend @ the R&R Hall of Fame in beautiful Cleveland, Ohio, the occasion was their 15th annual Music Master’s series which was honoring New Orleans legends Antoine “Fats” Domino and Dave Bartholomew. The week offered a variety of events highlighting the careers of these seminal musician’s but I chose to attend the 2 main events on Saturday.


The first was the all-day conference @ Case Western followed by an evening concert that showcased the magnificent music of New Orleans. The week was co-sponsored by my friend Ira “Dr. Ike” Padnos and the Ponderosa Stomp Foundation and the keynote speaker at the conference was my buddy and Fats Domino biographer Rick Coleman.

The 2 honorees are the godfathers of New Orleans R&B; Fats Domino and his band leader & arranger Dave Bartholomew. Dave is a lesser known name but he and Fat’s had an almost Lennon/McCartney kind of symbiotic creative partnership. Fat’s was the performer but Dave was the band leader, arranger and trumpet player. Even outside of his work with Fats’ Dave is one of New Orleans greatest arrangers, musicians and talent scouts and directly responsible for many, many groundbreaking recordings coming out of that great city from the mid-1940’s right thru the 1950’s and beyond. By the way, the 3rd element of this holy trinity of New Orleans music was also present at the conference and that was engineer and the owner of J&M Recording Studio Cosimo Matassa.

The conferences were similar to the ones run by the Ponderosa Stomp in New Orleans but not as focused on direct oral histories, and a bit more of an expert “talking heads” approach. The day started with an excellent and informative keynote address by Rick Coleman, his deep love of the music always enthusiastically apparent – Rick wears his musical heart firmly on his sleeve. New Orleans writer Jeff Hannusch’s interview Lloyd Price was superb as was Dr. Ike’s extraordinary panel with all the surviving original members of the great Dave Bartholomew band that backed Fats on so many hits (the youngest being in his 70’s, the oldest in his 90’s!); Billy Diamond, tenor sax man Herb Hardesty, drummer Bob French, guitarist Ernest McLean, and songwriter/producer Eddie Ray. The day was capped with music historian John Brovan’s insightful interview with honoree Dave Bartholomew.

After a quick dinner we arrived at the gorgeous Palace Theatre for the VIP reception and the evening’s concert. The show was emceed by Hall of Fame president Terry Stewart and actor Wendell Peirce and started out on a perfect note when the Rebirth Brass Band marched into the grand theatre playing Professor Longhair’s “Mardi Gras in New Orleans.” One of the most exciting aspects of the show for me was the house band; Mac “Dr. John’’ Rebennack and his Lower 9-11. Many years ago I was privileged to see Mac back up an entire roster of performers during the Newport R&B festival and he was a stunning combination of restrained taste and subtlety and I knew he was going to provide the perfect backing for this evening of (mostly) aging performers.

Most of the evenings performers did a tune made famous by Fat’s and Dave and then performed one of their own signature songs. The Dixie Cups did a rollicking “I’m Walking” followed by their own hit “Chapel of Love.” Robert Parker did “I Hear you Knocking” followed by his smash “Barefootin’.” Irma Thomas lent her molasses smooth voice to a bluesy “Blueberry Hill” and followed it with her seminal hit “Time is on my Side” (move over Mick!). Lloyd Price romped thru “Ain’t That a Shame” followed by his 1952 chartbuster “Lawdy Miss Clawdy.” Reggae masters Toots and the Maytals highlighted the deep influence that Fat’s and New Orleans R&B had on Jamaican music with smoking versions of “Be My Guest” and “Let the Four Winds Blow.” Dave Bartholomew at almost 90 then took the stage with the “Blues in B Flat” that clearly proved he still had his trumpet chops, this was followed by his definitive “The Monkey (speaks his mind).” There was a wonderful duet with Irma and Lloyd Price on the Fats Domino signature tune “Walking to New Orleans.”

The night was capped by a brilliant set with the good Dr. doing 5 Domino classics including Fat’s first hit from 1949 (and arguably the first Rock and Roll record) “The Fat Man” with original guitarist Ernest McLean playing along!

The joyous 3 hour concert came to a close with the entire cast on stage doing (what else!) “When the Saints go Marching In.” Led by the ebullient Rebirth Brass Band the party spilled out down the aisles and into the grand lobby in a Cleveland style second line and the band continued its impromptu lobby concert for about 15 minutes to the ecstatic audience that lined the lobby stairs and up into the balcony.

A fitting and joyous end to a well-deserved week that hopefully began to shine a light on the importance of Fats Domino, Dave Bartholomew and all the great music that has come out of New Orleans.

Health Care Legislation

I finally have to respond to the WSJ’s running (seems like daily) diatribe on what they term Obamacare. Obamacare is the federal health care legislation written largely by Senator Max Baucus and Speaker Nancy Pelosi with the President rarely taking a stand on anything within the legislation itself. In a Thursday op-ed piece the Journal stated: “…Mrs. Pelosi, who would lose her speakership and perhaps resign if Democrats lose their majority. But we suspect she has long believed that losing was possible but worth the risk to pass Obamacare. You have to break a few careers to make a European entitlement state.”

As I read the constant vitriol spewing from the right regarding this seriously flawed health care legislation there is virtually never a mention of the many Americans who go bankrupt, die and suffer under our current health insurance system. When the Journal tosses off a phrase like: “You have to break a few careers to make a European entitlement state’ they forget that behind that offhand and divisive phrase stand tens of thousands of suffering American citizens. I would ask them to contemplate and respond to their fellow citizens who have the health care that is worse than that found in some 3rd world countries (the World Health Organization rates us 37 below Costa Rica, Dominica & Chile).

I completely understand and sympathize with folks concern over the economic cost of this new entitlement, especially in light of the overwhelming anxiety over our growing deficit, but health care for US citizens is a moral issue much the way civil rights was and a solution must be found.

Two incidents have always stood out to me as road markers for the almost complete screw job Americans got in the federal health care legislation. The first was Rahm Emanuel’s deal with the pharmaceutical companies BEFORE the crafting of the legislation even began. The second was the forced removal by congressional security police of supporters of “single payer” health coverage from the “public” hearings of Senator Max Baucus. All the while he had a phalanx of health insurance lobbyists sitting behind him at these hearings. This shameful incident was covered by (the much missed) Bill Moyers on one of his Friday news shows on PBS. In retrospect I think this was in fact a metaphor for the American people, who were summarily ejected from the health care debate in its entirety (no wonder people were pissed off!).

As we watch the fascinating experiment by the British in their newly embraced austerity it is interesting to note that the only aspect of public service to NOT be subjected to the austerity knife is public health care. Every other civilized country (and some un-civilized ones too) have come up with solutions to public health care. Many in congress had other schemes, ones that included much needed cost containment, tort reform, greater efficiencies and an emphasis on personal responsibility but they were pushed aside for this mammoth, complex and costly plan does virtually nothing to address the core problems in the American system.

Clearly operating within the confines or out debased, corrupt and morally bankrupt government is not the answer. I think a solution will only be found when the American people conjure up the moral fortitude to demand of itself a solution that gives all citizens proper healthcare. We simply cannot call ourselves civilized and ethical, much less Christian when our citizens die for lack of proper healthcare.

Getting Lowe with Joe Lovano

Had another one of those great music weekends seeing songwriter extraordinaire Nick Lowe on Friday and saxophone master Joe Lovano on Saturday.

Nick Lowe is making a short, rare U.S. tour with his full English band so this show became a must attend date for me. Lowe’s band is a real English all-star group featuring Geraint Watkins (keyboards), Robert Trehern (drums), Johnny Scott (guitar) and Matt Radford (bass). Having seen Nick more times than I can remember his voice seems so much better now than I remember it from the old days of the Rockpile band. Rockpile was the simply put one of the greatest traditional rock band ever, with Nick on bass, Billy Bremner and Dave Edmunds on guitar and Terry Williams on drums. As a live act they rank as probably one of the best 10 bands ever, spewing out a crushing blend of rock, blues, rockabilly, and country. I always thought Nick was a bit of a shaky singer back in those days but not so at the Somerville Theatre Friday night. His singing was spot on as was his relaxed and funny stage patter (his routine on the cost of bringing the band to America was classic underplayed British humor). His band had a very heavy British rockabilly flavor and recast some of the older classics “I Knew the Bride,” “Cruel to be Kind” in that mold to great success. The show drew mostly from Lowe’s later material, which was fine as the quality of his output has remained consistently superb throughout his long career.


