Talk:Bill Bradley

Very solid work on taxes

I read Bill Bradley's sports autobiography LIFE ON THE RUN. And I also listened to most of one of his books about politics as a book-on-tape.

Bill's a cerebral guy. He likes people just fine, but he also likes having time on his own to think through issues in his own way and at his own pace. And regarding taxes, this absolutely played to strength. When he first ran for the Senate in '78, he really picked up on on the fact that people had deep objections to the way the income tax system was then working. Now a politician who was more of the backslapping variety may have just written this all off as, well, of course people are going to complain about taxes. But Bill really listened, and came up with the idea that people don't like the complications both because such are directly frustrating and also because of the nagging idea in the back of your mind that other people are getting out of their taxes while you are paying your fair share. And he moved toward the idea "less deductions, lower rates" [quote in doubt, Bill probably used different words, please see below]. It was not a blazingly original idea. Academic tax reformers had had the same idea for years. But Bill was among the forefront of elected officials, plus the fact that he had worked through this himself [plus reading, plus financial experience as a young professional athlete, please see below] gave him a lot of confidence in publicly proposing and publicly discussing this. Then there was the question, what about the deductions that have built up a political constituency over the years, that are kind of a vested part of the system, like the deduction for home mortgage interest? Bill and other Senate reformers came up with the idea of the "really sacred cows" [probably not Bill, probably another senator]. This is perhaps somewhat cynical, somewhat realistic, probably both, and we can argue how much of each. However, all this was in public view. With the voters in New Jersey, it was as if Bill was having a conversation in slow motion, and an honest, sincere conversation at that. The voters told him that they wanted him to find solutions, he looked sincerely, gave periodic progress reports, and continued to listen. There is indeed a good case for simplifying the system a whole bunch, maybe ten-fold, but also keeping the few deductions that people both like and are familiar with.

The result was the 1986 Tax Reform Act. A success, by any realistic standard. Some people think it's a failure because it didn't last forever and complications inevitably crept back. Of course they did! That's the overall cycle, periods of simplification and then longer periods when complications creep back in. It's only a failure if we give up on the overall cycle. Now in 2007, a good twenty years later, it might be time for another simplification, again keeping only the deductions that are working the best, this time perhaps adding the tuition and fees deduction to the list, along with perhaps a few others.

Would Bill Bradley have made a good president? I think he could have done the same type of thing with health care reform and I think successfully. However, a president also needs to do administrative tasks and make a number of small and medium decisions relatively quickly. Like so many areas, it's hard to find a person good at both.

Regarding the article itself, "less deductions, lower rates" [and again, this exact quote is in doubt, please see below] probably should be included as quote (which you can almost repeat as a mantra!), and maybe "really scared cows" [again, probably another senator]. The article mentions that Bill was sometimes perceived as aloof. Okay. But there's the whole other side to it, that he's thoughtful, and that he's a sincere listener. Not every politician is. FriendlyRiverOtter 07:20, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I am now not so sure about the quotes and I apologize. Bill said something very similar to less deductions, lower rates, but it may not have been exactly that. And really sacred cows may have been said by one of the other Senate tax reformers. Furthermore, I’m not sure how many levels the slow-motion conversation went, in particular, whether Bill brought back the idea of really sacred cows to his constituents.

I do think he did good work in taxes and played to his strength. And I do think there is indeed another side of the coin to the label aloof.

Now, you might be thinking, Oh, Come on, RiverOtter, if you’re going to include quotes, you’ve got to be sure that they are right. I agree. All I can say is that this is a learning experience for all of us. I acknowledge the sloppiness and the possible mistakes, and will endeaver to do better in the future. FriendlyRiverOtter 20:46, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Bill’s 1996 Book

The following is an excerpt from TIME PRESENT, TIME PAST: A MEMOIR, Bill Bradley, New York: published by Knopf, distributed by Random House, 1996, page 92-93.

“When I first started playing professional basketball, my tax attorney told me that I had to make a decision about how much I wanted to pay in taxes. At age twenty-three, I found that hard to believe. How could I decide how much to pay in taxes? He said that I could take my pay as salary, or defer all or part of it, or take it as property, or take it as a long-term consulting contract, or take it as employer-paid life-insurance and pension plans, or take it as payment to my own corporation, or take it . . .

