The Young and The Old

Galley: The kitchen in a ship or aircraft. (also galley proof) A printer's proof in the form of long single-column strips, not in sheets or pages. [ORIGIN: galley from French galée denoting an oblong tray for holding setup type.]

The two primary purposes of this blog is number one introduce the similarities of the old ways with respect to the new ways to offer a younger generation an older perspective that is still relevant to what they deal with in the modern world.  The second purpose of this blog is to begin building a curiosity and an interest in the methods we plan to use to make it all quite interesting.

Much debate has been heard of late about taxes and whether they should be raised to help pay for the cost of an irresponsible federal government. In the next paragraph I want to illustrate to young and old alike, a much easier picture to visualize then what the mainstream media or the government would have you to see.

For 25 years I ran a general contracting business. Sometimes the contracts were huge and I required more employees. Sometimes the contracts were small and I could get by with only a few. One thing any contractor, large or small, must consider is how to pay his labor cost. In contracting it is very common to maintain about a 30% labor cost. In other words if the contract is worth $1000.00 you can expect the labor to run some where in the ballpark of $300.00.

Regardless of what the taxes I have to pay are, I must stay true to that 30% labor cost. If my taxes increase by 5% that means I must either charge my customer 5% more, which may cause me to lose my competitive edge, or hire 5% less labor.  

The logical extension of a tax increase of any kind is that I will not be the only one having to pay it. Therefore it stands to reason that I can look at a 5% increase in my material cost, my transportation and various other expenses. So as you see that 5% tax hike has now added up to a 15% to 20 % increase in my costs. In order to stay in business I have to recoup that cost using various strategies, one of them and probably the first of which would be to reduce my labor cost.

You hear a lot in the media about corporate taxes. Let me make it very clear as a business owner, increases in our taxes must be passed on to the customer in order for a successful business formula to continue to work. Regardless of what you hear, or any news outlet may tell you, or any economic adviser may scream from the mountaintops, corporations do not pay taxes. The customers of that company or corporation pay the additional expense.

Having covered that brief material, let us move on to where CactusGrass Productions is heading. One of the many ideas and business plans I intend to implement is a concert series called “The Young and the Old”. The idea of this series is to bring families together in the arena of entertainment. While I cannot go into specifics at this time for strategic reasons, I can say that the primary mission statement is to provide an entertaining environment for the 40-year-old man or woman and his or her 15 year old son or daughter. Believe it or not that is not a completely new idea. As a matter of fact it is an idea that has been in practice for centuries. Here is another very old idea, which works very well with even the youngest of audiences, keeping that experience as inexpensive as possible.

There in lies the combination of taxes verses labor and any industry out there, including entertainment. In general contracting we are given three options when it comes to getting each project complete. We can either hire a core group of hourly wage earners and complete the project in house or we can hire sub-contractors and farm all the work out at a predetermined rate or we can use any combination thereof; the latter generally being the best option. As external expenses increase (i.e...taxes and workers insurance) it is likely that any contractor or promoter will begin to trim the in-house labor expenses before any other expenses will be cut or the price to the customer begins to increase.

So there you have it. An old fashioned approach to a new kind of business and a very tangible illustration of how old ideas can work effectively in an increasingly younger marketplace. As young business operators become more familiar with the impact that some political issues have on their own business, they generally take a different stance on such issues as they may have had before. 


A 20% increase on a $50 concert ticket is an additional $10. With a family of four that increases the cost of the event $40. That can and often does keep a venue from selling out. 


Regardless of which business we may be in, seemingly benign political issues can have a detrimental effect on our ability to make a profit and hire the help we may desperately need. I chose to go to Entertainment Business School not because I want to work for someone else but because I want to run my own promotion company. However if the shoe were on the other foot I would hope that the business owner would have the available funds to hire me.


Finally as a concert goer, there have been times where that additional $10 has prevented form going to a concert I had hoped to attend.

 

Can We Really Trust The Media

Galley: The kitchen in a ship or aircraft. (also galley proof) A printer's proof in the form of long single-column strips, not in sheets or pages. [ORIGIN: galley from French galée denoting an oblong tray for holding setup type.]

