Music Reviews: Howlin' Wolf, Tuvan Throat Singing

Howlin' Wolf
The men don't know but the little girls understand

If I had to pick one bluesman who was the quintessential blues deity that man would be Howling Wolf, or as the IRS knew him, Chester Arthur Burnett. He was named after the President. I don't remember the first time I heard him but he impressed me. He impressed many people with his stentorian gravelly baritone-bass voice that sounded like crushed glass and radiated unrestrained masculinity. Producer Sam Phillips said that Howling Wolf was the literal soul of man who never died while fan and musician Bonnie Raitt talked of the sudden impact that just seeing and hearing Wolf had (from afar) on her lady parts. Howling Wolf stood 6-6 and weighed over 300lbs in his glory days. He received his nickname not just for his unusual howling vocal abilities but because as a child he was quite taken with the Little Red Riding Hood stories he heard. He reminded me of my maternal grandfather. Although it was Howling Wolf's surprisingly expressive, deep and oft sinister voice that most people noticed, he was also a fairly talented harmonica player and decent guitarist. Wolf's voice was such that I imagined that he woke up every morning and gargled with road salt and nitroglycerin. 

Howling Wolf's primary vocal influences were people like Charley Patton, Son House, Tommy Johnson and Jimmie Rogers. Elmore James and Wolf also had similar vocal styles. Wolf toured with Robert Johnson and learned harmonica from his brother-in-law, blues giant Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller). So Wolf was literally a blues Founding Father. Wolf's yelps, howls and vocalizations were unique. As Wolf said "I couldn't yodel but I could howl. And I been doing just fine."

Howling Wolf was an extremely demanding bandleader who did not suffer fools or glory hounds lightly. Wolf once stopped a show to berate guitarist Hubert Sumlin for mistakes and pedestrian playing. He kicked Sumlin off his stage. Wolf sent Sumlin home, warning him not to return until he could play. Sumlin, who later became Wolf's primary foil and soloist, credited that incident with forcing him to improve. Wolf had no problem putting hands on people if he thought they did him wrong. He once knocked Sumlin's teeth out. There was one incident when he and fellow giant (literally and figuratively) bluesman Albert King fought. There were rumors about people that Wolf had badly hurt or worse, down south. Because he grew up in horrible poverty and segregation and often worked around people who were drunk, violent or armed, we shouldn't be surprised that Howling Wolf could be a suspicious martinet. It didn't help his outlook on life that his mother had essentially abandoned him after her divorce from Wolf's father. Wolf grew up with a great-uncle who could have been charitably described as violently abusive. Wolf finally ran away to rejoin his father and siblings. But the maternal rejection left lifelong scars. As adults, mother and son had a conflicted relationship.Wolf's mother, a spirituals singer, thought that blues was the devil's music and that her son was going to hell. 

Wolf was unafraid to tell people, black or white, what he thought. As Vaan Shaw, a blues guitarist whose father worked in Wolf's band said, "He was not necessarily a likable person. If you told him "good morning" he might answer with something like "'Well I don't know how good it is. Let's wait and see"". Working with younger avant garde blues/funk musicians in the late sixties, Wolf told future Miles Davis' guitarist Pete Cosey that "(Cosey) should take all of his pedals and wah-wahs and throw them in Lake Michigan on his way to get his hair cut". Cosey, who had a massive afro, remembered the incident with fondness. Wolf later bluntly described the album he did with Cosey as "dogs***". Generally, musicians who worked with him didn't have problems if they did their job and didn't get on the oft moody Wolf's nerves. Buddy Guy said he never had a cross word with Wolf.

Howling Wolf took his music and life seriously. He despised drunks. He was contemptuous of musicians who allowed alcohol to control them. Even his mentors and heroes like Son House could come in for caustic criticism from Wolf for this reason. Although when Wolf left home he was illiterate, he ultimately remedied that condition. He even briefly went to school to study guitar theory and learn how to arrange horn parts for his band. Wolf was one of the first bandleaders to start withholding Social Security and unemployment insurance from his band employees' salaries, guaranteeing them at least some money in retirement or in unemployment. Wolf was a stickler for paying his employees on time and in full. As Wolf was always fond of reminding people, especially fellow label mate, blues legend and close "frenemy" Muddy Waters, he was already a star before arriving in Chicago. Unlike Muddy Waters Wolf tried to keep the Chess Brothers at arms' distance. He refused to be paid in Cadillacs. He wanted his money. Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf were the premier Chicago post war bluesmen. They did not mind stealing each other's gigs, musicians or occasionally songs. They occasionally assisted each other as well.

