What is the musical equivalent of mid-century modern design? David Garland finds it in the jazz compositions of George Russell, a "Third Stream" piece for electric guitar and strings by Jim Hall, John Cage's serene "In a Landscape," Miles Davis' collaborations with arranger Gil Evans, Elmer Bernstein's music for the films of Charles and Ray Eames, and more. Your suggestions of Mid-Century Modern Music are welcome in the comments below.

"I started doing mail orders and then learned my way around the music blogs," Van Etten says in an interview with Weekend All Things Considered host Guy Raz. "I didn't know what a music blog was at the time."

Cripplingly shy, Van Etten toiled in anonymity during the day, then performed in clubs at night. Her boss, Ben Goldberg, had no idea she aspired to record for his label, Ba Da Bing Records.

"I actually got called out, because I never invited [Goldberg] to my shows, and I didn't tell him I did music. And he yelled at me that I didn't invite him to a show," Van Etten says, laughing.

Goldberg loved what he heard. He agreed to release Van Etten's breakthrough album, Epic, on which confessional lyrics are dispensed with either eggshell fragility or bold surges.

A Wounded Place

Van Etten's new album comes out Tuesday, and the accolades are already rolling in. It's called Tramp, and the internal navigation through life's minefield dominates her songs.

"I would say they are personal and they come from experience, whether they be my own experiences or my friends' experiences, but they're mostly love songs," Van Etten says. "It's supposed to be a conversation with the listener in a general enough way where they can relate to it and not feel so alone."

"Ask" is a great example of what people love about Van Etten's music. The person in the song comes from a pretty wounded place. In a recent interview, she said that "sadness isn't an emotion that most cool bands want to talk about."

"When I write, it's to heal," Van Etten says. "It's my own self-therapy so that I don't actually feel sad all of the time. The only thing that's helped me get through some really hard times was just being able to write and express — it's very cathartic for me. I'm hoping that, by writing and performing for other people, it affects them the same way."

Learning To Rock

Van Etten made her name with quiet, acoustic songs, but Tramp also features some rockers, including "Serpents." Van Etten says she wrote that song in secret because she wasn't telling anyone that she was playing the electric guitar.

"I didn't know how to rock at all," Van Etten says with a laugh. "When no one was home, I would just turn on my amp and play guitar as loud as I could. Whenever I got upset, I would sing, but at the time, I was trying to write more — my songs are more sad, and I don't feel comfortable being angry. But I'm learning that it's OK to have all of those things if you don't direct it at someone."

Perhaps rocking out was a way to challenge what people thought of Van Etten, but for her, it was more about her own self-image.

"I feel like I was a lot more insecure. I had a lot of social anxiety," Van Etten says. "I didn't really know myself very well, and I'd never lived in the city. A lot of things were just happening really fast, and I didn't even know how I felt about things as they were happening. I didn't know what I was doing. I was figuring out a lot. I'm a lot more secure than I used to be. The more I do music, the more confident I become, and I think these new songs show that."

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

We've invited Oldman to answer three questions about Up With People — a horde of wholesome, smiley young people who performed four Super Bowl halftime shows back in the day.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Baratunde Thurston Explains 'How To Be Black': From the comedian and digital director of The Onion, a satirical self-help book for anyone who has a black friend, wants to be the next black president or speak for the black community.

Leonard Cohen's 'Old Ideas' Inspire Confidence: Now in his late 70s, the singer-songwriter has just released a new album, his first collection of new material in eight years, titled Old Ideas. Rock critic Ken Tucker says these Cohen songs work as both pop music and as prayers.

Stew: 'Making It' After A Tough Breakup: Stew's new album Making It is, in part, about his relationship with his ex-girlfriend and songwriting partner, Heidi Rodewald. The two musicians, who continue to work together professionally, also collaborated on the 2008 Tony-winning musical Passing Strange.

You can listen to all of the original broadcasts here:

• Baratunde Thurston Explains 'How To Be Black'
• Leonard Cohen's 'Old Ideas' Inspire Confidence
• Stew: 'Making It' After A Tough Breakup

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Foster herself has followed a winding path in her career, including a tour of duty with the U.S. Navy Band and a stint in New York City, where she briefly had a contract with Atlantic Records.

"New York was a great experience. I try to say yes to opportunity, and it was an opportunity to be a songwriter," she says. "I learned a lot about different ways to write a song, how to keep an audience, how to keep people from walking out. I can say I walked away a better musician."

Ultimately, Foster left New York and returned to Texas, this time settling in the musical mecca of Austin.

I decided I needed to go back to my home base and write about the things that I know," she says. "That's when my music started to really change."

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

But the younger Tymoshenko says she's not a politician. She never imagined herself testifying on Capitol Hill, getting face time with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a prayer breakfast, or speaking to reporters at a K Street lobbying firm.

"I had to start participating in this process since my mother's arrest, actually, and I became her public defender since August; and I was able to see the really shameful process against her and other ex-politicians, opposition politicians," Evgeniya Tymoshenko says.

The United States has described the case against Yulia Tymoshenko as politically motivated. She served twice as prime minister, first for a brief period in 2005, and then from 2007 until 2010.

But after losing the presidential election in 2010, she was prosecuted for her role in negotiations with Russia over gas sales when she was prime minister. She was convicted last October and has been sentenced to seven years in prison.

Tymoshenko's daughter says she's being held in harsh conditions.

"Her cell is always lit 24 hours a day and she's under video surveillance, which they say is for her own safety but it's obviously just to put more psychological pressure on her," Evgeniya Tymoshenko says.

Though the 31-year-old worries about her mother's health, she says the former prime minister won't be broken, and is even winning over her prison guards.

"Her fiery character and her courage, political courage is what charges people to fight for their rights; and that's what happened during the protests she organized," she says.

Rise To Power

Back in 2004, Tymoshenko did whip up the crowds to protest fraudulent elections in what became known as the Orange Revolution.

She seemed an unlikely reformer, having amassed a fortune in the 1990s in the shady energy sector. A former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Steven Pifer says there were lots of questions about her then.

"I remember having a conversation with a Ukrainian in 2000 or 2001, and I said, 'Explain to me how you see Yulia Tymoshenko.' And the response was, 'Well, maybe she stole her millions already, but she actually now appears to want to do something good for the country. She wants to give something back,' " Pifer says.

Pifer, now with the Brookings Institution, says that in recent years the U.S. has worked well with her, and credits her with cleaning up Ukraine's energy sector.

But now, a man she bitterly opposes, Viktor Yanukovich, is president, having defeated her two years ago. Pifer says Yanukovich might be pursuing the case against her because of personal animosity, but it's backfiring.

"Her poll ratings were single digits, her party was in single digits, and she was kind of off the radar screen," he says. "What's happened with the trial last year is they've now sort of put her back on the front page, so it's had this ironic effect in terms of bringing her back in the spotlight."

And it's made Ukraine's relations with the West more complicated, because the case is seen here as one of many examples of backsliding on democracy. The picture Tymoshenko's daughter is painting sounds like a new Stalinist regime in Ukraine.

"I know that my phones are tapped and that somebody is watching me wherever I go," she says. "Obviously I feel pressure because my relatives, even my grandfather, is under investigation now."

Still, Evgeniya Tymoshenko, who spent nearly a decade in London and married a British rock singer, plans to stay in Ukraine and fight for her mother's cause. Her father received political asylum in the Czech Republic.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

That better-than-expected news from the Labor Department triggered a rally in the stock market Friday, with the Dow climbing more than 150 points. The news could also help the stock of President Obama.

All kinds of companies were hiring last month: 21,000 new construction jobs, 50,000 factory jobs and 30,000 new jobs for temporary workers. Tom Maher owns the Manpower temporary firm in Dayton, Ohio. He supplies a lot of workers to the auto industry.

"Our business has been steadily improving. I've seen an increase in billable hours week over week, which is a wonderful indicator," Maher says. "So we're seeing, at least as the year begins, pretty positive activity."

'One Day At A Time'

Even as he writes those extra paychecks, though, Maher is cautious. He was enjoying a similar boost in business this time last year, only to see it fizzle out after the Japanese tsunami wreaked havoc on U.S. supply chains, and the Arab Spring triggered a spike in oil prices.

"It's very important to take things really one day at a time. While I'm optimistic, I'm not exuberantly optimistic. But things are improving," Maher says. "I read an article locally that our restaurants are much busier than they were before. They're hiring staff. If people are spending more money on their dining entertainment, then obviously they're feeling more optimistic than they have been."

