On Tuesday, March 29, Senator Marco Rubio appeared on Fox News’ “Hannity” for the first time since becoming a U.S. Senator. Senator Rubio talked about refusing to vote to raise the debt ceiling and the need for serious spending cuts.
The disagreement is over the solutions — on what spending to cut; what taxes to raise (basically none ever, according to Boozman); whether or not to enact a balanced budget amendment (Boozman says yes; Pryor no); and on what policies would promote the kind of economic growth that would make this a little easier.
Over the next few days I want to take a closer look a Cato Policy Report from July/August 1996 called “Seven Reforms to Balance the Budget” by Stephen Moore. Stephen Moore was the Cato Institute’s director of fiscal policy studies, and afterwards, a Cato senior fellow. This article is based on testimony he delivered before the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight on March 27, 1996. Moore commented:
4.) Dynamic Scoring of Tax Law Changes
The 1986 capital gains tax rate increase has raised roughly $100 billion less revenue than the Joint Tax Committee estimated when the law was passed. Capital gains realizations are less than half the level expected, as shown in Figure 2. Why such gigantic forecasting errors? Congress still uses static analysis to score tax rate changes–that is, it assumes little change in behavior in response to tax changes and thus almost no overall economic impact of new tax laws. The assumptions have been shown time and again to be wrong. We know the procedures are wrong, but we still use them.
The capital gains tax cut promised in the “Contract with America” will almost certainly raise revenues for the government–and it might raise substantial new revenues. The rich will actually pay more taxes with the rate cut. But the Joint Tax Committee refuses to score those dynamic effects. Scholars at the Cato Institute have long endorsed a zero capital gains tax. But the static revenue estimators say that will reduce revenues by $150 billion over five years. Dynamic estimates indicate that a zero capital gains tax would so energize our economy that total tax revenues might actually increase. But as long as we are slaves to static scoring, pro-growth tax initiatives will be torpedoed by faulty computer models.
Dynamic scoring will yield more accurate tax revenue estimates and thus encourage better policy.
(1906-1978) – This Cove native created, along with Chester Lauck, the enormously popular 1940s radio show “Lum ‘n Abner” and subsequent movies. The setting for the program was mythical Pine Ridge, Arkansas, and its Jot-em-Down general store. Working in his father’s store while growing up made his role as grocer “Abner Peabody” a natural. www.norrisgoff.com
First, he would let their Bush tax cuts expire — this after he caved to the Republicans on this very point in December. He appears to be trying to atone, declaring, “We cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. And I refuse to renew them again.”
“Refuse” is not one of those usual wiggle words.
Then Obama would cap our top earners’ itemized tax deductions so that they cannot continue removing ever-increasing slabs of income from taxation through itemization while poor folks remove only shards through the standard deduction.
Republicans accuse Obama of “class warfare.” But they declared that war already. Obama is merely engaging on the side under siege.
This country once taxed its tip-top incomes with a 91 percent marginal rate, using the proceeds to fund two races it would gloriously win — on nuclear arms and to the moon…
This was the best thing about Obama’s speech: It aspired to be more than an incremental version of modern Republicanism. It aspired to be altogether different from modern Republicanism.
Brummett brings up the past when at one time we have a tax rate of 91% for the richest people in the USA. What Brummett does not tell you is that when that tax rate was lowered then tax revenues went up.
The real cause of the debt is entitlement spending!!!!!
Before coming to Heritage in 2001, Riedl worked for then-Gov. Tommy Thompson, former Rep. Mark Green (R-WI)., and the Speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly. Riedl holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and political science from the University of Wisconsin, and a master’s degree in public affairs from Princeton University.
Entitlement Spending Dominates Spending Growth. Even within spending, the cause of rising long-term deficits can be identified. Between 2008 and 2020:
Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid costs are set to increase by 2.6 percent of GDP, and
Net interest costs are projected to rise by 2.8 percent of GDP. (See Chart 5.)[15]
This 5.4 percent increase explains nearly the entire increase in the budget deficit by 2020. Even that assumes that Congress will not reverse the modest reductions in the Medicare growth rate that are supposed to partially offset the costs of the new health care law.
If these four costs simply remained at their 2008 percentages of GDP, then the 2020 projections would show revenues at 18.2 percent of GDP, spending at 21.1 percent of GDP, and the deficit at 2.9 percent of GDP—close to the historical averages.[16] The long-term budget deficit problem is an entitlement spending problem.
This can be shown another way. Over the next decade, the annual cost of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and net interest is projected to surge from $1.6 trillion to $3.5 trillion. This nearly $2 trillion budget increase will dwarf the budget increase for defense ($314 billion) as well as the extensions of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for those earning more than $250,000 ($98 billion) or less than $250,000 ($306 billion).[17] Thus, the vast majority of deficit expansion will come from Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and net interest.
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I am doing a series on famous Arkansans. Here is the 4th part on Wayne Jackson who grew up in West Memphis.