The opening act was another “new wave” fav – Graham Parker who (like Lowe) continues to produce one great record after another while laboring in relative market obscurity. Parker played a solo set and was, as you would expect, funny, acerbic and smart. Such great fun to see him again, I reminded him after the show of his date at the Paradise where he and his band the Rumor blew out the entire electrical system in the club because they were playing so loud, he laughed heartily.

On Saturday we ventured to the new “Backstage Bistro” at the North Shore Music Theatre to have an excellent dinner and to see Joe Lovano and his band Us Five. Sponsored by the new North Shore Jazz Project, Us Five is an amazing jazz quintet made up of Lovano on saxophones, James Weidman on piano, Petar Slavov on bass and Francisco Mela and Otis Brown III on drums. The 2 drummers set up on either side of the bass player and Lovano, providing a stunning, complex dialog of rhythm behind Lovano. The duel drummers were instantly the most unique element of the group, at times playing together at other times trading off between each other. Lovano was amazing, possessing the lighter tone of John Coltrane, who he defiantly channeled in some of the more blistering parts of the show. Lovano’s seeming unending flow of inventive improvisation was a wonder to behold. In that respect he reminded me of Sonny Rollins, at time I would think he just can’t keep this up but he did – over and over again. The set was mostly made up of material from the bands wonderful Blue Note CD “FolkArt” as well as from their upcoming release.

It is become increasingly rare for jazz artists to have the economic stability to maintain a steady group, Lovano is able to do this and his listeners benefit from the cohesion and musical telepathy that such a band can generate.

November – vote (or don't vote) @ your peril!

I am a fan of Peggy Noonan’s Saturday opinion pieces in the WSJ. She leans right but always brings intellect to bear and generally takes a larger more global & historical perspective that I find refreshing. This past Saturday she quoted Republican Mitch Daniels as follows:

Good practical advice on all this comes from Indiana's Gov. Mitch Daniels, who met this week in New York with conservative activists, journalists and historians. Our country is in real peril, he said, we have a short time to do big things to get it right. Republicans "need to campaign to govern, not merely to win." If Democrats are "the worst, the most malevolent" in their campaigning, "don't match 'em, let 'em." Be better. Be serious about the issues at a serious time.

This excellent quote gets at the heart of 2 matters, the general feeling that we are at the precipice on a number of issues and that the next 5 to 10 years might be critical to our very survival. The second is that politics have come to mimic their multi-national corporate handlers in that the primary concern is the next election cycle (the political equivalent to the next corporate quarterly profit report) and that there is precious little long term, strategic thinking, i.e. we run to win not to govern.

So the key question to Tea Party morons and the republicans is this, are you campaigning to win (throw the bums out!) or to actually govern. Would Mr. Daniels regard Massachusetts Attorney (and birther) Bill Hudak with his yard festooned with Obama as Osama Bin Laden pictures a "serious" candidate for a "serious time?"  The huge amount of corporate money flowing into republican campaigns gives one precious little hope for the future as the moneyed interests are seeing this groundswell of public anger as a great tool in which to bring a friendlier corporate environment into Washington. Less annoying regulations, environmental concerns, global warming, functioning educational system and most of all LOWER TAXES!

As far as I can tell, for many on the right, EVERYTHING revolves around a mania about taxes (this, of course might just reflect my own proclivity!). It seems, at times, that conversation on all issues pivots primarily on the subject of taxes. This obsession, and the incredible energy being devoted to it, is small minded, anti-intellectual, shortsighted and ultimately destructive to our country.

More Stupid E-Mail Tricks

The following is an e-mail I received from a client who asked; “is this true?”

Did you know that if you sell your house after 2012 you will pay a 3.8% sales tax on it? That's $3,800 on a $100,000 home etc.

When did this happen? It's in the healthcare bill. Just thought you should know.

SALES TAX TO GO INTO EFFECT 2013 (Part of HC Bill) - REAL ESTATE SALES TAX

So, this is "change you can believe in"?

Under the new health care bill - did you know that all real estate transactions will be subject to a 3.8% Sales Tax? The bulk of these new taxes don't kick in until 2013 (presumably after Obama's re-election). You can thank Nancy, Harry and Barack and your local Democrat Congressman for this one. If you sell your $400,000 home, there will be a $15,200 tax. This bill is set to screw the retiring generation who often downsize their homes. Is this Hope & Change great or what? Does this stuff makes your November and 2012 votes more important?

Oh, you weren't aware this was in the Obamacare bill? Guess what, you aren't alone. There are more than a few members of Congress that aren't aware of it either (result of clandestine midnight voting for huge bills they've never read).

MY ANSWER – This e-mail is mostly deceptive and false - it refers to the "Medicare" tax and it applies to all capital gains transactions (not just homes) starting in 2013, but it would only apply (1) IF the transaction was taxable (above the $250K/$500K sale of home exclusion) and then (2) only if the individual was in the income range to have this Medicaid tax applied. So it will probably affect very few people, in my practice I have never seen a sale of home taxed since the $250/$500K exclusion law was passed by President Bill Clinton.  

It makes you wonder what ignorant shithead wrote this piece, or decided to pass it along. It is clearly deceptive using the $400K and $100K examples - there are WAY too many variables in this calculation to use a simple generalization like that. If a couple sold a home for less then $500K the transaction would not even be reported on thier tax return, let alone taxed! 

This is a prime example of the crap hurling around the Internet these days, I am reminded again and again of something my brother Mark Riley said many years ago; “the Internet is the greatest source of mis-information in the history of mankind.” I would only add that, that goes double for e-mails, so be careful what you pass along. I have yet to get 1 of these kinds of e-mails that is true.

New Orleans – CODA

It is Sunday 9/26/10, the glorious 9th annual Ponderosa Stomp has ended and we are spending our last day in NOLA. We begin the day with a 2 hour “Cradle of Jazz” tour by John McCusker. This is my second tour with John who possesses that wonderful combination of knowledge and passion when it comes to traditional jazz and New Orleans. Amazing as it seems, John is the only person (to my knowledge) who does a jazz tour in NOLA and it is a must do event for anyone interested in the “Cradle of Jazz” in New Orleans. McCusker also has a great DVD of his tour called “The Story of Jazz – New Orleans Stomp” that you can buy on Amazon.com.


After a lunch of po-boys we went to see Fats Domino with his biographer and music historian Rick Coleman, who is hard at work on his forthcoming history of New Orleans R&B. Unfortunately Fats was taking a nap so we visited with his son Antoine Domino III for a while. Antoine was in the garage running Fat’s 2 Rolls-Royce Cornish automobiles (1 gold and 1 baby blue) to keep them in “ready to go” shape in case his dad wanted to use them, parked in the driveway was Fat’s Mercedes 600S, his daily driver, as well as a Cadillac.

Next up was a wonderful visit with New Orleans music legend Frankie Ford (“Sea Cruise”). Frankie has a wonderful home full of fascinating memorabilia from his 50+ years in music. He regaled us with stories of his career and antidotes of many of the legends he worked with and knew. During our discussion he spoke of Ernie “The Emperor of the World” K-Doe and he said something fascinating; that Ernie (who was an unrepentant alcoholic) suffered from “that New Orleans disease.” When I asked him what he meant he said simply: “here is my foot, someone get me a gun to shoot it.”

This comment hit me like a ton of bricks, as it struck me as a real truism of our beloved city. New Orleans does seem to have an odd propensity to shoot off its own foot in so many ways. You see this in its lack of support of the music it professes to love so much, you see it in the post-Katrina rebuilding of the city and the incompetence of city government (not that government incompetence is any more endemic in NOLA then it is elsewhere, it just feels more accepted). New Orleans seems at times to work hard against its own self-interest, but maybe that is just part of its quirky character that we all love so much. It is a hard city not to love, with all its faults, so I will end this by saying God Bless New Orleans and its great people, music and food!