Nationwide, bars and restaurants added 33,000 workers in January. Overall, the hiring spree was the strongest in nine months — a pleasant surprise for forecasters like Nariman Behravesh of IHS Global Insight.

"It's certainly too early to break out the champagne in the sense that this has been a very uneven recovery," he says, "but these are really good numbers — have been quite good for a couple of months. So at least we're getting going a little bit in terms of the hiring process."

Between Now And Election Day

That could be a break for Obama. The jobless rate is still high, higher than any president has been re-elected with since Franklin Roosevelt. But political forecaster Charlie Cook says at least now Obama has a fighting chance in November.

"The folks in the White House have had a lot of bad news for a really long time. They're just starting to get a spat of some good news, and it points to a real close race," he says.

Of course, a lot could happen between now and Election Day. Cook says many voters will be making their judgments about the president's economic stewardship based on what happens over the next six to eight months.

"Public attitudes — they start off as a liquid, and then they turn into a gel, and then they harden at the end," he says.

'Don't Muck It Up'

Obama acknowledged Friday that far too many Americans are still looking for work, and he warned the numbers could go up and down in the months to come. The jobless rate has tumbled nearly a full percentage point since August. It's now the lowest it's been since the president's first full month in office.

"The unemployment rate came down because more people found work, and altogether we've added 3.7 million new jobs over the last 23 months," he said.

Obama urged lawmakers not to jeopardize the recovery by allowing a payroll tax cut to expire this month. After all the economy's been through, he said, it doesn't need any self-inflicted wounds.

"So I want to send a clear message to Congress: Do not slow down the recovery that we're on. Don't muck it up. Keep it moving in the right direction," he said.

Republicans argue the country could be enjoying a stronger recovery, were it not for business uncertainty over taxes and regulation. But that in itself marks a shift in the debate. For years, it was the president, saddled with bad economic news, who was forced to argue that "things could be worse."

Now, Obama can point to encouraging numbers, leaving the GOP with the challenge of making the case, "things could be better."

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Mitt Romney is counting on another win here to keep him on the path to the nomination. Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul have also been campaigning across the state, while Rick Santorum is in the Midwest looking ahead to later contests next week.

Believe it or not, Nevada leads the country in: unemployment, home foreclosures and bankruptcy.

But at Romney's rally in Elko Friday, the stories were vastly different. In Elko, there are not enough houses for everyone who wants to buy.

"My wife sells real estate, and they're having a hard time finding houses for people," says Jim Moore, who works for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Elko is a gold-mining boom town. Michael Cornell works underground in the mines.

"We've been relatively untouched. I make six figures a year, and many of us here do," he says. "We've had a lot of people come from other parts of the country to live here because of the jobs situation."

That's really different from a lot of Nevada.

"I hear that there's some sort of unemployment rate problem here in Nevada, and we don't see any of it here," Cornell says.

Romney Shifts Focus To Obama

Romney's visit Friday coincides with the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering.

"The heart of the cowboy, the love of freedom and the outdoors and nature being celebrated this week with cowboy poetry," he said. "Congratulations to you that have come to listen to some wise words from some very humorous and bright people."

A week ago in Florida, Romney was hammering Gingrich incessantly. But ever since his decisive win in that state, he has kept his sights trained solely on President Obama.

"We have a president who is convinced that government is the answer to every challenge we have. Government has an important role, but it's not the answer," he said.

Romney has been very popular in Nevada, dating back to when he won the state caucuses four years ago.

Still, he encounters the same challenges here that he does across the country. Ashley Leahy came to this rally to see what Romney had to say, but she says she just doesn't like him very much.

"I think that he can come across as very abrupt and pompous and very defensive," she says.

Paul Bets On Loyalty

Leahy's planning to vote for Paul, a man who expects to climb in the standings Saturday in a state where loyal support makes a difference.

He was out in Las Vegas Friday, thanking some of those supporters at a "Gun Owners for Paul" event. Later, he addressed a group of veterans.

"National defense is the responsibility of the federal government, and, unfortunately, I think we spend too much money overseas doing the wrong thing," he said, "which actually undermines our national defense."

Paul took second place in the Nevada caucuses last time.

Gingrich Vs. 'Obama-Lite'

Then there's Gingrich, whose goal here is to knock Romney off the pedestal of inevitability.

"It isn't good enough for the Republican Party to nominate Obama-lite," he said Friday.

Gingrich rallied voters at a country western restaurant in Las Vegas, returning to Romney's statement earlier this week that he doesn't care about the "very poor."

Romney has said he misspoke and meant to say that his focus is on helping the middle class. Gingrich called the gaffe evidence that Romney's not ready for prime time.

"The elite media did exactly what Obama will do this fall and kept replaying 'I don't really care about the poor,' which by the way is not a very clever thing for somebody who's very wealthy to say," Gingrich said. "Talk about every possible example of what we don't want in a general election candidate."

Out Of Nevada, In The Race

The fourth candidate in the race, Santorum, is not in Nevada. He spent Friday in Missouri battling a cold during a joint appearance with the evangelical leader James Dobson. Dobson asked if Santorum was "in for the long haul."

"Look, a lot of people have come up to me and said ... 'Please stay in the race.' I'm not getting out of the race," he said.

Having opted out of the Nevada contest early, however, Santorum is not likely to be a factor in the results that come in late Saturday.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

House, about a seriously unlucky babysitter who reluctantly takes a gig at a shadowy mansion in the middle of nowhere, was directed by 31-year-old Ti West. West is known for making horror movies, and his films stand out: They're slowly paced, with minimal gore and a distinctive look borrowed from classic 1980s fright flicks.

In fact, West set House in the '80s, when the news was filled with real-life prosecutions of allegedly devil-worshipping preschool teachers. West tells NPR's Neda Ulaby that he's just old enough to remember that "Satanic panic."

"I'm an only child, and I'm a bit of a weirdo — I really kind of absorbed everything around me," West says. "So I do absolutely remember my mother saying, 'You can't go to the park because a van will come along and pick you up and [people will] sacrifice you to the devil.' And she believed it."

House established West as a masterful mimic of '80s horror, from the rotary phones to the credits' font. But West dislikes being pegged as the vintage-horror guy.

"Everyone said it was an homage to the '80s, and really I was making an '80s period piece," West says.

That might be a little disingenuous, says Adam Hart, a film scholar who studies horror.

"There's a loving fetishization of clothing and hairstyles [in the film]," Hart says. "I don't think I've seen a Walkman play such a prominent role in any film ever."

The babysitter, having taken the job, is alone in the house. She dances on the furniture, pokes through jumbled drawers, peeks into dark closets and explores room after ominous room.

"Every time she walks into a room, you think, 'Well, this movie is called House of the Devil, so something's gonna pop out at her and kill her,' " says West. Not so, he explains. As the moments stretch on, with nothing happening, something happens for the audience:

"You think, 'It has to happen in this room, because it would be insane to have her go into this room and not have something happen,' " he says. "Then when it doesn't, you kind of have to give up on being ahead of the movie."

Suspense In Slowness, In Life And In Film

West grew up in King of Prussia, Pa. His mother works at a hospital gift shop, and he sold jeans at Diesel while shooting his first feature film.

"I've had every minimum-wage job known to man — and I don't want to go back to minimum-wage jobs — but I have a fondness for that," West says. "So I wanted to make a movie that encapsulated that feeling of being stuck at work, and the apathy that comes with it."

The oppressive suspense of House reflects the tedium of low-wage work and how we pass the time, says Hart.

"It introduces the horrific and the supernatural into everyday rhythms," he says.

In West's new movie, The Innkeepers, he toys with that idea again, even as he explores another favored horror trope — the haunted hotel.

At the Yankee Pedlar Inn, the innkeepers in question aren't the owners but a couple of low-level workers. Claire and Luke, both in their 20s, clean the rooms, answer phones, and pull pranks on each other to stave off the boredom of taking care of the inn and its demanding guests.

The only thing that inspires Claire is searching through the hotel after hours for evidence of a ghost. Since this is a haunted hotel in a horror movie, you could speculate on what happens next. But how it happens may be more surprising.

Larry Fessenden, a respected independent horror director who produced The Innkeepers, says West's slow, deliberate pacing subverts not only the frenzied rhythms of contemporary horror films but the rhythms of contemporary life.

"There's obviously the 'slow food' movement and the 'slow this and that' movement, which is just to say, 'Everyone, take a chill pill,' " Fessenden says. "I feel that, in some way, Ti's doing that in his filmmaking."

