Listing of transcripts and videos of “Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market on www.theDailyHatch.org

Milton Friedman’s books and film series really helped form my conservative views. Take a look at one of my favorite films of his:

“FREE TO CHOOSE” 1: The Power of the Market (Milton Friedman)
Free to Choose ^ | 1980 | Milton Friedman

Posted on Monday, July 17, 2006 4:20:46 PM by Choose Ye This Day

FREE TO CHOOSE: The Power of the Market

Friedman: Once all of this was a swamp, covered with forest. The Canarce Indians who lived here traded the 22 square miles of soggy Manhattan Island to the Dutch for $24.00 worth of cloth and trinkets. The newcomers founded a city, New Amsterdam at the edge of an empty continent. In the years that followed, it proved a magnet for millions of people from across the Atlantic; people who were driven by fear and poverty; who were attracted by the promise of freedom and plenty. They fanned out over the continent and built a new nation with their sweat, their enterprise and their vision of a better future.

For the first time in their lives, many were truly free to pursue their own objectives. That freedom released the human energies which created the United States. For the immigrants who were welcomed by this statue, America was truly a land of opportunity.

They poured ashore in their best clothes, eager and expectant, carrying what little they owned. They were poor, but they all had a great deal of hope. Once they arrived, they found, as my parents did, not an easy life, but a very hard life. But for many there were friends and relatives to help them get started __ to help them make a home, get a job, settle down in the new country. There were many rewards for hard work, enterprise and ability. Life was hard, but opportunity was real. There were few government programs to turn to and nobody expected them. But also, there were few rules and regulations. There were no licenses, no permits, no red tape to restrict them. They found in fact, a free market, and most of them thrived on it.

Many people still come to the United States driven by the same pressures and attracted by the same promise. You can find them in places like this. It’s China Town in New York, one of the centers of the garment industry __ a place where hundreds of thousands of newcomers have had their first taste of life in the new country. The people who live and work here are like the early settlers. They want to better their lot and they are prepared to work hard to do so.

Although I haven’t often been in factories like this, it’s all very familiar to me because this is exactly the same kind of a factory that my mother worked in when she came to this country for the first time at the age of 14, almost 90 years ago. And if there had not been factories like this here then at which she could have started to work and earn a little money, she wouldn’t have been able to come. And if I existed at all, I’d be a Russian or Hungarian today, instead of an American. Of course she didn’t stay here a long time, she stayed here while she learned the language, while she developed some feeling for the country, and gradually she was able to make a better life for herself.

Similarly, the people who are here now, they are like my mother. Most of the immigrants from the distant countries __ they came here because they liked it here better and had more opportunities. A place like this gives them a chance to get started. They are not going to stay here very long or forever. On the contrary, they and their children will make a better life for themselves as they take advantage of the opportunities that a free market provides to them.

The irony is that this place violates many of the standards that we now regard as every worker’s right. It is poorly ventilated, it is overcrowded, the workers accept less than union rate __ it breaks every rule in the book. But if it were closed down, who would benefit? Certainly not the people here. Their life may seem pretty tough compared to our own, but that is only because our parents or grandparents went through that stage for us. We have been able to start at a higher point.

Frank Visalli’s father was 12 years old when he arrived all alone in the United States. He had come from Sicily. That was 53 years ago. Frank is a successful dentist with a wife and family. They live in Lexington, Massachusetts. There is no doubt in Frank’s mind what freedom combined with opportunity meant to his father and then to him, or what his Italian grandparents would think if they could see how he lives now.

Frank Visalli: They would not believe what they would see __ that a person could immigrate from a small island and make such success out of their life because to them they were mostly related to the fields, working in the field as a peasant. My father came over, he made something for himself and then he tried to build a family structure. Whatever he did was for his family. It was for a better life for his family. And I can always remember him telling me that the number one thing in life is that you should get an education to become a professional person.

Friedman: The Visalli family, like all of us who live in the United States today, owe much to the climate of freedom we inherited from the founders of our country. The climate that gave full scope to the poor from other lands who came here and were able to make better lives for themselves and their children.

But in the past 50 years, we’ve been squandering that inheritance by allowing government to control more and more of our lives, instead of relying on ourselves. We need to rediscover the old truths that the immigrants knew in their bones; what economic freedom is and the role it plays in preserving personal freedom.

That’s why I came here to the South China Sea. It’s a place where there is an almost laboratory experiment in what happens when government is limited to its proper function and leaves people free to pursue their own objectives. If you want to see how the free market really works this is the place to come. Hong Kong, a place with hardly any natural resources. About the only one you can name is a great harbor, yet the absence of natural resources hasn’t prevented rapid economic development. Ships from all nations come here to trade because there are no duties, no tariffs on imports or exports. The power of the free market has enabled the industrious people of Hong Kong to transform what was once barren rock into one of the most thriving and successful places in Asia.

If you enjoyed that then take a look at the other segments:

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 6 of 7)

PETERSON: Well, let me ask you how you would cope with this problem, Dr. Friedman. The people decided that they wanted cool air, and there was tremendous need, and so we built a huge industry, the air conditioning industry, hundreds of thousands of jobs, tremendous earnings opportunities and nearly all of us now have air […]

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 5 of 7)

Part 5 Milton Friedman: I do not believe it’s proper to put the situation in terms of industrialist versus government. On the contrary, one of the reasons why I am in favor of less government is because when you have more government industrialists take it over, and the two together form a coalition against the ordinary […]

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 4 of 7)

The fundamental principal of the free society is voluntary cooperation. The economic market, buying and selling, is one example. But it’s only one example. Voluntary cooperation is far broader than that. To take an example that at first sight seems about as far away as you can get __ the language we speak; the words […]

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 3 of 7)

  _________________________   Pt3  Nowadays there’s a considerable amount of traffic at this border. People cross a little more freely than they use to. Many people from Hong Kong trade in China and the market has helped bring the two countries closer together, but the barriers between them are still very real. On this side […]

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 2 of 7)

  Aside from its harbor, the only other important resource of Hong Kong is people __ over 4_ million of them. Like America a century ago, Hong Kong in the past few decades has been a haven for people who sought the freedom to make the most of their own abilities. Many of them are […]

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 1of 7)

“FREE TO CHOOSE” 1: The Power of the Market (Milton Friedman) Free to Choose ^ | 1980 | Milton Friedman Posted on Monday, July 17, 2006 4:20:46 PM by Choose Ye This Day FREE TO CHOOSE: The Power of the Market Friedman: Once all of this was a swamp, covered with forest. The Canarce Indians […]

 

July 3, 2012 – 12:35 am Categories: Milton Friedman | Post a comment

Total Tax Burden Is Rising to Highest Level in History

Total Tax Burden Is Rising to Highest Level in History

Everyone wants to know more about the budget and here is some key information with a chart from the Heritage Foundation and a video from the Cato Institute about the Laffer Curve. In a year and half (end of 2012) the Bush Tax Cuts will expire. However, is that wise? Not if you understand the Laffer Curve.

Taxes are projected to increase rapidly under various policy scenarios. If the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire and more middle-class Americans are required to pay the alternative minimum tax (AMT), taxes will reach unprecedented levels. The tax burden will climb even if those tax breaks are extended. President Obama’s budget, which cuts some taxes and raises others, also increases the overall tax burden.

PERCENTAGE OF GDP

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Total Tax Burden Is Rising to Highest Level in History

Source: Heritage Foundation calculations based on Congressional Budget Office and White House Office of Management and Budget data.

