Cartoons Monday!
More on Lindsey "Bucks in Hand" Graham, music chat with Jon Batiste, Krugman answers a taxing question.
Still free to subscribe to this nearly daily newsletter! Greg Mitchell is the author of fourteen books and director of five films for PBS since 2022. In a previous life, he was a longtime editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. His latest film “Woody Guthrie and The Ghost of Tom Joad Today” is now streaming everywhere via PBS.
Yesterday we posted an Ann Telnaes cartoon from her archives re: Lindsey Graham but she has rolled out a few more, so a selection below:
Paul Krugman on taxing the wealthy:
Before Trump 2.0 political corruption was generally disguised and implicit: Politicians and political staffers favored corporate interests because of incentives like the revolving door, in which they could expect to move on to well-paid employment as lobbyists. These days, thanks to Trump, political graft is open and direct: much of it is simply cash, crypto and sweetheart contracts that enrich politicians and their families.
In addition, big money has gained the ability to shape the information environment. Right-wing think tanks, subsidized “research” and captured media relentlessly push the interests of billionaires. This shifts the Overton Window, the range of policies conventional wisdom considers acceptable: even centrists often end up viewing billionaire-friendly policies as sensible and reasonable, while other policies — even policies that were considered perfectly normal in the past, like high taxes on profits — are viewed as radical and irresponsible.
A key part of the argument that corporate taxes must be kept low is the claim that the United States is competing with other nations for a limited pool of global capital, and that if we have higher corporate taxes than other nations, the capital will go elsewhere. Correspondingly, advocates of further cuts in corporate taxes claim that such cuts will generate huge inflows of capital from abroad, leading to higher economic growth and wages for workers.
So it’s worth pointing out that Trump did, in fact, slash corporate taxes in 2017. What happened as a result? Basically, nothing, except that corporations paid even less in taxes.
Axios: “In Drew, Miss., the Emmett Till Interpretive Center is transforming the barn where 14-year-old Emmett Till was tortured and killed in 1955 into a memorial and a place for reflection.”
This Twitter comment by Scott Barber on photo below went viral: “So the White House is a Thai restaurant now?”
Music Pick
Have noted previously that we are enjoying catching up with super-popular YouTube videos, by Jack Coyne known as “Track Star.” He plays music cuts— some famous, some deep—and asks guests on a NYC street to ID them and talk about the artist, if they can (they usually can). Guests are usually from the world of music, but also music-obsessed celebs, such as Ethan Hawke, Jimmy Fallon and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. He’s been doing it for about four years so you can browse what’s already posted and find plenty of artists you like or who at least are fairly close to your age so the music and chat may hit your sweet spot. We have loved everyone from Lucinda Williams to Taj Mahal and Adam Scott. Running time might range from about 8 to 20 minutes. There’s also a podcast and occasional live music.
Last night we caught this episode with Jon Batiste who is his usual engaging self as he bows down to Satchmo, Duke, Monk, Sam Cooke, and Randy Newman.
From Tunes to Toons
deAdder
Royaards:
Boris:
Bagley:
Koterba:
Photo Finish
Church on hillside, entering Sedona.
If ever there was a time to quote Heather Cox Richardson: rom a rupture of his aorta due to cardiovascular disease. Graham had just returned from a trip to Kyiv, Ukraine, where he met with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky. A former officer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG Corps) in the U.S. Air Force, Graham was a staunch supporter of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and of Ukraine. In that, he stood apart from Trump.
Ed. Note: He went to Ukraine to push for sanctions ... dying words to Trumpnot the SAVE act.
He objected to the takeover of the Republican Party by the MAGA Republicans. In December 2015 he called then-candidate Donald J. Trump “a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot” and said: “He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for.... I don’t think he has a clue about anything. He’s just trying to get his numbers up and get the biggest reaction he can.” “You know how you make America great again?” he said, “Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.”
In his earlier years in Congress, Graham was an establishment Republican who pushed for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton but was willing to work with Democrats personally. He once said of then-senator Joe Biden of Delaware: “If you can’t admire Joe Biden as a person, you’ve got a problem. He’s the nicest person I’ve ever met in politics. As good a man as God ever created.”
I can’t find it yet but there is a James McMurtry song about not speaking ill of the dead that has the lyric: “Don’t look at me like there’s something growing out of my head, just because the old girl is dead.”