Fessenden appreciates what he calls West's observational approach to horror and the craftsmanship he brings to a genre that can often feel cheap or over the top. By probing and prolonging the chills, he says, West is making them more meaningful.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

President Obama invited Debbie Bosanek to a seat in the spotlight to underscore a complaint her boss has widely made: that she pays a much higher tax rate than the 17 percent Buffett himself pays.

Speaking to a joint session of Congress, Obama proposed what he called the "Buffett Rule": Anyone making more than $1 million a year should pay no less than 30 percent in taxes.

"You can call this class warfare all you want. But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense," Obama said.

Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., said Obama was simply trying to score political points in an election year.

"When he picks out one item — rich vs. poor — that's class warfare," said Johanns. "And I know he says, 'Well, you can call it what you want.' But the truth of the matter, he knows what he's doing."

New Legislation

This week, Obama's Buffett Rule took the form of a bill introduced on the Senate floor.

"I rise today to introduce legislation that would address some loopholes in the tax codes, which provide for super high-income Americans ways to pay lower tax rates than are paid by regular, hard-working, middle-class families," said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.

The bill is aimed at the wealthiest of all taxpayers — the highest-earning one-tenth of 1 percent of Americans. It would affect roughly 100,000 taxpayers nationwide who — like Berkshire Hathaway CEO Buffett, and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney — earn more than $1 million a year, but pay less than 30 percent in taxes.

"To call our tax system fair, I believe the highest-income Americans should pay a higher rate, not a lower one, than middle-income taxpayers," said Whitehouse.

Tax rates for all Americans are in fact lower than they were 30 years ago. But tax expert Roberton Williams of the Urban Institute says rates have fallen the farthest for the top-income earners.

"Our top tax rate now is just 35 percent," said Williams. "Twelve years ago, it was 39.6 percent. If you go back into the 1960s, it was 70 percent. In the 1950s, it was 90 percent. ...We have a much lower tax rate now than we had before. Raising the tax rate on high-income people would not be out of line historically."

Debating What's A Fair Share

Tax cuts for income and for capital gains and dividends were pushed through Congress by President George W. Bush.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a top economic adviser to Bush who now runs the American Action Forum, a GOP think tank, insisted the wealthy are paying their fair share.

"They are paying for national defense, infrastructure, basic research, education. And when you have a small group providing all of the government to the rest of America, it strikes me as exceedingly weird to say, 'Pony up,' " Holtz-Eakin said. "They've already paid for the whole thing. Why are we asking for more?"

In fact, in 2009, the top 1 percent of tax filers paid about 37 percent of all federal income taxes.

Despite GOP opposition, Whitehouse thinks he may pick up more support in the Senate. He points out that the Bush tax cuts are set to expire at the end of this year.

"So, if the Republicans want to avoid [an expiration of the Bush tax cuts], then they're going to have to agree to some things that they may not otherwise like," said Whitehouse.

But Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., has doubts about getting the Buffett Rule bill through Congress, noting that Senate Republicans closed ranks late last year to block a relatively small tax hike on millionaires.

"We can't even get them to allow us to raise the rate 3 percent on folks on their second million dollars of income. The Republicans are unwilling to even consider that. So I think the voters are going to have to weigh in here," said McCaskill.

Voters will have a clear chance to do so, nine months from now.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

It's called Big Miracle, and the real miracle might be how this event became a story at all. The fact that three whales could draw a media horde to frigid Alaska — not to mention grab the attention of President Ronald Reagan — might say a lot about the power of television and how drama can turn a story that doesn't seem all that important into gripping news.

Journalist Tom Rose was among the journalists assigned to bundle up and head to a remote outpost in Barrow, Alaska, to cover the whale rescue in 1988. He authored the 1989 book Freeing the Whales that inspired Big Miracle. He talks with NPR's David Greene about the events that unfolded both above and below the ice.

Interview Highlights

On how the three gray whales got stuck

"Most of whales that are meant to survive end up getting on their way to their summer breeding grounds a lot earlier than the middle of October. These three, for some unknown reason, were stuck — ended up perhaps feeding too long. There was a baby among them. Perhaps the baby didn't have — you'll pardon the pun — his or her sea legs. They waited, and the next thing you know, they're stuck in the ice.

On how these whales got attention

"It was a natural and normal cause of death for those kinds of whales [to get trapped in the ice]. Anyway, as it happens, there was a guy out on the ice who managed to capture this ... on a TV camera that he had. The images were so compelling that — to continue with this awful arctic metaphor — the snowball grew in size and scope."

On the human drama happening above the ice

"Everybody came to this story with their own preconceived notions about what was good or bad with the world. The environmentalist lobby had battled bitterly with commercial fishermen in the southern part of Alaska, in the rich commercial fishing grounds. They battled ferociously with whaling communities on the Arctic fringe of Alaska. Yet here, the subsistence whaling communities needed the environmentalists to help them make their case to the gathering media hordes that these were not bloodthirsty whale murderers — that they were subsistence hunters who knew more about whales, respected ... whales, had a greater love for whales than any of the environmentalists could've fathomed in 1,000 lifetimes."

On the role played by environmentalists

"Had it not been for a woman who's portrayed in the movie [by] Drew Barrymore, the real-life character Cindy Lowry — she was the Alaska field rep for Greenpeace back at the time of this in the late 1980s — none of this would've happened."

On the various motivations for covering the story

"It might've been all about ratings, but I guess, who cares, if the end result is served? Let me put it this way — and I'm an admittedly cynical guy, even back then — you couldn't help but be moved by these creatures. The initial hole that was secured for these whales was no more than 10 or 11 feet long, six or seven feet across. So when they came up, and they had to take turns coming up to breathe, you literally could touch them ... And it's hard not to identify with the majesty of a California gray whale when you're in that kind of constant proximity to them.

"So, again, intentions ... who knows? I can't judge anybody's intentions. But at the end of the day, folks were brought together who otherwise never would've come together."

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

The nation's first president spent the night at so many inns and private houses that signs advertising "George Washington slept here" were regular roadside attractions even during his lifetime.

But only a few homes of celebrated figures, such as Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and Elvis Presley's Graceland, have become sites that people go out of their way to visit. Most such places have been torn down, or fall into neglect and disrepair.

Last month, jazz great Miles Davis was honored with a postage stamp issued jointly by the U.S. and France. Yet his childhood home in East St. Louis, Ill., is being torn apart by thieves, its aluminum siding and even wood panels stripped from every side of the house.

It may be a shame when homes associated with great artists or historical figures are left to rot. But how many such homes are ever going to be preserved — or attract the interest of many visitors?

First, Be Beautiful

"Art and personality and greatness is created in physical space," says Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University. "If we can see those physical spaces and the context in which things were happening, those can give us important insights into people when they were at their peak."

It's not just the prominence of the person that makes a home worth preserving and visiting, Thompson says. The intrinsic architectural value or beauty of the structure may be more important.

The first structures that older cities in the Northeast decided to designate with historic status generally had some connection with the Revolutionary War, says Anthony Tung, a former New York City landmarks commissioner. Then, they started saving the most beautiful historic works in town.

"That kind of aesthetic beauty contest is not only legitimate, but gets through the city council," he says. "If you show them beautiful pictures, they get it."

Plain But Worthy

Both political debates and fundraising become trickier when it comes to homes that have a strong association with an important person, yet aren't otherwise so fabulous in and of themselves.

Tung recalls that when he was on New York City's landmarks board, there was a big debate about whether to offer a historic designation to the Queens home of another jazz trumpet legend, Louis Armstrong, because the red-brick residence was so plain.

"Some of us argued that that was the point — he was such a major international figure, yet with all that money, he had a modest house," says Tung, who teaches historic preservation at Columbia University. "I find the modesty of that house very telling."

But not everyone gets all fired up about preserving — or visiting — dull houses just because they once housed someone famous.

"The whole issue of the associations that houses and various building have because of events and personages is one of the major emerging preservation issues," Tung says.

Reach Out And Touch

Some people are fascinated with seeing the actual places where their favorite books and movies have been set. The Tuscan hill town of Volterra in Italy has seen a spike in traffic from international visitors in recent years attracted not by its Etruscan museum but the spots where parts of one of the Twilight movies were shot.

Tung argues that historic houses are a better place to go looking for the spirit of an artist than the various and sundry movie locations, studios or libraries where she might have actually done most of her work.

But that kind of connection with the past doesn't move everybody.

Blake Bailey, the biographer of Richard Yates and John Cheever, notes that the two writers both lived, at separate times, in the same house in Scarsdale, N.Y.