Chart 19 of 42

In Depth

  • Policy Papers for Researchers

  • Technical Notes

    The charts in this book are based primarily on data available as of March 2011 from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The charts using OMB data display the historical growth of the federal government to 2010 while the charts using CBO data display both historical and projected growth from as early as 1940 to 2084. Projections based on OMB data are taken from the White House Fiscal Year 2012 budget. The charts provide data on an annual basis except… Read More

  • Authors

    Emily GoffResearch Assistant
    Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy StudiesKathryn NixPolicy Analyst
    Center for Health Policy StudiesJohn FlemingSenior Data Graphics Editor

July 3, 2012 – 12:06 am Categories: spending out of control, Taxes | Post a comment

Open letter to President Obama (Part 97)

Michael Cannon on Medicare and Healthcare

President Obama c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here.

Arkansas is really in danger in the next few years of going bankrupt if Obamacare in put into effect. It will expand this failing welfare program by putting over half of the reduction in uninsured into the Medicaid program that is already broke. SMOKE AND MIRRORS IS ALL WE ARE GOING TO GET FROM OBAMACARE. Instead, it seems that we could do at that point would be to  move around the chairs on the financial Titanic we will have here in Arkansas!!!!!

Below is a study done by the Heritage Foundation on the future impact of Obamacare on states budgets.

Obamacare and Medicaid: Expanding a Broken Entitlement and Busting State Budgets

By
January 19, 2011

Roughly half of the anticipated gains in insurance coverage from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)[1] are achieved through a massive expansion of Medicaid, the joint federal–state health insurance program for the poor. The Medicaid program, with its soaring price tag and dubious level of care for recipients, is in serious need of reform, not expansion. Increasing enrollment in this program by a third is a major flaw of the new health care law.[2]

Summary

Section 2001(a) of PPACA requires states to increase Medicaid eligibility to cover all Americans below 138 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) beginning January 1, 2014.[3] At that time, the FPL will be about $33,000 for a family of four, excluding the value of any welfare benefits. Section 1201 of the reconciliation bill (H.R. 4872) specifies that the federal government will pick up 100 percent of the cost of providing coverage for the expansion population (those who qualify under the new requirements but were ineligible under the previous state eligibility criteria) between 2014 and 2016. The federal reimbursement for the newly eligible will gradually decline thereafter until 2020, when the federal share of the cost will stay at 90 percent.

States will not receive such a high reimbursement for individuals who apply for Medicaid and were eligible under the previous state eligibility criteria in place when PPACA was signed into law.[4] States will be reimbursed for these individuals at their traditional federal reimbursement, which ranges from 50 percent in the wealthiest states to nearly 75 percent in the poorest states. Nationally, about 12 million individuals are eligible for Medicaid but are not yet enrolled.[5] The state cost of the Medicaid expansion will largely be affected by how many of these individuals sign up for the program, which will probably be increased because of the publicity likely to surround the penalties in the law for not maintaining health insurance.

One provision of PPACA, the maintenance of effort (MOE) requirement in Section 2001(b), impacts states immediately. Under PPACA’s MOE, a state would lose all federal Medicaid funding if it makes eligibility more restrictive than the standards in effect for the state’s program at the time the law was enacted.[6] This essentially freezes the state’s eligibility requirements regardless of the impact on its bottom line.

Not only are states forced to keep eligibility at that level, but they are being forced to raise payments to primary care physicians. Section 1202 of H.R. 4872 requires that states increase Medicaid reimbursement rates for primary care physicians (PCPs) to the same level as the applicable Medicare payment rates for 2013 and 2014. The legislation specifies that the federal government will pay this entire cost—temporarily. This requirement, along with the federal funding for it, expires on January 1, 2015. At that time, states will have to either maintain the physician payment rate themselves or make drastic cuts.

Impact

Instead of reforming Medicaid—by targeting taxpayer dollars to populations truly deserving of public assistance and pursuing fundamental reform of the basic structure—PPACA doubles down on the program’s existing flaws. This will lead to a substantial increase in cost to taxpayers and a dramatic swelling in the number of individuals dependent on the government paying their health care bills.

Increases in Taxes and Pressure on Other Areas of Public Spending. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) project that PPACA will increase federal spending on Medicaid by between $75 billion and $100 billion annually.[7] This dramatic increase is irresponsible given current annual federal budget deficits well in excess of $1 trillion. Further spending on Medicaid will necessitate an increase in federal taxes or cuts to other public programs. Given the evidence of poor health outcomes for Medicaid recipients,[8] the expansion likely fails a cost–benefit analysis.

Massive Increase in Government Dependence and Crowding Out of Private Coverage. CBO projects that PPACA will increase national enrollment in Medicaid by 16 million individuals in 2019, while CMS projects 20 million individuals.[9] The Heritage Foundation estimates that the growth in Medicaid caseloads will range from 9 percent in Massachusetts to 66 percent in Nevada.[10] Recent research by economists Jonathan Gruber and Kosali Simon finds that “the number of privately insured falls by about 60 percent as the number of publicly insured rises.”[11] This means several million individuals below the new income threshold who currently have private coverage will be swept into Medicaid when PPACA takes effect.

Worsening State Budget Problems and Limits on State Options. States are already required to cover children and pregnant women below 133 percent of the FPL, but they have had flexibility to cover or not cover additional populations. That flexibility vanished with the passage of PPACA. In the short term, states cannot reduce eligibility criteria at all in order to deal with budget crises, and after 2014 state Medicaid programs must cover everyone below 138 percent of the FPL.[12] Most states will be forced to either cut benefits or cut provider payment rates. This is a significant problem in many states that already have low payment rates, particularly for PCPs. Setting payment rates lower will further reduce Medicaid patients’ access to providers and will increase use of emergency rooms for basic care needs.[13]

Creation of a Medicaid “Doc Fix.” The federal requirement that states boost Medicaid PCP rates to Medicare levels in 2013 and 2014 seems like a win for states, since federal taxpayers will finance it. However, this requirement will actually create problems for states. The increase in Medicaid payment rates for PCPs may cause other providers to lobby government to increase their rates as well. This would increase the cost to the state. When the federal funds go away, states could reduce payment rates again, but both physicians and their patients are likely to lobby against such a move. The state also has to be concerned with too many doctors leaving the Medicaid program.

Bureaucratic Nightmare and Intergovernmental Tension. The interaction of the Medicaid expansion and the creation of federal subsidies to purchase health insurance on the new state exchanges will create headaches and tensions for policymakers at the federal and state levels. Individuals below 138 percent of the FPL will be enrolled in state Medicaid programs, while many individuals between 138 percent and 400 percent of the FPL will be eligible for subsidies. There will be a lag between income on a household’s W-2 (for the prior year) and current income for eligibility purposes. It also invites a conflict of interest between state policymakers—who are incentivized for individuals to receive subsidies (so the federal government pays the full cost)—and federal policymakers, who will prefer states to share the costs through Medicaid.

A New Direction

Instead of expanding the nation’s fastest-growing entitlement, policies should move toward a fundamental restructuring of the Medicaid program to ensure fiscal sustainability, promote a patient-centered financing model, mainstream families into private coverage, and maintain a limited safety net for those individuals truly in need.

The federal financing structure, which encourages states to overspend, needs to be replaced with a structure that is more fiscally sustainable. In the short term, federal policymakers should, at the very least, allow states greater flexibility with eligibility and benefits so states can better manage their programs, control their costs, and balance their priorities.

Brian Blase is Policy Analyst in the Center for Health Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation and is a Doctoral Candidate in Economics at George Mason University.

