donetodeath

Clipse - "Hell Hath No Fury" FINALLY drops today - maybe the hiphop record of the year - the production is completely insane.

Kid Rock got dumped. So did Joel Madden.

My buddy Matt manages a band called New Atlantic - the new single "Wire and Stone" with Will from Cartel singing backup vocals is available via Eyeball Records on Itunes. Check them out.

Check out new work by Boogie - i love his stuff.

Britneys cutting loose. Celebrity women cant seem to ever wear undergarments.

Add them.

The Jay-Z record is a complete let down. Im crushed. The Brand New record is great, but they obviously take themselves VERY seriously.

Leaving for the mountains - friends birthday - insane pot brownies, ill make it back.

Also check out - The Whigs, and Ryan Russells photos

NICE AND SMOOTH

Dane Cook isnt funny. Why do you all fall for it ? He is nothing but a frat boy with a stylist who LOVES Bloomingdales.

Moz opened with "Panic" in Chicago - serious shit.

The new Jay-Z album "Kingdom Come" drops today - lets hope it is as great as he says.

Brand New ruined big money record deals for emo bands. I never liked them in the past, but the new album "The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me" is fucking good. Trust me.

Will and i are off to Chicago to see Morrissey tonight ! Will has never heard the greatest voice of all time live. I may cry, whatever.

Mark Ronson DJ'd the TomKat wedding - What the fuck ???

Tonight on The Office the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin gets shut down. Jan drops the hammer. Best show on television.

Languna Beach last blew my mind. Shitty local band Open Air Stereo got a deal from Epic Records home to Incubus who Open Air Stereo thinks they are. Jesus. The band was originally called "Stulpigieon" WHEW. Check it out.

Turns out it wasnt Britney Spears sucking that dick on video - sometimes the internet is wrong !

Robbie Williams got shotdown by Lohan at Hyde. His new record is terrible.

"Hey, I see a lot of fine ladies in here," said the rapper. "You know I'm a free man, right, ladies? You wanna dance with a pimp?" Shockingly he had no takers.

The London grime scene producers REAL GANGSTERS - 50 Cent take notes.

Interscope just released a Laguna Beach CD. Featuring the usual cast of characters - Hilary Duff, All American Rejects, Angels & Airwaves, New Found Glory, etc... Imbetween tracks they feature DIALOGUE from the fucking show. Its fantastic - "If you and Steven had babies theyd be SO good looking..."

Please got listen to the previews on Itunes. Classic shit.

Bono, Tax Avoider
The hypocrisy of U2.


A familiar paradox about leftist celebrities in the entertainment industry is that their embrace of progressivism almost never includes a wholehearted embrace of progressive taxation, i.e., the principle that the richer you get, the larger the percentage of your income you ought to pay in taxes. The latest example is U2's Bono, a committed and unusually sophisticated anti-poverty crusader who is taking surprisingly little heat for the decision by his band, U2, to relocate its music-publishing business from Ireland to the Netherlands in order to shelter its songwriting royalties from taxation.

The irony was stated in admirably stark terms by Bloomberg's Fergal O'Brien, who reported on Oct. 16:

Bono, the rock star and campaigner against Third World debt, is asking the Irish government to contribute more to Africa. At the same time, he's reducing tax payments that could help fund that aid.

"Preventing the poorest of the poor from selling their products while we sing the virtues of the free market ... that's a justice issue," Bono said at a prayer breakfast attended by President Bush, Jordan's King Abdullah, and various members of Congress earlier this year. Preaching this sort of thing has made Bono a perennial candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. He continued:

Holding children to ransom for the debts of their grandparents ... that's a justice issue. Withholding life-saving medicines out of deference to the Office of Patents ... that's a justice issue.

And relocating your business offshore in order to avoid paying taxes to the Republic of Ireland, where poverty is higher than in almost any other developed nation? Bono's hypocrisy seems even more naked when you consider that Ireland is a tax haven for artists. In June 2005, Bono (who was born in Dublin) told the Belfast Telegraph:

Our publishing, which is about one third of our income, we have tax breaks on, and that's great and that's encouraged us to stay in Ireland and if that changes, it's not going to affect anything for U2. ...

Six months later, Ireland's finance minister announced a ceiling of $319,000 on tax-free incomes, and six months after that, U2 opened its Amsterdam office. The relocation of U2's music publishing will halve taxes on the band's songwriting royalties, which already reportedly total $286 million. Although Bono has declined to comment on the move, the band's lead guitarist, David "the Edge" Evans, said, "Of course we're trying to be tax-efficient. Who doesn't want to be tax-efficient?'" Writing in the Observer, Nick Cohen noted that Evans "sounded as edgy as a plump accountant in the 19th hole."

U2's tax-shelter scheme caused an uproar in Ireland when the story broke there in August. But it's scarcely raised a ripple in the United States. A conservative would argue that's because in this country, we don't begrudge a man the opportunity to keep what he earns off the sweat of his brow (or even off the sweat of someone else's brow ) ... even if that man spends half his time trying to goad governments into spending more to alleviate poverty. But a liberal could answer that in the United States, we are so used to seeing rich people avoid taxation that even a wealthy hypocrite who shelters his cash abroad can no longer qualify as news.