Dispatches from District 48
Posts tagged ‘Keith Richards’
Via Steven Green at Instapundit, comes this story of a comedian getting fined $42,000 by Canada for telling a joke:
Canadian comedian Mike Ward was fined a whopping $42,000 by Quebec’s Human Rights Tribunal for jokes he made about a disabled boy.
I still find this whole notion of opposing cultural "appropriation" to be bizarre and awful. I am not really an expert, but in the few areas that I know, some of the greatest moments of cultural innovation have come from cross-pollination of cultures. For God sakes, the cultural non-appropriators would never have allowed white British boys in Liverpool and London to play black American blues, but much of modern music owes its roots to this strange synthesis. Keith Richards and Mick Jagger spent years trying to be Howlin' Wolf before anyone heard of the Rolling Stones. I know that black musicians were resentful of the appropriation in part because the white bands made so much more money than they did and killed what market demand there was for their music. But that just forced African Americans, some of the greatest musical innovators the world has known, to innovate again and again to keep ahead (e.g. Motown, funk, rap, etc).
In a previous post, I observed that the opposite of cultural appropriation is cultural apartheid. I would add that the opposite of cultural appropriation is cultural stasis and stagnation.
The last time we visited the formerly great state of Connecticut, Democrats were preparing to raise taxes again after promising not to when they ran for re-election in 2014. This week they did the deed, and the politicians seem shocked that the business community is in revolt.
The blue-state paragon’s two-year budget of $40.3 billion includes a $1.5 billion net increase in taxes and fees. The top marginal individual tax rate rises to 6.99% from 6.7%. But the biggest blow is making permanent a 20% surtax on a company’s annual tax liability—a tax on a tax—and for the first time taxing Connecticut companies on their world-wide income, rather than what they earn in the state.
The high marginal rates are bad enough, but it is an astonishing overreach to tax corporations headquartered in your state based on their worldwide income. This leads to a huge double taxation problem for any company dumb enough to stay. Paraphrasing Keith Richards, that is the equivalent of being told to leave the state.
Quick report on the Rolling Stones concert last night:
I can only hope I have that much energy at age 62.
Yes, blogging has been so light of late as to be non-existent. We have two large proposals due next week for the recreation business so I have been just swamped with other writing.
The reference to the Stones is because my wife and I have tickets to see the Stones tonight in Glendale. I remember in 1981 or 82, when I was in college, my roommate and I decided we had to drive to Philadelphia to see the Stones in concert. After all, we thought, they are older than god and surely this was about their last tour. LOL. 25 years later and I am seeing them again. What odds would you have given in 1980 that Keith Richards would even be alive in 2005, much less touring?