_____________

Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com

July 2, 2012 – 9:41 am Categories: Healthcare, President Obama | Post a comment

“The Power of the Market” episode of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 4)

Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 4-5

How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms.  I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the last 30 plus years. Here is part four which consists of a lively discussion between Friedman and several other interested scholars concerning his film.
To take an example that at first sight seems about as far away as you can get __ the language we speak; the words we use; the complex structure of our grammar; no government bureau designed that. It arose out of the voluntary interactions of people seeking to communicate with one another. Or consider some of the great scientific achievements of our time __ the discoveries of an Einstein or Newton __ the inventions of Thomas Alva Edison or an Alexander Graham Bell or even consider the great charitable activities of a Florence Nightingale or an Andrew Carnegie. These weren’t done under orders from a government office. They were done by individuals deeply interested in what they were doing, pursing their own interests, and cooperating with one another.This kind of voluntary cooperation is built so deeply into the structure of our society that we tend to take it for granted. Yet the whole of our Western civilization is the unintended consequence of that kind of a voluntary cooperation of people cooperating with one another to pursue their own interests, yet in the process, building a great society.DISCUSSIONI’m Linda Chavez. Welcome to Free to Choose. Joining Dr. Friedman in a discussion of the power of the market are David Brooks of the Wall Street Journal, and James Galbraith of the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Galbraith, should we follow the example of Hong Kong and simply allow an unregulated free market?Galbraith: I think we do better in this country whereas the combination of a free market and its advantages, and a well regulated, carefully thought out structure of government, which provides a chance to pick up some of the losers from the market process and give them a second start. It provides us with a chance to make the economic process a little safer, a little healthier, a little more environmentally sound and protective, than you might get from a strict adherence to the free market such as Professor Friedman has described in the case of Hong Kong.

Chavez: Dr. Friedman, is there any such thing as a well-regulated market?

Friedman: No. He is begging the question. Obviously he is right. If you could have a well-regulated, carefully thought out, properly done market, benevolent dictatorship is the best of all forms of government.

Galbraith: Oh, I don’t agree with that at all.

Friedman: Neither do I.

Galbraith: Constitutional democracy is the best of all forms of government.

Friedman: No. Constitutional democracy is the least bad of all forms of government. But you beg all the questions when you talk about well-regulated, carefully thought out __ if you look at the actual programs that governments follow, they most always have effects that are the opposite of those that were intended by their well-meaning advocates.

Galbraith: Let me tell you what troubles me.

Friedman: I will tell you something. Matching the invisible hand of the market is the invisible foot of government.

Galbraith: You make the point in the program that in every case where you have a smaller role of government and a freer market, you have a higher standard of living.

Friedman: No. I didn’t say that. I didn’t say that. I said there are better conditions for the poorer people.

Galbraith: Okay. Better conditions for the poorer people. Fine, I will accept that. At the same time you are making the argument in the program that the conditions in Hong Kong are better, for example, than in the United States, which is manifestly not true. You are making the argument that Hong Kong is more free than we are.

Friedman: It is more free.

Galbraith: Does it then follow that the conditions for poor people in Hong Kong are better than they are in the United States? That I don’t believe is true.

Friedman: I said in there where you compare like with like.

Galbraith: Okay this is an important qualification.

Friedman: Hong Kong obviously started out from a much lower position. If I were to compare conditions in Hong Kong in 1945 or 1950 with conditions in the United States in 1820 or 1830, you would have a much closer comparison.

Galbraith: Are you then saying, a position which I would find much more congenial, that where you have a country which has developed a base of material wealth, a degree of comfort for the average citizen, that it is then legitimate for the government of that country to step in and provide some guarantees and some security for poor people and old people.

Friedman: No. I am not saying that at all. Every time they step in and try to do that, they end up doing the opposite.

Galbraith: This discussion reflects a feature of the program that I found to be most troubling which is the failure to make a distinction between governments of the kind that we have developed in this country over 200 years, and governments of the kind that you described in the People’s Republic of China. It’s perfectly clear that one can have, and many countries do have, the curse of repressive dictatorships. It is also perfectly clear that an economy that is organized by Commissars is going to fail. We have certainly seen laid out before us over the last several years, the ashes of those failed economies. But is it possible to take the example of the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, and to say that because their governments, which were after all dictatorships modeled after the system of government installed in the Soviet Union by Stalin, are in fact parallel to the actions of our government which is a government which operates on many different federal levels, and where fundamentally what you have is the ability of the ordinary citizen whose power is not weighted by the amount of money he or she has, to use the vote in order to make some collective decisions. Granted, after ten years of Reagan’s Washington, you’ve got a serious problem of corruption. Does that mean we should abandon the idea that you have a democratic process that should be entrusted with certain important decisions __ I don’t think so.

Friedman: You don’t have a democratic process in the sense in which you mean it. We have a democracy. We have a majority rule, but the majority that rules is a collection of minorities. It is a collection of special interests. You cannot tell me that the consumers in this country would vote for a sugar quota that makes the price of sugar three times the world price. When you say you can’t compare it to Russia, you are quite right, but only because they are 100% and we are 50%. If our system, if our present regulations and rules had prevailed, our scope of government had prevailed 100 years ago, we wouldn’t be where we are today.

Chavez: Let me understand you Dr. Friedman. Do you believe that there should be no role at all, whatsoever, for government?

Friedman: Of course there should be a role for government __ a very important role for government.

Chavez: What is that role?

Friedman: The role for government is first of all, to protect people from physical coercion by their neighbors or by foreign countries, that is to protect the national defense and to protect law and order at home. There is a role for government enabling us to have a mechanism whereby we decide on the rules which we want to run, how we define private property, what we mean by private property. There is a role for government in adjudicating disputes between us. There is a role for government. A very important role and I believe our government played that role quite well for about 100 years until the Great Depression.

Brooks: I would go a little further. I think there is a health and safety role as well. The problem is that you have to keep your regulations simple and minimal. You have to realize that there are costs and often the costs outweigh the benefits. In fact, in Washington there are interests who want to divert costs to themselves, so there is sort of a built in structure, a dynamic to make costs outweigh the benefits.

Galbraith: We are making progress here. I would add that the government has a role to protect the environment. I would say the government has a role to set standards for products, where information is very costly for the individual consumer to obtain. I like very much the fact that the steaks that the dentist was eating were inspected by the USDA. Their purity was guaranteed by a rather well-functioning aspect of our government.

Brooks: On the other hand, you have the FDA which has these long delays, 10 years to get a drug approved so that the effect is that you have to be a big drug company to get any kind of dent of the market. Basically you are closing off the market.

Galbraith: On the other hand, you have had a set of regulations which have disappeared without any well-justified regrets. For example, the regulations that govern the entry into interstate trucking; the regulations that govern entry and rates in the airlines.

Friedman: Don’t tell me that that was done under the Reagan administration.

Galbraith: Oh no. Those reforms were done under the Carter administration.

Brooks: There is no doubt that Carter did the heavy lifting on deregulation.

July 2, 2012 – 9:39 am Categories: Milton Friedman | Post a comment

“Music Monday” People in the Johnny Cash video “God’s Gonna Cut You Down”

Wikipedia noted:

Johnny Cash recorded a version of “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” on American V: A Hundred Highways in 2003, with an arrangement quite different from most known gospel versions of the song.

A music video, directed by Tony Kaye,[1] was made for this version in late 2006. It featured a number of celebrities, including:

In order of appearance; Iggy Pop, Kanye West, Chris Martin, Kris Kristofferson, Patti Smith, Terrence Howard, Flea, Q-Tip, Adam Levine, Chris Rock, Justin Timberlake, Kate Moss, Sir Peter Blake, Sheryl Crow, Dennis Hopper, Woody Harrelson, Amy Lee, Tommy Lee, the Dixie Chicks, Mick Jones, Sharon Stone, Bono, Shelby Lynne, Anthony Kiedis, Travis Barker, Lisa Marie Presley, Kid Rock, Jay-Z, Keith Richards, Billy Gibbons, Corinne Bailey Rae, Johnny Depp, Graham Nash (holding photos of Johnny Cash), Brian Wilson.