““I just want to play basketball and be paid well,” I said.

““It’s not so simple,” he said.

““Taxes,” observed Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., “are what we pay for civilized society.” Yet, ever since I read articles by the economist Milton Friedman and Harvard law professor Stanley Surrey in the mid-1970s, I believed that the income-tax system was inequitable and in need of fundamental restructuring. After I was in the Senate less than a year, I realized that most Americans paid at higher tax rates than necessary so that a much smaller group of Americans could take advantage of loopholes. These loopholes (credits, exclusions, and deductions) for the few distorted the market’s role of allocating resources, and this meant that taxpayers with the same income paid varying amounts of taxes, depending on their personal probity or the acumen of their accountants.

“In the early 1980s, a poll by Daniel Yankelovitch asked, “If you abide by the rules, will you get ahead in America?” An astonishing 81 percent of Americans said no. While many breaches of the social contract no doubt contributed to that answer, certainly one of them stemmed from the set of rules that affects a hundred million taxpayers annually—the tax system. As long as the code was so complicated that only experts could understand it, as long as almost as much money was excluded from tax collection as was collected (and for reasons that were never examined), and as long as the system produced widely disparate effects on similarly situated taxpayers, many Americans would remain convinced that you were a sucker if you played by the rules.

“After a few years on the Finance Committee, I floated my version of basic tax reform—lowering tax rates and eliminating loopholes. Russell Long, the king of the tax loophole, told me I was “barking up the wrong tree.” He would fight me at every step of the way. Journalists laughed at me. Other senators ignored me. I wrote a book called The Fair Tax about my ideas, and I tried to sell tax reform to Walter Mondale when he was running for president in 1984. Though he rejected my proposals initially, the Republicans thought he might take them up, so they called for a study of tax reform themselves. The study was adopted by the Reagan administration as a position partly out of fear that, by advocating the fair tax, Democrats would reassert control over the issue of cutting tax rates for the first time since the administration of John Kennedy.

“In his second term, Ronald Reagan proposed a version of the fair tax. It was known as the Tax Reform bill of 1986. I had opposed simply cutting tax rates in 1981 as an act that would increase the deficit, but I supported cutting rates if the cuts were paid for by eliminating loopholes. That way the deficit would not increase. I became the president’s strongest ally in Congress, selling the idea to Dan Rostenkowski, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and to Republican Senator Bob Packwood, who was by then the chairman of Finance. Both Rostenkowski and Packwood were used to the loophole habit, but when they went on the wagon they became tenacious advocates of lower rates and fewer loopholes.”

---

So, yes, it looks like I was mistaken about the words Bill used to express this idea. FriendlyRiverOtter 08:33, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Count

I've heard Bradley credited with a Final Four record for points/game, but can't find what it was. Anybody know? Include it? Trekphiler 08:56, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

He scored 58 in the consolation game of the '65 tournement being named MVP despite not being in the final game where UCLA beat Michigan.

Possible copyvio?

The style in which the Oxford University section is written--very literary tone, little Wikification, and other telltale signs--smacks of copyvio. Perhaps the most obvious sign is the following passage: "He and Smith squeezed onto a Vespa motorbike, large men both, ridiculous figures with knees bent to their chests. Gown flapping behind him, Bradley clowned and waved to passersby." The mysterious "Smith" is never before referred to in the article. The most logical explanation for this is that this was an unmodified excerpt cut-and-pasted in midstream. A google search turns up nothing but Wikipedia results. For lack of definitive evidence, I will leave it in the article for now. Does anyone know the story behind this? StarryEyes 13:15, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

This is obviously either copied from another source or original research, and as such I have no problem deleting the entire section. Wikipedia is not the place to print chapters of your unpublished book.

Rewrite!

This article needs a complete rewrite. It's currently an overwritten, unsourced, fluffy narrative of his life, and doesn't even resemble an encyclopedic entry.

