Bye Bye Miss American Pie

When I was a teen our music was important, it gave meaning to the world and provided a forum of expression. Today's air waves are but a poor resemblance to the musical revolution of the past that gave meaning for an entire generation.New or original rock'n'roll isn’t made anymore. Yes people are playing rock from every era, and musicians are producing what they think rock'n'roll should be. But, the heart of rock music, the explosive sensation of sound, youth and fury has become a part of history.

Rock music borrowed from the blues/gospel music of the south; they used the twangy flavor of the grand ole opry, adding the rhythmic smoothness of big band swing. From this unholy union burst the new wave of music that not only affected the tunes on the radio, but influenced the beat on the street.
The tunes of McCartney and Lennon ushered us into the psychedelic sounds of that era incorporating eastern mysticism with the drug culture of the 60's & 70's.

In unison with the folk poetry of Dylan and his ilk, there was little doubt that young people would be heard. Again music was taking youth to places it had never been before.
Music espoused revolution and spread a new message of coming change. Music now demanded change and acceptance of all philosophies as the voice of a whole generation drove that need right through your stereo speakers. Rock'n'roll had graduated into an art form that spoke for moral concepts and urged mankind to follow a new path. Contemporary music assured us that a new golden age was in the making, one that could eliminate wars, denounce racism and put an end to much of the world's poverty and suffering. All this and it had a great beat that you could dance to.

The spark of change was kept alive by the sound of The Clash, The Sex Pistols, The Police and dozens of faceless punks with instruments accosting us about a system gone wrong. But rock as social catalyst was rapidly running out of steam.

The advent of Grunge rock in the 80's was a logical follower to punk. The players tried to keep the music alive and socially relevant through their aggressive minimalism and crude relationship to their audience. Unfortunately the tunes, the playing and the lyrics were void, degrading, and often rehashed from various other eras. The social relevance of grunge was raw, loud, but short-lived and out of touch.
The most vital movement of the last 25 years has been rap. Rap music is the music that speaks for outcasts as well as heroes. Gangsta rap is so socially in tune the rappers are involved in as much gunplay as drum play. It's a further sad commentary that many hip-hop artists have traded on their freshness and parlayed it into symbols for clothing, jewelry, and cosmetics. This does not sing of revolution or brotherhood, but is rather a lullaby to corporate America. Instead of being part of a revolution Rap has been packaged and mass marketed and coopetd from the people.
Now we are at a changed paradigm in music. Often artists just remake songs that young listeners have never heard before showing them off as brand new material, manipulated and marketed by whatever large company has paid for the promotion.




We have worn out the musical cookbook. Our society is too drained to develop a music that represents youth. In the 1970's Don McClean was right about "the day the music died". "American Pie" was a couple of decades premature though. Music kept evolving until somewhere in the 80's when "video killed the radio star". Around that time, music stopped regenerating and became its own parody. Young musicians line up for a spot on "American Idol", where performers compete for money and media contracts.
The tastiest tunes of rock have been collected by big business to sell automobiles and espouse the merits of lite beer. These corporate advertisers also present the finest of the new sounds. Is anyone feeling inspired? Today's rock'n roll has lost its vision and it’s message. Sure there are some great sounds on the airwaves, but they won’t become the classics of tomorrow. Nothing so far in the new millennium has anything fresh. All the rock music has become fodder for the merchandising machine. Good-looking, hard-selling, ear-splitting numbers on a ledger. So bye bye Miss American Pie, I can barely see the chevy in the levee.

The Proof Is In The Pudding

The Proof Is In The Pudding

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University just released a study that was produced by Jason Sorens an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Buffalo and William Ruger, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Texas State University.
Founded 25 years ago, Mercatus describes itself as working "to advance knowledge about how markets work to improve our lives by training graduate students, conducting research, and applying sound economics to offer solutions to society’s most pressing problems" with a mission to "generate knowledge and understanding of how institutions affect the freedom to prosper and find creative solutions to overcome barriers that prevent individuals from living free, prosperous, and peaceful lives."

The study focused on three broad categories such as fiscal policy, regulatory restriction and paternalism. With regard to fiscal policies they researched things like taxation, debt to income ratio, government spending as a percentage of income and employment. With regard to regulatory policy they looked at state mandates, eminent domain and business required licenses and permits among others. Finally the category of paternalism where they examined social freedom such as gun control, same sex marriage and sin taxes imposed by government.

New York is by far the least Free State in the Union. The states motto is Excelsior which translates to “ever upward” as in costs to live here. It has also experienced the most interstate emigration of any state over the last decade. New York has by far the highest taxes in the country. Property, selective sales, individual income, and corporate-income taxes are particularly high. Spending on public welfare, hospitals, electric power, transit, employee retirement, and “other and unallocable” expenses are well above national norms. On personal freedoms, gun laws are extremely restrictive, but marijuana laws are better than average, while tobacco laws are extremely strict, and cigarette taxes are the highest in the country. Motorists are highly regulated, and home school regulations are excessive, but nondrug victimless-crimes arrests are low. New York has the strictest health-insurance community-rating regulations in the country, which have wiped out the individual market. Mandated coverages are worse than average but were actually cut back substantially in 2007–2008. Eminent domain abuse is rampant and unchecked.