It also briefly features archive footage of Cash himself. The video was shot entirely in black and white. Since its release, both the song and video have seen moderate airplay.

The video won the 2008 Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video.

The video was also covered by Rebel Son, Adding a little bit more upbeat sound to the song, Released on the “All my Demons” album.

The Johnny Cash version can also be heard in the following:

  • In the opening of the second mission of the video game Battlefield 3
  • In a 2011 commercial for Jeep Grand Cherokee
  • In the 2007 documentary:The Most Hated Family in America.
  • As bumper music for the Alex Jones radio show.
  • In promotional commercials for the hit CW series Supernatural.
  • In the trailer for the 2006 documentary Deliver Us from Evil.
  • As entrance music for UFC Fighters Spencer Fisher and Jason Lambert, as well as professional wrestlers Tyson Dux, Brodie Lee, and “The Southern States Outlaw” Michael Cross.
  • As the entrance song for left handed relief pitcher Joe Beimel of the Pittsburgh Pirates.
  • As the entrance song for Lance Berkman, right fielder of the St. Louis Cardinals.
  • As the entrance song for Arizona State pitcher Josh McAlister.
  • EastEnders used the recording in a 2008 promotional video for Max Branning‘s Judgement Day.
  • During the opening sequence and closing credits of David Ridgen‘s documentary Mississippi Cold Case made for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
  • In the release trailer of the game Splinter Cell: Conviction.[2]
  • In 2010, the recording was used in the opening titles sequence of the ITV (UK) series Father and Son.
  • As of June 16, 2010, a sample of the rhythm from this version is used as background music for a series of television commercials for the 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee; most notably the “Manifesto” advertisement.[3]
  • In a video entitled “The Death of Liverpool FC” intended to highlight the protest against the owners of the club at the time.[4]
  • Rapper RL sampled this version in his track, entitled “God’s Gonna Cut Us Down”, on his album “T.H.R.E.E.”
  • In a trailer for the Coen brothers‘s film True Grit.
  • In December 2010 in a trailer for ESPN‘s 30 for 30 film Pony Excess.
  • In March 2011 in the Being Human episode “Though the Heavens Fall,” as performed by Detroit Social Club.
  • Sampled by J-Clash on the track “Cut You Down” [5]
  • In a dramatic scene of Republic of Doyle, season 2, episode 9.

  • TIMBERLAKE’S BRAINSTORM: JOHNNY CASH VIDEO WITH KANYE, JIGGA, DEPP, OTHERS

    CLIP ALSO STARS BONO, CHRIS MARTIN, TERRENCE HOWARD, CHRIS ROCK, ADAM LEVINE, AMY LEE, TOMMY LEE.

    If Justin Timberlake adds any more titles to his résumé, we’re not going to be able to fit them all onto a single line. The singer/actor/dancer/producer/clothing designer has tacked video-treatment writer onto his long list of recent endeavors, courtesy of the moody new clip for the Johnny Cash song “God’s Gonna Cut You Down.”

    The concept for the all-star video came to Timberlake while he was taking a break from recording with producer Rick Rubin, who helmed Cash’s award-winning Americanalbum series and Timberlake’s “(Another Song) All Over Again.”

    “We were in the studio and we took a break to listen to the new Johnny Cash album [American V: A Hundred Highways], which was not yet released at that point,” Rubin said. “And when we got to that song, [Justin] said, ‘Stop!’ ”

    Timberlake then laid out a plan for a video to accompany the spare, moody song, which would feature a series of stars dressed in Cash’s signature black. “And he said, ‘I’m signing up to be the first one,’ ” Rubin said.

    Timberlake tops a list of 36 stars who appear in the clip, including Iggy Pop, Kanye West, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, actor Terrence Howard, Anthony Kiedis and Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Chris Rock, Maroon 5’s Adam Levine, Kate Moss, Sheryl Crow, Woody Harrelson, Amy Lee of Evanescence, Tommy Lee, the Dixie Chicks, Keith Richards, Bono, (+44)’s Travis Barker, Kid Rock, Jay-Z and Johnny Depp.

    “I had no idea yet how to market the album, which I’d just finished, since Johnny [Cash, who passed away in 2003] was not there and I wasn’t thinking about doing a video,” Rubin said (see “Johnny Cash Dead At 71”).

    Inspired by Timberlake’s brainstorm, Rubin called up acclaimed video director Mark Romanek, who helmed the award-winning clip for Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” (see “Johnny Cash Says Unlike Most Videos, ‘Hurt’ Wasn’t Too Painful”). Though Romanek loved the concept and added some ideas to it, he couldn’t sign on due to scheduling conflicts, so he suggested controversial director Tony Kaye (“American History X”). Kaye, who directed the time-tripping clip for the Chili Peppers’ “Dani California” (which is from an album also produced by Rubin), hasn’t directed many rock videos, but like many of the celebs in the shoot, he’s among the luminaries in Rubin’s thick address book of friends and professional acquaintances.

    “I got together with Tony — he loved Johnny and he’s really interested in the idea of music driving images,” Rubin said. Once they agreed on the concept, Rubin asked a few friends to make a list of the 10 coolest people on the planet. “At least five of the people in the video were on everyone’s list,” he said, “and Iggy was on a lot of lists, so it just felt right to open with him. I don’t know what that message is, but it just feels right.”

    Like the other stars, punk icon Pop is filmed wearing all black. The film’s lightning-fast, blink-and-you-might-miss-it series of quick-edit shots (many of which are close-ups of the stars’ faces) contrast with the slow tempo of the song.

    The video progresses through a series of quick mini-dramas, most of which were improvised, including Howard in a limo reading a Bible, Rock singing along with the lyrics, Timberlake staring at the camera, Depp standing on a balcony playing guitar, and Bono leaning on a graffiti-filled wall between angel’s wings and a halo while wearing a paper hat. The segments were filmed in Los Angeles, New York, London and (in Richards’ case) Amsterdam.

    Rubin said that for many of the artists in the clip — who also include Kris Kristofferson, Patti Smith, Q-Tip, Dennis Hopper, the Clash’s Mick Jones, Sharon Stone, Shelby Lynne, Lisa Marie Presley, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, Corinne Bailey Rae, Graham Nash and the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson — their reactions capture reflective moments spurred by hearing the song for the first time. Lynne sheds tears in an intense closeup, and a serious-looking Kid Rock stomps and claps his hands along to the funereal beat. “Each person got to design their own moment,” Rubin said. “But Tony was looking more for the instant emotional impact than a pre-planned skit. Nobody was asked to lip-sync, so pretty much everything was spontaneous.”

    After a slide-show-like recap of all the famous faces, the clip ends with Rubin and actor Owen Wilson sitting somberly in the back of a limousine.

    We get Iggy and Bono, but what’s Wilson’s connection to the whole thing? “It just made sense that if I was honoring Johnny, I’d have a friend there with me,” Rubin said.

    He also said Kaye has directed a clip for the Cash tune “Help Me” that is not celebrity-driven, but is equally gripping and slated for release in the coming months.

    Check out Kurt Loder’s exclusive 2003 interview with Johnny Cash.