Dateline New Orleans – The Ponderosa Stomp, Day 2

My day begins at noon with the first of 4 educational conferences. The first is with the irrepressible R&B shouter Tommy Brown who is articulate, funny and informative about his 50+ years in music. This is followed by a superb session moderated by the great Holly George-Warren called “Here Come the Girls.” This panel is with guitar player and singer Barbara Lynn and the lovely La La Brooks. In this panel these 2 great women discussed their careers from the female perspective. This great panel was followed by a rather strange session with noted New Orleans record dealer Jim Russel. The afternoon was topped off with New Orleans pioneer arranger, bandleader and trumpeter Dave Bartholomew. Bartholomew is one of the great icons of New Orleans music and the session was a real treat moderated by the great British music historian John Broven and our own Dr. Ike.


Next we had a wonderful dinner with historian John Broven, Fats Domino biographer Rick Coleman, studio legend Cosimo Mattassa and singer Gerri Hall then it was off to the evening’s shows.

The second nights shows were more typical Stomp shows then the first night because they featured 2 of the Stomps great backing bands, Paul “Lil Buck” Sinegal and the Topcats and Deke Dickerson and the Eccophonics. One of the most distinctive features of the Stomp is joining these (often) aging performers with absolutely top notch backing bands, giving them settings probably far better than anything they would be able to muster on their own.

The first half of the night featured Lafayette guitar master Lil Buck backing a total of 8 performers. These included funk/R&B singer Willie West, swamp blues harmonica master Lazy Lester who played as good a set of “lazy” swamp blues as you could ever hear. Lester was followed by blued eyed soul singer Roy Head who literally tore the roof off with his high energy set ending with his signature smash “Treat Her Right.” Roy preceded Stomp favorite Barbara Lynn. I love spending time with Barbara who is such a quite, reserved lady. Barbara, who has lived in Beaumont Texas her entire life, is soft spoken and just a delight to be with, but put her on stage and her guitar might as well be a Tommy gun. She delivered a blazing show that had the audience eating out of her hand and screaming as she powered thru a set of R&B classics as well as her own giant hit “You’ll Lose a Good Thing.” Barbara was preceded by a surprise 2 song guest set by Ronnie Spector who looked and sounded great. Ronnie and Barbara were followed by elderly R&B singer/songwriter Sugar Pie DeSanto who did a superb (if oddly sexual) set of classic soul and R&B.

The nights last 4 acts were all backed by Deke Dickerson and his band the Eccophonics. Like Lil’ Buck, Dickerson is a master of (seemingly) all musical styles. Over the years we have seen him do Rockabilly, Western Swing, garage rock, country and all with enormous skill and sensitively. First up was Louisiana rockabilly icon Joe Clay. Joe’s always crowd pleasing set was followed by legendary truck driving country singer Red Simpson. Red’s understated delivery was masterful and Deke brought just the right amount of Bakersfield twang to the occasion – this set was a real treat. Next up was R&B singer Little Jesse who did a red hot, foot stompin’ set of classic R&B, ending with is totally rocking masterpiece “Hit, Git and Split.” The night ended with the original guitar hero of rock and country gentleman Duane Eddy who did a perfect set of his famous guitar instrumentals.

With a twang the 9th annual Ponderosa Stomp drew to a close. As always a great time, being thrilled in seeing performers you never thought you would see, many you barely knew about, but virtually all delightful, surprising and entertaining. The Stomp is a direct look into the face of so many American musical traditions. The Stomp is also an odd little cult; you see many of the same faces each year because for music fans once they come to the Stomp they simply refuse to ever miss it again. During one of the conferences the speaker asked the audience if there was anyone from Europe, in that one small group there were individuals that had flown in from Finland, Germany and England to attend the Stomp! I meet many folks from the Boston area and from all over the country so unique is The Ponderosa Stomp. I suspect most would agree with me when I say God bless the Ponderosa Stomp!

For more information please visit www.ponderosastomp.com

Dateline - New Orleans - The Ponderosa Stomp, Day 1

It is 2:12AM and I am back in my hotel room after the first day of the 9th annual Ponderosa Stomp. The STOMP is America’s preeminent festival of obscure (and sometimes not so obscure) American garage rock, soul, rockabilly, R&B, swamp pop, surf, Cajun and other native styles. The DNA of the STOMP is the singular vision of its founder Ira “Dr. Ike” Padnos – eclecticism you can dance to, obscurity with a groove. This is a vision that connects with the deep roots that join all these great American musical traditions. The STOMP is very near and dear to my heart and after coming for 7 years it never ceases to surprise, delight and educate in very deep ways.


Day 1 began @ 10:00AM with a dedication of J&M studios @ the corner of Rampart and Dumaine as an official Rock n Roll Hall of Fame historic landmark. The ceremony was attended by the great Cosimo Mattasa who ran the famed studio from 1945 to the mid-1960’s and recorded almost all the music that came out of New Orleans for most of those years and bandleader and arranger Dave Bartholomew. It was a small ceremony but well attended and much deserved.

After the dedication @ J&M (which is now a Laundromat) I attended a short series of clips put together by film historical Joe Lauro showing vintage film of artists that had played the Stomp in past years. This was followed by a fascinating (work in progress) film on the New Orleans piano genius James Booker. After this it was a series of conference interviews that lasted all afternoon. First with guitar master Duane Eddie, followed by singer Gloria Jones, the surf greats The Trashmen and one of the lead vocalist for Huey Piano Smith and the Clowns, Gerri Hall, who lead the audience in a sing-along of their smash hit “Doncha Just Know it.”

A quick dinner and off to the evenings show, tonight was almost a perfect paradigm if what makes the Stomp so incredibly special. At 8:30 was Texas rockabilly pioneer Huelyn Duvall, followed by one of the most authentic R&B blues shouters I have ever heard, the irrepressible Tommy Brown (think Roy Brown, Wynonie Harris, Joe Turner, etc). Tommy was followed by La La Brooks, the lead singer of the Crystals (“And then he Kissed Me”,” Da Do Ron Ron”, “He’s a Rebel”). Ms. Brooks has the most amazing afro (huge and beautiful) I have ever seen and is a stunning & gorgeous performer and singer (sorry to gush - I may be in love!). Her set was spot on pop perfection backed by Boston’s own Jenny and the Delinquents! La La was followed by group I had never heard of “The Relatives” from Dallas Texas. Their set of funky, blazing gospel harmonies was mind-blowing; driving, soulful and uplifting. The Relatives was followed by Chicano rock pioneers Thee Midnighters from East LA. They played an incendiary set of great garage rock including their 1965 local LA hit “Whittier Boulevard.” The final set of the night were the Mid-West surf giants The Trashmen who played a killer set of perfect 1960’s garage/surf music including their timeless hit “Surfin Bird” (played twice @ Dr. Ike’s request).

So in the course of about 4 hours one careened with a sublime internal “Ponderosa Stomp” logic from 1950’s Texas Rockabilly, to a late 1940’s/early 1950’s blues/R&B shouter, to sublime early 1960’s Phil Spector AM radio pop, to blazing, righteous gospel followed by 2 slabs of rocket fueled mid-1960’s garage rock. That my dear reader is the summation of what is so extraordinary about the Ponderosa Stomp; it is not for the faint of heart, it is (in a word) music geek central. It is for listeners (and they fly from all over the world!) that really see and feel the deep vein that runs thru all this great American music – God bless the Ponderosa Stomp.

For more info visit www.ponderosastomp.com

Austerity, American Style

Much has written about David Stockman’s 7/31/10 Op-Ed piece in the in the New York Times; “Four Deformations of the Apocalypse.” It was a damning indictment of modern government economic policy starting back in the Nixon administration and moving forward, Stockman was head of OMB for the Regan administration. Stockman attacks deficit spending, Republican tax cuts, increased military budgets, Wall Street and the financial sector and the printing of money. He argues (among other things) that the Bush tax cuts, that he feels did not make sense in the first place, should be allowed to expire as part of a call for a new austerity.