Wolf's early Memphis music featured musicians like Willie Johnson, Pat Hare, and Ike Turner(who also played piano), all of whom were fond of a raw distorted guitar sound. The Memphis sides are the beginnings of rock-n-roll.  "House Rocking Boogie" and "Just My Kind", with Willie Johnson on guitar, show this. The early work is not necessarily what we might consider today to be well recorded but occasionally that works better I think. What is a true aural performance? Today we have multi-track recordings, the ability to easily fix vocal or instrumental mistakes in the mix, multiple channels and microphones dedicated to each instrument and other modern advances that make the producer more important. But sometimes it's good to put one microphone in front of the singer and have one or two room microphones for everyone else. That might be closer to what we'd really hear in a concert. Much of Wolf's music swings and swings hard. Although Wolf was not a jazz musician, there's little difference between some of Wolf's more relaxed cuts and some bluesy jazz from the forties and fifties. In other cases Wolf was playing funk music before it was called that. He influenced the next generation. For example Funkadelic's "Music For My Mother" has Howling Wolf's fingerprints all over it, right down to a (false) harmonica solo and a not so humorous reference to a town named "Keep Running, Mississippi".

Much of Wolf's late fifties and early sixties output was overseen, produced and occasionally written by blues bassist, songwriter and  producer extraordinaire Willie Dixon. This wasn't necessarily Wolf's idea. Dixon and Wolf weren't the best of friends. Wolf would occasionally opine that Dixon's lyrics and music were too simplistic, too personally identifiable with Dixon, and too sexual while Dixon often said the best way to get Wolf to do a song was to claim that Muddy Waters was thinking of recording it. Wolf thought that some Dixon written "big man" songs like "Built for Comfort" were silly. Wolf was also suspicious that Dixon was too close to the label owners, the Chess Brothers. Listen to Wolf and Dixon share verses on "Going Down Slow". Dale Hawkins' hit Suzie Q was inspired by Wolf in general and by his song "Smokestack Lightning" in particular. It's both ironic and possibly fitting that Wolf's classic stream of consciousness song "Smokestack Lightning " is being used for Viagra commercials. The ominous song "No Place to Go" and its close relative "How Many More Years" each define existential dread and mystery."Mr. Airplane Man" uses the same melody found in "Smokestack Lightning".

"Evil" reminds me of Louis Jordan's similar musings on domestic relationships. "My Mind Is Rambling" has a delicate tricky beat. When I hear that song I always think of a bull dancing in a china shop and not breaking a single item.
Drummer and Army veteran Earl Phillips had one leg shorter than the other which could be what caused him to place extra emphasis on the "one" of the bass drum's beat. You can hear this most famously in songs like "I'll Be around" and especially "Forty Four". I can't decide whether "I'll Be around" is a classic stalker song, someone begging his woman to change her mind, or a warning from beyond the grave. It could be all of those. Anyway I'll be Around" is a great song with MASSIVE distortion via overdriven amps, microphones and recording board. When Wolf starts playing harmonica it's as if the speakers are going to explode. Wolf's voice is like something from another dimension here. It's scary. "Do The Do" gives a nod to Bo Diddley with its tom-tom heavy rumba riff and avoidance of cymbals. Wolf earnestly explains just what sort of woman he likes and why. ("34 bust, 22 waist, everything else right in place") . "Spoonful" is a song about how small things matter. "Moving" was recorded near the end of Wolf's life while he was suffering from kidney and heart disease and finally cancer. You can hear someone (Eddie Shaw?) feeding Wolf the lyrics. But as Wolf boasts, his name still rings everywhere he goes. "Hidden Charms" sees Hubert Sumlin reel off an extended inventive solo that shows why he was considered to be Wolf's definitive guitarist. "Commit a Crime" is a sinister one chord vamp. It bemoans a murderous woman. Wolf tries to survive long enough to leave. "I Ain't Superstitious" is another Dixon written tune that combines Dixon's favored stop time rhythms with lists of African-American superstitions.