  • Related posts:

  • Johnny Cash (Part 4)

    I got to hear Johnny Cash sing in person back in 1978.  Here is a portion of an article about his Christian Testimony. The Man Came Around   “Being a Christian isn’t for sissies,” Cash said once. “It takes a real man to live for God—a lot more man than to live for the devil, […]

    Johnny Cash (Part 3)

    I got to hear Johnny Cash sing in person back in 1978.  Here is a portion of an article about his Christian Testimony. The Man Came Around   A Walking Contradiction Cash’s daughter, singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash, once pointed out that “my father was raised a Baptist, but he has the soul of a mystic. He’s […]

    Johnny Cash (Part 2)

    I got to hear Johnny Cash sing in person back in 1978 at a Billy Graham Crusade in Memphis. Here is a portion of an article about his Christian Testimony. The Man Came Around Cash also made major headlines when he shared his faith on The Johnny Cash Show, a popular variety program on ABC […]

    Johnny Cash (Part 1)

    I got to hear Johnny Cash sing in person back in 1978. Here is a portion of an article about his Christian Testimony. The Man Came Around Johnny Cash was not ashamed of his Christian faith—though it was sometimes a messy faith—and even got some encouragement from Billy Graham along the way. Dave Urbanski | […]

  • People in the Johnny Cash video “God’s Gonna Cut You Down”

    Wikipedia noted: Johnny Cash recorded a version of “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” on American V: A Hundred Highways in 2003, with an arrangement quite different from most known gospel versions of the song. A music video, directed by Tony Kaye,[1] was made for this version in late 2006. It featured a number of celebrities, […]

July 2, 2012 – 12:37 am Categories: Current Events | Post a comment

Net Interest Spending Will More Than Triple Over the Next Decade

Net Interest Spending Will More Than Triple Over the Next Decade

Everyone wants to know more about the budget and here is some key information with a chart from the Heritage Foundation and a video from the Cato Institute.

As the national debt grows, interest payments will consume more and more of the federal budget, even without interest rate increases. Under the President’s budget, the national debt would double and real net interest costs would more than triple over the next decade.

INFLATION-ADJUSTED DOLLARS (2010)

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Net Interest Spending Will More Than Triple Over the Next Decade

Source: White House Office of Management and Budget and Congressional Budget Office.

Chart 28 of 42

In Depth

  • Policy Papers for Researchers

  • Technical Notes

    The charts in this book are based primarily on data available as of March 2011 from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The charts using OMB data display the historical growth of the federal government to 2010 while the charts using CBO data display both historical and projected growth from as early as 1940 to 2084. Projections based on OMB data are taken from the White House Fiscal Year 2012 budget. The charts provide data on an annual basis except… Read More

  • Authors

    Emily GoffResearch Assistant
    Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy StudiesKathryn NixPolicy Analyst
    Center for Health Policy StudiesJohn FlemingSenior Data Graphics Editor

July 2, 2012 – 12:04 am Categories: spending out of control | Post a comment

Sweden cutting back welfare state and having good results

Milton Friedman

Economics 101: Learning From Sweden’s Free Market Renaissance

Uploaded by on Mar 8, 2010

Sweden is a powerful example of the importance of public policy. The Nordic nation became rich between 1870 and 1970 when government was very small, but then began to stagnate as welfare state policies were implemented in the 1970s and 1980s. The CF&P Foundation video explains that Sweden is now shifting back to economic freedom in hopes of undoing the damage caused by an excessive welfare state. www.freedomandprosperity.org

__________________

Milton Friedman – The Negative Income Tax

Published on May 11, 2012 by

In this 1968 interview, Milton Friedman explained the negative income tax, a proposal that at minimum would save taxpayers the 72 percent of our current welfare budget spent on administration. http://www.LibertyPen.com

Source: Firing Line with William F Buckley Jr.

________________

We got to cut our welfare state. Why not look at other countries like Sweden have learned this lesson of over spending and are trying to cut back now.

Sweden must be a schizophrenic country. Something strange is happening, after all, if a statist like Jeffrey Sachs and a rabid libertarian like yours truly both cited it as a role model in our remarks last month at the United Nations.

So who’s right? Well, it depends what you care about.

In a column for Bloomberg, Anders Aslund elaborates on Sweden’s efforts to reduce the size of the state.

Not so long ago, Sweden could claim world leadership in unmitigated Keynesian economics, with a 90 percent marginal tax rate and a welfare state second to none. …but in the last two decades the country has been reformed. Public spending has fallen by no less than one-fifth of gross domestic product, taxes have dropped and markets have opened up. …no turnabout has been as dramatic as Sweden’s. From 1970 until 1989, taxes rose exorbitantly, killing private initiative, while entitlements became excessive. Laws were often altered and became unpredictable. As a consequence, Sweden endured two decades of low growth. In 1991-93, the country suffered a severe crash in real estate and banking that reduced GDP by 6 percent. Public spending had surged to 71.7 percent of GDP in 1993, and the budget deficit reached 11 percent of GDP. …Sweden’s traditional scourge is taxes, which used to be the highest in the world. The current government has cut them every year and abolished wealth taxes. Inheritance and gift taxes are also gone. Until 1990, the maximum marginal income tax rate was 90 percent. Today, it is 56.5 percent. That is still one of the world’s highest, after Belgium’s 59.4 and there is strong public support for a cut to 50 percent. The 26 percent tax on corporate profits may seem reasonable from an American perspective, but Swedish business leaders want to reduce it to 20 percent.

Interestingly, the Swedish people and the Swedish elite (just like the Estonians, as I discussed in my takedown of Paul Krugman) seem to understand that there’s no going back to the statist era of the 1970s and 1980s.

Where are the left-wing intellectuals to challenge this new order? They have disappeared. The old socialist research organizations have closed down. The Center for Labor Market Studies was a state institution that generated propaganda, not research, and the government closed it. The Trade Union Confederation had a sophisticated research institute, which it eliminated for not being sufficiently political. The union economists, who dominated Swedish economic debate in the 1970s and ’80s, have been replaced by bank economists. The free-market right has influential research centers in Stockholm. After many years of absence from the debate, I attended a conference on the Swedish economy in the southern city of Malmo last month. …the 180 speakers represented the full range of Swedish views. I was amazed to hear how far the consensus had moved to the free- market right, even among Social Democrats and trade-union leaders. …The Social Democrats haven’t only joined the free-market consensus, but seem to attack the current government from the right, pushing for a better business environment. Gone are demands for the restoration of social benefits. Opinion polls have rewarded the Social Democrats for their right turn with sharply improved ratings.

In other words, Sweden is a lot like Canada – a nation that took a misguided turn to the left but since then has moved significantly in the right direction.

I’m not willing to trade places with either nation, but that may change at some point. The Bush-Obama policies of bigger government and more intervention have made America less attractive, while other nations have learned from their mistakes.

If Sweden adopts a flat tax and figures out how to cancel winter, I may have to move there.

P.S. Sweden’s government-run healthcare system can be quite emasculating.

July 1, 2012 – 9:17 pm Categories: Cato Institute, spending out of control | Post a comment

Tagged |

Open letter to President Obama (Part 96)

Government Spending Doesn’t Create Jobs

Uploaded by on Sep 7, 2011

Share this on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/qnjkn9 Tweet it: http://tiny.cc/o9v9t

In the debate of job creation and how best to pursue it as a policy goal, one point is forgotten: Government doesn’t create jobs. Government only diverts resources from one use to another, which doesn’t create new employment.

Video produced by Caleb Brown and Austin Bragg.

___________________________

President Obama c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here.

I have said that the stimulus did not work, but the liberals always responded that it needed to be bigger. Who was right? Now the most liberal paper in the country has weighed in on this.

J.D. Foster, Ph.D.

March 6, 2012 at 5:00 pm

Does unprecedented deficit-spending such as on highways stimulate the economy? For the last few years, some have argued it could. Some have argued it might. Some have argued it would if done right.

We have consistently argued that deficit spending on highways or anything else intended to lift aggregate demand, and therefore jobs, must and would fail. The economic evidence that we were right has now been joined by the illustrious trio of The Washington Post, the Associated Press, and the esteemed Alice Rivlin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget.