Stockman’s article is something all Americans should read. I say this not because I think the piece is necessarily “correct” but because it is correct enough, and comes from the unique perspective Stockman offers. I think Stockman leans too heavily on increased taxation and not enough on spending cuts and government streamlining and re-organization – things that could have a significant impact on our governments spending (including ending the wars in Iraq & Afganistan).

All that being said the other thing Mr. Stockman had brought into the discussion is the idea of austerity. It seems that there is little doubt that the extreme size of the deficit is (when any adults happen to be elected to congress or the White House) going to lead to some very tough choices in our public and private life.

What remains to be seen, is if Americans, who have shown a very slight taste for austerity, have the moral fortitude to stomach this. Years of drunken, debt fueled spending (both public and private) have left Americans little equipped to fight this coming battle.

Iggy and an Ode to the Joy of the “really cool” American Songbook, OR my week in music OR the summer of 2010 swings to a close

As is often said, variety is the spice of life and for me music is one of my key “spices,” and last week proved exceptional. On Sunday 8/29/10 we went out to Tanglewood to hear our friend John Relyea sing the bass/baritone lead in the BSO’s annual Tanglewood closing performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.


The 9th symphony, so familiar and the subject of much parody (The Beatles "Help") with its famous “Ode to Joy” chorus has the singular ability to blow past all that familiarity and strike the listener deep in the heart. It is at once huge and epic and yet utterly human, melodic and accessible. It is “King Lear,” it is “Lord of the Rings,” or “Mozart’s Requiem” – epic yet intimate, and ultimately a very moving work of art. Beethoven’s ability to write such a powerful “Ode of Joy” at such a (seemingly) low point in his life reminds us that Joy is a choice we make in our life and not a natural feeling that springs forth as a result of some outside force, event, emotion or person.

I cannot really pretend to critique the performance that day under the baton of the aging maestro Kurt Masur as I am not familiar enough with classical music, but the very sold out audience on the beautiful, sunny and warm afternoon were apparently as overwhelmed by what they had heard as I had been and the performers were called back for 3 curtain calls. It was the type of performance one felt very privileged to attend, deeply life affirming and dare I say it, joyous.

On Tuesday we found ourselves and the House of Blues in Boston to see Iggy and the Stooges. This show was blisteringly loud, ferocious and amazing and to quote my learned friend Mark Poulin who attended the show with me pithily observed “as advertised.”

The Stooges were a band who existed for a few incendiary years in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s and recorded 3 legendary albums, including an all-time classic “Raw Power.” The band we saw that night was essentially the “Raw Power” band with the great James Williamson on guitar, and the set list was all Stooges material. This was about as far as you could get from a bland retread of past glories. This group of AARP members (all over 60) was up to playing these proto-punk masterpieces with an energy level that equaled the “Raw Power” of the old days. Iggy Pop was amazing; shirtless, bruised and broken but still possessing a remarkable life force (and voice) that connected is a very direct way with the largely younger audience (James Williamson describes Iggy as an “in your face” front man). He still stage dives (!?!) and works as hard as any performer I have ever seen to connect in a really personal, physical way with his audience. He is rewarded with for all his life-long hard work with what can only be described as a quasi-violent, semi-controlled love fest with Iggy as a sort of benevolent, grand old wizard at the helm, and thoroughly enjoying every minute of the mosh pit madness taking place around him.

On Saturday we ventured back out to Tanglewood for its jazz festival. In the afternoon we attended the second annual live taping of the “Radio Deluxe” show with John Pizzarelli, his wife Jessica Molasky and his great quartet. John Pizzarelli is one of my favorite performers, a fine jazz guitarist and an excellent singer dedicated to the ongoing health of the American songbook. In a funny way he always makes me think of Bruce Springsteen. John has a similar quality as a performer in that he clearly loves being on stage and always appears to always be having the time of his life. Being in the audience I am always thoroughly convinced that there is simply no other place John would rather be then on that stage at that moment in time, and that is a quality I have only witnessed consistently in one other performer, Mr. Springsteen (must be something in that New Jersey water!).

As I said, the concert was a live taping of John Pizzarelli’s ”Radio Deluxe” radio show that is heard coast to coast (locally on WNBP in Newburyport, MA) and of course streaming on www.johnpizzarelli.com. The show is done in an urbane style of the classic, live radio; with stories, conversation, humor, special guests and music. Its core value is a celebration of the American Songbook but it also consistently pushes the listener to new music and performers. Ms. Molasky is a well-known Broadway singer and actress and seems to have a bit more expansive tastes then her husband and often adds a more contemporary flavor to the show.

The show opened with John and the quartet and included a couple of wonderful performances with Ms. Molasky including an inventive “mash up” of “While me Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Killing me Softly with His Song” with John doing the George Harrison tune and Jessica doing the song made famous by Roberta Flack.

The special guest this year was singer Jane Monheit who sounded and looked spectacular, as she and John did an exquisite duet of “Tonight you Belong to Me” and Jane closed her short set with a smokin’ version of Annie Ross’s “Twisted.”

I was VERY heartened to see John’s dad Bucky Pizzarelli’s Benedetto 7 string guitar on stage when we arrived knowing that we were going to get to see him. At almost 85 years young Bucky is a jazz & jazz guitar national treasure and one of the most joyous (there’s that word again!) performers I have ever seen. He sits on stage, laughs and simply beams with happiness. His playing is still flawless and it is always an honor to see and hear him. He and John did a short interview segment and then played a gorgeous duet on Django Reinhardt’s “Nuages.”

That night we heard Kurt Elling and his trio. If you have not heard Kurt sing, it is a really a singular experience. He is somewhat of an acquired taste, heavily mannered and improvisational in his interpretation of songs but also very artful and deeply felt in his delivery. In this he always makes me think of my friend, the late great Betty Carter who had a similar approach to jazz singing (I suspect Kurt recognizes this as well, he recorded Betty’s song “Tight” on a recent CD).

The evenings opening set was Elling’s backing group, the Lawrence Hobgood trio. If you have not heard Mr. Elling you might not know that he has one of music’s greatest accompanist/arrangers/collaborators in Mr. Hobgood, and their opening set was simply gorgeous. Some of the set was drawn from Mr. Hobgood’s highly recommended CD “When the Heart Dances.” Hobgood told me after the show that it was the Tanglewood Jazz Fest staff who suggested he do the opening set for Mr. Elling – Bravo!

Kurt Elling, suave and handsome, has the really cool hipster persona that amazingly does not come off as fake or overly ironic. Like Ella Fitzgerald he is very much part of the band and interacts directly with the group as he sings and the interplay is fantastic. He treated us with such ballads as “Stairway to the Stars” and “Dedicated to You,” and a genre bending, inventive arrangement of the Beatles “Norwegian Wood” with guest guitarist John McLean. His intonation is perfect and his range is stunning and for us he capped off a really amazing week of music. For this listener we really dug the way he closed out our summer is a really cool style.

They call me the Wolf

One of the amazing qualities of all great art is its ability to transcend its own time. When listening to Ben Webster and Harry Carney solo on Duke Ellington’s “Cottontail” from May 4, 1940 with its complex structure and its blistering yet elegant swing you are encountering music that is intensely a part of the era it was created in yet simultaneously existing like ether, beyond time and space (by the way, feel free to substitute your own favorite film, song, book, poetry, play, theatre, dance, architecture, performance, visual art or music in this passage). The highest artistic creations run deep into the veins of human existence and emotion, allowing it to literally transcend the superficial attributes, noise and concerns of modern life and strike us deep where we live. It embodies and expresses the most profound and primal human emotions in ways that can’t be understood, only felt; joy, sadness, fear, love, etc.