But on "Just Like I Treat You" Wolf is not paranoid and hassled but very happy. The insistent song with a locomotive rhythm is a hymm to male female domestic equality. Wolf knows his wife will return his treatment of her for good or bad. And he wouldn't have it any other way. "Howling For My Darling", "Ooh Baby (Hold me)" and "You'll Be Mine" all express frank appreciation for life's female principle. In "Shake For Me" Wolf explains to a woman who rejected him that she returned a little too late because he's found a woman who shakes like jelly on a plate. It's a blues song but with something close to an Afro-Latin beat. A brokenhearted Wolf begs his woman for an explanation in "Tell Me What I've Done". "Killing Floor" is a famous song that was later "redone" by Led Zeppelin as "The Lemon Song" without proper credit. Wolf plays slide on "Down in the Bottom" which has the same theme as "Back Door Man": Wolf as a Lothario who must depart before his girlfriend's husband returns. "Sitting on Top of the World" is a classic traditional blues that Wolf probably learned from Charley Patton. Long Distance Call (w/Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley)  is actually Moaning at Midnight". It is from a late sixties session featuring Howling Wolf, Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters. The version of Little Red Rooster with Wolf on acoustic slide is quite pretty. If you're unfamiliar with this music I think you missed something. Songs that Wolf wrote or performed are blues or blues-rock standards. Howling Wolf was a giant of American music. 






Tuvan Throat Singing

Although the tone and sound of Tuvan Throat singing has some surface similarity to what Howling Wolf was doing it is completely unrelated and is actually musically something quite different. All the same some blues and other musicians have been fascinated by this sound and have performed with Tuvan style singers. After all humans are brothers and sisters once you get down to it and if you search for a while you can probably find something in common with anyone, no matter how small.
What throat singing does is allow the singer to create more than one pitch at the same time. There is the fundamental pitch and then the overtones. Effectively throat singing allows the singer to become a virtual human bagpipe. In males especially it can come across as a distorted growl with almost electronic sounds that are something akin to a Moog synthesizer.

This is most definitely an acquired taste but I happen to have it. The best stuff to listen to if you are curious about this music is the release "Fly Fly My Sadness" which features the Tuvan throat singer group Huun-Huur working with the female Bulgarian chorale group Angelite. The two music styles fit pretty well together I think. This for me anyway is trance music. It's something you can listen to when you're just reclining in a dark room with your eyes closed and meditating. It's repetitive. It's most definitely not for dancing, or at least not any sort of dancing I would be familiar with. Maybe you could do some sort of odd (to me) interpretive modern dance to the music. Maybe in Siberia and portions of Central Asia this is considered dance music. Dunno. But I doubt it. Although obviously I don't understand any of the lyrics, just like with opera or salsa or various other musics in languages I don't speak, the feeling of the music transcends language. At least for me. As mentioned this isn't for everyone. Nothing is. Some people I know find this music about as relaxing as listening to a broken garbage disposal that won't stop running or a belching contest. So YMMW. All that said though check it out if you want to hear something completely different.

Legend  Lonely Bird  Orphan's Lament   Fly, Fly My Sadness

Jayru Campbell Arrested

There was a lot of talk recently about whether or not Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman is a thug. I don't think he is. Generally speaking most thugs, in the most basic understanding of the word, don't attend Stanford or score 1400 on their SAT's. My snobby class bias aside though more importantly I think that your actions, not your words, hair style or skin color make you a thug. Speaking loudly and animatedly without cursing, about your success over a rival player after a big win does not a thug make. See a thug could be someone who body slams a school security guard. That would be Cass Tech QB and Michigan State University (MSU) verbal recruit Jayru Campbell, who was arrested for his actions in the video below. The security guard is of course somewhat fortunate to be alive as getting body slammed on a hard floor without any protection can lead to all sorts of bad outcomes, especially if your head impacts the floor as it did here. I didn't attend public schools until high school and certainly did not attend Cass Tech High School or MSU. Cass Tech has traditionally been considered one of the better public schools in Detroit but I've heard that in recent times (over the past 10-15 years or so) that's akin to boasting that you're the skinniest fat person at fat camp. My brother first brought this to my attention. He didn't attend Cass either. Smirk. Of course these things are not common but stereotypically this explains why people, black and white, racist or not, have been fleeing Detroit Public Schools. 

