Though not as well known as Bob Dylan or Tom Waits, John Hiatt has written and performed some of the best songs of the last few decades. His songs span the genres from alt. country to rock, to folk, to blues and R&B. He’s kind of one of those guys whose songs you recognize, but can’t think of the artist.

Here are a few essentials for the uninitiated:

Perfectly Good Guitar

Master of Disaster (the Dude’s personal favorite, though I think the album version is better)

Slow Turning

Thunderbird

Have a Little Faith

Feels Like Rain

Tennessee Plates

Dust Down a Country Road

Watch the videos, listen to the songs elsewhere, and I’m sure you’ll agree with me. John Hiatt is one of the greatest American singer-songwriters ever.

So people like Kirby M. can get rich, extremley rich. Though I think VL should be abolished along with taxes on food and clothing (which could be replaced by an income tax on high income people like Kirby) as long as we have it as a funding source I think it should be equitable for the state. The state takes only half of the revenue, it should be closer to 70-80%. Last year that was $111 million dollars. That means a handful of casino owners and investors are taking the other half. It is estimated that there is roughly only about 20 major owners in the state. If you do the math each of them is pocketing about 5.5 million a year. Even if they shared half that wealth with other vendors you can still consider that a pretty good living considering once you have the casinos setup and paid for you don’t have to do a damn thing for the money, except watch the poor miserable f’cks walk through your door and gamble away their paychecks. Must be hard to sleep at night. The worst part about this money faucet that only hurts our state in social costs is that the owners of these casinos can do it all privately.

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One name that stuck out in the Argus Leader story was Don Drake. Earlier this year I did a story about Brad Drake, who owns Ultra, Inc. and once(?) had the servicing contract for the laptop program. Not sure how Don and Brad are related but they both gave significant amounts of money to Mike Rounds campaigns. And if you go to the laptop link, there is a link to the Rounds campaign financials, it appears that Don is one of Mike’s biggest campaign contributors. It seems all you have to do these days to find out how Mikey governs is follow the money.