W.J – I’ve been a songwriter since I was a kid and I’ve been playing my trumpet since I was 11. I love writing songs so I formed a publishing company called “Sweet Medicine Music.” We had a major success back in 1999 with Amy Grant’s version of ‘Christmas Can’t Be Very Far Away’ which I wrote with Roger Cook.
You know, I’ve come a real long way from when my parent’s house used to back up to a cotton patch and I practised my trumpet – since I thought that it was the only way I knew that might get me out of there.
EIN – What have you been up to recently, have you been busy?
W.J – I sure have. Firstly, I have just completed writing book two in my autobiographical series, “In My Wildest Dreams”. The first book “Across The River To Memphis” dealt with Memphis in the 1960s, including my first glimpses of Elvis. The second book in the series, “The Memphis Horns” deals with Memphis in the 70’s, Stax and even more glimpses of Elvis. Both books are very entertaining and, although not history books, they give lots of information and stories that you won’t find anywhere else!
In the recording studio last year I spent time with Neil Young. We made a record called, “Prairie Wind” and a movie by the same name. I had a ball. Then you might have seen us on Saturday Night Live on TV where we performed some of the music from that movie! Wow, if you saw the show you know how much fun we had. And this year I wrote the horns for Tony Joe White’s new CD, “Uncovered.” I know that you’ve met Tony – & let me tell you that he is as funky as always and he inspired me to do my very best work! I can’t wait for you to hear it!
(EIN Note: Neil Young’s ‘Prairie Wind’ CD on Amazon.com gets the review.. “With Wayne Jackson of the soulful Memphis Horns…Neil Young has previously released a lot of albums in different musical styles, but Prairie Wind feels like a homecoming, and ranks with his very best”)
EIN – It’s great to know you’re still working as hard as ever & with such great performers. What a wonderful history you have.
W.J – I tell you what it has been wonderful, it’s been great times – I don’t have any complaints! I have some pretty good friends.
Please let me say hello to all the fans of Elvis in Australia & New Zealand and let me say that Elvis was truly a wonderful young man and they would have loved him personally had they met him. Wayne Jackson was interviewed by Piers Beagley for EIN, September 2002/2006.
Right: Wayne Jackson & Andrew Love. The Memphis Horns still funky after all these years.NOTE: For more information about Wayne Jackson’s autobiographical books, discography, historical journey & photos go to his website “Sweet Medicine Music”.There you can also find out about how to purchase Wayne’s handwritten sheet music of the legendary horn parts to his classic songs, including ‘Dock of the Bay’, and ‘Suspicious Minds.’
The disagreement is over the solutions — on what spending to cut; what taxes to raise (basically none ever, according to Boozman); whether or not to enact a balanced budget amendment (Boozman says yes; Pryor no); and on what policies would promote the kind of economic growth that would make this a little easier.
Over the next few days I want to take a closer look a Cato Policy Report from July/August 1996 called “Seven Reforms to Balance the Budget” by Stephen Moore. Stephen Moore was the Cato Institute’s director of fiscal policy studies, and afterwards, a Cato senior fellow. This article is based on testimony he delivered before the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight on March 27, 1996. Moore noted:
3.) National Referendum on All Tax Increases
Another populist budget reform that is sweeping the states is the requirement that any tax increase be ratified by a popular vote of the people in the next election. That gives the taxpayers veto power over the state legislature’s efforts to raise taxes. Congress, too, should be forced to take its case to the people when it wants to take more dollars out of our paychecks. It is a virtual certainty that George Bush and Bill Clinton’s wildly unpopular record tax increases would have been blocked if such a rule had been in effect.
Minority Leader Dick Gephardt deserves hearty congratulations for suggesting this reform as part of his 10 percent tax plan. Perhaps a bipartisan consensus could emerge on the issue.
from radio program Lum & Abner. Abner is played by Norris Goff. Grandpap is voiced by Chester Lauck
(1902-1980) – Creator, along with Norris Goff, of the radio comedy team of “Lum and Abner.” He was born in Alleene but grew up with Goff in Mena. Their cracker barrel humor was popular in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s in both radio and the movies. Lauck played the character, Lum. The Lum ‘N’ Abner convention is held each June in Mena, Arkansas. www.chesterlauck.com
Will Rogers has a great quote that I love. He noted, “Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it’s not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago”(Paula McSpadden Love,The Will Rogers Book,(1972) p. 20.)
Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below:
Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Here are a few more I just emailed to him myself at 6:59 am CST on April 18th, 2011.
Halve federal program payment errors by 2012, especially by reducing Medicare errors and earned income tax credit errors.
Tighten oversight by spending $5 billion on new resources, such as updated computer systems, and then recover $49 billion in payment errors.
$20,000
Rescind unobligated balances after 36 months.
$12,500
Halve the $25 billion spent to maintain vacant federal properties.
$10,000
Cut the federal employee travel budget to $4 billion (half of FY 2000 spending).
$3,000
Freeze federal pay until it can be reformed.
$1,000
Suspend acquisition of federal office space.
$600
Trim the federal vehicle fleet by 20 percent (a reduction of 100,000 vehicles).
