Dos Equis and KFAN radio have invited The Contend Cow, along with 31 other pubs, bars, and restaurants in the Twin Cities area, to take part in a “March to the Championship”!

From now until March 8th, please use your smart phone and computer every 24 hours to cast your vote for the Contented Cow.

Click on this link to vote: http://www.kfan.com/pages/promotions/barbracket/bracket.html

In this round, The Contented Cow is Number 15!

For more details of this competition, and Dos Equis specials at the Cow, go to to the Contentd Cow’s facebook event page.

If you are a wine drinker and have been to the Contented Cow recently, you will have noticed the new wine line-up.

The new house red is the 2008 Alias California Cabernet Sauvignon. Scouring the web for some background information, we found the “Gut Check” blog, who was interviewing Kata Lozina about this.

‘The label features eight silhouettes, which Lozina explains are the “Cult of 8″ winemakers who joined forces to create this wine together – but anonymously. Without listing names, faces or estates — just the region, Napa — the winemakers instead detail their philosophy on the label, including “Vineyards make grapes, winemakers make wine,” “Wine is not art, wine is craft,” and “Luxury can be affordable.”‘

Come see what you think!

Just a quick reminder to check out our calendar for up-to-date listings of music and other events. You can also keep in touch via Facebook. 2012 is going to be a great year!

Carleton’s American Medical Students Association is hosting their annual fundraiser at the Cow this Wednesday!

Come down to the Cow on Nov. 16th (the last day of classes, Carls) and support AMSA, your campus music groups, and women’s public health in Mali!

25% of the profits from 9pm to 1am will go to Project Muso: Yirimadjo, a partner organization of Partners in Health.

For more information, see http://www.projectmuso.org/

Performance Order:
9:00-9:30 Agnes, Olaf a Capella
9:30-10:00 Intertwining Melodies, Carleton a Capella
10:00-10:30 Exit 69, Carleton a Capella
10:30-11:00 Debbie Wong & Hannah Button-Harrison & Deborah Tan
11:00-11:30 Groove Factory
11:30-12:00 Touch Me Jungle
12:00-12:30 Gabe Keller
12:30-1:00  Jon Walsh, Marty Schwarz, David Tullis, Peter Briggs

Basically: come support your friends, listen to some great music, and help out a great cause!

These plans, and plans like them, are popular not because they are fairer than the existing plan, but rather because they are simpler. The byzantine US tax codes are legendary, and the immediate appeal of these plans is their simplicity, a simplicity that promises to remove all those special interest advantages that so distort the free market that we believe in.

The guiding idea behind the flat income tax is the idea that all taxpayers should be treated equally, but any introductory economics class will certainly introduce the student to the concept of the law of diminishing utility, which leads, from a fairness argument, to the concept of a progressive tax structure.

For example, a person who earns $90,000 per month attaches less importance to $10. But a man who gets $1000 per month, the value of $10 to him is very high. A finance minister knowing this fact that the utility of money to a rich man is high and to poor man low bases the system of taxation in such a way that the rich persons are taxed at a progressive rate. The system of modern taxation is therefore, based on the law of diminishing marginal utility.
Ref: http://economicsconcepts.com/law_diminishing_marginal_utility.htm

So, while the candidates try to use a flat tax to appeal to the voters, in a gesture with no hope of ever becoming law, what they might find more success with, in a manner consistent with basic principles of human behavior, is a “fair flat tax”.

The figure below illustrates graphically the three forms:

• In red we see the current tax code, idealized with a smooth curve, it starts with a low rate and steps up to a maximum rate of 35%. We also observe some of the special interests … these exceptions to the tax rules are sometimes very small divots in the collections (how many llama farmers are there, anyway?). Sometimes they are larger (oil companies come to mind) and sometimes they are simply politically powerful special interests (renewable energy companies). Some even experience negative tax rates due to grants and the like.
• In blue we see the simple flat tax as proposed by Perry. At 20% (which seems to reflect Hauser’s Law), it is simple in theory, but is not really fair. The person earning $20K per years will miss much more from the tax of $4K than the person making $100K will miss the $20K. The former may miss some meals, the latter may miss some trips to restaurants.
• In black we see a progressive flat tax. This correctly recognizes the decreasing marginal utility of money as a function of income (itself a surrogate for wealth, against which real marginal utility must be measured).

Both the blue and the black lines promise the most important feature of the flat taxes,  which is that there are no special breaks, making both “flat” when compared to the current tax codes. If Republican candidates were able to make their proposals look like the black “fair flat tax”, then the editorials would have to take them seriously and the cartoonists would have to find honest ways to make a living. As long as we don’t add the word “progressive” we will never make it past the late night comedy show monologues and the editorial cartoonists, and lacking any meaningful dialog, we (the taxpayers who fund all this silliness) shall surely lose.

