A modest proposal to to bring free market principles to the US political system

A modest proposal to  to bring free market principles to the US political system and to prevent politicians  from becoming a burden to their nation.. (Spoiler-this article is satire)

Two  recent Supreme Court decisions (Citizen United and McCutcheon v. FEC) right minded though they may be, did  not go nearly far enough to bring a free market system to our expensive , wasteful system of elections and government.   If the core  principles of "corporations are people too" and "one dollar, one vote" are to be truly beneficial to our nation, they will need to be carried out further.  Free market principles,  as a rule, always bring incredible  efficiencies  to every market endeavor-just look at the great increase in revenues for aging  rock stars ( and ticketing  agencies) once they actually  began  charging what the market will bear for concert tickets. 

A private well compensated body should be  set up to conduct  auctions for all leadership positions in the federal government.   Bidders should be able to obtain for a price (and a small fee) which ever positions in the government they wish to control. Why spend all of the money of the donor class on  CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS FOR CANDIDATES and indirect bribes   when that money could instead be spent on government itself.   Once bidders have bought the positions they will be obligated to pay for all the salary, benefits, staff and office expenses for the position in question.  There will be  no more complaining about the great expense of Air Force One, for once in private hands the jet will be downsized, and market efficiencies introduced. Extra staff will be let go. Future  First Ladies will have to pay for her own vacations.

We shouldn't have to pay for the First Lady's  trips to feed foreign animals.

The resulting savings, may eventually enable the government to cease charging taxes all together and rely solely  on auction receipts,  government fees, and foreign  bond holders to cover those government expenses that we actually choose  to pay for.   With tax money back in the hands of the  investing class, the nation will once again be able to invest in off-shore job creation.  It will  be a win-win for every one.

Why not rename this building-The Capital One-US Capitol building?

What about the pricey government infrastructure?  The continuing expense of many of these buildings could be mitigated by auctioning off  naming  rights, or the buildings could be removed directly from inventory by outright sale. Parts of government that can't be shut down, could be paid for by donations from  people who like to  give away their money like Warren Buffet, Warren Buffet's secretary, Hollywood liberals, and  Bill Gates.

A theft-based  variation of this system has already shown to work really well for oligarchs  in China and Russia, why shouldn't oligarchs here have the same rights? I for one, am looking forward, to not having all those campaign commercials clogging the airwaves. 

Does Anybody Really Belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

 ODD!

Doesn't it seem a little odd to have a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?  I mean isn't Rock and Roll partly about rebellion?  It hardly seems rebellious to have a big museum charging 35 dollars a pop  devoted to Rock and Roll.  The other thing odd  is most big Rock Stars already have plenty of fame. TOO MUCH FAME, and TOO MUCH MONEY!. Too much sex and too many drugs. Does Mick Jagger need more fame? Does Bono need more money? Does Gene Simmons need more sex? Ah-no, no and NO!

No that's not true of everybody, not every rock artist is rich and famous. A  lot of the Rock and Roll pioneers, people like Ruth Brown or Solomon Burke, or blues  greats like Buddy Guy are not rich and they haven't been on the cover of People, so heck put them in the  Hall of  Great Ignored, Ripped Off music artists.  In fact, that was the original idea of the founders of the Hall, people like Ahmet Ertegun wanted to recognize all those great rock and roll and soul  artists of the 1950's  that record company owners  like him had ripped off.

So meanwhile, there is still much wringing of hands about whether certain  artists belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  People bitch about who is in, people bitch about who is not in. Some folks  love to bitch about all the non-rock artists who are in the Hall of Fame. Dance music stars like  Madonna or Donna Summer.  These ladies  are  not rock are they? Does  Madonna belong in the Hall? Isn't most  of her stuff is crap? Isn't  she is a  evil, evil person?  True, true.. but just remind yourself  the Material Girl  does have  more hits then the mafia, and  she somehow managed to stay on the radio for 30 years. That must be worth something....

So who does belong?   Should anybody really care? No. But, if we did, in fact, care, we would have to go over it . ANAL-yze IT.  Go over it (yeah we said that).   Who belongs-who doesn't. Sift the wheat from the chaff.

WHO !!!!!!!

There is a lot controversy about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's selection process.  The acts chosen seem to be fairly random, and many of them have somewhat small bodies of work. It seems to me that  you should have more than one albums worth of  quality stuff to be in the rock and roll of fame, but what are you going to do-Bill Haley has  got be in there even if can we only think of two songs that he actually  did.