I guess because I knew the bluesmen Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf fairly well I often think of this seeming paradox by visualizing a kid somewhere hundreds of years from now listening to the Wolf singing “Smokestack Lighting” or Muddy singing “Feel Like Going Home” and being totally blown away. He (or she) will not need to know anything about these great men, or understand the tumulus life they lead or the virulently racist American they grew up in. They will not need to know anything about their hard life in the Mississippi Delta or the violent south side of Chicago they performed in and lived with their families or the musicians that played on these recordings. The powerful voices and sounds will come out of the darkness and pierce their heart right where they live and (perhaps) change their life. That is the indefinable magic of the arts, and it is important to be touched by this every day.

America’s “Night of the Living Dead” OR “Plan 10 from Wall Street” OR “I Spit on your Grave – the Goldman Sachs Story”

Like one of the midnight madness horror movie marathons (you remember those, where you find yourself watching “Plan 9 from Outerspace” @ 3 in the morning!) it is really difficult to move past the particular horrors that was our 8 years under President Cheney and George W.’s leadership (oops!). Recent polling has indicated that Americans are now feeling that the lives of their children will NOT be as prosperous or as good as theirs has been (for an excellent take on these polls read Peggy Noonan or Mort Zukerman’s op-ed articles in the WSJ over the last several weeks). I think this feeling that the lives of our children will be better than our own has been the real cornerstone of the American dream (not the big car or house). This represents a real sea change in how American’s view themselves and their country. With all the Bush administrations crimes & misdemeanors, the final, massive “fuck-you” was TARP in October of 2008 (the bailout of Wall Street) and all this has me thinking; did George W. and his cohorts in congress preside over the mortal wounding of our country and secondarily are the Obama administration moving us closer to the brink or further away?

Grover Norquist & the great Bush tax cut debate!

A client recently sent me this e-mail from a friend “who is very smart” and wanted to know what I thought. It turns out this little diatribe is from Grover Norquist (http://www.atr.org/) who was George W. Bush’s main tax advisor (need we say more). When I was in northern Maine on vacation last week I read an op-ed piece is a little newspaper there that taken almost verbatim from this piece. See my comments after each section;

In less than six months, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect. They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves on January 1, 2011:

First Wave: Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief
In 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for investors, small business owners, and families.
These will all expire on January 1, 2011:
Personal income tax rates will rise. The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed). The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent. All the rates in between will also rise. Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as higher marginal tax rates. The full list of marginal rate hikes is below:
- The 10% bracket rises to an expanded 15%
- The 25% bracket rises to 28%
- The 28% bracket rises to 31%
- The 33% bracket rises to 36%
- The 35% bracket rises to 39.6%

RESPONSE - The current administration has always maintained that these bracket changes would not affect those making under $250K so therefore would be little or no change to the 10, 15, 25 or 28% brackets. So the change is mostly just to the 33% & 35% brackets. Keep in mind that these “tax increases” were in fact enacted by the Republican congress and President Bush when they had them sunset on 12/31/2010. Lastly, there is starting to be a lot of pushback regarding these changes, I would not put too much money on anything happening necessarily this year.

Higher taxes on marriage and family. The "marriage penalty" (narrower tax brackets for married couples) will return from the first dollar of income. The child tax credit will be cut in half from $1000 to $500 per child. The standard deduction will no longer be doubled for married couples relative to the single level. The dependent care and adoption tax credits will be cut.

RESPONSE - The marriage penalty is (essentially) a mathematical trick of the code (not a secret plot by evil tax code writers or congress) would most likely be fixed as it has in the past - I doubt that the MP is something anybody really wants. Personally I think the dependent care and adoption credits probably should be ameliorated in some ways to broaden the tax base a bit more.


The return of the Death Tax. This year, there is no death tax. For those dying on or after January 1 2011, there is a 55 percent top death tax rate on estates over $1 million. A person leaving behind two homes and a retirement account could easily pass along a death tax bill to their loved ones.

RESPONSE – We will agree as adults here to NOT use the infantile “republican-speak” term “death tax” and use the proper terminology ESTATE TAX instead. The estate tax was allowed to lapse (as the Bush administration planned) this year, something I doubt is anybody expected to actually happen. In all likelihood it will be pegged at somewhere between 3 and 5 million and as such would (statistically) affect only a handful of American taxpayers. There has been 0 discussion regarding it going back to the levels mentioned above.

Higher tax rates on savers and investors. The capital gains tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 20 percent in 2011. The dividends tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 39.6 percent in

2011. These rates will rise another 3.8 percent in 2013

RESPONSE - This refers to the Bush lower rate on dividend income and LT cap gains - I suspect this will happen and I truly doubt if ANYBODY reasonable expected these preferential rates to last for very long. My vote would certainly be to keep the LT cap gains rate @ 15% and increase the dividend rate. The other thing I would add here is that one of the tricks of these particular Bush tax cuts is that the alternative minimum tax (AMT) often added back some of the tax savings delivered by these 2 cuts with higher AMT taxes.

Second Wave: Obamacare
There is over twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare. Several will first go into effect on January 1, 2011. They include:
The "Medicine Cabinet Tax" Thanks to Obamacare, Americans will no longer be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).
The "Special Needs Kids Tax" This provision of Obamacare imposes a cap on flexible spending accounts (FSAs) of $2500 (Currently, there is no federal government limit). There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education. Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education.
The HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike. This provision of Obamacare increases the additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HAS from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.

RESPONSE - These are all true (to the best of my knowledge – I don’t think there are any “experts” yet on the new health care legislation as many of the details have not been worked out yet)


Third Wave: The Alternative Minimum Tax and Employer Tax Hike
When Americans prepare to file their tax returns in January of 2011, they'll be in for a nasty surprise-the AMT won't be held harmless, and many tax relief provisions will have expired. The major items include:
The AMT will ensnare over 28 million families, up from 4 million last year. According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center, Congress' failure to index the AMT will lead to an explosion of AMT taxpaying families-rising from 4 million last year to 28.5 million. These families will have to calculate their tax burdens twice, and pay taxes at the higher level. The AMT was created in 1969 to ensnare a handful of taxpayers.

RESPONSE - AMT has been ensnaring folks consistently for the last 8 years, this INDEED was a technique of the Bush administration tax code to ameliorate the effect of some of the Bush tax cuts, for instance very few investors really got the 15% dividend and cap gains rates after the AMT was calculated on their return.

Small business expensing will be slashed and 50% expensing will disappear. Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly-deduct, or "depreciate") equipment purchases up to $250,000. This will be cut all the way down to $25,000. Larger businesses can expense half of their purchases of equipment. In January of 2011, all of it will have to be "depreciated."

RESPONSE - It is very unlikely this will happen, NO Democrat or Republican is going to have the stomach to attack this classic small business tax break.

Taxes will be raised on all types of businesses. There are literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place. Then biggest is the loss of the "research and experimentation tax credit," but there are many, many others. Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs.

RESPONSE - It is very unlikely this will happen – many of these credits are historically re-authorized year by year by congress and are always re-authorized

Tax Benefits for Education and Teaching Reduced. The deduction for tuition and fees will not be available. Tax credits for education will be limited. Teachers will no longer be able to deduct classroom expenses. Coverdell Education Savings Accounts will be cut. Employer-provided educational assistance is curtailed. The student loan interest deduction will be disallowed for hundreds of thousands of families.

RESPONSE – These are fairly small items in tax terms and I am sure they will effect some folks negatively but in the scheme of things do not seem to be something to get worked up over.

Charitable Contributions from IRAs no longer allowed. Under current law, a retired person with an IRA can contribute up to $100,000 per year directly to a charity from their IRA. This contribution also counts toward an annual "required minimum distribution." This ability will no longer be there.

RESPONSE - Only seen this once in my career, largely meaningless in my opinion

Final comments - this is typical sort of "red meat" rant, ignoring all fact patterns and current tax trends, as I said it is from a website run by Grover Norquist, the notorious tax/economic adviser in the Bush administration. Folks like Norquist have NEVER met a tax increase that they like, or a tax decrease that they don’t like - no matter how preferential or biased it is to one group or another or unsupported by any meaningful economic data!