$300
Cut the House and Senate budgets back to the 2008 level of $2.2 billion.
$215
Eliminate the Presidential Election Campaign Fund.
$100
Tighten controls on federal employee credit cards and cut down on delinquencies.
$70
Require federal employees to fly coach on domestic flights.
Targeting programs more precisely. Corporate welfare programs benefit those who do not need assistance in the American free enterprise system. Other programs often fail to enforce their own eligibility requirements.
(b. 1957) – A Fayetteville native, he started his career by leaving a lucrative job singing jingles to take a $150-a-week songwriting gig. RCA made the 25-year-old Belmont graduate the then-youngest executive at a major label. That confidence saw Wright co-produce Clint Black’s “Killin’ Time,” the 1989 record that spawned five number ones. Wright now has to his credit more than 26 million units in sales and over 40 number one singles that he’s written, published or produced. As songwriter, he’s had 12 BMI Awards – seven of them Million-Airs – including Mark Chesnutt’s “Goin’ Through The Big D,” Oak Ridge Boys’ “Lucky Moon,” and “Today My World Slipped Away,” cut by both George Strait and Vern Gosdin. His latest accomplishment is an Album of the Year Grammy for Lee Ann Womack’s dazzling “I Hope You Dance,” which has already earned him the 2000 CMA Single of the Year honors. www.allmusic.com
Politicians and interest groups claim higher taxes are necessary because it would be impossible to cut spending by enough to get rid of red ink. This Center for Freedom and Prosperity video shows that these assertions are nonsense. The budget can be balanced very quickly by simply limiting the annual growth of federal spending.
The disagreement is over the solutions — on what spending to cut; what taxes to raise (basically none ever, according to Boozman); whether or not to enact a balanced budget amendment (Boozman says yes; Pryor no); and on what policies would promote the kind of economic growth that would make this a little easier.
Over the next few days I want to take a closer look a Cato Policy Report from July/August 1996 called “Seven Reforms to Balance the Budget” by Stephen Moore. Stephen Moore was the Cato Institute’s director of fiscal policy studies, and afterwards, a Cato senior fellow. This article is based on testimony he delivered before the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight on March 27, 1996. Moore commented:
2.) A Supermajority Requirement to Raise Taxes
Americans have been hit with 12 tax hikes in the past 20 years; each one has succeeded in further expanding the size of government rather than reducing the debt. Requiring a three-fifths or two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate to pass a tax increase would allow Congress to pass tax hikes in cases of national emergency but would make it very difficult for Uncle Sam to continue the annual ritual of peacetime tax hikes. Several states, including Arizona, California, and Oklahoma, have enacted such measures; they have stopped tax increases dead in their tracks. As one Arizona taxpayer advocate of the supermajority requirement recently told me, “Now the legislature doesn’t even bother to propose new taxes.”
Congress passed the part of the “Contract with America” that promised new rules requiring a 60 percent vote to raise income taxes. That was a good start. But now that hurdle should be made to apply to all revenue-raising bills.
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Another famous Arkansan.
A weary gunfighter attempts to settle down with a homestead family, but a smoldering settler/rancher conflict forces him to act in this classic Oscar winning western.
(1913-1964) – Born in Hot Springs and raised in California, he worked a variety of jobs before landing bit parts in films and theatrical productions. His big break came when he was cast as the psychotic paid killer, Philip Raven, in “This Gun for Hire” (1942). With a career consisting primarily of westerns and adventure films, he is perhaps best known as the mysterious stranger in “Shane” (1954). He appeared in 150 films. www.cmgww.com/starts/ladd
Gene Lyons in his article “Sure, the government is just like your family,” Nov 24, 2010 commented, “The current deficit’s almost entirely a product of two things: the Bush tax cuts and the recession.”
I don’t accept Lyons assertion that the Bush tax cuts have anything to do with the deficit. In fact, the revenue went up after the tax cuts.
Riedl’s budget research has been featured in front-page stories and editorials in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times. He has discussed budget policy on NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, and C-SPAN. He also participates in the bipartisan “Fiscal Wake-Up Tour,” which holds town hall meetings across America focusing on the looming crisis in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Myth #3: Declining revenues are driving future deficits.
Fact: Rapidly increasing entitlement spending will cause nearly 100 percent of rising long-term deficits.
The proper way to diagnose the cause of long-term deficits is to measure taxes and spending against their historical averages. This identifies the moving variable that is causing the rising deficits. In this instance, it shows that runaway entitlement spending is overwhelmingly driving long-term deficits.
Over the past 50 years, Washington has collected an average of 18.0 percent of GDP in revenue, spent 20.3 percent of GDP, running a sustainable deficit of 2.3 percent of GDP. Annual figures have not deviated much from these averages. Even as tax rates fluctuated, tax revenues rarely deviated by more than 1 percentage point from 18.0 percent of GDP. The composition of spending has shifted dramatically from defense to entitlements, yet total spending has nearly always remained within 2 percentage points of 20.3 percent of GDP. Total spending and revenues have remained remarkably stable for the past 50 years.