I think I eliminated a lot of the most unencyclopedic writing, but the tone of the article still feels a little off to me. Also, there are no sources whatsoever.

Free Throw Count

What is the 57 consecutive made free throws refering too? It has been surpassed many times in professional basketball, as opposed to what the article says. 71.236.169.89 09:41, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Apparently, this refers to a record at the time (the early 1960's). I'm not familiar with college records, but in the early 1960's Bill Sharman still held the professional records of 55 in a row during the regular season (1956) and 56 in a row during the playoffs (still a record in that context). Sharman's 55 consecutive regular season free throws remained a record until Rick Barry broke it with 60 in a row in 1976. Of course, the NBA record for consecutive free throws has evolved upwards and now stands at 97. Myasuda 20:56, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Cornbread, MO

Where the heck is Cornbread, MO? I can't find it in Google Maps or Mapquest. But it is making me hungry.

religion needs to be fixed

please fix his religion from 'kkk' to Presbyterian (dang wiki-terrorism)

Roger3b 05:40, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Can we give some of Bill’s thinking behind his political views?

We do it on taxes, and we do a pretty good job at it. We also do it with the 1981 budget stating that he was one of only three Senators to vote for Reagan’s spending cuts, but against his tax cuts. But we don’t really do it for any other issues (at least not that I can see).

For example, why did Bill initially support the Contras in Nicaragua and then change his position? And if we really want to do grad level work—and why not! I mean, let’s make our article as good as we can—knowing what we now know about the Cold War in hindsight, what should we have known in the 1980s?

Okay, so Bill favored vouchers for private schools and then reversed this position during his run for the presidency in 2000. That sounds like political expediency to me. But, I would like to know his thinking behind it.

And one issue we haven’t mentioned, I think Bill was a big supporter of debt relief for third world nations, and I for one would like to know some of the specifics of this. FriendlyRiverOtter 23:13, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

WP:FOOD Tagging

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GA stuff

I won't do a review but some points: the lead needs to be expanded to properly summarize the article and there are too many short and choppy paragraphs that could be combined. Hekerui (talk) 09:25, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Bill Bradley/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Initial Review

(Reviewed revision)

Hello. This is a very nice article, but still needs a bit of improvement to become a good article. Below is a list of what I feel is missing based on the criteria.

• The lead of the article is very short given the length of the subject. You should expand it to be at least three paragraphs and better summarize his entire life. See WP:Lead for pointers.

 Done

*The Image File:McPheeBradley.JPG does not have a fair use rationale for using it on this article. I am not sure that one exists either. I beleive the use of this image would only be acceptable on an article about the book itself. See WP:F for more details.

 Done

*File:Billbradleytimemagazine.jpg has the same issue as above. The image likely is only acceptable on an article about the magazine itself. In any case, there is no fair use rationale for its use on this article.

 Done

• Overall the article is well written, but there are a few places the prose is a little winding and could be tightened up. For example:

**Bradley chose Princeton University—even though, as an Ivy League school, it could not offer an athletic scholarship—after backing out of a commitment to Duke University. Could be: After backing out of a commitment to Duke University, Bradley chose to attend Princeton University—even though, as an Ivy League school, it could not offer an athletic scholarship.

 Done

**During his high school years, Bradley maintained a maniacal practice schedule. Maniacle sounds a bit odd here unless you are quoting someone. How about "rigorous" instead?

 Done

**Bradley is an Eagle Scout and recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America. One sentance paragraps should be merged in somewhere else or expanded. See WP:Paragraph

 Done

**More than four decades after completing his college career, Bradley holds a number of Ivy League career records, including total and average points (1,253/29.83, respectively), and free throws made and attempted (409/468, 87.4%). This is not going to age very well. Keep in mind that in another twenty years this article will still be here. Maybe say something like, "As of 2009, Bradley still holds a number of Ivy League career records..."

 Done (I had previously thought the "more than four decades" wording was sufficiently broad that it wouldn't be stale every week or every year; then I just removed any ref to time. People can figure out how long ago 1965 was.)