The house is still there and still being rented out. "But there's no plaque up saying two of the greatest chroniclers of the postwar middle class lived in this house," he says.

Bailey doubts many people would go looking for one. Visiting such properties is instructive about the writers' aspirations and financial circumstances. Both borrowed local settings for use in their fiction. But Bailey still says their homes won't speak much even to those people drawn to their stories.

"It's helpful to a biographer, but I don't think it's of any great interest to John Q. Citizen," Bailey says.

Being There

Even from a scholarly standpoint, the house that a person grew up in will likely be less valuable than the boxes in the attic that might contain old letters and ephemera, says Thompson.

Still, sometimes there's no substitute for being there. Kansas City, Mo., is filled with sites associated with the boyhood and early career of cartoon pioneer Walt Disney. Butch Rigby, a local movie theater mogul, has been working for years to preserve some of them.

Each move the Disney family made represented a "comedown" in their fortunes, according to Disney biographer Neal Gabler. The neighborhoods where Walt Disney lived and worked remain poor.

For that reason, Rigby says, those places can offer tangible inspiration to kids living in meager circumstances about how much potential their lives still hold.

"It's very important for a kid growing up on the east side of Troost [Avenue] to understand a young Walt Disney sat there so poor that he could barely feed himself, but he shared food with a mouse who became the inspiration for Mickey Mouse," Rigby says. "We can lecture them in a hundred ways, but I guarantee Mickey Mouse will do a better job."

Great American Success Story

The house on Bellefontaine Avenue where Walt Disney lived the longest as a kid is still standing. It doesn't look like much. Parts of the facade are crumbling, and the neighborhood isn't especially inviting, with a new- and used-tire and repair shop around the corner.

Nevertheless, tourists show up every weekend, wanting to take a picture of the place, says Roberta Young Long, who lives there now.

"There's no greater American tale than the fact that one of the most famous pop icons in the 20th century grew up in a bungalow in a very working class neighborhood," Rigby says.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Longtime family friend Suzanne Mados said Gazzara died Friday in Manhattan. Mados, who owned the Wyndham Hotel, where celebrities such as Peter Falk and Martin Sheen stayed, said he died after being placed in hospice care for cancer. She and her husband helped marry Gazzara and his wife, German-born Elke Krivat, at their hotel.

Gazzara was a proponent of method acting, in which the performer attempts to take on the thoughts and emotions of the character he's playing, and it helped him achieve stardom early in his career with two stirring Broadway performances.

In 1955, he originated the role of Brick Pollitt, the disturbed alcoholic son and failed football star in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." He left the show after only seven months to take on an equally challenging role, Johnny Pope, the drug addict in "A Hatful of Rain." It earned him his first of three Tony Award nominations.

In 1965, he moved on to TV stardom in "Run for Your Life," a drama about a workaholic lawyer who, diagnosed with a terminal illness, quits his job and embarks on a globe-trotting attempt to squeeze a lifetime of adventures into the one or two years he has left. He was twice nominated for Emmys during the show's three-year run.

Gazzara made his movie debut in 1957 in "The Strange One," Calder Willingham's bitter drama about brutality at a Southern military school. He had previously played the lead role of the psychopathic cadet, Jocko de Paris, on Broadway in Willingham's stage version of the story, "End of Man."

He followed that film with "Anatomy of a Murder," in which he played a man on trial for murdering a tavern keeper who had been accused of raping his wife.

After "Run for Your Life" ended in 1968, Gazzara spent the rest of his career alternating between movies and the stage, although rarely with the critical acclaim he had enjoyed during his early years.

In the 1970s, he teamed with his friend director John Cassavetes for three films, "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" and "Opening Night." In another Cassavetes film, he appeared with Falk, and the two became friends (it was Cassavetes who introduced them to the Wyndham Hotel, according to a 1982 article in New York magazine.)

Gena Rowlands appeared with Gazzara in "Opening Night," which also starred Cassavetes. Cassavetes and Rowlands were married; he died in 1989. Falk died last year.

"It breaks my heart to have this era come to an end. Ben meant so much to all of us. To our families. To John. To Peter. To have them gone now is devastating to me," she said in a statement.

She said her prayers and thoughts went out to "all his loyal and wonderful fans throughout the world."

Rita Moreno, who played Gazzara's wife in the 2000 film "Blue Moon," said, "He was a wonderful man, and I so enjoyed working with him. I wish I could have had the pleasure more often."

Other Gazzara films included "The Bridge at Remagen," "The Young Doctors," "They All Laughed," "The Thomas Crown Affair," "If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium," "The Spanish Prisoner," "Stag" and "Road House." He also made several films in Italy.

He appeared on Broadway in revivals of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," "Awake and Sing!" "Strange Interlude" and several other plays.

Gazzara began acting in television in 1952 with roles on the series "Danger" and "Kraft Television Theater." Before landing "Run for Your Life," he played a police detective in the series "Arrest and Trial," which lasted two seasons.

Born Biagio Anthony Gazzara in New York on Aug. 28, 1930, he grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in a cold-water flat with a bathtub in the kitchen. His parents were immigrants from Sicily who met and married in New York, and his first language was Italian. Although he was baptized under his birth name, his parents always called him Ben or Benny.

As a child he became fascinated with movies, and after giving his first performance, in a Boys Club play, he knew he had found his life's work.

"I disliked high school," he once said, "and after two years of it I left without telling anyone at home."

Instead he spent his days in movie theaters.

He entered Erwin Piscator's Dramatic Workshop in 1948. Eighteen months later he auditioned for the Actors Studio run by Lee Strasberg and was accepted.

Gazzara's first two marriages, to actresses Louise Erikson and Janice Rule, ended in divorce.

While filming "Inchon" in Korea in 1981, he met Krivat. They married the following year, and the union endured.

"Elke saved my life," Gazzara said in 1999. "When I met her, I was drinking too much, fooling around too much, killing myself. She put romance and hope back in my life."

He adopted Krivat's daughter, Danja, as his own. She recalled on Friday that he was a "complex soul" and that his role as a father to her and his own daughter was challenging.

"I adored Ben, and so did his daughter," she said. "But we both had difficulty with him ... I think the difficulty lay in his complexity of being an actor and those layers that you have, that you bring with you."

Besides Danja, Gazzara is survived by his wife, daughter Elizabeth and a brother.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino filmed a gun-control commerical that will air during the New York Giants and New England Patriots match-up.

It shows the two mayors sitting on a couch, wearing their respective team's jersey, as if they're watching the game, listing things they don't agree on. But the rivalry gets put aside when it comes to "common sense reforms" to keep guns out of the hands of criminals.

Both Bloomberg and Menino are founders of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which has pushed for stronger federal background checks and closing the gun show loophole.

The ad will only be shown in the Northeast, not nationally.

With the Associated Press

The people wielding the sticks replied by sending in more than 13,000 scarves to the Super Bowl Host Committee.

The Super Scarves program was thought up as a way to give the almost 8,000 unpaid volunteers "a warm thank you," keeping them warm during the week leading up to and during the game. It would also make it easy for visitors and attendees to identify volunteers who can give directions and other help, said host committee spokeswoman Dianna Boyce.

“I like football, I like knitting and I like the idea of creating something memorable,” said Mary Trombley, a knitter who lives near Utica, N.Y.

The committee gave guidelines for the scarf: It had to use a specific blue and white color, had to be six to eight inches wide and 76 to 100 inches long. Each scarf was emblazoned with a Super Bowl Host Committee patch, but the design was left of up to the knitters’ imagination.

Irene Buster, one of the knitters, is a football fan from Buffalo Bills country but said she’s rooting for the Giants over the Patriots in the game Sunday.

She sent two scarves: a knit one (knit three, pearl three pattern) and a crocheted one (waffle stich). She liked the idea of having volunteers be able to “take home a scarf — a momento of the Super Bowl.”

Trombley took five months to make a striped scarf, using Fibonacci numbers when switching back and forth between the blue and the white. She said she’ll be watching the game closely.

“I’m hoping to watch some of the pre-game because I would love to see a volunteer with the scarf on,” she said. “I just want to see somebody with the scarf.”

All of the Super Bowl volunteers have received scarves. Extras went to frontline hospitality workers, partners and each of the teams.

PROGRAM #2999, New Music for Bass Clarinet (First aired on Mon. 11-02-09)

Gazzara appeared in dozens of films, television shows and stage productions over his long career. On the TV show Run For Your Life, which ran for three season in the 1960s, Ben Gazara starred as a lawyer diagnosed with a terminal illness.

