Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

50 years ago today…

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You can’t possibly have missed it, but just in case: 50 years ago today, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

There’s endless coverage of the event at just about every media outlet in existence. Here’s one item I found particularly remarkable. At that time, the Boston Symphony Orchestra broadcast its Friday afternoon concerts on WGBH radio, so we have an audio record of the conductor of the BSO, Erich Leinsdorf, informing the audience of the news that Kennedy had been assassinated, and the audible gasps from the audience. The orchestra then changes the program and plays the funeral march from Beethoven’s Third Symphony.

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  1. I’ve posted this earlier this week, as have others, but I cannot fathom a better mission statement for our movement or our party

    if by a “Liberal” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal.”

    And the full speech is quite impressive as well

  2. “A bill will be presented to the Congress for action next year. It will include an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in both corporate and personal income taxes. It will include long-needed tax reform that logic and equity demand … The billions of dollars this bill will place in the hands of the consumer and our businessmen will have both immediate and permanent benefits to our economy. Every dollar released from taxation that is spent or invested will help create a new job and a new salary. And these new jobs and new salaries can create other jobs and other salaries and more customers and more growth for an expanding American economy.” – John F. Kennedy, Aug. 13, 1962, radio and television report on the state of the national economy

      • that is spent or invested will help create a new job and a new salary”.

        He didn’t mean just those in the top bracket, he meant everyone who pays federal taxes. JFK made across the board tax cuts, for everyone, Reagan did the same in the 80’s, as you well know.

        Would JFK be welcomed in today’s Democrat Party?

        “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” is a very conservative message, today.

        I was disappointed when I dropped my kid off at school, the flag was not lowered to honor JFK on this day.

        • [new] I knew that David, but JFK said “every dollar released from taxation(0+ / 0-) View voters

          that is spent or invested will help create a new job and a new salary”.

          He didn’t mean just those in the top bracket, he meant everyone who pays federal taxes. JFK made across the board tax cuts, for everyone, Reagan did the same in the 80′s, as you well know.

          And how did that work out?

          50 years of tax cutting. Did the rate of job growth appreciably differ from the prior 50 years of tax increases?

          Presumably a cut in 1964 would provide adequate empirical evidence gathered in all the intervening years until 2013 as to the efficacy of the cut. Surely we should know, by now, whether or no it worked…. no?

          • but if we found out that the Republicans defunded every effort to keep valid statistic on this, I would not be surprised. But then, if the effort was blocked, they would need to blame Obama for killing the program decades before he was in office. Stupid Republicans!

        • The problem with the theory is that much of what is released from taxation is not spent or invested, certainly not for the sake of creating jobs, but rather hoarded. In practice tax cuts for the middle and working classes can be stimulative, but for the rich not so much.

          • Did you not? His tax hikes were not aimed just at the 1%, most workers got soaked.

            FYI, Deval also used Grant Anticipation Notes to pay for his transportation funding….same as Baker did with the Big Dig…..

            • Did you not? His tax hikes were not aimed just at the 1%, most workers got soaked.

              … Not if they got a better transportation infrastructure out of it.

            • There does after all have to be investment in the public sector too, though I’m not sure anyone got soaked. Until we figure out how to plant money trees taxes will have to increase from time to time, even on the non-1%.

              • What incentive does this give politicians to make any cuts and savings to their budgets? What’s next, sales and property taxes have a automatic tax increase? Thank goodness the voters will decide, since I, and a 100,000 other
                MA residence, signed a petition to repeal the auto-increase mechanism.

      • I’d point out that I vaguely recall someone pointing out how ridiculous it is to equate JFK’s proposed tax cuts with 21st century Tea Party ideology.

        What [Scott] Brown and [Jeff] Jacoby won’t tell you is that from 1954 to 1963, the top tax bracket was a stultifying 91%! The bottom rate was 20%. Even with a Republican in the White House from 1953 to 1961, and Republican control of Congress from 1947 to 1949, the top rate hovered in the 80-90% range. Even the most progressive among us would agree that there does come a point where the tax burden gets so high that it really does stunt economic growth. (Progressives, moderates, and conservatives seem to disagree as to at what point….)

        After Kennedy’s proposed cuts, the top rate went down to 77% in 1964, and the bottom rate to 16%. What’s the top tax rate now? Thirty-five percent.

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