Many of the acts in the hall of fame are  not even  rock acts. I am actually OK with that since it appears to be the point of of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to celebrate all the music of the Rock Era. But lots of people get all worked up that Hall of Fame leaves out a lot of rock acts in favor of acts from other genres. Why ABBA and not Kiss? Why Laura Nyro and not Motley Crue? Maybe it's because Motley Crue sucks.  Just saying!

I can think of a few acts that I  personally really don't think belong in the hall-Alice Cooper, Grand Master Flash,  Miles Davis,   and Percy Sledge . I thought Miles Davis was Jazz. Oh sure he's done   some fusion shit-but he's JAZZ!!!!!!!!

There are so  many  acts in the hall  that just seem to be  borderline choices  and there  many other borderline acts that are not in the Hall of Fame that could just as well be in there like  The Moody Blues or Chicago.  (Update-these two were finally let in decades after they became eligible).

The problem is the Hall of Fame lets in far too many acts, so many, that many  of the choices seem questionable. What if they did it like the Baseball Hall of Fame, where there were only 2-4 inductees  a year (instead of the 5 to 7 in the rock hall ) , plus a veteran's committee to pick from candidates  snubbed in the   the original voting process.  I mean Roger Maris is not in the Baseball Hall of Fame is he?  NO, NO he is not. One or two great years does not get you into to the baseball Hall of Fame. It's fairly easy to figure out who to put in the Baseball Hall of Fame because you can just compare stats. But if you just go by the stats for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the place would be filled with the likes of Britney Spears, Justin Bieber (if they were   eligible) and Kiss. Oh wait, Kiss is in the Hall of Fame, now. 

If the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame had  a lot fewer acts,  people wouldn't wonder why  Blondie is in there and not Kate Bush, because none of the non-consensus acts would be in there.


SNUB!

At least,  now it has gotten a little better. In the past few years , a lot of the long snubbed   acts have been inducted. These are commercially successful (but sometimes not highly esteemed )  acts who have eligible for a long time but who had been snubbed: Kiss, ABBA,  Heart, Hall and Oates, Neil Diamond (maybe they should have just  inducted  the 1960's Neil Diamond) , Linda Ronstadt, and Cat Stevens (remember Fatwa's are OK now) .  In recent years, somebody let fans into the voting process, and that seems to have helped cut down on the bull shit of picking people like the Stooges when nobody can remember anything the Stooges ever did. Now we get the bull shit of picking acts just because they were popular.  

The snubbing process is  sometimes personal. The biggest female rock star of the 1970's -Linda Ronstadt was kept out because Hall of Fame Board member, Jann Wanner didn't like her. It seems she finally got in now-because she has Parkinson's Disease. Wanner is also blamed for personally messing with the voting process and installing Grand Master Flash over the Dave Clark Five, because he said he thought the hall needed at least one hip hop act. Rock Critic Dave Marsh, personally kept Kiss out of the Hall of Fame.  But eventually both of these acts got in

Even now,  the snub list is still long. It's a roll of honor. A badge of honor.  You know a  lot of acts on the snub list have never  even been  nominated. 

The most notable snubs now are the Monkees, ELO, Deep Purple, , Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, Journey, Joy Division, Fairport Convention, The Spinners, Kraftwerk, Motley Crue,  Nick Drake Procul Harum, Ozzy Osborne (solo),  , Kate Bush, The Doobie Brothers, Duran Duran, Dire Straits, Bad Company, Depeche Mode, Def Leppard, Jethro Tull, and , but there so many other plausible acts left out as well.

A few acts such as  Mariah Carey , and Whitney Houston, have only been eligible for a few years, and it's to early to say it is a " snub"  that they have been left out. 


WHO ARE THE OBVIOUS CHOICES? 

What if the Rock and Roll Fame only had rock acts? What if you only  included the fairly obvious choices? Well the  first list below  this is a fairly good guess as to  who would  be in there if only the clear, very  obvious choices were in there.    Indeed, All of  these acts listed  really are already in the Hall of Fame!

I  did include  in a few  R&B soul acts who are borderline rock and roll, such as the Supremes. The number of R&B acts in the real  hall of fame is fairly large, since Rock is based on this genre, it's sometimes hard to make the distinction on these acts.  

 Bob Marley, Michael Jackson , Madonna, Simon and Garfunkel, the Bee Gees, Prince, Carole King  and ABBA belong in the hall  but the diehards will tell you they are  not rock acts.   I have excluded some clearly important choices who have only  small amounts of important works (Bill Haley, The Sex Pistols, Buffalo Springfield, Gene Vincent) or who are more soul than rock (Al Green).  This lists below do not include pioneers, sidemen,  non musical performers etc.