Monday’s edition of the Post carries a story sourced to the Associated Press entitled, “Highway bills pitched as by lawmakers as job creators, but are they really? Economists say no.”

Notice especially the subject of the piece: federal highway spending. If ever there was a sympathetic topic for stimulus, it is infrastructure spending, especially highway funding. Remember, these were some of President Obama’s “shovel-ready” projects that turned out to be not so shovel ready, as he later admitted.

So what went wrong? Why is this not short-term stimulus? The widely respected Rivlin explained it clearly and succinctly: “Investments in infrastructure, if well designed, should be viewed as investments in future productivity growth.”

Exactly right—future productivity growth.

She went on to say that if investments in infrastructure “speed the delivery of goods and people, they will certainly do that. They will also create jobs, but not necessarily more jobs than the same money spent in other ways.”

Exactly right—a dollar spent is a dollar spent. A job gained here, a job lost there.

This speaks to a longstanding flaw of highway spending arguments. Proponents argue that this spending creates tens of thousands of jobs, and they are half right. The other half is the tens of thousands of jobs not created (or saved) by shifting spending to highways from other areas in the economy. The valid argument about infrastructure spending is: If done right, it will lift future productivity growth, not current job growth.

The central failing—the essential fiscal alchemy of Keynesian stimulus—is the belief that government can increase total spending in the economy by borrowing and spending. What Keynesians ignore is that we have financial markets whose job in good times and bad is first and foremost to shift funds from savers to investors, from those who have money they do not wish to spend today to those who have a need to borrow to spend as much as they’d like, whether on new business equipment, a home, or a car.

There are no vast sums of “excess funds” just sitting around in bank tellers’ drawers waiting for government to borrow and spend them. Government borrowing means less money available to the private sector to spend. So government deficit spending goes up, and dollar-for-dollar private spending goes down. America’s resources are generally speaking spent less wisely, and the federal debt is unequivocally higher.

If past is prologue, the current infatuation with Keynesian deficit spending as stimulus will fade, just as it always has in the past, in this country as elsewhere. Perhaps this simple WaPo article marks the beginning of the end for the latest incarnation of this fiscal folly.

________________

Do you still want to claim that the stimulus was the right thing to do considering that it passes on the new debt to our children and grandchildren to pay off?

Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com

July 1, 2012 – 9:10 pm Categories: Cato Institute, President Obama, spending out of control | Post a comment

Tom Landry of the Dallas Cowboys (Part 3)

Here is story that uses Tom Landry as an example of meekness:

Because he regularly attended a church, Tom Landry thought he was a Christian. In his own words: “I had been in and about church my whole life. But really, it was only half-heartedly…I thought of myself as a Christian but I really wasn’t. I was just a church-goer, which is a lot different. If you just go to church, it’s a lot like going to the Lion’s Club or something like that. Oh, man, there’s no comparison.”[2] Then one day in 1959, Landry accepted an invitation to a men’s Bible study because, he says, he couldn’t think of a graceful way to get out of it![3] It’s a good thing, too, since in that meeting Tom came to realize how many passages from the Sermon on the Mount spoke directly to the personal struggles in his life. So he returned the next week. And the next. Later that year, says Tom, “I finally reached a point where faith outweighed the doubts, and I was willing to commit my entire life to God.”[4]

In 1959, Tom was a 33-year-old assistant coach for the New York Giants and an off-season insurance salesman. Eventually, he would coach a team of his own – the Dallas Cowboys – and he would lead them to an unprecedented 20 consecutive winning seasons, five Super Bowl appearances and two championships. An impressive record, to say the least. Even more impressive to many of us who watched him, though, was that he did it without raising his voice.

Tom was meek in the best sense of the word. He was a reserved man, a soft-spoken man, a man who walked with God as he walked the sidelines. That was evident by his game-time mannerism. Were the Cowboys up by 14 or down by 14? Tom’s demeanor provided no clue. Was it fourth and goal on the opponent’s one yard line or first and ten on their own twenty? Did the Cowboys just fumble away the game? Did the refs just blow a call? Don’t look to Tom’s expression for answers. This now-devout Christian personified gentleness and self-control.

Not exactly the norm in the workplace of NFL coaching. More typical were people like legendary Vince Lombardi, infamous for being unapproachable for days after his offense had a bad game.[5] Similarly, Raider coach John Madden got so worked up in his job that he had to retire from coaching because of ulcers.[6] Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka also fit that mold. Not only was he notorious for his sideline tantrums, Ditka was apparently a bear off the field as well. When he played tennis with Landry, for example, he would smash his racket on the ground so many times it began to resemble, in Tom’s words, an “aluminum pretzel.”[7]

But Tom was different. According to sportswriter Bob St. John: “The pressures of coaching in the NFL has had adverse mental and physical effects on the majority of coaches in the profession. But Landry does not … have ulcers or trouble sleeping.”[8] Tom attributes that to his faith, asserting that “My relationship with Christ gives me a source of power I would not have otherwise. What eats you up inside is fear and anxiety. God does not give us fear, but power and love and self-control.”[9]

That’s meekness.

Tom Landry managed to remain meek in a world of macho football players, thunderous peers, and a hyper-critical football town. The culture of his workplace put no edge on the man. Tom did not allow it to shape him adversely. Rather, he was shaped daily by his faith. As a result, today Tom Landry is renowned not only for his win-loss record, but for being a contemporary role model for workplace Christians everywhere. His legacy is one of both character and success.

Ours can be too if we reject the notion that meekness is weakness. Don’t buy into the workplace myth. In gentleness, you can both survive and thrive in a job environment that continually encourages you to act otherwise. As discussed in chapter 1, this begins by acknowledging God as your ultimate CEO. It continues by taking a page from Coach Landry’s playbook: Never lose sight of Jesus’ disposition. Regardless of what others are doing on the job, don’t let harshness, quick-temperedness, and aggressiveness undermine your witness and your legacy. Instead, live by God’s standard: “I am gentle and humble in heart.”

No, meekness is not weakness. It’s Christlikeness.

Wikipedia noted:

Landry’s success during nearly three decades of coaching was the impetus for his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1990, less than two years after his last game. Landry was inducted into the “Ring of Honor” at Texas Stadium in 1993. Landry had declined several earlier offers by Jones to enter the Ring of Honor before accepting in 1993.

Landry died on February 12, 2000, after battling leukemia. Landry’s funeral service was held at Highland Park United Methodist Church, where he was an active and committed member for forty-three years. He was interred in the Sparkman-Hillcrest Memorial Park Cemetery in Dallas. A cenotaph dedicated to Landry, complete with a depiction of his fedora, was placed in the official Texas State Cemetery in Austin at the family’s request.[14]

The Cowboys wore a patch on their uniforms during the 2000 season depicting Landry’s trademark fedora. A bronze statue of Landry stood outside of Texas Stadium, and now stands in front of Cowboys Stadium since the Cowboys relocated in 2009. The section of Interstate 30 between Dallas and Fort Worth was named the Tom Landry Highway by the Texas Legislature in 2001. The football stadium in Landry’s hometown of Mission, Texas was named Tom Landry Stadium to honor one of the city’s most famous former residents.[15] Similarly, Trinity Christian Academy’s stadium in Addison, Texas is named Tom Landry Stadium in honor of Landry’s extensive involvement and support of the school.[16][17]