**Harry S Truman should be Harry S. Truman

 Done

• • On the court, Bradley struggled in his rookie year before coming into his own in his second season, when he was moved from the guard position to his more natural forward slot. "Coming into his own" is slang and also vague. You should be more precise here in explaining exactly what happened, did he become more proficient in a certain area? Did he start getting along better at playing with his teammates? Etc. See WP:Slang

 Done

• • While he was a senator, Bradley walked the beaches from Cape May to Sandy Hook, a four-day, 127-mile trip each Labor Day weekend, to assess beach and ocean conditions and talk with constituents.[27][28] this seems out of place, should probably be moved back a pragraph or two and integrated with another paragraph.

**Although Gore was considered the party favorite,[29] Bradley did receive several high-profile endorsements. He was supported by senators Paul Wellstone,[34] Bob Kerrey, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan;[35] former senators John A. Durkin and Adlai Stevenson III; Governor John Kitzhaber; former governors Lowell Weicker (a former Republican),[36] Tony Earl, Ray Mabus, Brendan Byrne, Robert W. Scott, Neil Goldschmidt, Philip W. Noel, Kenneth M. Curtis, and Patrick Lucey; Representatives George Miller, Bill Lipinski, Pete Stark, Jerrold Nadler, Luis Gutiérrez, Anna Eshoo, Jim McDermott, and Diana DeGette; former Representatives Jim McNulty, Mary Rose Oakar, Michael J. Harrington, Andy Jacobs, and David Skaggs; former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich; former New York City mayor Ed Koch; former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker; filmmaker Spike Lee; San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano; Seattle Mayor Paul Schell; Harvard Professor Cornel West; feminist icon Betty Friedan; former Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox; and basketball stars Michael Jordan and Bradley's former Knicks teammate and close friend Phil Jackson.[37][38][39] This list is really execsive. Cut it down to five of the most important and either footnote the rest, or remove them.

 Done

• The "Personal" section seems to be out of place also. I would weave it into the rest of the article.

• Referncing is good overall, but there are a few places that need inline citations. See WP:FOOTNOTES for more info.
  • During his sophomore season, Bradley averaged 27.3 points and 12.2 rebounds a game while sinking 89.3 percent of his free throws. Among his greatest games was a 41-point effort in an 80-78 loss to heavily favored Michigan in the 1964 Holiday Festival (Bradley fouled out with his team leading 75-63), and a 58-point outburst against Wichita State in the 1965 NCAA tournament, which was a single-game tournament record. In total, Bradley scored 2,503 points at Princeton, averaging 30.2 points per game. A citation needs to placed at the end of each sentance that cite a statistic.

 Done - removed the paragraph (might be appropriate to add back later).

• • On the court, Bradley struggled in his rookie year before coming into his own in his second season, when he was moved from the guard position to his more natural forward slot. In 1969–70, he helped the Knicks win their first NBA championship, followed by a second in 1972–73. The second championship season was Bradley's best as a pro, and he made his only All-Star Game appearance that year. His first NBA title also made him the first player ever to win an Olympic gold medal, a European Champions Cup, and an NBA championship ring. This feat has only been matched by Manu Ginóbili. This needs a citation

 Done (reworded some; removed the uncited claim)

• • In the NBA, Bradley was not the major scoring threat he had been in college. Over ten years at small forward for the Knicks, "Dollar Bill", as he was nicknamed, scored a total of 9,217 points for an average of 12.4 points per game, with his best season being 16.1 points per game. this needs a citation

 Done

• • In 1976, he also became an author, with Life on the Run, which chronicled his experiences in the NBA and the people he met along the way. This needs a citation

 Done

• • He felt his time had been well-spent in "paying his dues". Needs a citation

**The article relies heavily on newspaper sources, which is ok, but you would get a much better picture and more details if you could find a book with a more comprehnsive look at his life. This is not such a problem, as I feel the sourcing meets the GA requirements, but it will be a definite needs to improve this if you intend to take this article for a featured review. *There is some problem with the reference formatting. Each web reference must include an access date. Ref #35 has a syntax problem.

