Too Right

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All You Need to Know About Detroit

Detroit: Choose your plot--$1 each, no more than 14/person, please.

As promised:

Besides the tax incentives, Michigan has several traits that make it attractive to the film industry. Unlike Louisiana or New Mexico, which are also film hot spots, Michigan has four marked seasons. It has more than 3,000 miles of coastline along the Great Lakes, bodies of water so big their horizons are as empty as an ocean's. There are lots of charming old towns with charming old buildings, several universities and plenty of out-of-work autoworkers itching to do something with their hands, such as build sets, operate lighting systems or learn makeup artistry.

Even Michigan's economic malaise has an upside for Hollywood: Those empty, abandoned streets in Detroit are perfect for moviemakers, who can close off entire blocks for weeks without worrying about disrupting the city's flow. The Irishman, a movie due next year starring Val Kilmer and Christopher Walken, was shot in several neighborhoods of Detroit and barely interrupted city life, even when explosives were set off.

"Detroit is a fantastic resource," says Larry August, director and managing partner of Avalon Films, which has done mostly auto commercials in the past. "You have a city that was built for 1.8 million or 2 million people, and it has a lot fewer people than that (912,000 now, the Census Bureau estimates). That's the definition of a back lot. It's gritty, it's urban, and it's a very film-friendly city."

There's even a barely used high school west of Detroit in Howell, Mich., which has stood empty since 2003 because the town can't afford to operate two high schools. It's been the backdrop for at least one movie and is the location now for a pilot being shot for a sitcom for tweens.

(courtesy USA Today)

You had me at "tweens."

You also had me at "Val Kilmer" and "definition of a back-lot."

Whoo! HAGS! lol...

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U.S. Government Boldly Decides to Tax Jobs White People Don't Do Anymore

This just in:

In the scramble to find something, anything, to generate more revenue, states are considering new taxes on virtually everything: garbage pickup, dating services, bowling night, haircuts, even clowns.

“It’s hard enough doing what we do,” grumbled John Luke, a plumber in the Philadelphia suburbs. His services would, for the first time, come with an added tax if the governor has his way.

“Look, I’m not a crazy tax guy,” Mr. Rendell said, reflecting on recent trims to the budget. “I know what we’ve cut the last two years, and I know how deep and painful the cuts have been. So I know that in the future there’s going to have to be a revenue increase, and this is the best of the alternatives, obviously none of which we’re happy about.”

Michigan’s revenues, adjusted for inflation, have sunk to a level last seen in the 1960s. And that may be exactly what at long last pushes through wide acceptance for taxes on more services, according to supporters of the idea, who say it makes sense in an economy that has long been service-based. In the past, such taxes have never quite been able to survive the political tussle.

(courtesy NYTimes.com)

To what is the world coming?

Of course politicians would rather tax the working stiffs than the corporate stiffs. I didn't hear any suggestion that Michigan should repeal the excessively generous entertainment-industry tax credit, for example, because it creates jobs! But they will tax the people who take those jobs, as well as the barbers and line cooks that service those workers.

Ah, trickle right down my ass, I say.

Working stiffs may seem to have strength in numbers, but too many of us would switch allegiance for a few shekels--hence the imbalanced power of the uber-rich.


We all know The Rich are little more than the pride-and-joy descendants of Roman Senator types--rich enough to have private armies, smart enough to cloak them in corporate legitimacy, inbred enough to be ugly.

They are constantly pacing their sun-drenched downtown offices, plotting the future, playing puppeteer in Warshington, London, Tokyo, Beijing--when they aren't snorting coke off the ass of a $5000/hr call girl in a suite they keep at the St. Regis to help alleviate such cravings.

But what are we doing about it?

We are presenting the rump and pretending we're okay with it.

Are we?

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A Little of the Old In-Out, In-Out

It pleases me to report some good news on the economic front, friends, for Great Britain has struck a mighty blow for the little bloke!

Alistair Darling, the U.K.'s Chancellor of the Exchequer -- sort of like a Treasury Secretary, but with more pluck -- announced today that he will impose an immediate, one-time 50-percent tax on bonuses of more than 25,000 pounds (about $40,800). That's on top of regular income taxes.

The New York Times calls it"the most direct attack on bonuses anywhere in the world."

(courtesy Huffington Post)

Indeed! And rightly so, all things considered.

Meanwhile, as Goldman Sachs tries to hustle through their $16.7 billion bonus pool and Lehman Brothers...oh, yeah--they died without our support...nevermind, President Obama and the fine fellows in Congress have responded with...silence.

Nobody is even half-heartedly saying something, testing the waters, or making hollow promises to look into it. Nothing.

Huh? Is this not the perfect situation for a bandwagon ride? Like dominoes, these bonuses should fall, but our government is too afraid of their pinstripe-suited master, and so, once again, a grand opportunity for change will pass.

Hey, Obama--remember this?


It should be more than just a sexy graphic, you know...

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