Head coaching record

Team Year Regular Season Post Season
Won Lost Ties Win % Finish Won Lost Win % Result
DAL 1960 0 11 1 .000 7th in NFL West – – – –
DAL 1961 4 9 1 .308 6th in NFL East – – – –
DAL 1962 5 8 1 .385 5th in NFL East – – – –
DAL 1963 4 10 0 .286 5th in NFL East – – – –
DAL 1964 5 8 1 .385 5th in NFL East – – – –
DAL 1965 7 7 0 .500 2nd in NFL East – – – –
DAL 1966 10 3 1 .769 1st in NFL East 0 1 .000 Lost to the Green Bay Packers in NFL Championship Game
DAL 1967 9 5 0 .643 1st in NFL Capital 1 1 .500 Lost to the Green Bay Packers in NFL Championship Game
DAL 1968 12 2 0 .857 1st in NFL Capital 0 1 .000 Lost to the Cleveland Browns in Divisional Round
DAL 1969 11 2 1 .846 1st in NFL Capital 0 1 .000 Lost to the Cleveland Browns in Divisional Round
DAL 1970 10 4 0 .714 1st in NFC East 2 1 .667 Lost to the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl V
DAL 1971 11 3 0 .786 1st in NFC East 3 0 1.000 Super Bowl VI Champions
DAL 1972 10 4 0 .714 2nd in NFC East 1 1 .500 Lost to the Washington Redskins in NFC Championship Game
DAL 1973 10 4 0 .714 1st in NFC East 1 1 .500 Lost to the Minnesota Vikings in NFC Championship Game
DAL 1974 8 6 0 .571 3rd in NFC East – – – –
DAL 1975 10 4 0 .714 2nd in NFC East 2 1 .667 Lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl X
DAL 1976 11 3 0 .786 1st in NFC East 2 1 .667 Lost to the Los Angeles Rams in Divisional Round
DAL 1977 12 2 0 .857 1st in NFC East 3 0 1.000 Super Bowl XII Champions
DAL 1978 12 4 0 .750 1st in NFC East 2 1 .667 Lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XIII
DAL 1979 11 5 0 .688 1st in NFC East 0 1 .000 Lost to the Los Angeles Rams in Divisional Round
DAL 1980 12 4 0 .750 2nd in NFC East 2 1 .667 Lost to the Philadelphia Eagles in NFC Championship Game
DAL 1981 12 4 0 .750 1st in NFC East 2 1 .667 Lost to the San Francisco 49ers in NFC Championship Game
DAL 1982 6 3 0 .667 2nd in NFC 2 1 .667 Lost to the Washington Redskins in NFC Championship Game
DAL 1983 12 4 0 .750 2nd in NFC East 0 1 .000 Lost to the Los Angeles Rams in Wild Card Round
DAL 1984 9 7 0 .563 4th in NFC East – – – –
DAL 1985 10 6 0 .667 1st in NFC East 0 1 .000 Lost to the Los Angeles Rams in Divisional Round
DAL 1986 7 9 0 .438 3rd in NFC East – – – –
DAL 1987 7 8 0 .467 2nd in NFC East – – – –
DAL 1988 3 13 0 .188 5th in NFC East – – – –
Total 250 162 6 .607 20 16 .556

In popular culture

  • In 1959, while defensive coach of the Giants, Landry pretended to be a Catholic missionary priest on the TV panel game To Tell The Truth (on an episode that included balloonist Commander Malcolm Roth).
  • The coach in Peter Gent‘s novel North Dallas Forty is based on Tom Landry. G.D. Spradlin played the role in the film of the same name.
  • In Fox‘s animated sitcom King of the Hill, the local middle school is named after Tom Landry, and Landry is a personal hero of the show’s main character Hank Hill. He mentions being “mortified” because he went to work on the date of Landry’s death after his cousin Dusty (guest star Dusty Hill of ZZ Top) had previously tricked him into thinking Tom Landry had died, and he thought it was a repeat of that prank. Hank also has a Tom Landry Ceramic plate that he sometimes consults in times of need, on one occasion saying “Where did I go wrong, Tom?” Landry also occasionally appears to Hank in dream sequences to counsel him in times of need, like during Hank’s varnish induced hallucination on the episode “Hillennium“.
  • The series Friday Night Lights features a character named Landry hinted to be named after Tom Landry, given the town’s obsession with football.
July 1, 2012 – 8:58 pm Categories: Current Events | Post a comment

Chris Martin of Coldplay unknowingly lives out his childhood Christian beliefs (Part 6 of notes from June 23, 2012 Dallas Coldplay Concert)

Coldplay – Yellow (Live) @ American Airlines Center

Published on Jun 23, 2012 by

Coldplay Performing Yellow @ American Airlines Center Dallas June 22, 2012

Coldplay brought confetti, lights and thousands of fans to the American Airlines Center; see photos from their colorful show

 

 3/11

Chris Martin was brought up as an evangelical Christian but he left the faith once he left his childhood home. However, there are been some actions in his life in the last few years that demonstrate that he still is grappling with his childhood Chistian beliefs. This is the sixth part of a series I am starting on this subject.

On June 23, 2012 my son Wilson and I got to attend a Coldplay Concert in Dallas. It was great. We drove down earlier in the day from our home in Little Rock, Arkansas.

On the Howard Stern Show Chris Martin was questioned about his religious beliefs on November 9, 2011:

CM: I was raised very religious.

HS: I know that. What religion?

CM: I am not really sure. People kept asking me that.

HS: You were studying religion but you don’t know what it was.

CM: It was Christian, but there are so many branches of that now. I don’t know which branch we were on.

HS: Are you a religious man?

CM: Not any more religious. I believe I am a spiritual guy I guess.

HS: Do you believe there is a heaven and a hell.

CM:There definately is not a hell. That is what made me stop being religious.

HS: Would you take your children to church or do you want them to get religious training?

CM: No. I think it is important to show that there is all these kinds of religions and this person believes that and you can believe whatever you want.

HS: What do you do if you want your children to get religious training and you want them to embrace all religions and get the concept of God? Where would take your kids to learn that?

CM:That is a good question. I have been doing it in the nihilist approach and I haven’t been taking them anywhere.

HS: So they are not going to be raised in any religious way.

CM: Not in any strict religious way, no…. Religion is not the same as having faith is it. Faith is different right. I am not saying I don’t believe in anything. I not saying that it has to be this and if you believe something else then the other person is going to hell and all that crap.

HS: I am with you on that.

Robin: How do you expose your children to [religion] what do you do? You don’t know what to do.

CM: You just say, “I don’t know. None of us knows yet.”

___________

Notice Chris Martin’s advice to his kids about spiritual answers in life. “None of us knows yet.” Martin is definately still on a journey searching for a meaning and  a purpose to life.

Coldplay – 42 Live

Coldplay perform on the french television channel W9.

I wrote this article a couple of years ago:

