POS: Politics/Opinion/Satire (& self-derision)

Faith

2011-11-28T18:37:00.000-05:00

Faith is totally bizarre. Faith means believing in something without having any evidence to support your belief, but its definition is not really what makes it bizarre. Faith is kind of the opposite of the philosophy called science. In science you believe only what you can prove. If you can't prove it, you doubt it and instead of calling it a 'law' you call it a 'theory'. You can disprove competing theories all you like but until that special theory is proven, you know your belief in it is not absolute and understand that it shouldn't be. As far as things go, laws are best, but theories are fine too, that is until a better one comes along in which case the old theory is dropped like a hot potato.

And then there is faith. If you find evidence to support your belief it ceases being a matter of faith. Faith is by necessity vague and uncertain, though those that have it often give it more substance than any scientific law. Technically speaking, this isn't rational, but faith isn't even remotely related to rationality.

Then there is this odd duality of faith.

If you blindly put faith in your fellow man, they call you naïve.

If you blindly put faith in God, a force that none of us has ever seen, heard or felt, they call you spiritual (or pious, devout or religious -- take your pick).

The sheer illogicality of these two attributions, and the enormity of the gap between them, is what I consider bizarre. How can this be?

The absence of concrete evidence of the existence of God (or gods if you prefer) means that there is also no evidence that this 'omnipotent force' has ever let anyone down. On the other hand, I'm going to suggest that every single one of us has been let down by their fellow man at least one significant time in our lives. That's all it takes. Even if you are a positive person and believe that given the choice of right and wrong people will overwhelmingly choose right, you still recognize the danger of placing faith in the generalized other. That is more negative than the universal perception of divine powers. And there lies the source of the naïve and spiritual labels. (Actually, faith in man is sufficiently derided that you'd raise fewer eyebrows by putting faith in your pet dog.)

Even with that explanation I still find it bizarre. I suppose that makes sense as I am an extremely rational person. Faith runs counter to just about everything I understand or hold dear -- it just isn't in me. That more than anything else is probably why I find it so bizarre.

Debt, Destructive Debt

2011-11-28T14:35:00.000-05:00

Initial reports are in and this weekend's Black Friday / Thanksgiving spending is up almost 10% over last year's holiday. On the surface this sounds like great news! Perhaps the economy is improving and a recession can be avoided.

Not so fast.

I'm ready to predict that at least 50% of that spending was made by people who are already in debt that they can't handle. Further, another 25% of the spending pushed families that had manageable debt or no debt at all into debt. In other words, virtually none of this consumption was advisable.

Why is debt-spending bad, especially in tough economic times? There are lots of reasons. Carrying a debt erodes or eliminates the ability of an economic unit (person, family or state) to handle crises. By casually increasing debt these people have placed themselves dangerously close to ruin (or bankruptcy). It will only take one piece of bad news to break the proverbial camel's back. A lost job. Heck, even a reduction in hours can spell disaster. A health crises could do it. Debt itself contributes to health problems! Debt means stress, stress leads to disease.

What happens when an economic unit reaches or crosses the breaking point? The typical response it to declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy is like a financial nuclear bomb strike to the economy. Sure, bankruptcy helps put the ruined economic unit in a position to recover, but every single person or agency that was owed money is forced to take a loss. The hit each takes depends on the size of the economic unit that failed. Those incurred loses can be large enough to lead to them becoming bankrupt themselves.

And therein lies the danger of bankruptcy: it is contagious. Bankruptcies resemble dominoes in that one falling can lead to hundreds (or even millions) of others falling. Bankruptcies are like nuclear reactions, they can achieve 'critical mass' where they become common enough to cause the system to produce an endless chain of bankruptcies. If that ever happened the economy wouldn't just flounder, it would fail outright. With nearly every government in the world (except China's) also carrying significant debt the ability of government to stimulate or rescue the economy is almost nil. The demand on the Welfare System would bankrupt governments. A country to go from being a G7 or G20 nation to resembling a third world nation in short order.

This all becomes possible because individuals cannot or will not behave responsibly. Further, those that choose to behave irresponsibly will not even take ownership of their own behaviour, they will place the blame on others. A refusal to say 'no' to luxuries we can't afford, an unquenchable desire to fulfill 'wants' rather than merely our 'needs' will be our undoing.

What about the banks and other credit-offering agencies? We are addicted to debt and they are our pushers. It's not just an analogy, it's the reality! If there is a record of your existence (like an e-mail address) and they can attach an address to that record they will send you junk mail inviting you to obtain a credit card. Lure them in with small tastes of their drug of choice -- credit. There are family pets with their own credit cards! How were the banks supposed to know that 'Roscoe' was a Dachshund or a Siamese?

