Don't fuck with my pony

The excellent gorilla vs bear has an equally excellent top 25 hip hop albums run down, and if I were to do such a list it would look remarkably similar. The best part: Digable Planets' Blowout Comb was #1. Sweet. That album is probably my favorite from the genre as well. It's worth checking out. What would my list have that his didn't? Edan's Beauty and the Beat for one (probably my favorite hip hop record of the last several years), recommended for its amazing psychadelic production and excessive use of a Roland Space Echo. But that might be the only one. Great list Chris!

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin had an awkward week, with Boris Yeltsin dying and all. Radar finds out how they're coping. Also, I listened to Broom for the first time in a few months the other night, and it's still a totally excellent pop record, especially for the nice spring weather.

Lastly, it's always fun to watch Jon Stewart call bullshit on politicians: this time it's John McCain and his blather about the occupation in Iraq. Enjoy

Labels: Links, Politics, SSLYBY

NEW YORK - Spinal Tap is back, and this time the band wants to help save the world from global warming.

The mock heavy metal group immortalized in the 1984 mockumentary, "This is Spinal Tap," will reunite for a performance at Wembley Stadium in London as part of the Live Earth concerts scheduled worldwide for July 7.

The original members of Spinal Tap will be there: guitarist Nigel Tufnel (played by Christopher Guest), singer David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) and bassist Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer).
Rob Reiner, who both directed "This is Spinal Tap" and played the fake documentarian Marty DeBergi in the film, will also be in attendance.

A new 15-minute film directed by Reiner on the band's reunion will also play at the opening night of the Tribeca Film Festival in New York on Wednesday. The slate for the opening gala, to be hosted by
Al Gore, was previously announced, excepting the Reiner short.

The festival is to open with a showing of several global warming-themed short films produced by the SOS (Save Our Selves) campaign. SOS is also putting on the Live Earth concerts, to be held across seven continents.

Reiner spoke to The Associated Press on Tuesday to explain the reunion of Spinal Tap — a band always known more as a parody of rock `n roll excess than environmental awareness.

"They're not that environmentally conscious, but they've heard of global warming," said Reiner, whose other films include "When Harry Met Sally" and "Stand By Me." "Nigel thought it was just because he was wearing too much clothing — that if he just took his jacket off it would be cooler."

Spinal Tap has reunited several times since the film, but hasn't for a number of years. For the band — whose last album was 1992's "Break like the Wind" — the occasion warranted a new single: "Warmer Than Hell."

Reiner provided a sneak peak at the lyrics: "The devil went to Devon, it felt like the fourth degree/ He said, `Is it hot in here, or is it only me?'"

The director said the new short film explains what the band has been doing with their lives lately. Nigel has been raising miniature horses to race, but can't find jockeys small enough to ride them; David is now a hip-hop producer who also runs a colonic clinic; and Derek is in rehab for addiction to the Internet.

Reiner, 60, has for over 20 years worked with the National Resources Defense Council, an environmental action organization. Though the Spinal Tap reunion will be a lot of laughs, he hopes the SOS short films program and the Live Earth concerts have a substantial effect.

"What I think is going to be nice about this whole effort is there will be marching orders for people," said Reiner. "Not only from a personal standpoint of what individuals can do in their lives, but a macro perspective with respect to the public sector and government."

Tax Day Silliness

By Jared Bernstein | bio

I took part in a rousing debate last night on Larry Kudlow’s show last about fairness and tax policy.

While I fear such debates generate more heat than light, the argument really breaks down very simply: if you want to make our tax system sound unfair, you do two things. First, you talk only about income taxes, ignoring payroll and other sources, and second, you talk about the share of taxes paid by each income class.

Note that last one. You don’t talk about the share of their income that families pay in taxes, a much more intuitive measure of fairness. You talk about the share of total tax receipts paid by different groups. Then you can say stuff like, “the top 1% pays for 25% of the total tax bill.”

Now, as I’ll stress in a minute, those points have little to do with fairness.

It’s true that most households in the bottom 40% pay no federal income tax. Thanks to the various credits, deductions, and the Earned Income Tax Credit—a wage subsidy for low-wage workers—many get money back from the IRS (and while Kudlow inveighed against the EITC, conservatives should remember that it was Reagan’s favorite anti-poverty program).

But lower income families pay a much larger share of their income in payroll taxes than do richer families. Remember, payrolls are taxed at a flat rate, and there’s a salary cap of $97,500 for taxes that support Social Security. That makes for a regressive tax: low- and middle-income families pay about 9% of their income on payroll taxes compared to 2% for those in top 1%. And let’s not forget that almost every state has a regressive tax system.

But it’s the second point that really gets the crocodile tears flowing. Kudlow and his friends practically staged a tragic opera bemoaning the outsized share of federal taxes paid by rich people.

But I was not moved, and you shouldn’t be either.

The reason the well-heeled are footing the lion’s share is because a) we still have a progressive tax system (though less so, thanks to the Bush cuts), and b) they’ve been raking the stuff in, hand over fist. Profits as share of income stand at a fifty year high, and the share of pretax income flowing upstream to the top 1% is the highest it’s been since 1929 (hmmm…that didn’t exactly end well).

Given these realities, the fact that the rich account for a larger share of the IRS’s take tells you nothing about fairness. Try this thought experiment: imagine that over a given year of the economic growth, every penny of it, went to those in the highest reaches of the income scale. Of course their share of taxes paid would rise, and who would view that as unfair? They were the only ones who got ahead. Oh, and by the way, that’s exactly what happened in the most recent year for which we have such income data.

The best measure of fairness is really simple: it’s your tax liability over your income, called your effective tax rate. If effective rates fall faster for those at the top relative to the rest of the pack, you can legitimately cry foul, even if their share of total taxes paid goes up.

CBO data through 2004 show that the effective federal tax rate of the top 1% most recently peaked at 36.1% in the mid-1990s, falling to 31.1% in 2004. Other income groups’ rates fell too, but not as much as the top rate. The Bush cuts are at play here: analysis by the group Citizens for Tax Justice shows that the Bush cuts lowered the effective rate of the top 1% by three percentage points, the middle group by two, and the bottom group by less than one. That translates into tax cuts of about $50,000 for the top, $700 for the middle, and less than $100 for the bottom.

If this all sounds class warfare-ish, it’s not meant as an attack on the wealthy. But they are the ones who have benefited by far the most from the economy of the last few years. Many will presumably pay their fair share this week without squawking (some will pay a lot to other rich people to exploit loopholes for them, but that’s another story).

But don’t be misled: our federal tax system has become less progressive.

Labels: Politics