Seems to me that during his little rant he should take responsibility for helping pass tax cuts during wartime (Iraq) that were clearly unsustainable AND then having them sunset on a specific date! This type of writing is meant to spread fear and hatred of the current administration & the Democrats. I have no problem attacking the current administration and the Democrats on policy, but this sort of unfocused and uninformed anger is not going to lead to any meaningful change in our political system, and that is really sad.

A superb website to see the effects of proposed income changes on your personal tax return is http://www.mytaxburden.org/ run by the Tax Foundation

My friend Jennie Lee

Several years ago I decided that I needed to learn yoga. I had been going to the gym on a regular basis but kept bumping into this thing called yoga and I wanted to understand it. NOW, there was no way I was gonna haul my fat ass around in a group/class situation so knew I needed private instruction. Our office had just done Jennie Lee’s tax return and I knew she taught yoga so I called her. One on one instruction is her specialty thru her Transformative Yoga Therapy model. Over the next 3 years she quietly yet forcefully pushed me forward to a (I think) real understanding of the practice of yoga. When I started I wanted to use it primarily as an exercise routine, and bypass all the spiritual mumbo-jumbo but to her great credit she did not allow me to do that. During our sessions, without making a big deal about it, she never lost the focus of yoga as a spiritual practice. Now keep in mind that these sessions probably sounded anything but spiritual as I cursed my corpulent self into all sorts of contortions that fat people are simply not designed to do! Jennie was, of course, inspirational and the perfect coach for me; she often said that she had never heard anyone say “fuck” so many times while doing yoga!
This week as I did my yoga while on vacation in Maine I thought of her as I often do, I recently told her that her voice would be in my head for the rest of my days: breath, straighten out the back, don’t forget to breath, engage your core, don’t think about the move, just do it (don’t overthink it!) and (of course) DON’T FORGET TO BREATH!

I was also thinking about an excellent article Jennie wrote for Yoga Therapy Today (you can read it on her website) in which she spoke about yoga’s ability to meet you wherever you are (this is something she often said as we worked together). As I enter my 5th year of doing what I semi-respectfully call “fat guy” yoga I know that this is true. Even when you are tired, depressed, anxious, or worried (and fat!) you can do yoga it will meet you where you are and work with you and uplift you. In all this Jennie Lee gave me a lifelong gift and I miss her and wish her well on her new life away from Newburyport, I am sure there are great things awating her! For information please visit her website - www.stillnessinmotion.info

Obama - Bush and the world of PSC's

The United States relies on contractors to provide a wide variety of services in Iraq and Afghanistan, including security. Private firms known as private security contractors (PSCs) are hired to protect individuals, transport convoys, forward operating bases, buildings, and other economic infrastructure. While DOD has previously contracted for security in Bosnia and elsewhere, it appears that in Iraq and Afghanistan DOD is for the first time relying so heavily on armed contractors to provide security during combat or stability operations. As of March 31, 2010, there were more than 27,000 armed private security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Recent contracting trends indicate that the number of such contractors in Iraq may decline while the number in Afghanistan may continue to increase. Many analysts and government official believe that DOD would be unable to execute its mission without PSCs. 

The above paragraph is from a 6/22/10 "Congressional Research Service" report on the use of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since Iraq, the use of contractors has been both war’s dirty secret - growing exponentially in cost of lives and treasury. These contractors allow our cowardly & craven leaders cover up the extent of our involvement in both wars as conversation always pivots on the US troop numbers never on the amount of private contractors.
This use of what amounts to mercenaries (in many cases) was embraced by President Bush, but it has increased under President Obama with none of the “accountability” that he promised during his campaign.
I have a novel idea - if this war is worth fighting lets (1) increase taxes to pay for it and then (2) re-institute the draft so it is fought by regular US citizens being paid military rates of compensation and not highly paid private contractors!

FILE UNDER - "That's what you think!"

John Cornyn, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told C-SPAN's "Newsmakers" program that "Bush's stock has gone up a lot since he left office," adding: "I think a lot people are looking back with more fondness on President Bush's administration, and I think history will treat him well."

Economic Stimulus, Capitalist Style!

No it is not quite “Marriage, Italian Style” but it could be just as stimulating! U.S. corporate cash reserves have grown (apparently) to an all time historic high of almost 2 trillion dollars. Maybe the idiots in Washington could figure out how to foster companies to loosen the purse strings and invest some of this money (rather than borrowing cash from the Chinese and having the Government spend it!).


There is little doubt that there is a rather deep seated anti-business bias that runs thru the Democratic Party. I suspect that this is a remnant of some ill fitting counter culture baggage. I would hasten to inform the great party that this is America, if you are trying to stimulate the economy you might wish to consider engaging business owners and their checkbooks!

How about starting by figuring out what tax policy is going to be for the coming year/years? Whether taxes are going to go up or down, the unknown is a lot more damaging then a clear, stated policy one way or the other.

As I sat with clients this week to do tax planning I kept having to preface every remark with the caveat “as of right now …….” I thought, how absurd, that in July I cannot give a client a reasonable idea of the tax consequences of a particular action in 2011! Businesses and business owners do not do well with ambiguity; it makes tax and strategic planning impossible. We have known for 10 years that the infamous Bush tax cuts were going to sunset in 2010 and yet we still sit in July of 2010 with a no Federal estate tax policy and no real idea what the tax code is going to look like when the clock ticks past midnight on January 1, 2011.

Keep in mind the scheduled tax change (if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to simply sunset) are fairly extreme, we would in an instant move back (essentially) to the tax code in place @ the end of the Clinton administration. While this would NOT be the end of the civilization as we know it, and the fires of hell would probably not open up and consume our country (I say this with all due respect for W.S.J. opinion makers who would disagree and could no doubt PROVE me wrong!) it would nonetheless represent a fairly extensive, one time change to the federal tax code. I would also add that the liquidity of Federal tax policy makes it impossible for many states to establish their taxation schemes for 2011 and that increases the unease for business owners.

Clarity in tax & fiscal policy would make executives and business owners all over America feel more comfortable about moving forward with business expansions, hiring and purchasing, and that, my friend would be, much like Sophia Loren in "Marriage, Italian Style," a source of stimulation!

Pixar and “the best movie ever!”

Recently took our 5 year old to see “Toy Story 3” in IMAX 3-D and was knocked out. Having seen all the Pixar movies more times that I care to remember I am always astounded by the consistent quality of their films. The reason for this consistency is their abiding love of character and story and a striking fidelity to both, in Pixar films there is never gratuitous technology, everything serves the forward movement of the story. This is amazing for a company that was (initially) built on its technological achievements and it sets them apart from most major Hollywood filmmaking which, at times, seems to be all about gratuitous use of technology.


Toy Story 3 has the earmarks of all great Pixar movies including its incredible ability to embrace directly very serious subject matter, yet still do so in the context of a children’s movie. Toy Story 3 addresses, with great nuance and emotional resonance: death, love, fear, sex, abandonment and evil. It is full of feeling, humor and excitement, including a very daring escape sequence. It is awash with film references, both to their own movies as well as other classic films, and much like Wall-E it picks up structural and visual elements from film history to move the story along. While all along maintaining its own unique individuality and transporting for all time Woody and Buzz into the pantheon of great movie characters.

Is Toy Story 3 up to the genius and grace of Wall-E (one of films great masterpieces) or the brilliance of Ratatouille? Not quite, but when you are up in this stratosphere of creation and sheer genius any one-upmanship is merely child’s play (so to speak!). Toy Story 3 is immensely entertaining, you will laugh and cry and your time in the theatre will fly by, or as my 5 year old said as the movie ended; “Daddy, that was the best movie ever!” and who was I to argue.