We hear a lot about about how certain people are improperly disciplined in schools and thus set up for a school to prison pipeline. That's true. A child who is boisterous, loud mouthed or questioning of authority isn't necessarily "disturbing the peace" or "special needs" or a "threat". The flip side of that though is that there are some children who are indeed threats and need to be removed from the school ASAP for the safety of others. Evidently Campbell was given second chances and missed them. So it is what it is. Of course in our society even where there is a video like this the accused is still presumed innocent until proven guilty. Just ask the cops who beat Rodney King. However, unless there is evidence that the security guard was assaulting Mr. Campbell or attempting to molest him or something like that I am not seeing how this ends well for Mr. Campbell. I think he gets expelled from school and convicted of any criminal charges. And I'm okay with that. I am both descended from and related to people who worked or still work in schools. I would hate to see something like this happen to them. Watch video below.

The quarterback of the Detroit Cass Tech High School football team has been arrested in connection with an attack on a security guard.

Jayru Campbell was arrested Wednesday by the Detroit Public Schools Police Department because of an incident that occurred inside Cass Tech at dismissal time. But in a departure from earlier DPS statements, district spokeswoman Michelle Zdrodowski said this afternoon that Campbell has not been charged, describing the earlier statements as a misunderstanding on the district’s part.

In an e-mail this afternoon, Maria Miller, a spokeswoman for the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, said her office has now received paperwork on the case, but she cautioned against making any assumptions. “It would be premature to indicate what if any charges (we) will issue until we have reviewed the paperwork and a formal decision has been made,” Miller wrote in the e-mail.

Campbell, a junior, verbally committed to play college football at Michigan State, but commitments are nonbinding until national letters of intent are signed in February 2015. Per NCAA rules, college coaches are not allowed to comment publicly on unsigned recruits. Campbell committed to MSU in August, turning down scholarship offers from Alabama, Notre Dame and Wisconsin, among others. He is rated as a four-star recruit by rivals.com. The alleged assault marks the second incident in recent months involving Campbell, who was suspended from school and for the first game of the 2014 season for throwing a punch after Cass Tech’s state semifinal loss to Novi Detroit Catholic Central in November.

LINK

Do you think that Cass Tech should expel Campbell?

Are you curious as to what Campbell's side of the story is? 

Should MSU reject Campbell because of this incident?

Would you be willing to hire/work with someone if you saw them do this?

Black Man Arrested for Drinking Arizona Iced Tea

This could just be reason # 345,754 as to why I generally don't like the police. I view them as at best a necessary evil. Police often escalate situations unnecessarily. Below the jump check out a May 2013 video from Fayetteville, North Carolina that somehow I missed but that The Janitor brought to my attention. It was hard even for me to believe that it was real at first just because the person arrested literally wasn't doing anything questionable, let alone wrong. The blog lawyers can discuss if any laws were broken. What I took away from this is that some police assume:

1. any black men gathering anywhere must be up to no good 
2. no black man anywhere has any right to not be pushed around by any cop. 

There's a lot of talk about school bullying or online "bullying" because someone implied on facebook or twitter that someone else could stand to drop a few pounds or wasn't the most beautiful person. I think this is real bullying. The citizen Christopher Beatty, a military veteran, is indeed lucky that the cop didn't shoot, tase or beat him. I think the cop made a wrong assumption. To pump up his ego and show Beatty who was the boss, he invented a reason for arrest. Fundamentally this is because some police and their enablers do not concede that black people have a right to public spaces. Watch the initial video and the updated interview video below. We've got driving while black, shopping while black, walking while black, and now standing and drinking iced tea while black. To be fair though it's not just a race thing. Police make mistakes and bad assumptions all the time with white people too. Such incidents are why I think that "victimless crimes" or "lifestyle crimes" should be decriminalized. Police should have limited reasons and authority to interact with or detain their fellow citizens. And no matter who you think you are I don't want your hands on my food or drink. It's just a pet peeve...