Once you have a credit card they will continuously 'reward' you with additional credit. It would be bad enough if they only did this for people who pay off their monthly balances without fail but that isn't enough for them. Giving more credit to someone who has their addiction under control is a blind hope that they will eventually lose control. Banks keep upping the ante for people who constantly carry a balance! What are they thinking!? They're thinking "You've got a bad habit and we can make more money on interest payments by encouraging you to increase your debt load." If you liked smoking weed, try some of this heroin, it's so much better! They are gladly handing a depressed person more and more rope and crossing their fingers that you won't go ahead and hang yourself with it right away. If you do it too quickly, they lose money. However, the vast majority of us take a while before we bite down on the debt cyanide pill which allows the bank to make enough money in the process to justify the loss they must take at the end. We don't go quietly into the dark night, we struggle to make payments as best we can, funneling money to the banks as fast as we can earn it.

I knew that this was coming when the first 'Money Mart'-type payday advance stores opened. They are blatantly charging usury to let you have access to your own money a few days ahead of schedule and stupidly, we are willing lambs led to the slaughter. (It's bad enough that banks service charge us near to death to access our own money without payday advance leeches!) The marketing strategy of sellers is to whip us into a frenzy of consumption. They convince us that we 'need' things that we won't even use once we have them. Buyers remorse is rampant, but good luck returning things. So, in the banks we have drug (credit/debt) pushers on every corner and in the sellers we have unrelenting peer pressure to abuse drugs, i.e. spend without any consideration of our means. So, now we have an entire society addicted to obtaining credit and using every last damned bit of it.

All the while, the government has sat back and 'let the market' decide how things would proceed. Just a small amount of regulation on interest rates for lenders would have curbed this economically destructive industry. A little regulation on what kinds of marketing is and isn't allowed might have helped us retain a modicum of self-control in spending. Instead, we have neither. Marketers can say virtually anything about their products, even blatant lies. The more outrageous the claim, the less likely that a court will find that the marketing crossed the line! Courts have decided that the public should already understand that the claims made for products aren't true so don't need to be protected from the lies. They should expect the lies and act accordingly. Even catering to addictive behaviour in children isn't off limit! Child marketing attacks self-esteem and the brain's pleasure centre, so no wonder kids are the ultimate consumers and want everything. Numerous toys, especially virtual toys/pets, and social networks engage in psychological practices that are so influential that they are known to be manipulative at best, and 'brain washing' at worst, especially for unsophisticated minds -- like those of children. Parents complaints fall on deaf ears. The companies voices (i.e. money) are too loud for parents to be able to sway politicians.

Actually, governments are making things worse. Instead of attacking the real problem hurting the economy they encourage the public to spend. Spending is the traditional way out of a recession. However, historically all the instances of spending out of a recession have entailed families dipping into savings to spend and governments running deficits after having run surpluses. Now, we have families already in debt being encouraged to spend, and the government is limited in how much it can help stimulate the economy through job creation incentives, tax cuts and other services like retraining and welfare because it too is choking on debt! We can't spend our way out of this one.

Europe is having the same problem and is trying the opposite solution, and that is also failing. Greece and Portugal are both experiencing massive unemployment and rapidly shrinking economies. No amount of austerity can combat that kind of financial disaster, in fact, it feeds the problem of shrinking economies and increasing unemployment.

So, if you can't spend your way out and you can't save your way out, what can you do? You can address the real issue affecting economies around the globe. Stop encouraging the rapid concentration of greater and greater amounts of money in fewer and fewer hands. The greater the portion of a nation's wealth that sits in the top 20%/10%/1% personal financial empires the greater the drag on the economy. In that sense, governments are right, spending IS the way out of recessions, but so much surplus money is sitting unspent in the hands of the world's billionaires that the economies are running on fumes! The bigger the fortune, the higher the relative amount of idle money, so is it any wonder that the global economy is dying? With every financial/economic hiccough the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the middle class gets squeezed farther and farther down the standard of living scale.

The last global financial crisis in 2008 was caused by greed in the banking/financial system. Those companies and their owners (other than the ones that failed) have gotten bigger and wealthier as a result of the crisis. The next crisis is on the doorstep and guess who is driving it...the bloated banks and financial institutions and their obscenely wealthy owners are siphoning money from the middle class and poor at a record-breaking pace and we're letting them. Not only are we letting them, we're choosing to help them fleece us! Credit is a great thing to have when you have no debt. It allows you to weather emergencies. Carrying debt, especially at the all-time high levels carried today, is the single greatest financial emergency on the planet and we're generally ignorant of the fact that our behaviour is not only breaking our backs, but the entire economy's back. And the banks? Well, they're laughing all the way to the bank, of course.