Fareed Zakaria on Afghan War

Huffington Post - 7/4/2010

Fareed Zakaria criticized the Afghanistan war in unusually harsh terms on his CNN program Sunday, saying that "the whole enterprise in Afghanistan feels disproportionate, a very expensive solution to what is turning out to be a small but real problem."
His comments followed CIA director Leon Panetta's admission last week that the number of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan may be down to just 50 to 100 members, or even fewer.
"If Al Qaeda is down to 100 men there at the most," Zakaria asked, "why are we fighting a major war?"
Zakaria noted that the war is costing the U.S. a fortune in both blood and treasure. "Last month alone there were more than 100 NATO troops killed in Afghanistan.," the CNN host said. "That's more than one allied death for each living Al Qaeda member in the country in just one month.
"The latest estimates are that the war in Afghanistan will cost more than $100 billion in 2010 alone. That's a billion dollars for every member of Al Qaeda thought to be living in Afghanistan in one year."
To critics who suggest that we need to continue fighting the war against the Taliban because they are allied with Al Qaeda, Zakaria countered that "this would be like fighting Italy in World War II after Hitler's regime had collapsed and Berlin was in flames just because Italy had been allied with Germany."
"Why are we investing so much time, energy, and effort when Al Qaeda is so weak?" Zakaria concluded. "Is there a more cost-effective way to keep Al Qaeda on the ropes than fight a major land and air war in Afghanistan? I hope someone in Washington is thinking about this and not simply saying we're going to stay the course because, well, we must stay the course."

4th of July

How sad and cynical it is for our nation’s leaders to play on patriotism to support our current war efforts. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have nothing to do with preserving freedom or protecting our nation. These “leaders” extol our servicemen and women for “fighting to preserve our freedom” when all most of them have ever fought for is to preserve their bank accounts (and of course guarantee funding for their next campaign).


Of course, all Americans “support” our troops, I feel like crying whenever I hear about some poor soldier losing his or her life in Afghanistan, but this does not make this war worthwhile, reasonable or “win-able.” It is a war driven by our military industry (talk about corporate welfare!) to fill defense contractor’s pockets and pour cash into congressional districts and feed campaigns.

Republicans can make a stand on extending unemployment benefits to American citizens in the name of “deficit reduction” but they are happy to spend millions of dollars a day in Afghanistan and Iraq (funded by our foreign debt holders) and that is A-OK (please do not construe this comment as being supportive of Democrats – they are just as guilty). Hey, Tea Party morons, here is something to really get MAD about!

For more info on the cost of our war efforts visit www.costofwar.com run by the National Priorities Project.

God Bless Matt Taibbi

The latest flap regarding Rolling Stone’s printing of General McChrystal’s drunken, professional suicide has engendered several comments from fellow reporters including (and I quote Mr. Taibbi’s 6/28/2010 Blog post): “I thought I'd seen everything when I read David Brooks saying out loud in a New York Times column that reporters should sit on damaging comments to save their sources from their own idiocy. But now we get CBS News Chief Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan slamming our own Michael Hastings on CNN's "Reliable Sources" program, agreeing that the Rolling Stone reporter violated an "unspoken agreement" that journalists are not supposed to "embarrass [the troops] by reporting insults and banter."


Mr. Taibbi titled this BLOG posting “Lara Logan, You Suck” (I fucking love this guy!). The whole BLOG post is well worth reading (www.rollingstone.com/politics & click on Matt Taibbi) if you have any love or regard for actual news and the importance of a vigorous, honest public dialog. This whole flap has reminded me of the scene from Cameron Crowe’s movie “Almost Famous” where the music journalist Lester Bangs (played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman) coaches the young writer about being friends with the rock stars he is writing about; “My advice to you, I know you think those guys are your friends, you wanna be a true friend to them? Be honest, and unmerciful.”

War in Afghanistan

Please take note of a 6/25/2010 story by Matthew Rosenberg in the WSJ, this is the opening paragraph: “More than $3 billion in cash has been openly flown out of Kabul International Airport in the past three years, a sum so large that U.S. investigators believe top Afghan officials and their associates are sending billions of diverted U.S. aid and logistics dollars and drug money to financial safe havens abroad.” Another alarming quote: “One figure often cited by Afghan and Western officials is $10 million a day leaving Afghanistan. That is $3.65 billion a year, more than a quarter of the current GDP.” This is taxpayer money (borrowed from foreign investors no less – but that is another subject) to fight a war for which no reasonable person can even define what “winning” would even be! This report follows a Washington Post piece by Karen DeYoung on 6/22/2010 that begins with the following paragraph: “The U.S. military is funding a massive protection racket in Afghanistan, indirectly paying tens of millions of dollars to warlords, corrupt public officials and the Taliban to ensure safe passage of its supply convoys throughout the country, according to congressional investigators.”


This war effort is Mr. Obama’s greatest mistake. Whatever you think of Health Care and Financial Reform legislation at least there is potential that some American citizens might actually be helped and that is clearly not something you can say about the Afghan war. American’s should be outraged and every wasted life and every wasted dollar lost in this useless, meaningless war – GET THE FUCK OUT NOW!

The problem with Republicans

While anti-Obama sentiments rage around the country fueling the Tea Party movement and anti-incumbency fever is it going to be enough to win the next presidential race? The party has rallied around Mitch McConnell who simply plays the politics of opposition (simple opposition is certainly easier than pursuing actual ideas and legislation). This all may be an effective strategy in the mid-terms but I don’t think it is going to work in a presidential contest. In a presidential race you need to actually have a vision and plan and (at least appear) that you possess the intangible quality of leadership.


While the bloom is certainly off the Obama rose, he will enter the next presidential cycle with some real accomplishments running against a Republican party that appears to pride itself in a “just say no” agenda. Yes, Mr. Obama’s accomplishments are questionable; massive Health Care legislation that institutionalizes future deficit spending and does nothing to control costs and (again) massive Financial Reform legislation that does nothing to ameliorate “to big to fail” and institutionalizes future bail outs while creating a huge new “consumer protection” agency (again fueled by deficit spending). Whatever you think about these 2 accomplishments it is not going to be enough to just rail against them, the next Republican presidential candidate will need to have an actual plan to make our country better, you know, some vision for America. See anybody on the Republican horizon that fits that mold?

4 June Shows, 4 Stories – Dave Rawlings, Alan Toussaint, Jim Hall & Sonny Rollins

On Friday June 4th we ventured to the Portsmouth Music Hall to see the Dave Rawlings Machine, the 4 piece acoustic band lead my husband & wife team Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch. The group was positively effervescent in its joyous delivery and the audience responded in kind for an uproarious concert. The music was mostly taken from the (sadly) less enchanting new CD “The Dave Rawlings Machine.” The set was peppered with some choice covers, notably Robbie Robertson’s “The Weight,” and Dylan’s classic “Queen Jane Approximately.” While fully serviceable (the audience loved them!) these covers suffered a bit as no one in the band is quite up the task of singing these great songs. Gillian performed two of her tunes (including the wonderful “Look at Miss Ohio”) and provided incredibly intuitive backup to Dave both on the guitar and vocals. All in all a great night of roots/country music, Rawlings remains (in this writer’s opinion) one of the best guitarist in the world on his old 1935 Epiphone archtop. To the delight of the audience, after a 3 song encore the group came out for a second encore and walked to the very lip of the stage and Gillian led them in a wonderful acapella version of “Go to Sleep (Little Baby).” www.myspace.com/daverawlingsmachine


The next day, Saturday the 5th we traveled up to Burlington, Vermont to the Discover Jazz Festival to see New Orleans legend Allan Toussaint. I was lured there as the show was titled “The Bright Mississippi” after Toussaint’s recent recording of the same name (from a Thelonius Monk tune). The show was also to feature Don Byron who plays clarinet on that same CD. Toussaint started the show with his regular band and proceeded to perform a set that can only be described as really good lounge music. I have seen Toussaint twice recently and have come away with the same opinion; he is a really charming and superb supper club performer. He sings some of his famous songs, but of course he is no Lee Dorsey (“Workin’ in a Coalmine”) or Ernie K-Doe (“Mother in Law”) so while pleasant, they tend to be shadows of the original versions. Mid-set the bass player switched to an upright bass and Don Byron appeared and the group did indeed do 4 tunes from “The Bright Mississippi” and they were sublime. “The Bright Mississippi” is one of the most nuanced and greatest essays on traditional New Orleans music I have ever encountered, and these live versions did not disappoint. Immediately after this set we were back to the lounge, that included a revolting sing-a-long of “The City of New Orleans,” with its refrain, “good morning American, how are you.” The audience loved all this, and apparently did not miss the fact that Toussaint played virtually no traditional New Orleans piano (in the style of Longhair, Booker, or Washington). This omission is stark as he can do can play in those traditional modes as well as any man alive, he did not even venture into his own early material (the Tousan Sessions) – very disappointing. www.allentoussaint.com

On Friday and Saturday the 11th and the 12th, we were back in Burlington to see the guitarist Jim Hall on Friday and tenor saxophone master Sonny Rollins on Saturday. Both of these giants turn 80 this year and they clearly showed the physical ravages of time, both somewhat crippled and stooped with age; that is until they began playing. What a profound testament to the power of music to see these 2 men perform!