Revenue stability should continue. Using CBO data, the current-policy budget baseline shows that tax revenues—currently down due to the recession—are projected to rebound to their historical average as the economy recovers. In fact, 2020 tax revenues are projected at 18.2 percent of GDP—slightly above the historical average.[13] This estimate assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts will be extended and the alternative minimum tax patched.
Yet spending stability has ended. Baseline spending is projected to leap to 23.7 percent of GDP by 2015 and to 26.5 percent by 2020—levels not seen since World War II. (See Chart 4.)
Thus, the 2020 budget deficit is projected at 8.3 percent of GDP—6.0 percentage points above the historical average. This will be the net effect of spending rising to 6.2 percentage points above the historical average, compared to tax revenues rising to 0.2 percentage point above the historical average.
The discrepancy is projected to grow over time. The CBO’s long-term budget projects that tax revenues will continue growing over the next 75 years, reaching a record 22 percent of GDP. However, spending will rise to an unfathomable 67 percent of GDP.[14]
Simply put, higher spending, not declining tax revenues, are causing the rising long-term budget deficits. Even if the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts and the AMT fix are extended, revenues will remain above the historical average and eventually reach record levels. This is true by any measure—nominal dollars, inflation-adjusted dollars, and percentage of the GDP.
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This is another part of my series on famous Arkansans. This is part 3 on Wayne Jackson who grew up in West Memphis.
Elvis Presley “If I can dream”
(Right: The Memphis Horns at EP’s Beale Street, 2002.)EIN – When, as a musician, did you first become aware of Elvis in Memphis?W.J – When we were the Mar-Keys and had the first record Elvis would sometimes come out & see us ‘cos he loved the horns. He would come to some clubs we worked at and he’d sometimes park out the back behind the Rainbow Room.
EIN – Did you spend any time with Elvis at Graceland?
W.J – Once in a while we’d go out to Graceland. At times we went to the movies late at night with him where we would have a caravan of cars and we’d all go to the Memphian. And sometimes we’d troop out to the Fairgrounds with him – which was a lot of fun. Elvis would want to ride that roller-coaster Zippin’ Pippin and so we’d all go ride the Pippin. Then when he tired of that we would all go to the bumper cars and everybody would ride them for a while. It was real fun, and it allowed everyone to relax much more than they could if we were all at his Graceland house.
I remember one time waiting for Elvis to come down, sitting in an old gnarly Jungle Room chair and the damn thing nearly swallowed me up! We would sit around drinking Cokes, may be 15 or 20 of us, and sometimes he might not come downstairs ’til one O’clock in the morning. So eventually we’d get back around 5 or 6 in the morning but I would have to beg out as I’d have to be back in the recording studio at noon. Of course in retrospect now I wish I hadn’t! But we were working really hard making hit records and I needed more than three or four hours sleep!
EIN – How did you get to see so many of Elvis’ performances in Las Vegas.
W.J – It just happened that I am a qualified pilot. Elvis’ cousin Bobbie Ayers was married to a wealthy real estate developer and I was the co-pilot of his Lear jet. So when Elvis would open in Las Vegas I would fly their Lear jet down there and we’d all go and see Elvis’ opening show. We would all sit in the big booth right in the front and we’d end up going back stage after every show for the whole week! We went every time Elvis opened. Since I had played on all the records, and Elvis had known me since I was a kid, we had a natural connection for talking and he’d also like to see Bobbie, so we would just party for the week. That went on once or twice a year for several years – they were the best times.
EIN – Eventually you decided to move to Nashville.
W.J – I moved to this home in 1977 – and I like it in Nashville. I like the hills and the way it feels and almost anywhere you go you run into songwriters. A swirling cauldron of musical people! Sadly it is not that way in Memphis anymore.
In fact I was moving down to Nashville when I learned that Elvis was dead. I was shocked and suddenly thought that I was the last Memphis hold-out. American Studios was gone, Stax was gone, Hi studios was gone. Al Green wasn’t making pop records any more and Steve Cropper had left town. All the people from American had left town, Reggie Young, Bobby Wood, Bobby Emmons and Chips Moman. They could have turned the lights out. It seemed to be all over. Otis Redding was dead – and now Elvis was dead. I was the last guy leaving Memphis. It was over, it really was the end of this era.
EIN – Booker T & the MGs along with the Mar-keys was a great mixture of soulful black & white musicians. What do you think the black Memphians thought of Elvis?
W.J – I sincerely believe that the black people respected Elvis’ success. Even if they didn’t respect all the songs that he sang, especially in those sixties movies, they respected his success. You have to. When you look back at the great songs that he sang, like ‘In The Ghetto’ and ‘If I Can Dream’ he was a truly great singer. Elvis was also a great gospel singer because he loved it and truly believed it.
You know even in those movies I admire him for being “Elvis” no matter what his costume or his name was. I only wish that he had gotten a good movie role where he could have proved himself just one time. I honestly think he could have if he had lived long enough. One day someone would have finally let Elvis play a legitimate acting role!