(Never let it be said that we do not see the irony in this cartoon.)

The Details:

• What: Politics and a Pint
• Where: Contented Cow, Northfield MN
• When: Sunday, 13 November 2011, 6-7:30PM

Footnote: The Center of the American Experiment is hosting a roundtable on political  compromise that could use this information, methinks.

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What: Politics and a Pint

Where: The Contented Cow

When: Sunday 23 OCT 11 starting at 6:00pm

Per the discussion at the end of last Sunday’s meeting, we’ll be discussing some of the ideas of Elinor Ostrom, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009 (the only female recipient) and considered one of the founder of the “Bloomington School” of economics. Much of her work deals with efficienceis in local governments, natural resources and turning the “tragedy of the commons” into the “opportunity of the commons”.

Saturday Oct. 15, 2011 4pm – 1am the 16th.

Nine local performers bring you classic country and honky tonk music all night long!

Scheduled to perform:
4:00 — The Jealous Husbands present The Sons of the Pioneers and Marty Robbins
5:00 — Michael Anderson presents Dwight Yoakam
6:00 — Ray Barnard presents Charlie Rich
7:00 — Ed Frost, Bill McGrath and Randy Broughten present Hank Williams and Willie Nelson
8:00 — Jon Larson & Tim Hollinger present The Louvin Brothers
9:00 — Alison Rae presents Patsy Cline
10:00 — Matt Arthur & the Bratlanders present Johnny Cash
11:00 — The Rice County Roosters present Wesley Church and Gram Parsons
Midnight — Mr. Sticky presents Sweetheart of the Rodeo

Photo by Magne Sandnes. Used with permission.

The Norwegian trio Geitungen (The Young Goats) is coming to The Contented Cow!

With their capricious and compelling playing, Geitungen takes you back, far out to the poorly lit dance floors of the more festive parts of rural southwestern Norway in Rogaland province.

They play the tunes in the rhythmic fashion handed down through the years. The three musicians’ fiddles, diatonic accordion, melodeon, mandolin, hardanger fiddle, mandola and guitars combine to color the soundboard. The expression is straightforward and the music ranges from cosy, warm mazurkas to hotheaded hopsars and plaintive waltzes with elements of more contemporary popular music styles in the arrangements.

Geitungen has released three albums: Langt Ute (2010), Bra Kast (2005) and Vaniljesaus (2001). Bra Kast won a Norwegian Folk Music Award in 2005 for best album in the open/experimental class. Langt Ute is nominated for the same award in 2011.

Geitungen is:

VIDAR SKREDE on hardanger fiddle, fiddle and guitars. He is a freelance musician and a member of numerous Nordic bands like The Great Norwegian Guitar Quartet, NOMAS, The Secret Carpet Club, Fant&Fente, Aamos, Stimenn, and Vidar Skrede Dynamo Band. He has a master’s degree in Nordic folk music from the Royal School of Music in Stockholm.

CHRISTER “LAFFEN” ROSSEBØ on fiddle, mandolin, mandola and guitar. A freelance musician, known from bands like Bergen Mandolin Band, Earlybird Stringband, Fant&Fente and Filibuster, Christer is a candidate in folk music performance at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo.

HÅVARD IMS on melodeons and accordions, including the two-row diatonic. He is a two-time Norwegian champion on the instrument.

The three guys met as teenagers and have been playing together since 1997. They play for dancing, concerts and tours in several countries, and at festivals like Nordsjøfestivalen in Farsund, Skandinavisk folketone, Hilmarfestivalen, Jørn Hilme-stemnet, Riddu Riððu, Den norske folkemusikkveka, Folkekulturfestivalen, Vikedal Roots Music Festival and Shetland Folk Festival. They also have appeared on TV and radio in several countries, and presented a live concert at Studio 19 on NRK (The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation) radio.

Kjell Bitustøyl, the former editor of Norway’s most prominent folk music journal wrote this about the band after their début:

The most pleasant surprise of the evening was the newly established band Geitungen from Haugesund – three versatile musicians with sparkles and great musicality. With youthful presumption they change instruments already after the first tune and continue this throughout the entire concert. But it surely sounds great! – and the repertoire is exciting: Bjerkreim tunes in refined arrangements with guitar, two row accordeon, fiddles, whistles, but also own written tunes in untimid performance. The inspiration comes from many sides, not the least from the Celtic in the west and the Agder counties in the south. Geitungen can in some of their numbers sound like a new and fresh version of Ånon Egeland and Per Midtstigen on their early records.

Geitungen is at the forefront of Norwegian folk musicians inspired by both modern times and “the old days”. They represent a living expression of folk music that put new life into old traditions.

There is no cover charge for the event — but generous tips for the band are encouraged and CDs will be available for sale.