He is remembered as a powerful actor, who appeared in the original Broadway production of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. He acted on Broadway regularly over the course of 50 years, garnering three Tony nominations for his work on stage.

Gazzara made his big break into film with his role as an accused killer in Otto Preminger's 1959 courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder.

The son of an Italian brick layer, Gazarra studied acting first at a Boys and Girls Club in Manhattan, then at the famed Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg. Film buffs may remember him most fondly as a regular presence in films directed by his friend John Cassavetes.

-- with reporting by NPR's Neda Ulaby.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Military District of Washington commander Maj. Gen. Michael Linnington referred all charges against Pfc. Bradley Manning to a general court-martial, the Army said in a statement.

The referral means Manning will stand trial for allegedly giving more than 700,000 secret U.S. documents and classified combat video to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks for publication.

The 24-year-old Crescent, Oklahoma, native faces 22 counts, including aiding the enemy. He could be imprisoned for life if convicted of that charge.

A judge who is yet to be appointed will set the trial date.

Manning's lead defense counsel, civilian attorney David Coombs, didn't immediately return a call Friday evening seeking comment on the decision.

Defense lawyers say Manning was clearly a troubled young soldier whom the Army should never have deployed to Iraq or given access to classified material while he was stationed there from late 2009 to mid-2010.

At a preliminary hearing in December, military prosecutors produced evidence that Manning downloaded and electronically transferred to WikiLeaks nearly half a million sensitive battlefield reports from Iraq and Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables, and video of a deadly 2007 Army helicopter attack that WikiLeaks shared with the world and dubbed "Collateral Murder."

Manning's lawyers countered that others had access to Manning's workplace computers. They say he was in emotional turmoil, partly because he was a gay soldier at a time when homosexuals were barred from serving openly in the U.S. armed forces.

The defense also claims Manning's apparent disregard for security rules during stateside training and his increasingly violent outbursts after deployment were red flags that should have prevented him from having access to classified material.

Manning's lawyers also contend that the material WikiLeaks published did little or no harm to national security.

In the December hearing at Fort Meade, Md., prosecutors also presented excerpts of online chats found on Manning's personal computer that allegedly document collaboration between him and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Federal prosecutors in northern Virginia are investigating Assange and others for allegedly facilitating the disclosures.

The Bradley Manning Support Group, which contends Manning heroically exposed war crimes, issued a statement calling his prosecution "fundamentally unjust."

"This administration owes all Americans an honest explanation for their extraordinary retaliation against Bradley Manning," said Jeff Paterson, one of the group's lead organizers.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

At least, that's how it looks heading into Saturday's presidential preference caucuses in the Silver State, the first contest in the West.

With the most recent polls putting the former Massachusetts governor up by at least 20 percentage points in the state over his nearest rival, former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Rep. Ron Paul and Rick Santorum trail far behind) there isn't much suspense about who will win. Santorum even decided to campaign elsewhere.

Four years ago, Nevada gave Romney his only victory in the early primary states and a resounding one at that. He won 51.1 percent of the votes of Republican caucus goers, a 37.4 percentage point advantage over Paul.

Nevada is, in part, such friendly territory for Romney because of its place in the Mormon Corridor, a group of states fanning out from Utah which, besides Nevada, include Arizona, Wyoming, Idaho and southern California with significant populations of Romney's fellow Mormons.

Mormons comprise nearly seven percent of Nevada's population, for instance. But they are expected to vote in disproportionate numbers at Saturday's caucuses where organization will be decisive. Mormons are expected to be about 25 percent of Saturday's caucus goers. Four years ago, Romney received about 95 percent of that vote.

Saturday's only Nevada caucuses drama is likely to be how many Mormons Paul can attract. Paul is hoping his strict constructionist approach view of the U.S. Constitution will appeal to Mormon voters who hold that founding document as essentially sacred, according to a Las Vegas Sun report by David McGrath Schwartz.

With Romney the odds-on favorite to become the first Mormon to be a major political party's presidential nominee, however, Paul's Nevada ambition may represent more the triumph of hope over practical political reality.

Meanwhile, two of Gingrich's biggest supporters, Las Vegas casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam, both of whom have given lavishly to a superPAC supporting the former speaker, haven't been able to turn Romney's Nevada tide.

And Nevada is expected to be only the start of a month highly favorable contests for the former Massachusetts governor. After Nevada comes Maine, Minnesota, Colorado, Michigan and Arizona, all states expected to add to Romney's momentum.

For Romney's rivalsl, especially Gingrich, it's March, with a number of Southern states holding primaries, when that may provide the next best chance to slow Romney down.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

• The Center City Jazz Festival is being started up by a Philadelphia musician, trombonist Ernest Stuart. It's being crowdfunded in large part through Kickstarter. David Adler reports more details here.
• RIP Jimmy "Junebug" Jackson, drummer with Jimmy Smith and D.C. hero.
• Ahmad Jamal interview at All About Jazz. Terell Stafford too.
• Jose James interview at The Revivalist.
• Chris Albertson has been posting some hip recordings lately — Bud Freeman, Howard McGhee, etc.
• A Michel Petrucciani documentary, which premiered at Cannes, is out.
• L.A. jazz clubs need more loud drunks, apparently.
• Pro Sonny Rollins, anti Kennedy Center Honors.
• "Jazz, Max Weber, and the Breakdown of the Protestant Ethic."
• Trombone Shorty is on this year's New Orleans Jazz Fest poster.
• The Jazz Bakery is getting a permanent home in Culver City, designed by Frank Gehry. Apparently, he is working pro bono.
• The Village Vanguard on Yelp. What people who don't revere the place think.
• Destination: Out has a guest post on low brass man Bill Lowe, from Taylor Ho Bynum.
• JazzWax spoke with vocalist/pianist Meredith d'Ambrosio, whose new recording has a rather powerful story behind it.
• The Jazz Session spoke with saxophonist Noah Kaplan and pianist Tom Wetmore.
• The Checkout spoke with Benny Golson.

Elsewhere at NPR Music:

• Bill Frisell does John Lennon: a Tiny Desk Concert.
• Paul McCartney does standards: a First Listen.
• Arturo Sandoval at KPLU/Jazz24.
• Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz this week features the Clark Terry episode.
• JazzSet this week features Steve Wilson doing Charlie Parker with Strings.
• ICYMI: Radio obituary for John Levy.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Hardly.

Some might find it rich even to raise the question, but many NPR listeners have, and it is journalistically and intellectually a valid question.

According to tax returns that Romney released last week under pressure from opponents in the Republican presidential primaries, he paid what appears to be a low rate for 2010 of 13.9 percent in federal taxes on adjusted gross income of $21.7 million. His campaign also released his estimated income for 2011 and projected that the average rate over the two years would come to a slightly higher 14.5 percent. That is an uncertain number, however, and is still extraordinarily low by the standards of the nation's progressive income tax scheme. In that scheme, the wealthy supposedly pay the highest rates.

But many listeners wrote to complain that reports on Romney's tax returns by Tamara Keith on Morning Edition and All Things Considered were, if not biased against the wealthy, at least ill-informed and lacking the context that explains how he came to have the low rates. More than half of Romney's income comes from investments, which Congress purposefully taxes at a low rate. They do so on the grounds that this will encourage more investment, as well as compensate for what arguably is double taxation on some investment income. Keith's reports noted that most of Romney's income was taxed low because it came from investments, but some listeners and conservative advocacy groups felt that she and most of the mainstream media failed to explain the justification.

They are right.....to a point. NPR is obligated to provide context and explanation, especially for subjects that are controversial or that might be unfamiliar to many in its audience, including the details of tax policy, for example. But it's also important that the context is itself fair and balanced; the explanation should not be skewed to one side of an argument. Full context requires additional historical, moral and economic analysis if any of this background is to be included in straight news stories and still be fair—that is to say, not be biased in favor of Romney's low tax rates.

Omitting the full analysis, in other words, and simply labeling the rate in news stories as "low" is fair even if it is not complete.

Elsewhere in its coverage, however, NPR did provide some of the context that letter-writers said was missing. It did so online, and, in anticipation of Romney's returns, All Things Considered did a two-way conversation between host Audie Cornish and NPR reporter John Ydistie on capital gains rates.

It was also fair to focus only on federal taxes, even though Romney surely paid state and local taxes, too, as some listeners noted. Those are lesser taxes and vary geographically, making it difficult to make comparisons nationally. Also, Romney didn't release his state and local tax information.

None of this is to suggest that Romney did anything illegal or questionable. No NPR stories made such a suggestion.