Soon enough, the world will be openly run by corporations. With lobby groups being what they are, corporations pretty much already are, but from the shadows. What governments that remain will be figureheads, puppets. They will rubber stamp the decisions made in the boardrooms powerless to do anything else. Even the greatest nations will be poorer than and beholden to corporations. The United States of Microsoft. Exxon Arabia. The Siemens Economic Union.

There's still time to prevent this dystopic nightmare from happening. but not much. The Occupy Movement is right, and there is a real urgency to it. Economies will grind to a halt as greater and greater proportions of the world's wealth get siphoned into private vaults, where it does nothing. Uncle Scrooge McDuck is happily swimming in his money while the common duck is getting accustomed to malnutrition and hunger. As the money concentrates further, the economy shrinks further still, the number of jobs drops, and thus the cost of labour takes a dive. With so much competition for every available position there will be desperation and people will offer to work for less and less. Unions will be utterly powerless. With so many unemployed and dead broke, demand for just about everything (except food) will bottom out further reducing the size of the work force. The minimum wage will be eradicated. Eventually, all the wealth will be in the hands of 20%/10%/1% of the population with the remaining 80%/90%/99% homeless or on the fast track to ruin. The ultra-wealthy won't be any more motivated to be charitable then than they are now. They'll give whatever they can to reduce their tax burden and not a penny more. Of course by then, they may not even be taxed -- only the poor will be taxed. We'd be back to the feudal system, with people being dragged off to the dungeon for not being able to pay the Lord's taxes. It never mattered if there was a drought and the crops failed leaving the farmer with nothing for himself let alone for the greedy and petty Lord.

Sure, the banks are driving this phenomenon, but there's enough blame to go around. The governments are greasing the gears of the system enabling it to reach record levels. We are just as culpable as we are willingly rushing into the arms of ruin in order to enrich the already wealthy. Just a tiny bit of intelligence, forethought, reasoning and restraint would have prevented this from happening in the first place. If we used a reasonable portion of our brains' potential we would recognize that we are being used and abused by a money-mad system and might even find the strength of will to do something about it! Instead, we dance like puppets on strings throwing our ever-shrinking share of the world's wealth into the hands of those that have more than they can count, or spend, in a lifetime and we're doing it faster and faster all the time! We're in a hurry to realize the plutocratic vision of dying with all the toys and leaving us with none.

Wake up people! Force your government into enacting policy that is sustainable. What they are doing now sure isn't! And Mr. and Mrs. Billionaire, you should wake up too! If you think your lives are going to be comfy and cozy once the majority of the population has nothing -- and therefore nothing to lose -- you're sadly mistaken. Besides, if you're in the lower tier of the ultra-wealthy you'll eventually get sucked into the economic black hole as your more wealthy 'cousins' begin to prey on you once there is nothing left to take from the poor and middle class! And last, but perhaps not least, Mr. & Mrs. Billionaire, if there is an afterlife and you think you're pittance of charity will get you into Heaven, that it somehow absolves you of the sin of grand larceny taken to the ultimate degree -- your fleecing the world of its wealth for your own personal fortune -- you are sadly mistaken. You'll spend eternity trying to get used to the smell of brimstone and the pain of unending torture. I guarantee it. You have to decide whether it is worth it. Clearly, you've already decided. You have chosen...poorly.

A Dented Tin Can -- The Misunderstanding & Abuse Of Aesthetics

2011-11-27T01:13:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, human behaviour is incredibly illogical and approaches being inexplicable. Consider the following allegory in a grocery store.

You are there to buy a single can of soup. There are only two cans left on the shelf -- one is dented and one looks pristine. It isn't relevant, but if it helps you understand you can assume that the can is dented because you just dropped it on the floor. With which can do you walk out of the store?

99% of people will take the pristine looking can, even if they themselves were responsible for denting the other can. The other 1% will take the dented can because they feel guilty for having dented it.

Why do we take the dent-free can? Does the dent affect the taste or nutritional value of the soup inside? If both cans had been perfect we might have the presence of mind to check the "Best Before" date on the them to take the fresher of the two. The fact that one in dented makes us forget that this piece of information is even available, let alone worth knowing. The only thing that matters is the overriding fact that one of the cans is visually defective. We won't particularly care if we end up the less fresh of the two cans because how it looks is so important to us. Some might not even care if the pristine can had actually gone past its date because we are so certain we got the 'better' can.

There isn't even the tiniest shred of logical thinking in how a typical human would handle that scenario. Why are we so obsessed with appearance?