EIN – Sadly Elvis never got the chance.
W.J – Yeah, in later years Elvis fell into bad habits. Those things he fell into will destroy and distort anyone. I don’t care how strong you are, drugs are bad.
But deep down Elvis was a great example of what a Southern person was like. Elvis held his family values highly. He loved Mother – a typical Southern boy – He loved his Mother and his Daddy and God and the United States. And why not? Elvis came from Tupelo and turned into the “King of Rock’n’Roll” – It was the American Dream.
The disagreement is over the solutions — on what spending to cut; what taxes to raise (basically none ever, according to Boozman); whether or not to enact a balanced budget amendment (Boozman says yes; Pryor no); and on what policies would promote the kind of economic growth that would make this a little easier.
Over the next few days I want to take a closer look a Cato Policy Report from July/August 1996 called “Seven Reforms to Balance the Budget” by Stephen Moore. Stephen Moore was the Cato Institute’s director of fiscal policy studies, and afterwards, a Cato senior fellow. This article is based on testimony he delivered before the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight on March 27, 1996. Moore observed:
I would urge that a new budget act contain the following seven provisions, which are discussed in order of priority.
1.) An Enforceable Legislative Balanced-Budget Requirement
Don’t wait for a balanced-budget amendment. Act now. The most urgent reform for this Congress to undertake is passage of a balanced-budget law that enforces the deficit targets established in the House budget resolution.
What I have in mind is a new Gramm-Rudman-Hollings formula that establishes iron-clad enforceable deficit targets. One of the great myths in Washington is that Gramm-Rudman was repealed because it wasn’t working. Gramm-Rudman was repealed by the pro-spending constituencies in Congress precisely because it was working too well.
Gramm-Rudman was enacted in 1985, when Congress was under intense public pressure to immediately reform the budget and reduce the $200 billion budget deficit. The controversial law required Congress to balance the budget by 1991 by meeting a series of annual deficit reduction targets. If Congress missed those targets, the law would trigger automatic spending cuts–a process called “sequestration”–to reduce the deficit to the mandated level.
Critics charge that the act was a dismal failure because Congress continually veered off the balanced-budget track. It is true that Congress routinely missed the deficit targets. Actual deficits under Gramm-Rudman were, on average, about $30 billion per year above maximum deficit targets.
Still, Gramm-Rudman had a positive effect on the federal budget. The best way to measure its impact is to compare the actual deficits recorded during the five years the act was in effect with what the deficit was projected to be by the Congressional Budget Office without Gramm-Rudman. The 1989 deficit was about $100 billion lower than had been expected in 1985 without Gramm-Rudman. The deficit fell from 6 to 3 percent of GDP under Gramm-Rudman.
The most dramatic effect of Gramm-Rudman was to curb government expenditures. Government spending in the five years before the act grew at a rate of 8.7 percent, but it slowed to only 3.2 percent in the five years Gramm-Rudman was in effect. Even entitlement spending was curtailed under Gramm-Rudman to a 5 percent growth rate, because Congress realized that if it allowed programs like Medicare and Medicaid to rise uncontrollably, that would eat up the rest of the budget and cause painful automatic cuts in discretionary spending.
Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) and House Majority Leader Dick Armey have introduced legislation to restore many of the features of Gramm-Rudman. The most vital reform is a series of deficit reduction targets that, if missed, would trigger automatic across-the-board spending cuts–a sequester. I would urge that any new sequester process include all federal outlays except interest payments and Social Security benefits. That would impose a much-needed dose of discipline on the budget process.
(b. 1942) – Holyfield is from Little Rock and has written 15 number one country songs for many Nashville recording artists, such as Ronnie Millsap, Randy Travis, Reba McEntire, the Judds, Julio Iglesias, Don Williams and Waylon Jennings. “I am proudest of the song “Could I Have This Dance” because it is used in so many weddings (listed as one of the top 5 wedding songs). Touching people’s lives is what songwriting is really about. I am proud to be able to say that I am a professional songwriter and that my music has had an impact in some small way on those who have heard it. What a wonderful legacy.” Holyfield received the NSAI Presidential Award in 1979, has received 14 BMI performance awards, and also received 16 ASCAP performance awards. He wrote and recorded the song “Arkansas, You Run Deep in Me” for the Arkansas Sesquicentennial in 1986. He is quoted as saying “I live in Tennessee,” I work in Nashville, but Arkansas is always home and I wrote this song from my heart.” www.nashvillesongwritersfoundation.com/fame/holyfld
The Life and Work of Award Wining Songwriter, Wayland Holyfield (1/2), Songs By: Williams, Gilley
Wayland Holyfield is the writer and performer of “Arkansas (You Run Deep in Me),” which was named one of Arkansas’s official state songs in 1987. Grammy-nominated Holyfield, a prolific songwriter has written more than forty top-ten hits, including fourteen that claimed Billboard’s number one spot. Wayland composed a huge cache of songs of which one hundred — thirty – four of his compositions have been published and recorded by an array of successful and popular artists from the country music arena.