• Regarding the access date, can you expand on this? The only web references I can see in the article do have an access date specified. There are a number of news references for which a URL is also provided, but they are not actually web references. They are printed news and magazine refs, with page numbers, for which URLs happened to be available so they are also included. In fact, the {{cite news}}-based references do have access dates, but that template does not display them.

  I see a few refs that do not have retrieved dates. 36, 38, & 49 (which is missing publisher and author also). The external links also need to have accessdates. I find it easiest to use a {{cite web}} template for that. —Charles Edward ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 23:22, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

 Done - sort of. The {{cite news}} template accepts the accessdate parameter but does not display it, presumably because it is a print source...even if it also contains a URL. I think the fact that a web reference is available today but might not be at some other time isn't sufficient reason to force an accessdate to display if it was originally a print source. I know of no discussion on this point but suspect it has been had since the template doesn't display it. Indeed, in the template's documentation for this parameter, it states "Full date when item was accessed, if it was found on line. This is not needed when the article is itself clearly dated. In such a case, accessdate, if used at all, should be commented out so as not to be visible to the ordinary reader."

As a further question on this point - can you expand on the accessdate request for external links? Specifically...an example of how this would be implemented? It's not something I've commonly seen...although of course I understand most articles aren't GA status.

If you are sourcing from newspapers, and have added the links afterwards, then that is acceptable. I was assuming you had use the web as the source, rather than the actual paper. If you are using the paper, and using cite news, than the access dates are not needed in those instances.

Typically I do use other sources rather than the web (technically still the web but library searches which access the print versions). The placement of URLs in these cases is for convenience so that people who do not have access to those resources (or don't know they have access) can still get to it if it's available online. In the unusual (for me, anyway) case that the web was the source but I didn't have other access to an original printed source, I default to the web template instead. Basically, if I didn't see it with my own eyes in either a PDF or a Lexis-Nexus type of database search, it's a {{cite web}}, otherwise it's a {{cite news}}.  Frank  |  talk  15:59, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I have also reviewed WP:EL and it appears that the requirment for accessdates on external links has been changed at some point in the last monthes - so I was mistaken on that point. The way in which you currently have them formatted is acceptable. Sorry for the confusion! —Charles Edward ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 15:53, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

• Some questions that should be awnsered by the article:
  • What year did he graduate from Princeton?

 Done

• • In the Senate, Bradley acquired a reputation for being somewhat aloof and was thought of as a "policy wonk",[21] specializing in complex reform initiatives. Somewhat aloof on what? Who called him a "polic wonk" and why? This is not made clear. "Somewhat" may also be a WP:Weasel word depending on its use here.
• On social issues, Bradley's record has been described as "reliably liberal". On economic issues, he was a "committed tax cutter" who supported Ronald Reagan's 1981 tax cuts. Who described him these ways? A certain newspaper? A certain person? A number of people? Supporters, Opponents?

 Done (Removed the paragraph completely; it did seem vague and didn't contribute to the article, at least not without further details.)

• There is not much information on his senate campaigns, really. Who did he run against, what was the campaign issues about?

Some extra wording on this has been added, but I agree it could eventually use more, and probably electoral history as well.

If you can fix up these issues the article should pass. I am placing the review on hold for one week for these improvements to made. Good luck! —Charles Edward ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 18:56, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

I am going to go ahead and pass this GA review now. You have brought it up to what I feel to be a minimum standard for a good article. There is still alot of information that could be added into this article, and it still needs alot of work to continue improving it. To take it to the next level, it will be important to focus on expanding the content primarily, and to a lesser degree cleaning up the prose for a better read and finding more comprehensive sources on his life. His political career could use the most expansion. Good job so far! —Charles Edward ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 23:15, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, and while I'm not necessarily going to jump right into it, I agree with your assessment of what would be a good future direction for the article.  Frank  |  talk  03:53, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Photo?

Does anyone think this photos really dated? It's in Black and White, and in the picture he looks like he's in his 30's or 40's, but now he is in his 70's. does anyone think the photo should change.

Photo?

Does anyone think this photos really dated? It's in Black and White, and in the picture he looks like he's in his 30's or 40's, but now he is in his 70's. does anyone think the photo should change.