Lets work our way through the arguments. Listener Rick Walsh, of Boca Raton, FL, summed up many of the complaining emails in this very well-reasoned letter:

ATC's story on Jan 24th regarding Mitt Romney's tax return was very incomplete and misleading. The story utterly fails to note that any dividends upon which Romney pays 15% Federal tax have already been taxed at the Corporate level at 35%. In effect Romney is paying more net taxes due to this double taxation.

If you want to advance the agenda that the 15% double taxation of dividends is too low, then fine — but it is unfair, and frankly economically illiterate — to fail to report all the facts about how Corporate taxes and dividends work — and to point out fairly and accurately that the dividend payment has been taxed previously.

ATC should endeavor to provide a complete understanding of the issue, rather than the same breathless ignorance over the low rate (again, which is NOT a low net rate) that I hear and read all day long in the media.

Failing to do so, and joining the mass of ignorance not only misinforms on the facts, it builds bad faith in the government since it sounds like corruption — when in fact it is not unreasonable at all to have a 15% rate AFTER the 35% corporate tax has already been paid.

I don't want to make this a media bias issue, since the real issue is the evident economic illiteracy of the reporting staff, but I don't recall John Kerry's dividend income and effective tax rate being so closely scrutinized in 2004.

On one level, Walsh is correct. Of Romney's $21.7 million in reported 2010 income, $12.6 million was taxed at the capital gains rate, which is a maximum of 15%. Of this money, according to his campaign, $5.4 million—or roughly a quarter of his total income—was mostly in qualified dividends, stock sales and other gains from the profits of companies. The companies may have already paid taxes on these profits, reducing the after-tax profits to be distributed to investors and giving rise to the argument of double taxation. The maximum corporate tax rate is 35 percent.

Putting the two tax rates together, John Berlau and Trey Kovacs, of the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, estimated in an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal last week that the total effective tax rate on income from investing in corporations is as much as 44.75 percent. This compares to a top rate on salary income of 35 percent, which is applied to wages of more than $379,150. This suggests that Romney in fact could have paid a high effective tax rate.

But this context is itself incomplete. First, numerous studies over the years have shown that few companies pay the maximum 35% corporate rate. According to a recent study of 280 corporations by the non-partisan Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy—both of whom advocate for middle- and low-income tax payers and tax transparency—the three-year effective tax rate of the group averaged 17.3 percent. Some large corporations manage some years to pay no corporate taxes at all.

The second issue has to do with the concept of double taxation itself — a concept that is highly disputed. For example, almost all of us who earn salaries are hit by double taxation. Our employers match our payroll taxes. Most economists agree that this "employer half" is effectively subtracted by companies from the wages they pay us, in effectively the same way that corporate taxes are subtracted from the profits distributed to investors. Additionally, it is not clear that corporate tax costs are passed on to investors anyway, and might instead be paid by employees (through reduced wages) and by consumers (through higher prices).

This debate over corporate tax "incidence" has divided economists for years and will surely do so for years more. This suggests that there is nothing conceptually special, galling or even agreed-upon about double taxation paid by corporate investors.

Almost all of Romney's investments in companies, moreover, were not directly in the companies themselves but in funds. It is the funds that are the direct investors in the companies. A "pass-through" concept links the fund investors and the companies, but this concept becomes ever more tenuous in the modern financial world of hedge funds and derivatives.

In Romney's particular tax case, there is more still to consider. Much more. Until now, we have been exploring the quarter of his income that is indisputably capital gains. Another nearly 30 percent of his income—$7.4 million—was in so-called "carried interest," according to Romney campaign chief counsel Benjamin Ginsberg in a conference call with reporters. Carried interest is taxed like a capital gain but is a very different type of income altogether. It has almost no ties to corporate profits and thus is not subject to a double-taxation claim.

Almost all this income continues to come from Romney's past interest in Bain Capital, a private equity firm he founded. Carried interest is considered by many economists to be conceptually more like a commission because it is earned by private equity managers from the investments made by their firm even if they don't invest their own money. Additionally, a core strategy of private equity firms is to borrow against the target company in which they are investing precisely so that the interest on the loans reduces corporate taxes to as low as zero. Perversely, in other words, instead of there being a double taxation claim, it can be argued that firms such as Bain borrow, take risks and grow at the expense of other taxpayers.

None of this is secret. Congress repeatedly has made a value judgment in devising the tax structure and rates that have benefited Romney. Congress—both parties, at different times—voted to benefit investors and financiers with lower tax rates for investments than those paid on wages on the grounds that this would help stimulate more investment and, in turn, the economy.

Romney benefited from a host of other deductions, such as for charitable giving, and legal maneuvers, such as in the establishing of trusts and offshore investments. Because of these deductions, his total real income was surely much more than the reported $21.7 million in "adjusted gross income."

You must decide for yourself whether you agree with the policy rationale for taxation on business investments and if it should apply in all the ways it does now. President Barack Obama and many Democrats have proposed reversing the benefit for carried interest. Newt Gingrich goes in the other direction and proposes doing away with the capital gains tax. Romney himself has proposed keeping it at current levels for high earners, but eliminating taxes on dividends and capital gains for households that earn less than $200,00 a year.

Capital gains tax is long enshrined. Until 1921, the rate was equal to that on wages, according to Roberton Williams, senior fellow at the authoritative and non-partisan Tax Policy Center. The argument that a high capital gains tax was counter-productive prevailed after the war, and it was cut to as low as 13 percent, he said. Beginning with the Great Depression it mostly fluctuated, though during four years under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, wages and capital gains were again taxed the same—28 percent. The current rate was passed by Congress in 2003.

This history suggests that the current rates and structures are not engraved in stone, or even proven in their effectiveness. Economists are divided on what is the optimal rate that encourages investments, jobs and economic growth, plus maximizes tax income.

Then there is the moral argument. If tax levels are not seen by most Americans as fair, they lose their legitimacy, which is an existential threat to the nation itself. A democracy is held together by more than its rules. People must believe in the tax structure, and its fairness for all.

Enter the so-called Buffett Rule proposed by President Obama. The rule would impose a minimum tax rate of 30 percent on the highest income earners in the United States, no matter how the money is earned. The rule is named after legendary Warren Buffett who has complained that he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary.

You will decide for yourself what is moral and fair, and what you think the collective ethos of the nation is. My concern and that of NPR is what is fair in the reporting on Romney and the broader tax issues. Should stories be framed in the context of progressive total tax payments, of economic stimulus, of double taxation, of finance loopholes, of the lesser value of work, of the historical fluctuations or the division among economists? All these questions reflect elements of truth and are legitimate.

But one thing is clear to me. To frame a news story or analysis only in the context of double taxation would be incomplete and misleading. The rate Romney paid is what it is. The justifications are a separate argument best left to a separate story that explores these many angles.

I end with Shirish Date, the lead editor on Romney's tax coverage. I asked him to explain the editorial decisions until now. He wrote:

What we wanted to show in these pieces was how much income Romney had, and how much he paid in taxes, against the yardsticks of his top GOP primary opponent and the typical American taxpayer. These are political measures, which are appropriate for political stories such as these.

True, there are a number of related discussions that we didn't enter into. Maybe these are good places to explore in the coming weeks.

Back to you.

Stephannie Stokes contributed to this post.

More from the Ombudsman:

Santorum, Race and the Limits of Journalistic Fairness

To Catch A Lie: Political Reporting's Dilemma

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

The tensions were heightened even further by Prince William's arrival to the islands on Thursday. While England insists the heir to the throne's trip is routine, Argentina's foreign minister said it was akin to the arrival of a conquistador. The government also viewed the closing in of one of Britain's most advanced war ships as a move of aggression.

The AP explains:

"Britain and Argentina have been trading barbs in the run-up to the 30th anniversary of Argentina's April 1982 invasion. The 10-week war that followed ended in British victory and killed 650 Argentine troops, more than 250 British personnel and three islanders. ...

"Last month, Argentina persuaded Brazil, Uruguay and Chile to join a Mercosur trade group resolution to turn away any ship flying the Falklands' flag — which depicts a sheep and a ship along with the United Kingdom's red, white and blue Union Jack.

"That action prompted British Prime Minister David Cameron to accuse Argentine President Cristina Fernandez of having 'colonialist' aims on an island population that wants to remain a British dependency. She accused Cameron of 'mediocrity bordering on stupidity.'"

La Nacion, one of Argentina's largest newspapers, reports that Argentineans received Prince Williams' visit with protests in front of the British Embassy in Buenos Aires.