Hall, who is the dean of American jazz guitarist, was clearly the most effected by his age, there were more missed notes and difficulty at faster tempos but there were also (as there always is with him) moments of almost transcendental, lyrical beauty and his tone is still singular in the guitar world. The first half of Hall’s set was with some of his orchestrated pieces and featured Vermont area brass players. This set was a mixed bag as some of the players seemed to not be up to the task at hand, perhaps due to experience or lack of rehearsal. The second half was with Hall’s amazing quartet of Scott Colley on bass, Joey Baron on drums and Greg Osby on alto sax. The highlight of the second set had to be a sublime reading of Billy Strayhorn’s “Chelsea Bridge” with great solos from Hall and Osby. Other highlights were a lush reading of standard “All the Things You Are” and 2 Sonny Rollin’s compositions; “Sonnymoon for Two” and “St Thomas.” www.jimhallmusic.com

Sonny Rollin’s was simply staggering, when he walked out on stage I hardly recognized him, with his “Larry Fine” style grey afro, stooped and smaller then I remembered but when he counted off the first tune, a blistering blues he might as well have been 20 years old. On the opening number he soloed for well over 10 minutes calling to mind his friend John Coltrane’s famous live version of “Chasin’ the Trane.” It was an unrelenting barrage of invention, melody and energy that defied both his appearance and age. Rollins played for almost 2 hours without a break, his 5 piece band was fabulous including the recent addition of guitarist Russell Malone and fiery drummer Kobie Watkins. Rollins rarely broke between tunes, counting off directly into the next number like a man possessed, swinging his horn and stomping on the floor for emphasis. Certainly a highlight for jazz fans was the appearance by Jim Hall on 2 tunes near the end of the night: “In a Sentimental Mood” & “If Ever I Would Leave You.” Jazz stalwarts will know that one of Rollins most famous recordings, “The Bridge,” included both Jim Hall and Rollins current bass player Bob Cranshaw as part of that historic quartet. Rollin’s introduced Hall as a “young man” sitting in on guitar as Hall made his way to the stage with his cane. It was truly a “surreal” moment (to quote Guitarist Russell Malone) to see these 3 men together again. www.sonnyrollins.com

The Obama Apologists

There is nothing more pathetic then the current Obama apologists; it generally shows itself in the phrase I have heard several times in the past week or so: “he still has time to turn it around.” The “it” of course is his presidency. These are folks who elected a man with virtually no real political track record, fueled by autobiographies, the promise of “hope and change” and some great speeches. God knows we need a lot of both hope and change, but it is a fool’s quest to elect someone who is both untested and untried and “hope” for “change.” In this scenario what exactly is the basis for being disappointed? President Obama is clearly a very intelligent and thoughtful man which is something you cannot say about our last President, but it is proving to not be good enough as he appears to not have any clear leadership abilities or core vision. He seems to be more of a manager then a leader. His chose of Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff signaled that Mr. Obama was going be a good corporate Democrat and do what he was told, with Mr. Emanuel doing the side deals on his behalf to make sure the campaign money kept rolling in.


One of the great ironies of the last presidential election is that it was a race between a largely unknown candidate, Mr. Obama, and one with a substantial track record, Senator McCain, but quick as a wink the “maverick” John McCain morphed into some sad shill of his campaign manager Steve Schmidt. While, no doubt McCain rolled out of the Presidential campaign severely bruised he had the ability to emerge as one of our elder statesmen but that is not to be. John McCain sadly has now fully bought into the obstructionist Mitch McConnell (right) wing of the Republican Party and is now groveling in Arizona, begging to keep his job and even calling on Sarah Palin to campaign for him!

It is hard to know where the Obama presidency with wind up, he has made some severely tarnished attempts at major legislation with health care and financial reform, both pieces of legislation shot full of holes by the intensive lobbying by both the health related industries and Wall Street. These 2 bloated and half-assed pieces of legislation will do little for the American people but I suspect will haunt us for many years. Of course the real downfall of the current administration may end up being the decimation of the Gulf Cost by BP, time will tell. Meanwhile all we can do is “hope” for “change.”

The New Paradigm, or a tale of the “Turd Blossom”, lesbian bondage, a Death Star and “Citizens United”

It appears that Karl Rove is always a man to watch (but perhaps not so much to read, as his op-ed pieces in the WSJ tend to be un-insightful and one reads them primarily because of their author rather than to gain any real perspective, but I digress). Mr. Rove (who George W. referred to as “Turd Blossom”) clearly continues to be the country’s greatest political strategist and is the perfect model of a modern major Machiavellian (pardons to Gilbert & Sullivan). Much has been written about him and Ed Gillespie’s recent work thru the new political organizations American Crossroads & the American Action Network (National Journal & Rolling Stone.) The CEO of American Crossroads is former Chamber of Commerce executive Steven Law. American Crossroads was developed as a (essentially) shadow organization of the RNC, weakened by the leadership of Michael Steele (whom you might have run into if you have visited any Hollywood lesbian bondage clubs recently), it has received over $30 million in secured commitments from big money Republican donors that have been shunning Steels’ RNC. Rove is moving quickly to take full advantage of the recent “Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission” case in the Supreme Court that will allow corporations and non-profits to actively & directly participate in the election process. American Crossroads will apparently unite with fellow dark star The Chamber of Commerce by funneling money into the Chamber to be spent on key House and Senate races. Rove & Gillespie, “advisors” to American Crossroads, will be, according to operative Mary Matalin “making sure that everybody is expending themselves properly, as opposed to duplicating efforts or working at cross-purposes. That’s something that the committees and the campaigns really don’t do – legally cannot do.”


I have never been one for conspiracies, they always seen to me to be complex explanations of simple events, but the use of the word “agenda” in Justice Stevens’s dissenting opinion in the “Citizens United” case has haunted me. Does Chief Justice Roberts have an agenda to inexorably seal the landscape of American politics? There seems to be little doubt that Mr. Rove clearly sees that he is now able to set up an independent financial powerhouse fueled by corporate money and channel it directly into the election process, what heroin addicts’ call “mainlining.” He is no longer bound by those pesky 527 groups that, while useful, were not allowed to directly support a specific candidate. In setting up American Crossroads Rove and Gillespie (operating in “unofficial” capacities) simply side-step the RNC completely and move directly to support candidates that work for their wealthy corporate donors. I fear that even now as major corporations control so much of the public policy in our nation, the” Citizens United” case essentially seals our fate and becomes the final nail in America’s coffin. The amount of cash amassed at the boarder will crush any attempt to overcome this dreaded combination of power, influence and money. I am afraid this is not Star Wars where the small band of rebels can destroy the Death Star! To quote Republican strategist Ed Rollin’s: “Independent expenditures will play a very, very significant role. There are no rules anymore.”

Two big questions remain:
• Was this the type of legislation Chief Justice John Roberts was expected to accomplish when he was nominated to the court? Remember Justice Roberts, the architect of the “Citizen’s United” case, vowed to Senator John McCain to respect judicial precedence at his confirmation hearings and “Citizen’s United” is clearly not a case of respecting judicial precedence.
• And finally, where is the American public in all this? Where are all those ANGRY folks in the Tea Party movement who “want their country back?”