Category Archives: Uncle Sam
What do You get for not Playing Your Music
I got this “what do you get for not playing?” idea from a WSJ piece by Gregg Opelka, a musical-theater composer-lyricist.
We’re all Marxists now. Not Karl, Groucho. There’s a famous sketch in “Animal Crackers” (1930) in which Groucho (as Captain Spaulding) quizzes Chico (Signor Emanuel Ravelli) on how much money the band gets paid. “What do you fellas get an hour?” Groucho asks. “For playing we get $10 an hour,” Chico replies.
Groucho presses: “I see. What do you get for not playing?” “For not playing we get $12 an hour. . . . Now for rehearsing, we make special rate. That’s $15 an hour.” Groucho: “That’s for rehearsing? And what do you get for not rehearsing?” Chico: “You couldn’t afford it. You see, if we don’t rehearse, we don’t play. And if we don’t play, that runs into money.”
Then he goes on about his real life friend.
I have a musician friend, Jim. He plays the bass. Jim is a talented man, and his gigging takes many forms—studio recording as well as live performance. As has happened to so many, his entire livelihood dried up overnight in mid-March. After filing for unemployment relief, he was grateful to receive the bulk of his lost weekly income but equally surprised by the unexpected $600-a-week bonus.
Without auditioning for it, Jim has become an unofficial member of Signor Ravelli’s Animal Crackers orchestra. He recently complained, only half ironically, that he doesn’t know how he’ll make ends meet once he can work again.
Gregg Opelka, Wall Street Journal
Mickey Mouse VA
VA Secretary Bob McDonald is ok with long lines.
“When you go to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line? Or what’s important?” “What’s important is what’s your satisfaction with the experience?”
When it comes to the government Daniel Henninger, in the WSJ, thinks the experience is mostly Mickey Mouse.
iPhone Smarter Than Uncle Sam
Michael Hayden, the former head of the NSA, is on Apple’s side in the fight over cracking the iPhone of dead terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook. So is Ted Olson, former Solicitor General for George W. Bush. His wife was killed in the original 9/11 attack.
iPhone Smarter Than Uncle Sam
The FBI says Apple’s reluctance to co-operate is a marketing stunt. The government’s computers can be hacked but the government can’t hack Apple’s phone.
Seems hard to blame Apple for wanting us to know about it.
Yellen Takes Off Training Wheels
Janet Yellen took the training wheels off the economy on Wednesday. After seven years of near zero percent interest rates, the Fed hiked rates a quarter percent.
Meanwhile, Congress passed a 2,000 page, 1.2 trillion dollar budget. That tacked another 157 billion onto the 18.5 trillion dollar national debt.
Yellen
On Friday the Dow dropped 370 points.
David Stockman says, “sell the bonds, sell the stocks, sell the house”. IBD wonders if the markets know something the Fed doesn’t.
Greek Credit Swagger
Greece is in default. On Tuesday the government missed a payment deadline on its IMF debt. On Sunday Greeks will vote in a referendum to accept terms from the IMF for more loans. The terms include tax increases and pension cuts.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras says he’ll step down if the referendum passes. Holman Jenkins in the WSJ says Greece has put a gun to its head saying, “Pay us ransom or the idiot gets it.”
The Greek economy is only 1.8 percent of the Eurozone. At 18 trillion in the hole, nobody has a credit swagger like Uncle Sam.