The Spiritual Search for the Afterlife
Russ Breimeier rightly noted that it seems that Coldplay is “on the verge of identifying a great Truth” and their latest CD is very provocative. Many songs mention God and other Biblical themes such as dealing with death, and the afterlife and meaning in life and the shortness of life. The song “42” states,
Those who are dead are not dead
They’re just living my head
And since I fell for that spell
I am living there as well
Oh…Time is so short and I’m sure
There must be something more
This is the same journey that Solomon went on 3000 years ago in the Book of Ecclesiastes. The Christian Scholar Ravi Zacharias noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term UNDER THE SUN — What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system and you are left with only this world of Time plus Chance plus matter.” Most people are not in the position of Solomon was in because he had a great deal of resources and could see if getting true lasting satisfaction was possible without God in the picture and Solomon went about this experiment.  He found out these hard cold facts.
Three things that do not bring lasting Satisfaction
Satisfaction does not come through (#1) learning more, or (#2)  putting more effort in your work or  (#3)seeking pleasure.
Read Solomon’s words for yourself.
Ecclesiastes 1:16- 2:11
16-17 I said to myself, “I know more and I’m wiser than anyone before me in Jerusalem. I’ve stockpiled wisdom and knowledge.” What I’ve finally concluded is that so-called wisdom and knowledge are mindless and witless—nothing but spitting into the wind.18 Much learning earns you much trouble.
The more you know, the more you hurt.
Chapter 2
1-3 I said to myself, “Let’s go for it—experiment with pleasure, have a good time!” But there was nothing to it, nothing but smoke.What do I think of the fun-filled life? Insane! Inane!
My verdict on the pursuit of happiness? Who needs it?
With the help of a bottle of wine
and all the wisdom I could muster,
I tried my level best
to penetrate the absurdity of life.
I wanted to get a handle on anything useful we mortals might do
during the years we spend on this earth.
 4-8 Oh, I did great things: built houses,
planted vineyards,
designed gardens and parks
and planted a variety of fruit trees in them,
made pools of water
to irrigate the groves of trees.
I bought slaves, male and female,
who had children, giving me even more slaves;
then I acquired large herds and flocks,
larger than any before me in Jerusalem.
I piled up silver and gold,
loot from kings and kingdoms.
I gathered a chorus of singers to entertain me with song,
and—most exquisite of all pleasures—
voluptuous maidens for my bed.
 9-10 Oh, how I prospered! I left all my predecessors in Jerusalem far behind, left them behind in the dust. What’s more, I kept a clear head through it all. Everything I wanted I took—I never said no to myself. I gave in to every impulse, held back nothing. I sucked the marrow of pleasure out of every task—my reward to myself for a hard day’s work!
 11 Then I took a good look at everything I’d done, looked at all the sweat and hard work. But when I looked, I saw nothing but smoke. Smoke and spitting into the wind. There was nothing to any of it. Nothing.
No band has worked harder than Coldplay (creating 4 of the greatest cds in pop history) and Chris Martin is a very educated man who has achieved the storybook life in many areas. Why has his writing turning more towards spiritual matters now? Could he be traveling down the same road that Solomon was going 3000 years ago?

Ecclesiastes 1

Published on Sep 4, 2012

Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider

_____________________

Ecclesiastes 2-3

Published on Sep 19, 2012

Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 16, 2012 | Derek Neider

_____________________________

Related posts:

Chris Martin of Coldplay unknowingly lives out his childhood Christian beliefs (Part 8 of notes from June 23, 2012 Dallas Coldplay Concert)

July 4, 2012 – 1:42 am

Coldplay 6-22-12 Dallas, TX Best Opening.MOV Published on Jun 23, 2012 by jaimenolga 1 of Don’t miss the second song of this clip!! It was incredible! (One eye watching you song was great.) Coldplay brought confetti, lights and thousands of fans to the American Airlines Center; see photos from their colorful show Photo Gallery News […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Chris Martin of Coldplay unknowingly lives out his childhood Christian beliefs (Part 7 of notes from June 23, 2012 Dallas Coldplay Concert)

July 3, 2012 – 10:58 am

Coldplay Live in Dallas – Lover’s in Japan Ball Drop Published on Jun 23, 2012 by TheRyanj64 Live From the American Airlines Center in Dallas Texas June 22, 2012 Coldplay – Lover’s in Japan Ball Drop Coldplay brought confetti, lights and thousands of fans to the American Airlines Center; see photos from their colorful show […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Chris Martin of Coldplay unknowingly lives out his childhood Christian beliefs (Part 6 of notes from June 23, 2012 Dallas Coldplay Concert)

July 1, 2012 – 8:15 pm

Coldplay – Yellow (Live) @ American Airlines Center Published on Jun 23, 2012 by Crwdickerson Coldplay Performing Yellow @ American Airlines Center Dallas June 22, 2012 Coldplay brought confetti, lights and thousands of fans to the American Airlines Center; see photos from their colorful show Photo Gallery News Sports Lifestyles Comments (0)   3/11 Chris […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (1)

Chris Martin of Coldplay unknowingly lives out his childhood Christian beliefs (Part 5 of notes from June 23, 2012 Dallas Coldplay Concert)

June 29, 2012 – 6:05 am

Coldplay “paradise” Dallas Texas 6/22/12 ( Floor View ) Published on Jun 23, 2012 by ccam cher Awesome concert Coldplay brought confetti, lights and thousands of fans to the American Airlines Center; see photos from their colorful show Photo Gallery News Sports Lifestyles Comments (0)   9/11 Chris Martin was brought up as an evangelical […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Chris Martin of Coldplay unknowingly lives out his childhood Christian beliefs (Part 4 of notes from June 23, 2012 Dallas Coldplay Concert)

June 28, 2012 – 6:54 am

Coldplay – In My Place (Live in Dallas) June 22 2012 Published on Jun 24, 2012 by maimiaa Coldplay performing at American Airlines Center in Dallas, TX Coldplay brought confetti, lights and thousands of fans to the American Airlines Center; see photos from their colorful show Photo Gallery News Sports Lifestyles Comments (0)   7/11 […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Chris Martin of Coldplay unknowingly lives out his childhood Christian beliefs (Part 3 of notes from June 23, 2012 Dallas Coldplay Concert, Martin left Christianity because of teaching on hell then he writes bestselling song that teaches hell exists)

June 27, 2012 – 6:51 am

Viva La Vida Published on Jun 23, 2012 by TheRyanj64 Coldplay’s Viva La Vida at American Airlines Center in Dallas on June 22, 2012 __________ Coldplay brought confetti, lights and thousands of fans to the American Airlines Center; see photos from their colorful show Photo Gallery News Sports Lifestyles   Comments (0)   5/11 Chris […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Chris Martin of Coldplay unknowingly lives out his childhood Christian beliefs (Part 2 of notes from June 23, 2012 Dallas Coldplay Concert)

June 26, 2012 – 6:36 am

Coldplay – Mylo Xyloto/Hurts Like Heaven (Live) @ American Airlines Center Coldplay brought confetti, lights and thousands of fans to the American Airlines Center; see photos from their colorful show Photo Gallery News Sports Lifestyles Comments (0)   2/11 Published on Jun 24, 2012 by Crwdickerson Coldplay Performing Mylo Xyloto/Hurts Like Heaven @ AAC Dallas […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Chris Martin of Coldplay unknowingly lives out his childhood Christian beliefs (Part 1 of notes from June 23, 2012 Dallas Coldplay Concert)

June 25, 2012 – 8:06 am

Coldplay-DALLAS-2012-”Opening, Mylo Xyloto, and Hurts like Heaven!” Published on Jun 24, 2012 by ColdplayDALLAS2012 1:10 is where the concert starts! Sorry for the shaking and sound audio! It was really loud! AND AWESOME! Please THUMB UP and COMMENT if u went to this coldplay concert! And I also hope that this will get a few […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

“Music Monday” Chris Martin’s favorite song has a deep meaning

January 7, 2013 – 1:33 am

Uploaded by emimusic on Feb 28, 2009 Pre-VEVO play count: 22,581,204 Music video by The Verve performing Bitter Sweet Symphony. ________ At the 4.40 mark in the clip below Chris Martin identifies the best song ever written in his estimation: What does the song mean? Here is a thought off the internet: This song is […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Uncategorized | Edit | Comments (0)

“Music Monday” Video interviews of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin (Part 2)

December 17, 2012 – 6:45 am

As far as I know they have never done an interview together. Therefore, I have included separate interviews that they have done below and I have some links to past posts I have done on them too. Gwyneth Paltrow & Robert Downey Jr. on Jonathan Ross 2010.04.23 (Part 1) Coldplay: Chris Martin and Jonny Buckland […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
July 1, 2012 – 8:15 pm Categories: Current Events | Comments (1)