Updated Short Interview with Chris Beatty

Book Reviews: Gates of Fire, Darkfall

Gates of Fire
by Steven Pressfield

Gates of Fire is the literary equivalent of the films Saving Private Ryan or Glory in that from the outside looking in it seems to capture not only the horror but also the courage and randomness of combat. Although the style of warfare depicted in Gates of Fire is extinct, war and death remain the same across time and place. I wonder if combat veterans think this book accurately illustrates the experience. The author is a Marine veteran. The book is on the reading list at West Point. Gates of Fire details the Battle of Thermopylae in which 300 Spartans allied with roughly 3-5000 Greeks from other city-states held off a Persian invasion force of at least twenty times their number for seven days before being betrayed, surrounded and annihilated in a last stand that has resonated throughout history as a definitive example of stubbornness, determination and total bada$$ery. To the very last, the Greeks disdained surrender, fighting with broken spear shafts, dented shields, blunted swords and finally their bare fists, feet and teeth. Sparta was not only famous for its military prowess but also for its wit, from which we have derived the word "laconic". This battle, or the legends that grew up around it, provided some famous quotations illuminating the particular and peculiar Spartan warrior ethos, which was considered extreme even by the standards of the time. Some of these include:

• Come and get them! (King Leonidas' retort to a Persian envoy's demand that the Greeks lay down their weapons)
• Good. Then we'll have our battle in the shade. (General Dienekes' response to a Greek refugee's claim that the Persian arrows would blot out the sun)
• Eat hearty men for tonight we dine in hell with ghosts! (King Leonidas' exhortation to his soldiers upon news that they had been surrounded)

After King Leonidas was killed, his body became a rallying point for the remaining Greeks. In these last frantic minutes two brothers of the Persian Emperor Xerxes were killed. Enraged, Emperor Xerxes ordered King Leonidas' body to be decapitated and crucified, something considered sacrilegious by everyone. As the Persians are burying their dead and tending to their wounded they discover that one Spartan warrior is still alive, though slowly dying. Instead of having him killed Emperor Xerxes orders his own doctors to treat the man's wounds. Emperor Xerxes regrets the mutilation of King Leonidas' body. He wants to know more about the Greek, specifically the Spartan, way of life and of war.

This dying Greek soldier is Xeones. He is not a Spartan by birth but that rarest of things, a Spartan by acculturation. In childhood, Xeones' home city was sacked by rival Greeks. His parents were murdered. His cousin and likely betrothed Diomache was raped. Believing that Sparta could have stopped such injustice Xeones eventually migrated to Sparta, where he grew into manhood. He became something more than a helot and something less than a citizen. To make Xerxes understand why in defiance of common sense, the Spartans flatly refused to submit, Xeones tells his life story.

This story of course ends in The Battle of Thermopylae. There are a lot of old tropes here that are easily recognized but can still be enjoyed by the reader. Polynikes is a vain aggressive drill sergeant and war hero, who upon discovering that a raw recruit (whom he dislikes anyway) has made a mistake, proceeds to humiliate and brutalize that recruit and his entire platoon until they get it right. Obviously this recruit, thought soft and effeminate, eventually proves his mettle under unthinkably harsh conditions while Polynikes shows that he will sacrifice everything for his city and his brothers in arms. This is as much a philosophical and ethical meditation as it is a battle story. Gates of Fire asks what exactly makes a man willing to suffer great wounds, kill and die, when every instinct tells him to flee. The answer would seem to be both fear and love. The Spartan training replaced the fear of death with the fear of letting your unit down and substituted the love of life's comforts with the love of your fellow soldiers. I don't mean that last necessarily in any sort of erotic sense. Aristotle for example, thought that homosexuality was rare among Spartans precisely because their women had too much independence, were too attractive (Helen of Troy was a Spartan) and were too healthy. He considered this a bad thing. Go figure.

Spartan military prowess came at a cost, for its men and women. As King Leonidas haltingly and gently explains to a Spartan woman who angrily rebukes him for taking her husband on what is sure to be a suicidal mission, he chose his 300 not for their strength or battle prowess but for the emotional and mental strength of their wives and mothers. The Spartan system could never have survived without women's support. For example, two Spartan warriors, having become virtually blinded in battle, were sent home by King Leonidas. One refused to leave and fought and died with the rest of his troop. The second returned to Sparta. There the women (including his own relatives!) led the citizens in scorning him. He was called "The Trembler" and shunned by all. Desperate to restore his name he later threw himself into suicidal charges in the Battle of Plataea. In Gates of Fire, even though Dienekes has massive respect from his Peers, he himself often defers to his wife Arete. As Arete points out the men are said to rule Sparta but women rule men. Arete will take steps that simultaneously increase her husband's fame, save the life of her unacknowledged nephew Rooster, and make her chances of becoming a widow virtually certain.