Wayland Holyfield was born on March 15, 1942, northeast of Little Rock, Arkansas,USA in the town of Mallettown. Wayland attended the University of Arkansas (1961-1965) earning a BA degree in marketing. In 1972, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue a songwriting career. Holyfield had his first major hit when Johnny Russell charted “Rednecks, White Socks and Blue Ribbon Beer” (No.4, 1973), just nine months after Wayland signed a publishing contract with Jack Clement. In 1975, Wayland achieved his first solo number one composition, You’re My Best Friend (No. 1, 1975), recorded by Don Williams. In addition to Williams, Holyfield’s songs have been recorded by numerous Nashville luminaries including George Strait, Reba McEntire, Tammy Wynette, Conway Twitty, Charley Pride, Mark Chesnutt, John Anderson, Mel Street, The Oak Ridge Boys and Anne Murray.
For nearly two decades, Holyfield supplied the Nashville recording industry with a steady supply of chart toppers such as “Till The Rivers All Run Dry” (Don Williams, No. 1, 1976), “Some Broken Hearts Never Mend” (Don Williams, No. 1, 1977), “I’ll Do It All Over Again” (Crystal Gayle, No. 2, 1977) and “If I Had a Cheating Heart (Mel Street, No 9, 1978). In 1980, Wayland received a Grammy nomination for “Could I Have This Dance” (Anne Murray, No. 1, 1980), which was featured in the movie, Urban Cowboy starring John Travolta. Wayland has long been active in protecting songwriters’ rights and was the first writer member from Nashville to serve on the board of ASCAP, the performance rights association.
Other popular Holyfield compositions include, I’m Getting Good at Missing You (Solitaire) (Rex Allen Jr., No. 10, 1977), “Nobody Likes Sad Songs” (Ronnie Millsap, No. 1, 1979), “Tears of the Lonely” (Mickey Gilley, No. 3, 1982), Ed Bruce’s biggest chart single, You’re the Best Break This Old Heart Ever Had “(No. 1, 1981) and “Down In Tennessee” (John Anderson, No. 12, 1985).
Throughout his career, Wayland accumulated several awards, including ASCAP\Country Writer of the Year\co-winner (1983) and NSAI Presidential Award (1979). Wayland’s songwriting skills earned him sixteen ASCAP performance awards and fourteen BMI performance awards. Holyfield is the current chairman of the Nashville Songwriters Foundation. He has been a member of the board of directors of the Nashville Songwriters Association International, (NSAI) for almost 25 years. In 1990, Holyfield was elected to the ASCAP Board of Directors, the first Nashville writer so honored. Holyfield was elected to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1992. “Most of us go to our grave with our music still inside us”. ….. Wayland Holyfield. ~RJB: Country Music Historian, 9/2010.
The liberal Pat Lynch in his article “Worry Inc.” Arkansas Democrat- Gazette, April 4, 2011 commented:
While the budget cutters are busy going after programs that help mere citizens, any notion of bringing taxrates for the wealthy back to the levels of the Clinton era, when there was a federal surplus, is off the table.
Liberals always think they can raise the taxes on the rich and everything else will take care of itself. The problem with our deficit is not that the politicians need more money but they need to spend less. I heard Congressman Tim Griffin say that on Monday.
Brian Riedl of The Heritage Foundation discusses the newly released budget by President Bush.
Riedl’s budget research has been featured in front-page stories and editorials in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times. He has discussed budget policy on NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, and C-SPAN. He also participates in the bipartisan “Fiscal Wake-Up Tour,” which holds town hall meetings across America focusing on the looming crisis in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Myth #2: Future deficits are “the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program.”
Fact: These policies play a relatively minor role in the growth of future deficits.
During his 2010 State of the Union Address, President Obama asserted:
At the beginning of the last decade, America had a budget surplus of over $200 billion. By the time I took office, we had a one-year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program.[7]
In other words, according to President Obama, the massive budget deficits are President Bush’s fault, but the data do not support this assertion. President Bush implemented the three policies mentioned by President Obama in the early 2000s. Yet by 2007—the last year before the recession— the budget deficit had stabilized at $161 billion. Since the combined annual cost of these three Bush-era policies is now relatively stable, they cannot have suddenly caused a trillion-dollar leap in budget deficits beginning in 2009.[8]
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However, the larger problem is that the President’s entire methodology fails basic statistics. With Washington set to collect $33 trillion in taxes and spend $46 trillion over the next decade, how does one determine which spending programs “caused” the $13 trillion deficit? By the President’s methodology, one could blame any $13 trillion group of spending programs (or tax cuts) for the entire budget deficit. For example, the President could have blamed much of the 10-year budget deficit on Social Security (10-year cost of $9.2 trillion), antipoverty programs ($7 trillion), net interest on the debt ($6.1 trillion), or non-defense discretionary spending ($7.5 trillion).[12] (See Chart 3.) There is no legitimate, mathematical reason for President Obama to ignore all of these more expensive policies and single out the $4.7 trillion in tax cuts, the funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Medicare drug entitlement. A better methodology would focus on which program costs are actually growing and pushing the deficit up.