Today July 22, 2010 marks the 35th anniversary of my mother’s death. It seems like a very long time doesn’t it. That was 1975. The Viet Nam War had just ended in April and Watergate was slowly becoming a memory. On August 8,1974 Richard Nixon had resigned the office of President of the United States. The civil rights movement had become a household and accepted word. Amid a firestorm of scandal media and alleged corruption it seemed there was a light at the end of the tunnel we all wanted America to begin the healing process. What we did not know was the corruption was only beginning, it is cropping up where we never thought to watch for it. It was like a cancer in the very news outlets we as Americans had always felt we could trust.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/articles/080974-3.htm

http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/nixon.htm (Nixon Resignation)

Over the years there has been one charge after the next of unethical reporting in the media. It seemed to really begin as a pattern during the Viet Nam War. Many would argue, and I would not discount, that it began in the Civil Rights movement. The one element I would point out with regards to that argument is with the Civil Rights movement we had footage on the news that could not be censored or argued. Water canons are water canons and protesters being sprayed with 150+ psi are hard to argue with. With Viet Nam it is a given that we were not getting an accurate report of the war from day to day due to the sensitive nature of the debate. While Nixon was President the war was covered as though it were his war and not one started in a Democratic Administration. The same applied with the Civil Rights movement. The coverage and history of Civil Rights led the viewer to believe that it was the Democrats that were leading the charge. It was quite the contrary. The Democrats were the ones filibustering and fighting it all the way.

Quote:

Civil Rights

"Texas Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had been a Russell protégé, moved Civil Rights legislation through the Senate in 1957. It was the first such legislation passed by Congress in 80 years. Russell and others formed a "Southern bloc" of senators opposed to legislation giving equal rights to blacks. This bloc voted against the Civil Rights legislation of 1964 and 1965, the programs of Johnson's Great Society, and many judicial nominations.
As chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, Russell oversaw virtually every aspect of funding of the U. S. Government. His opposition to the Vietnam War meant tough going for his old friend Lyndon Johnson, but Johnson prevailed."

(http://ngeorgia.com/ang/Richard_Brevard_Russell,_Jr.)

This was allowed to happen because the elitist media felt that the citizenry needed to be lead as opposed to being informed. During the Reagan Administration the media argued the benefits of tax cuts on the economy. Jimmy Carter had left the economic situation in the country in shambles and the media wanted no part of Reagan’s recovery and tax cut plans. In response they simply reported what they felt the citizenry needed to hear very little of that being accurate.

In the end, Reagan got his policies through a very hostile and Democratically dominated congress. The recovery was slow starting but when it did take hold it was convincing enough for the electorate to give Reagan a second term.

During the Clinton administration passes were given out like parade candy to Clinton. A perfect example was the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The media was all to set on sweeping this one under the nearest rug. However during his administration Newt Gingrich was not afforded the same passes from the media. Gingrich also had an affair, (though not while discussing foreign matters on the phone, in the oval office) but the media reaction was not that of issuing a pass as they had with Clinton but crucifixion. In the end without significant persuasion Gingrich admitted his wrongdoing and resigned as speaker of the house. This action snuffed the medias attempts to discredit him and left Clinton looking like an even bigger scoundrel.

During the Bush administration another incidence of blatant bias occurred with Trent Lott. At the 100th birthday party for Strom Thurmond, Trent commented on Thurmond’s history. Much of the comment was reported out of context and inevitably Lott resigned. Senator Robert Byrd was a segregationist as were most white politicians of that era. However, when Senator Byrd died recently he was touted as a hero in the media. The media said sure he was in the Klan but it is OK now because he had changed yet that same logic was not applied to Strom Thurmond nor was it allowed in Trent Lott’s case. Keep in mind Trent Lott was never a Klansman nor was he ever a segregationist; he simply commented on an old man who had been. If the same media brush were used on the Democrats, dozens would have to resign tomorrow after their comments at Byrd’s funeral.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/01/09/sen-reid-trent-lotts-resignation-2002-he-had-no-alternative

http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=59337

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=885211 (Audio Record)

There are hundreds of similar and documented incidents throughout the last 50 or 60 years where media bias has been irrefutably present. Some of those incidents were arguably objective but in many cases they were blatantly unethical distortions or misrepresentations of the truth.

Recently, there was an incident of unethical behavior not only in the media but all the way up in the Justice department. In the 2008 election two members of the New Black Panther Party were videotaped immediately outside of a polling station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They were well within the restricted area that surrounds all polling stations in a Federal Election. The two were indicted and were to stand trial with the Prosecutors holding a seemingly open and shut case. With little or no warning the Justice Department instructed the Prosecutors to drop the case and release the New Black Panthers from any further liability. The questions in normal circles would be, #1 why and #2 if these were Klansmen or Skinheads would the same justice apply? The overwhelming response to the later question is absolutely not. This leaves the other question; why? The Justice Department claims lack of evidence. All of this in the wake of a very unscripted and very incriminating videotape.