Gates of Fire examines the ugliness that supported the Spartan life style. Sparta's standing army required total mobilization of Spartan men and constant training. Accordingly, many of the other masculine jobs in society were handled by servants or more precisely helots (slaves). In Gates of Fire one of the helot leaders is Rooster, the illegitimate son of a deceased Spartan hero. Rooster is Dienekes' nephew by marriage. But Rooster despises Sparta and despite Xeones' urgings regularly refuses opportunities to be legitimized and become Spartan. This could cost Rooster his life as the Spartan secret organization known as the Krypteia routinely kills helots who are thought seditious. Although Xeones has put down roots, gotten married and had children his mind still turns to his cousin, Diomache, for whom he has never stopped searching. And the Lady Arete might be able to help Xeones find her. To sum up this is really good well researched historical fiction. It's not just about a battle. Although we know how the story ended in broad terms, it is fascinating to look beneath the big picture to see how these ancients fought, lived, loved and died. We're not so different.





Darkfall
by Dean Koontz

This is one of Koontz's older books. I recently reread it. I think it's better than some of the stuff he does currently though it's not necessarily his best. It is very creepy though. I'm surprised it hasn't been made into a movie or at least a mini-film.It's about 400 pages but it was very quick reading. I think it's a good introduction to Koontz's style if you're not familiar with him. This is a perfect book to read if you have to travel or wait for someone in a hospital lobby or something similar.
It takes place in New York City. Jack Dawson is a recently widowed NYC homicide detective with two small children. He's not a self-righteous sort but he is fundamentally a good man who tries to see the best in people. He's also starting to have feelings for his new partner, Rebecca Chandler, a beautiful but cold woman whom everyone assumes is either a harsh feminist, a lesbian or both. He's not sure if Rebecca feels the same way. She's very tightly wound.

But while Jack is wondering what to do about this (and taking good natured and not so good natured joking from fellow officers) an evident gang war breaks out in NYC. Several members of the Carramazza Crime Family are found dead in very suspicious circumstances. Some of them have been killed in locked rooms. Many of the dead men emptied guns without apparently hitting anything. The coronor and medical examiners don't know what to make of the bodies since the bodies all appear to be chewed or stabbed to death. But they can't figure out what the weapon or animal being used would be. And some of these men were heard screaming and begging for mercy. These men were all hardened thugs and killers. 

Both from word on the street and an unpleasant meeting with the head of the Carramazza Crime Family himself, Jack and Rebecca learn that it's not a mob war. It's a blood feud. Someone has some very personal reasons to eliminate not only the Carramazza Crime Family but the entire Carramazza bloodline. And this person is just as evil as the Carramazza Boss, only far more powerful. Jack has already done some private investigating on his own and come up with a few ideas that Rebecca doesn't like and can't even bring herself to examine. Jack is openminded when it comes to the supernatural while Rebecca only believes what she sees. But when Jack's own family is threatened both Jack and especially Rebecca have to put aside their skepticism and deal with the fact that magic and hell are real. As mentioned this was a fast read. Apparently Koontz did some research on Vodou. The villain is not completely cartoonish but from other reading I've done I'm not sure that the Western Christian concepts of good and evil or heaven and hell necessarily translate all that well to other civilizations. So I think Koontz was making a lot of things up. Even so this book might have you wondering what was that sound on the stairs late at night.

Who Runs Kansas Schools: The Courts or The Legislature

Kansas is a centrally located state that has often been ground zero for a number of social changes, some good and some bad. John Brown made his bones in Kansas. It was after all Kansas that rang the death knell for enforced legalized school and other forms of racial segregation in the Supreme Court case Brown vs. Board of Education. The author Thomas Frank chronicled the slow rise of conservative and occasionally racist populism in his noted book "What's the Matter with Kansas". Part of Frank's thesis posits that fiscal conservatives use hot button cultural issues to whip up resentment among the socially conservative base in order to get said base to support policies and ideologies which are bad for them economically. To add insult to injury it was rare that conservative politicians even delivered on promises to the socially conservative segment of their base, instead preferring to promote fiscal conservatism. This theory was really popular among some progressives as it tended to confirm some of their deepest beliefs about conservatives. Frank's thesis is a little out of date since the national energy on one of the hotter social issues of the day, gay marriage, seems to be almost entirely with the liberal pro-gay marriage supporters. 