Finally, there is some hypocrisy at work. President Obama criticizes President Bush for “not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program.” Yet he would extend $4 trillion of these policies (while repealing $700 billion in tax cuts) without paying for them either. By his own faulty logic, he is almost as irresponsible as President Bush.
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This is part of the series I am doing on Famous Arkansans. This is part two on Wayne Jackson who grew up in West Memphis.
W.J – To be honest with American Studios and the Elvis sessions, they were just plain recording sessions. The “Gods from Heaven” did not come down & there was no fire & brimstone either. It was just a recording session that just happened to be with Elvis. There was of course a lot more magic in recording Elvis than there was in recording a nobody but American studios had some great talent going through it at the time.
The first time I actually heard Elvis sing ‘In the Ghetto’ however I was quietly sitting with my horn and looking at the music. I hadn’t heard any of it yet and I suddenly realised that this was really special stuff. I just got a chill up my spine hearing that. I knew that it was going to be a landmark record for Elvis because it was about such a current topic. I thought “My God, here we all are genuinely in the ghetto!” There really was a guy with an automatic rifle on the roof in case of something bad happened – especially after Martin Luther King died.
You see American Studios was in the worst part of town. Stax was a little nearer Graceland, but American & Hi studios, all of them were in the worst parts of town. ‘Suspicious Minds’ was also an emotional subject for Elvis at that time as well and it was a thrill to be involved in those songs, knowing that they would be so important to his future career as they were.
EIN – Interestingly Dusty Springfield’s fabulous LP ‘Dusty In Memphis’ was released on the same day January 13, 1969 that Elvis came in to American Studios to record! Featuring the same line up as Elvis’ band wasn’t ‘Son Of A Preacher Man’ a stunner?
W.J – It was one of the best of the era. There was so much music and also a lot of poverty and we all worked to earn something extra and I was one of those people.
EIN – Were you brought in for sessions or did you play for whoever came along.
W.J – Chips Moman produced Stax’s big early hit ‘Last Night’ and I played on that. He liked my horn sound and so anytime they needed horns at American they’d call us up. We also worked Muscle Shoals studios too!
At the time I’d known Elvis for lots of years and recently he had been singing those poor “Movie Songs” which we were not that excited about since we’d recently been recording three number 1 records each a week! But the songwriters really had their day with him, including Mark James and ‘Suspicious Minds.’ In fact Mark James is a good friend of mine and we wrote some songs together.
EIN – How did Chips Moman’s session work out since there were a lot of overdubs. Were you there when Elvis recorded the vocals?
W.J – Next door was a restaurant & upstairs there was kid of a holding area. Because the studio was so small we would often go off with the Backing singers while the rhythm section worked out the backbone of the songs. We would be playing poker upstairs while they were cutting tracks downstairs. Then we would come down and Elvis would be singing and we’d put the horns in with the track. Elvis liked to sing with the horns and hear them together with the background vocals. So although we did overdub the horns on ‘In The Ghetto’ Elvis actually sang with us while we overdubbed those. You’ve got to understand that the studio was surprisingly small so that there was not much room for the band plus the horns & back-up voices.
EIN – Like Sun Studios?
W.J – Did you visit Sun Studios? Well it was just like that room – which still has all the magic hanging around in there. Sun Studios is probably the most important place in the world for Rock’n’roll and you can certainly feel that something very important happened in that room. I reckon you might even feel it even if you didn’t know what it was because there are such energies left over from all that creativity. But that all happened before I got into the business. I never got to play at Sun until Johnny Rivers did a session, Rufus Thomas too. We also worked with U2 when they recorded there in 1988 to produce their ‘Rattle & Hum’ album.
Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below:
Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Here are a few more I just emailed to him myself at 9:35 pm CST on April 11, 2011.
Eliminate business subsidies from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Federal spending is on an unsustainable path that risks disaster for America. Runaway spending has increased annual federal budget deficits to unprecedented levels, adding $2.7 trillion to the national debt in the past two years alone. Each year’s huge federal deficit increases the mountain of national debt borrowed from future generations of Americans. Congress needs to cut federal spending sharply and quickly. This paper sets forth $343 billion in available spending cuts.
Over the past two years, Congress has added $2.7 trillion to the national debt, including a record $1.4 trillion deficit for fiscal year (FY) 2009 and a $1.3 trillion deficit for FY 2010.[1] If Congress does nothing and simply continues existing taxing and spending policies, federal deficits will grow, reaching a projected $2 trillion deficit in just 10 years—and even that assumes a return to peace and prosperity.[2]
America cannot live with such deficits interminably. Deficits mortgage the livelihoods of future generations of Americans and ultimately put U.S. economic growth, stability, and reliability at risk.