Various news outlets claim that the intimidation was alleged. But how can something on videotape clearly occurring be alleged? Later another video recording was recovered of one of the two men claiming that the Black man must kill White babies. (Paraphrase) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIrKtoHYPsE)

Many media outlets have given the entire story back page coverage or have avoided the story altogether. However some have gone so far as to claim that The Bush administration did the same thing. The incident occurring with the Bush administration D.O.J. may have been similar, however one would be hard pressed to find in within either Justice Department that would support that argument. An ethical argument to made here would be if the cases are similar does poor judgment in on necessitate poor judgment in the other.

More recent occurrences of unethical media include the argument around payroll taxes for the rich. The media neglects, repeatedly, to point out that “The Rich” as they refer to them, is anyone whom pays taxes. They also fail to point out that the largest groups of employers are the very people the wish to raise taxes on. The logical conclusion that one could draw form this common sense approach is that by taking more money from employer’s leaves less money to hire employees.

What will it take for America to finally realize that the mainstream media is not the trusted institution it may once have been? Has the country become so complacent, lacking such diligence, as it would take to simply verify any given story?

I pray we do not have to loose all of it for a select few to realize that what they wanted would cost them everything. I hope the Americans will see what could not possibly happen is already on its way to becoming what we wished we had not ignored.

CGD

Closer Than We Appear

Galley:

The kitchen in a ship or aircraft. (also galley proof) A printer's proof in the form of long single-column strips, not in sheets or pages. [ORIGIN: galley from French galée denoting an oblong tray for holding setup type.]

The purpose of this blog is to focus on bridging the generational gap. Not only in a societal sense but also in the professional, political and entertainment realms. When I was younger, the concept of technology was a color TV and an Atari video game. Politics consisted of not getting in another Viet Nam War, fighting inflation and keeping the job market open. Much has changed since then. The youth of today still want what we wanted back then but they are confronted with a multitude of faster, easier and more treacherous options.

There is much to be shared between the latter day baby boomers like myself and the generations that have come to be known as Generation Y, X and Next. It is my strongest belief that the bridge decks rest on the columns of art and the art that speaks universally is music and visual stimulation.

CactusGrass Productions’ primary mission statement, in short, is to use music and movies to narrow the gap, lesson the distance and to recapture and strengthen the bonds that tied us together once before. If we unite across the boundaries of age, we can strengthen a nation being brought down by ruthless politicians, corrupt industry, a complete loss of ethics and values and the ongoing assault on the family and individual rights.

Those of us who were here before you were born, not only hear your disappointment and anger, but also we sang about it, wrote literature about it and even made movies about it. Then one day we all got busy and let the anger and determination slip away in exchange for kids, a minivan an over priced house and OK paying job. While we were not looking they divided us, where we had made huge strides racially and doused the fires that burned back then, they quietly fanned the coals to keep them easy to reignite.

Now without each other we let them taste victory and take our very souls away. My old friend and Grammy Award Winner, C.W. McCall once sang, “There won’t be no Country Music, there won’t be no Rock and Roll. Cause when they take away our country they take away our soul.” How close we are now and how we should have kept singing, writing, talking and, most importantly, listening back then. We just did not believe it was possible but looking back now, we realize it is not only possible but also it is coming to pass.

Through Music, Art and Education, we can reunite the ages, bring our families back to the family night out, and inevitably win back our country and our Independence.

This may all seem strange and foreign to some right now, but in the surveys and focus groups I have conducted locally, the response has been inspiring and overwhelmingly supportive.

This is only the beginning but stay diligent, observe and participate if you feel the passion. With nothing to reference but history books, you cannot see how it has changed and if you wait 30 years like we did, the chance for change will already have been eliminated.

For those of you who cannot relate to an old country singer, here are some lyrics to a song you may find more familiar. “Don’t annoy us further, Oh we have our work to do. Just think about the average, what use have they for you. Another toy to help destroy the elder race of man. Forget about your silly whims! It doesn’t fit the plan.” (Rush 2112). If you have never listened to it, as entertainment students you really should.

I encourage you to watch these incredible videos It is part 1 and 2. Keeping in mind that the song is 35 years old, tell me if it does not seem hauntingly familiar in today's world.

Like our guns, the government knows the power, over them, that art yields. If we do not use it to keep them at bay they will simply take it away. Do you think that is outrageous? Take a look at the current legislation to regulate the Internet. Here is just a sample of what is to come and what has already come to pass.

McCain's Bill to Ban FCC Regulation

Australian Censorship

"It is not the function of Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error."

- Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954), U.S. Judge

While it might sound far fetched, it is very real and coming fast. The greatest power we have is our faith our art, our spirit and each other young and old. There will be much more to come but for now, as students of entertainment, please understand we are charged with protecting more the profiting from what we have accepted as our lives work.

'Tis better that we stand and deliver now, rather than sleep and realize what we have lost then.

After all, we are closer than we appear.