However another key tenet among the conservative base is the importance of having the people, and not the judges, decide what is correct among competing political ideas. "Activist judges" remains a powerful epithet for many on the right. Some fervently hold to the idea that a great deal of mischief is caused by know it all, elitist, out of touch, Ivy League, smug judges who arrogantly substitute their own preferences for plainly written law or long agreed upon custom.

Or to put it another way some conservatives just throw a fit and start hurling insults when their favored position loses in court. People on the other side are hardly immune to this of course. Check out the liberal reactions to the Supreme Court's Heller decision. Temper tantrums seem to have become more common for everyone. Still, this conservative sensitivity and hostility to the very existence of judicial review was touched recently in Kansas. Like many states Kansas is seeing new battles over education and social spending. Conservatives and liberals almost by definition usually have quite different political preferences for the spending levels in those categories. These battles have not only been touched off by tax cuts or other reductions in spending but by the recession driven crash in property values in many localities. So even if some states wanted to keep the same level of school funding, it was sometimes very difficult to do so. States can't print their own money. States, unlike the Federal government, are generally constitutionally forbidden to run deficits. Still in Kansas, it appears that politics, not necessity is the primary driver of the latest contretemps. It's not necessarily that Kansas politicians can't spend the money. It's that they don't want to do so.

Kansas’ current constitutional crisis has its genesis in a series of cuts to school funding that began in 2009. The cuts were accelerated by a $1.1 billion tax break, which benefited mostly upper-income Kansans, proposed by Governor Brownback and enacted in 2012.

Overall, the Legislature slashed public education funding to 16.5 percent below the 2008 level, triggering significant program reductions in schools across the state. Class sizes have increased, teachers and staff members have been laid off, and essential services for at-risk students were eliminated, even as the state implemented higher academic standards for college and career readiness.

Parents filed a lawsuit in the Kansas courts to challenge the cuts. In Gannon v. State of Kansas, a three-judge trial court ruled in January 2013 for the parents, finding that the cuts reduced per-pupil expenditures far below a level “suitable” to educate all children under Kansas’ standards. To remedy the funding shortfall, the judges ordered that per-pupil expenditures be increased to $4,492 from $3,838, the level previously established as suitable.

Rather than comply, Governor Brownback appealed to the Kansas Supreme Court. A decision is expected this month. A victory for the parents would be heartening, but if it comes, would Governor Brownback and legislative leaders uphold the right to education guaranteed to Kansas school children? The signals thus far are not promising. If the Kansas Supreme Court orders restoration of the funding, legislators are threatening to amend the state’s Constitution by removing the requirement for “suitable” school funding and to strip Kansas courts of jurisdiction to hear school finance cases altogether. And if the amendment fails, they have vowed to defy any court order for increased funding or, at the very least, take the money from higher education.

LINK

So what's your opinion. Most state constitutions make it clear that the state has the responsibility to provide for public education for all. As in most things though the devil is in the details. On the one hand the state can't dodge that responsibility. On the other hand, times are tough all over. If the elected politicians of Kansas decide that their state is best served by a 16.5% funding cut to education, isn't that their business? Or is it ultimately the Court's job to determine what the mix of expenditures should be? Public school outcomes are never just about money in the system but on the other hand are there public schools that have provided better results with much less money? I can't think of too many where I grew up.  You can't cut a school system off at the knees and demand higher performance can you? Or can you? Who should prevail in this battle?

What's your call?

Are legislators and/or executives ever justified in threatening to ignore court rulings they dislike?

HBO Game of Thrones Season 4 Trailer

In case you missed it HBO released its first (I am sure there will be many more) trailer for Season 4 of its hit series "Game of Thrones". The show starts again on Sunday April 6. Enjoy the trailer below the jump if you are into that sort of thing. And as always if you happen to have read all of the books or be one of those know it all people who just looked up the published books' endings, kindly do not ruin it for everyone else, who may wish to watch the series in unspoiled anticipation. The Red Wedding may have been the series' biggest shock (to me at least) but there are several more surprises, twists and turns that may be coming along. My understanding is that the new season will cover at least the second half of book three, A Storm of Swords, which for my money is the most powerful and most disturbing book in GRRM's series. But who knows what the show's writers, producers and directors will choose to include or leave out from that book, how many new storylines they will create from their own imaginations, or how much material they will pull ahead from books four and five. We'll just have to wait and see.