The protesters chanted that they wanted the British out of the Malvinas, as Argentina calls the Falklands, and they wanted the U.S. out of Latin America. They also burned the Union Jack.

The BBC reports from Port Stanley that most islanders want to stay under British rule. But because of Argentina's democratization since the last invasion, they're not really worried about another one:

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

The NFL estimates that hosting the country's premier sporting event will give the local economy a $300-500 million jolt.

Economist Victor Matheson of the College of Holy Cross doesn't buy it.

In today's podcast, co-hosted from Indianapolis by NPR's Mike Pesca, Matheson presents the case against hosting the Super Bowl.

He argues hosting the Super Bowl pushes out the economic activities that occur on normal, non-Super Bowl hosting weekends. No conventions are held. Museums are closed. Local residents do not come downtown simply because it's too crowded.

What's more, Matheson says, the majority of the money that's being shelled out by out-of-towners does not even stay in the city. It flows to the big, national hotel companies and restaurant chains.

"More money than average is being spent in hotels and restaurants, but is then immediately leaving town...you have lots of dollars changing hands but it's really money being sucked out of people's hands and disappearing, rather than build local economy or repay a big stadium subsidy."

Subscribe to the podcast. Music: Johnny Pearson's "Heavy Action" and Faith Hill's "Waiting For Sunday Night." Find us: Twitter/ Facebook/ Spotify.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Over 150 plaintiffs — led by a the Public Employees’ Retirement System of Mississippi — allege that Goldman Sachs didn’t properly evaluate loans it bought from New Century Financial Corp. in 2005, which it then packaged into mortgage-backed securities in 2006.

The suit also alleges that New Century didn’t follow its own mortgage underwriting standards when making the loans, according to the decision issued Thursday by Judge Harold Baer, Jr., though the company is not named as a defendant in the suit. Goldman’s alleged negligence arises from its failure to properly vet the loans and the inaccurate information about the quality of the loans investors say they received as a result.

This decision paves the way for the case to move into discovery and possible trial.

“That’s what firms like Goldman get really nervous about,” said Andrew Stoltmann, a Chicago-based attorney who has been working for several years on behalf of individuals and funds that claim they were deceived into buying mortgage bonds that were marketed as safe. “The last thing you want is a class action lawyer sniffing through the documents that a bank or brokerage firm might have.”

Moreover, “other judges trying to decide motions relating Goldman Sachs might rely on similar analysis,” Stoltmann said.

Class action certification is often the most difficult hurdle for class action cases and is therefore a significant step for the plaintiffs. Goldman had argued that each investor should have to file individual lawsuits against the bank, but Judge Baer ruled against that motion.

A spokesman for Goldman Sachs declined to comment.

In 2010, the bank paid $550 million to settle charges filed by Securities and Exchange Commission over a mortgage debt investment the bank sold to investors.

The move comes less than 24 hours after an appeals court dissolved a preliminary injunction that had required the city to keep paying rents until a legal challenge was resolved.

Karen Ruth said she and her son have been receiving an Advantage housing voucher for just over a year. "I have nowhere to go if they stop paying for me and my son to live here,” said Ruth, who currently lives in a private apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Ruth said she is legally blind and receives a disability check that's less than $1500 a month. Her monthly rent is $1375. Ruth pays $305 and the city covers the rest. The single mother said she's worried about ending up back in a homeless shelter, where they lived for 10 months before getting the housing voucher.

In a statement, Department of Homeless Services Commissioner Seth Diamond wrote "The city taxpayers have borne alone the extraordinary cost of this program since the withdrawal of state and federal funding almost a year ago." According to the city's law department, Homeless Services has spent $114 million on rental payments since June.

Homeless advocates have argued that shelter stays are more expensive. They predict many families will end up homeless again. Mary Brosnahan, with the Coalition for the Homeless, said ending rental payments puts thousands at risk of eviction in the middle of the winter at a time when shelters are already overcrowded. "More than 41,000 New Yorkers are homeless, including 17,000 children," she wrote in a statement.

Homeless advocates said that landlords that rent to tenants in the Advantage program have raised concerns. Landlords are angry that they might not get full rental payments.  The legal challenge over the housing voucher began last spring when Legal Aid sued to stop the city from ending the Advantage program. Attorneys argued that people would not have agreed to leave shelter for apartments they could not afford had the city not guaranteed rental assistance for up to two years.

 The city argued that the housing program was a social service benefit subject to funding changes.

 In September, a lower court ruled in the city's favor. Legal Aid appealed and a hearing is still scheduled for Thursday.

There's a tradition in many New York City jazz clubs: Monday nights are reserved for big bands. The Village Vanguard, the most storied of clubs, has observed this practice since 1966, when a nascent large ensemble called together by trumpeter Thad Jones and drummer Mel Lewis was booked for three Mondays in February. Now called the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, the Grammy-winning 16-piece band upholds Jones and Lewis' precepts of swinging boldly and arranging deftly to a sold-out crowd weekly.

NPR Music and WBGO will feature the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra on its home turf, in a live radio broadcast and online video webcast Monday, Feb. 13 at 9 p.m. ET on this page. An on-demand recording will be available online the following day. NPR Music and WBGO have our own tradition of broadcasting monthly from the legendary club; this marks the 50th concert in the npr.org/villagevanguard series.

Copyright 2012 WBGO-FM. To see more, visit http://www.wbgo.org.

Go back with me now to Idol B.T. (Before Tyler). What was rock like on the show then? Not much like what he does.

True, Aerosmith's songs make regular appearances in the annual vocal battle. Michael Johns brought his full Aussie throat to "Dream On" in season 7, and Danny Gokey eviscerated it in Season 8. Adam Lambert took a ride through "Cryin'" that same year. But the band's Idol presence is mostly defined through performances of its 1998 ballad "I Don't Want To Miss a Thing," written by the Top 40 doyenne Diane Warren and largely considered the band's least "rock" song.

Successful rockers on Idol have mostly veered toward this softer edge, where the elegantly blow-dried Jon Bon Jovi rubs shoulders with the colorfully congenial Elton John. This is rock as pop — not confrontational noise made by iconoclasts, but steroidally enhanced grand melodic gestures crafted by songwriters who could have worked at the Brill Building. Fan favorites Chris Daughtry and David Cook added earnestness to the mix, borrowed from contemporary Christian worship music and post-Pearl Jam scrunge. Adam Lambert played hard with the formula. In general, though, Idol rock is the opposite of prime Aerosmith, which is raunchy and excessive, not something your mother would like.

During this season's audition rounds, the million kisses Tyler received from hyperventilating women of all ages made clear that moms and even grandmas have thoroughly rejected the old rock-pop split that once gave Aerosmith some of its oomph. So has Tyler, who's always been game to violate new boundaries — he's the guy who helped invent rock-rap, remember? Embracing his Idol role as the King of Rock, he's not only revived his own career yet again; he's expanding (or correcting, depending on your view of what rock should be) the show's very definition of the music and lifestyle to which he's been devoted for 40-plus years.

Tyler's perfect fit on Idol is uniquely impressive. But one of the program's key mandates — make new stars, but also revitalize the reputations of older ones — made it happen. Before Idol, Paula Abdul was a mid-level dance pop ingénue who'd been absent from the spotlight for a decade; no average pop fan knew who Randy Jackson was. Both now have reputations that loom larger in pop music history than they did during the bulk of their music careers. (Abdul's possibly forced departure from former Idol honcho Simon Cowell's X Factor this week, along with her younger peer Nicole Scherzinger, suggests that Idol's power to make us care about what was once marginal can't be bottled.)

Tyler's benchmate Jennifer Lopez, who has occasionally been one of celebrity culture's most reviled inhabitants, is getting similar love now. Her hit of last year, "On the Floor," benefited from the internationalist flair of RedOne's production, but people listened, initially, because of the platform Idol had granted her.

One of Idol's most powerful strategies has been to reimagine pop within a closed world that exists adjacent to actual history, but not beholden to it. Here, Aerosmith matters more than the Rolling Stones, and Stevie Wonder's minor 1980 ballad "Lately" has as much impact as his career-defining 1972 monster "Superstition." Sometimes Idol's parallel pop universe skews history in cool ways: the show has helped spur a Queen revival and maybe pay some of Leonard Cohen's bills by joining in the odd 21^st century fetishization of "Hallelujah." It has, however, also greatly elevated the status of post-Genesis Phil Collins.