New Hampshire is the freest state in the country. Their state motto is “ Live free or die” and seems to be fairly appropriate. New Hampshire does much better on economic than personal freedom and on fiscal than regulatory policy. Under unified Democratic control in 2007–2008, the state saw a respectable increase in freedom. A smoking ban was enacted, but so were same-sex civil unions.


Taxes, spending, and fiscal decentralization remain more than a standard deviation better than average, and government debt actually went down slightly. Gun laws are among the most liberal in the country, but carrying a firearm in a car requires a concealed carry permit. Effective retail-tax rates on wine and spirits are zero. Marijuana laws are middling; low level possession could be decriminalized like it is in Maine, while low-level cultivation could be made a misdemeanor like it is in both Maine and Vermont. New Hampshire is the only state in the country with no seatbelt law for adults. It lacks a motorcycle helmet law but does have a bicycle-helmet law and authorizes sobriety checkpoints. Eminent-domain reforms have gone far. The state’s liability system is one of the best, but campaign-finance regulations are quite strict. The drug law-enforcement rate is low and dropping, while arrests for other victimless crimes are high and dropping.

Statistics show that Free states of New Hampshire, Colorado, Texas, Georgia, Florida and North Carolina are all gaining population in the range op 5 -7 % or more. While the Nanny states of New York, New Jersey, California, Massachusetts and Illinois are all declining between 5 – 9% per year since 2007.

Around the country people are voting with their feet as they flee the least free states in America and move to free states that allow them to pursue happiness. The is tacit approval that liberty, the freedom to live and be left alone and the ability to pursue a happy life is an inalienable right that comes from our creator but can be taken by our government. Invariably people given a choice are choosing freedom over the Nanny state.

Common Sense: Our National Debt IS About To Swallow Us!

Common Sense: Our National Debt IS About To Swallow Us!: "Our huge national debt is about to swallow us whole. We used to talk in terms of millions of dollars for a very long time. Then it seemed ..."

Our National Debt IS About To Swallow Us!

Our huge national debt is about to swallow us whole. We used to talk in terms of millions of dollars for a very long time. Then it seemed in the 1990’s we started talking in billions of dollars and now in the past few years we’re talking in Trillions of dollars. President Obama didn’t invent deficit spending even though he may have exacerbated it, he certainly didn’t do it by himself. He had help from democrats and republicans both who can share in the blame for our crisis. The first dramatic growth spurt of the debt occurred during the Civil War. The debt was just $65 million in 1860 and reached $2.7 billion following the war. The debt slowly fluctuated for the rest of the century, finally growing steadily in the 1910s and 1920s to roughly $22 billion as the country paid for involvement in World War I. The buildup and involvement in World War II plus social programs during the Roosevelt and Truman presidencies in the 1930s and 40s caused a sixteen fold increase in the gross debt from $16 billion in 1930 to $260 billion in 1950.
After this period, the growth of the gross debt closely matched the rate of inflation where it tripled in size from $260 billion in 1950 to around $909 billion in 1980. With the programs of the Great Society and our welfare state, Vietnam, the Middle East, the Arms race and Iraq and Afghanistan the debt as soared out of control.
In nominal dollars the public debt rose and then fell between 1992 and 2000 from $3 Trillion in 1992 to $3.4 Trillion in 2000. During the administration of President George W. Bush, the debt increased from $5 trillion in 2001 to over 10 trillion by 2008, rising from 57% of GDP to 74% of GDP. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in March 2009 that under the Obama administration public debt would rise from 70% of GDP in 2008 to 100% in 2012.
No wonder that our debt is out of control when our politicians use the budget for the express purpose of bribing the American public. Of course Congress and the president do this so that they can get elected and re elected to office.
Our percent of debt as it relates to GDP was around 50% when Ronald Reagan was in office, but it hasn’t been lower than 60% since 2003 under George W. Bush. Since the War on Terror, Economic upheaval and out of control spending by Congress through bailouts and the rest we’re headed into 100% of GDP. Each American citizen man woman and child owes close to $50,000 each toward our national debt.
We can’t say on one hand we want to spend more on social programs and cut the budget on the other hand. Just like at our own homes we need to reduce all spending when we have an economic crisis and there must be no sacred cows. Forget politics as usual and cut the budget otherwise our whole economic system may very well collapse as we know it. As we get more productive in the economy debt as a share of GDP will reduce. We have a duty to our children and grandchildren to leave them a better world, as our parents and grand parents did for us. Stop the blame game, roll up your shirt sleeves and get to work!