Season 4 Trailer

December Jobs Report and Unemployment

In December the U.S unemployment rate fell to 6.7%. This should have been good news. Being below 7% should be a good thing. It should have been something that was seized on by economists as a sign that the US economy was continuing to recover and move out of the doldrums. We should have seen Democratic partisans run to the nearest microphone to take credit for Presidential economic policies that have led us to this point. (BTW the ability of ANY President-- Republican or Democrat-- to take credit or blame for a single data point in the massive system that is the US economy is far overstated but that never stops supporters or detractors from trying to give him credit or blame in good times or bad).

But this time there was no Vice-President Biden braying and bragging about a "recovery summer" on the way. That's because the greatest nation on the earth, a place that put a man on the moon and defeated Hitler and Tojo in just four years, was only able to create a net 74,000 jobs. Even by the standards of the so-called recovery we've been having this was a horrible number. The average net increase for 2012 and 2013 was a net 182,000 jobs. Even those numbers were just barely short of what was needed to keep up with population growth. The unemployment rate is only below 7% because more people gave up and moved out of the workplace. It's not because companies are on hiring sprees. They're not. At least they're not hiring in the United States.


So this number is hopefully something of a statistical fluke. Maybe there was something that was going on in December that won't be repeated again. Maybe this was the initial impact of ObamaCare. The health care sector lost 6000 jobs. Maybe this had something to do with colder weather. Maybe someone didn't get a clean compile on a program and so the number will be adjusted upwards in the coming months. We shall see. For now all we have is this data. What's more troubling than the unemployment rate is the reason why it's fallen. The overall labor participation rate is hovering at 62.8 percent, which is the lowest level in some 35 years. This is weird. I've always wondered about this because for me, there's no choice but to either be working or looking for work. I'm not yet rich enough to retire. There's no one who would be willing to work in order that I could pursue a life of leisure. So if I lost my job I'd have to keep looking for another one and/or create my own business. And I don't think I'm alone. So what are these discouraged workers doing? That's a mystery. Clearly some of them are working off the books, going back to school, relying on family and friends for food, shelter and income, going on disability or retiring. 

If the low labor participation rate was being primarily driven by retirements, that is by an increasingly older population, well then it would be nothing to worry about. The problem is though is that it's not being driven by retirements. The labor participation rate for workers 65 and older has been on a near inexorable rise since 2000 or so. People are increasingly delaying retirement because they simply can't afford it. Those old people you see in grocery stores or big box stores working as clerks or greeters aren't there because they're bored. No, they need the money, thanks in no small part to the financial sector's destruction of their retirement wealth I would guess. And even among younger workers aged 45 to 54 the labor participation rate is 79.2%, which is the lowest since 1988. As I've wondered before, we may be in a situation where thanks to automation, weak unions, outsourcing and wholesale transfer of industries overseas, the US economy simply doesn't need as many workers as it did before. Period. The average duration of unemployment calculated for December was 37.1 weeks. It was 38 weeks a year ago. So it's not as if this economy has been doing well for a long time now.

The other interesting thing about the job numbers is that not only were most of the gains in low wage sectors (retailing, leisure, and hospitality) but for the first time since 2007 ALL of the net job growth went to one gender. Women. Men had a net loss in jobs. Again, this may all be "statistical noise" which will be corrected in coming months. But right now it looks to me like we have an economy that excels in creating low wage jobs and bailing out banks but doesn't seem to be able to create jobs which support a strong middle class. As usual the black unemployment rate was twice that of the white unemployment rate while the "did not graduate high school" unemployment rate was three times that of those with a college degree. And although both political parties will use this report in their battle over extending unemployment benefits again, I think this report and the mostly anemic jobs reports that came before it only support my belief that we need some radical changes in economic policies.
Growth in jobs slows sharply

What do you think of the jobs report?

If you lost your job how long could you last without a new job?

Should unemployment benefits be extended?