The point is, it's just as important to track Idol for its effect on established artists' careers as for its ability to birth new ones. Madonna agrees. She chose to tease her new video for "Gimme All Your Luvin'" on Thursday's episode, I'm sure, because she knew it would reach not only younger fans who would find it the next day on YouTube anyway, but those grandmas and moms (and dads and uncles) who've learned from the show that they don't have to age out of active music fandom.

Madonna's song turns out to be all about imagining a world where she doesn't have to age, where her younger rivals support her with a cheerleader chant and the fact that she's copping a punky ingenue's style doesn't matter, since Madge proves, right in the second verse, that Avril stole her vibe from "Lucky Star" anyway. "Let's forget about time, and dance the night away," Madonna croons to an imagined conquest that is really her audience. And why shouldn't people try that? Idol's been teaching them how for more than a decade.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

The Nasdaq Composite rose to an 11-year high, while the Dow hit its highest reading in almost four years. The S&P gained 1.4 percent, marking its best start to a new year since 1987.

Here's how one obviously giddy investor framed it for Bloomberg:

"'Spectacular,' Ron Florance, managing director of investment strategy for Wells Fargo Private Bank, said in a telephone interview from Phoenix. His firm manages $169 billion. 'It's a very, very strong jobs number. It shows that companies have confidence that they see global demand growth through their products and services. That will support risk assets.'"

And here's how a more sober economist put it to The Wall Street Journal:

"'The data seem to show the economy is mending a bit faster than it was a year or two years ago,' said David Resler, chief economic adviser for Nomura Securities."

CNN Money works through the numbers:

"The rally pushed pushed the Dow, up more than 5% in 2012, to its highest level since May 2008. The Nasdaq, up more than 11% for the year, climbed to its highest level since December 2000. The S&P 500 has gained almost 7% this year, and finished at a six-month high."

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

The Republican primaries have showcased the GOP’s tortured stance on this issue. From Newt Gingrich’s plan to set up countless local immigration boards to Romney’s claim that illegal immigrants might just “self-deport” and save us all the trouble, Republican candidates have found it hard to appeal to Latinos when their conservative base wants a Berlin Wall on the Mexican border and 10 million people deported.

I used to be one of those people. It used to bother me that some foreigners came here, never bothered to learn English or to assimilate and then proceeded to use our public services for free.

That still bothers me, to be honest.

But Republicans have to be practical. There’d be no support for deportation after one shot of grandma being hauled off a police car ran in The New York Times.

If we want to at least be competitive for the Latino vote, it makes more sense to highlight immigrants’ contributions. Countless small businesses are immigrant-owned. And millions of illegal immigrants have paid income tax according to the IRS. The GOP should talk more about that kind of entrepreneurship and acknowledge illegal immigrants who manage to hold down jobs and contribute to Uncle Sam.

We should also talk more about what we can learn from immigrants, both legal and not. In Europe, for instance, a lot of kids grow up speaking both English and their native languages. American kids, on the other hand, take language classes but are almost never bilingual. Our fixation on English has made our kids less competitive in the global market. That’s a failure of the Education Department – and a potential election issue.

In short, Republicans should stop attacking the “tired, poor, huddled masses” and focus on immigration reform.

I know someone who swam the Rio Grande naked at age 12 to make it to Texas, BTW. He went on to be a Fulbright scholar.

When a team of foreign journalists entered the eastern Damascus suburb of Saqba on Jan. 27, they were greeted by a sight that did not bode well for the Syrian regime.

Rebel fighters from the so-called Free Syrian Army were protecting about 5,000 demonstrators calling for the fall of President Bashar Assad. One was hoisted onto the shoulders of the protesters. Victory, it seemed, was approaching. Several other neighborhoods nearby saw rebels set up checkpoints and essentially take control.

Four days later, however, GlobalPost returned to the area and encountered a very different scene.

The Syrian army had returned.

Turning off the Damascus highway east of the city, we were stopped by several soldiers manning a checkpoint of sorts. Our driver said we were foreign journalists. He looked in and waved us on. The same incident happened twice more. The soldiers had a yellow plastic ribbon tied to their jackets that clearly indicated they were on the side of the regime.

There was little sign of life other than a line of people waiting for bread outside a bakery. Parked next to them were an ambulance, a military jeep and an armored vehicle. Two men stared with open mouths as a truck laden with gas canisters entered the area, surprised they would now finally have gas with which to cook.

We continued on in search of Municipal Square, where the anti-regime protesters had gathered with such hope only days before.

When we arrived, we found a scene of devastation. Whole sides of homes had caved in, exposing the everyday household items inside. An electricity pole was smashed in half close to the ground, splinters standing vertical, high into the air. Only a tank shell could have caused such damage. Local men held up large shell casings for us to see.

"They arrived Saturday and blew us away," said one man.

We were taken to a mosque just off the square. A gaping hole had been blasted in the side of the mosque's minaret. I asked if the rebels had been inside.

"There was no one there — if they [the rebels] were inside they would have been at the top," said one man. The hole was about halfway down the minaret.

Government Troops Back In Control

A man carrying a bag of fruit whistled to get my attention and gestured for me to follow him. I hesitated, more concerned with the crowds of men gathering around us. I warned them to disperse. Military vehicles were close by.

Machine-gun fire crackled in the distance. It was cold. Several angry men asked if we were from Russia, one of a dwindling number of countries that still support the Assad government.

The streets were almost empty. A carpet of glass, rubble and metal covered the wet concrete. Fear gripped me — the area was clearly under government control once more, and there may have been snipers looking out for any remnants of the rebels.

We walked briskly, one by one, down a side street and through narrow passages dividing houses. We came to a clearing and the man with us called to another now close by.

"Do you have the keys?" he asked the second man. He then opened a large metal door that appeared to me to be the entrance to a hospital. It was, in fact, a school, long closed down. In the corner were a half-dozen pine trees. Under them was an uneven lump on the ground, covered in plastic. Another man joined us and began to peel back the plastic sheeting.

It was difficult to look at the disfigured, swollen faces. One body had its eyes missing. Another was blackened.

"They killed him as he was lighting a fire in his house. Then they threw him into it," said one of our guides.

"There are six men here; they were all killed in the last few days," said another.

"We are hiding them here so that we can bury them ourselves. If we go to a hospital [the security] will take them and we won't even get a burial. They already took one body," he added, anger deep in his voice.

There was no real smell — it was too cold. Their hands were bound, as is tradition with the dead here in order to avoid the effect of rigor mortis. Photos were taken and questions asked. There were several other sites where locals were holding their dead relatives in a state of limbo, they said.

"People are burying their dead under their houses — there is nowhere else to take them," said one man. After about 10 minutes we left the communal grave. If the army or security found us we were likely to be shot too. We were now witnesses to the regime's death squads.

We headed back in the direction of the square and our waiting car. On the way we walked over glass and mangled metal, shops without window fronts, televisions exposed to the rain. There were no people in these destroyed homes.

Increasing Bitterness

We jumped back into the car where our driver was waiting for us.

"Who will pay for all of this?" asked a young man passing by in his car, pointing at the destroyed buildings around us. "We will pay. I hate the Free Army [the rebel forces] — they brought death and destruction to our homes."

"When the [Syrian government] army comes and they see people on the streets with guns and shooting of course they will try to kill them. They think this is their job," he added.

Through the square, a government convoy rolled by, made up of multipurpose vehicles painted blue to give the impression they were police, as opposed to military. In a 32-seater bus sat dozens of soldiers, guns sitting on their laps. The young man crouched next to the car out of their view.

On the way out of the town, I spotted the green of the Free Syria flag painted on a wall. We stopped at each checkpoint, and at one a soldier opened the glove compartment of the car. But he let us go. The soldier guarding the next checkpoint was Alawite, said our driver, able to tell from his accent. Alawite is a minority Shiite sect in Syria to which the ruling elites belong.

"Come over here and see what the fighters did here," the Alawite soldier urged us. We declined, keen to get out of this fresh and bloody war zone. The bizarreness of returning to the center of Damascus, where life continued in apparent normalcy, was astounding.

The men I met in Saqba were not freedom fighters, and they were not political. But the death and violence brought on by Syria's now civil conflict have tied them up in a struggle between life and death. For them to even be seen talking to journalists would in all likelihood lead them to a tortuous end. The other districts east of the capital, which were celebrated as new centers free from Assad last week, have also now fallen.

With the withdrawal of the Arab League monitors and most foreign journalists, Syrians are again on their own. Tanks and checkpoints have returned to several other towns around the capital. Locals fear the army is gearing up for more assaults, something it can now do uninterrupted and out of sight.

Copyright 2012 GlobalPost. To see more, visit .