THE WHEAT: ACTS THAT ARE FAIRLY OBVIOUS CHOICES FOR THE ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME.

----These  are the more consensus might be the acts that would likely  still be in if far  fewer acts were allowed in...
Most  of the acts were chosen within their first three years of eligibility,

Pretty small list it is....

1986 *Chuck Berry James Brown *Ray Charles *Sam Cooke *Fats Domino *The Everly Brothers *Buddy Holly *Jerry Lee Lewis *Elvis Presley *Little Richard	1987 Aretha Franklin Carl Perkins   Roy Orbison	1988 *The Beach Boys *The Beatles *Bob Dylan *The Supremes
1989 *The Rolling Stones The Temptations *Stevie Wonder	1990 The Four Seasons *The Kinks *The Who	1991
1992 *The Jimi Hendrix Experience Johnny Cash	1993 David Bowie *Creedence Clearwater Revival *The Doors *Van Morrison	1994 The Band *The Grateful Dead *Elton John *John Lennon
1995 *Janis Joplin *Led Zeppelin Neil Young	1996 *Pink Floyd	1997 *Crosby, Stills and Nash
1998 *The Eagles *Fleetwood Mac	1999 *Billy Joel *Paul McCartney *Bruce Springsteen	2000 *Eric Clapton
2001 Steely Dan *Queen Paul Simon Aerosmith	2002	AC/DC 2003 *The Clash Police

2005 *U2

2006 *Lynyrd Skynyrd

2007-*R.E.M, and Van Halen 2009 Metallica 2010 Genesis

2014 Linda Ronstadt

THE CHAFF
ACTS THAT COULD HAVE BEEN LEFT OUT OF THE HALL OF FAME, if fewer acts were chosen  each year, or if non-rock artists were excluded. And I'm not saying all these people do not belong-I am just saying that there are other  folks who have been left out who are just as good.

1986	1987 Ricky Nelson The Coasters Eddie Cochran Bo Diddley *Marvin Gaye Bill Haley B. B. King Clyde McPhatter *Ricky Nelson *Smokey Robinson Big Joe Turner Muddy Waters Jackie Wilson	1988 *The Drifters
1989 Dion Otis Redding *The Temptations	1990 Hank Ballard Bobby Darin *The Four Tops   The Platters	1991 LaVern Baker *The Byrds John Lee Hooker The Impressions Wilson Pickett Jimmy Reed Ike and Tina Turner
1992 Bobby "Blue" Bland Booker T. and the M.G.'s *The Isley Brothers Sam and Dave The Yardbirds	1993 Ruth Brown Cream Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers Etta James Sly and the Family Stone	1994 The Animals Duane Eddy *Bob Marley Rod Stewart
1995 *The Allman Brothers Band Al Green Martha and the Vandellas Frank Zappa	1996 Gladys Knight and the Pips Jefferson Airplane Little Willie John *Pink Floyd The Shirelles The Velvet Underground	1997 The (Young) Rascals *The Bee Gees Buffalo Springfield The Jackson Five *Joni Mitchell Parliament-Funkadelic
1998 The Mamas and the Papas Lloyd Price Santana Gene Vincent	1999 Curtis Mayfield Del Shannon *Dusty Springfield The Staple Singers	2000 *Earth, Wind & Fire Lovin' Spoonful The Moonglows Bonnie Raitt *James Taylor
2001 Solomon Burke The Flamingos *Michael Jackson Ritchie Valens	2002 Isaac Hayes Brenda Lee Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Gene Pitney Ramones Talking Heads	2003 AC/DC Elvis Costello & the Attractions Righteous Brothers

2004 Jackson Browne The Dells George Harrison Traffic ZZtop Bob Seger	2005 The Pretenders Percy Sledge Buddy Guy The O'Jays	2006 Blondie, Miles Davis The Sex Pistols Black Sabbath

2007Grand Master Flash, Patty Smith, The Ronettes,

2008- Madonna,  Leonard Cohen, the Ventures and the Dave Clark Five.

2009-2014...

2009 Jeff Beck Little Anthony and the Imperials Metallica Run DMC Bobby Womack 2010 ABBA Genesis Hollies Jimmy Cliff Stooges Gun and Roses  2013 Rush Donna Summer Heart Randy Newman Public Enemy Albert King

Alice Cooper Neil Diamond Dr. John Darlene Love Tom Waits 2012 Beastie Boys Blue Caps Comets Crickets Donovan Famous Flames Midnighters The Miracles Laura Nyro Red Hot Chilli Peppers The Small Faces 2014 Cat Stevens Linda Ronstadt Kiss The E street Band Hall and Oates Nirvana