Soaring spending drives these dangerous deficits. By 2020, federal spending is set to soar to 26 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), after having averaged 20 percent after World War II. Revenues will likely return to their post–World War II average of 18 percent of GDP by 2020, even if the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are made permanent.[3] Thus, given current spending and taxing policies, spending is clearly the variable that drives up the deficits.[4] To reduce deficits, Congress must cut spending.
The costs of federal entitlement programs—Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—and interest on the national debt will drive future deficits, and Congress must promptly and carefully decide how best to reduce those costs. However, entitlement reforms will take time, and spending cuts cannot wait. Congress needs to start cutting spending now.
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Randy Goodrum is another famous Arkansan. Wikipedia notes:
Randy Goodrum toured extensively with guitarist Chet Atkins and performed and produced cuts on many of Atkins’ albums. As a co-writer with Chet Atkins, Randy wrote “To B or not to B” and “Waltz for the Lonely” among others. Goodrum’s song “So Soft Your Goodbye” won a Grammy award for Chet Atkins, and Mark Knopfler, in 1991.
Goodrum has conducted numerous seminars for aspiring songwriters over the years and urges songwriters to be patient, noting that he had written songs for over 10 years before any were recorded by other artists. According to Goodrum, his biggest hit, “You Needed Me” was rejected at first because it did not have a chorus.
“When I took them “You Needed Me” they told me it wouldn’t work, that it needed a chorus. And I said “No, it doesn’t.” I had been writing a really long time at that point and I knew there were a lot of songs that were hits that did not have a chorus, like “When Sunny Gets Blue” for example. Now a less experienced writer might go back home and write a chorus and end up with a seven minute piece of garbage.” said Goodrum in a recent interview.
Jason Tolbert reported that Rep. Uvalde Lindsey (D-Fayetteville) prefers the map know as the Luker Amendment and does not mix words regarding his opposition to moving Fayetteville into AR4. Here is a clip of an interview Jason did with Rep. Lindsey below.
Pat Lynch suggested today in his article “The political bog,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, April 11, 2011, that the Democrats in the State Legislature could have quietly pushed through the Fayetteville Finger without much attention if they had been united. He states:
Two super-sized and ominous ongoing news events dominate the attention of those who keep up with such distasteful things. One is the General Assembly’s stumbling attempt at congressional redistricting and the second item concerns whether the national government will keep running.
Both of these little dramas demonstrate the consequences of getting bogged down in a political mess. Many Arkansas lawmakers would surely like to take a mulligan on redrawing the congressional districts. For our reps in Washington, there is no escape from the budget showdown…
Had legislative Democrats enjoyed any semblance of party discipline, the “Fayetteville finger” might have been pushed through with minimal opposition and swiftly enacted. Nobody would have noticed-except a few Fayetteville malcontents.
It is one of the deeper mysteries of these confusing times as to why Fayetteville folks, good and reasonable people, would so detest the possibility of being represented in Congress by a Democrat. If that is what they want, let it be.
The situation is so unsettled that it seems almost every lawmaker has developed a personal redistricting map. This is what representative government is all about, these occasional fits of total chaos.
Challengers in the 2012 election will be able to use that “Fayetteville finger” against any incumbent Democrat, and potential voters will have some sort of foggy idea of what it means. All they need to know is that the finger is bad. Democrats proposed it, so all Democrats are bad.
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I think that Pat Lynch misses the boat on this one. It has been shown before that 82% of the people polled in Fayetteville opposed the move to the fourth. That is hardly a “a few Fayetteville malcontents.”
It was completely ruled out of the question by Max Brantley and considered a joke when it first came to his ears. Liberal John Brummett is the columnist who gave it the name of the “Fayetteville Finger.”
I just don’t see how it could have been shoved through without causing a stink.
Another day of redistricting and of course another map to look at. Here is what the newest map that is still being hammered up might look like… maybe (blogger’s render – subject to change.)
Meetings are currently taken place and by all appearances some of the them in Gov. Beebe’s office primarily with Democratic legislative leaders to hammer out the details. I spoke to several Republicans that have still not seen the map. (HERE IS THE NEW MAP BELOW)
In my series of famous Arkansas entertainers I come to someone that people may not recognize his name, but behind the scenes he has written some of the top hits. He grew up in Little Rock and graduated from Arkansas Baptist High School. He now lives in California and Linda Caillouet has written about him on several occasions in her Paper Trails articles in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Today she did again in her article “Arkansans abound on TV, Music,” April 11, 2011. She noted:
MUSIC MAN: Little Rock native David Hodges continues making music long after he left the locally rooted Grammy-winning rock band Evanescence.
One of his most recent projects? Collaborating with country star Carrie Underwood on the lead single off the soundtrack for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, released on DVD last Friday. The single “There’s a Place for Us” was nominated for a Golden Globe in the Best Original Song category.
The cut, available exclusively on iTunes, has sold more than 80,000 since its release last November. To view a video of the song, go to tinyurl.com/4yu7s8k.
Other artists with whom Hodges has worked as a songwriter and producer include Kelly Clarkson, Reba McEntire, Daughtry, Celine Dion and Adam Lambert.
The Daily Hatch 