In the case of food it may be one of man's few remaining instincts from the time when everything we ate we hunted or gathered ourselves. If one fruit looks less 'healthy' than another fruit of the same kind then the choice is obvious. Sure, the 'imperfection' might only be a fresh bruise which won't affect the taste, texture and nutritional value of the fruit or at least not very much. However, it might be a sign of spoiling -- bruises do become more susceptible to spoiling than unblemished parts of fruits. Similarly, if a meat has an unusual or unexpected colour or smell that could spell disaster if eaten. But none of this is relevant to food stored in a tin can. (Yes, if the can is so badly dented that the seal itself is damaged then it does present a concern, but this phenomenon kicks in with even the most superficial dents.)

In other aspects of life, like socialization, we are equally obsessed with appearance. We become completely convinced of a one-to-one relationship between beauty and inherent value. Most people go to the grave still believing that beautiful women have hearts of gold and ugly women are a cruel (w/b)itches. The most handsome politicians often turn out to have the most ugly, corrupt and hateful hearts and souls, but we keep electing them over the plain-looking but earnest and intelligent candidates, whom we can't bring ourselves to trust.

When we aren't obsessed with sheer beauty we fall back on another completely useless attribute for determining quality -- familiarity. Somehow, we are so convinced at our own righteousness that we think anyone that seems to be like us must be awesome too! It doesn't matter if we are more (supremely godly and moral "The Simpsons" character) 'Ned Flanders' or (executed serial killer) Ted Bundy; whether we have minor skeletons in the closet or bodies packed six deep under the floorboards, we see ourselves as pretty amazing people, just the kind we'd want to know! I figure this is how 'simple folk' like George W. Bush get elected over vastly more qualified people who don't have his benefit of coming across as a familiar, nonthreatening 'every-man'. Ideology helps of course, but there needs to be more than just ideology to amass 'majorities'.

Can we place the blame with the Brothers Grimm? Aesop? Probably not. I'm fairly certain that the phenomenon is as old as humanity itself. You would think that religions would do something to combat this illusion, but they don't. Modern religions are more strongly influenced by men with no claim to divinity than to any divine figure, so are ill-equipped to guide us beyond the pitfall of placing predictor powers on 'pretty'.

For example, modern Christianity owes more to the hundreds of thousands of priests, ministers, monks, saints and popes of the past 2000 years than to the words, teachings or actions of The Father, The Son or The Holy Spirit. 2 millennia of interpretation and reinterpretation during synods, councils, consortia and pilgrimages using contemporary morals and ethics have made an indelible mark. Translation, re-translation, interpretation and reinterpretation of ancient language has had a significant effect on it as well. Even what is considered canon and what is considered apocryphal is the decision of mere men decades to centuries after the authors of the works had passed on. What is and isn't considered 'inspired' was determined by best guesses and isn't even universally uniform. Sure, they are probably very educated guesses, but nonetheless, they are guesses made by mortal and fallible men. Even the formation of Christianity into something completely distinct from Judaism was the decision of just men. (At no point in his life did Jesus preach for the creation of new religion. His teachings were for his people, whom he considered lost, to return to their old ways, the way of God. Unlike previous teachings, he did not limit his teachings to any specific demographic group but preached to any who would listen. With the rapid acceleration of interest in conversion to Jewish Christianity by pagans 'compromises' had to be made to promote and accommodate them, such as disavowing the need for circumcision, and thus the first steps to an independent religion were taken.) People of deep faith will tell you that these were not, in fact, guesses but instead were decisions made by men who were God-inspired and therefore the decisions are guaranteed to be correct. Of course, there can never be even the vaguest kind of proof of this statement of belief. They believe because they want to believe. This choice to believe or not believe is itself a decision made by mere mortal and fallible men, therefore all current beliefs have been tainted at least once along the line by the potential for gross deviation from the intent of God's Word.

Modern Islam is even more heavily influenced by the hundreds of thousands of fallible men that have followed Muhammad than is Christianity by its 'experts'. This is perhaps more true today than at any point in the history of Islam. An objective analysis of some of the teachings in Madrasahs around the world would find so many filled with hate-inspired rhetoric that it becomes next to impossible to believe that one of the definitions of the word 'Islam' is 'peace'.

So, here we are, in the present day. Human culture is enormous. Human knowledge is so vast that it is impossible for any one person to master even a small portion of it. And in spite of all of these accomplishments we are still tripped up by the most fundamental, basic and obvious of truths, that an object's appearance is of extremely limited value (and in some cases no value at all) in determining anything beyond its appearance! So, why are we still hung up on appearance in virtually all aspects of life? And is it more universally abused anywhere more than in dating/courting? Western divorce rates are near 50%. The more times you've already been married, the higher that rate goes, so it's no wonder there are the Liz Taylors, Zsa Zsa Gabors and Lana Turners of the world marrying eight or more times and yet often dying alone. (Of the 3, only Zsa Zsa may pass while still married -- she's now 94 and has been married to the same man for 25 years!)

Even when relationships last they are often rife with cheating and/or abuse of various kinds. We're getting it wrong far more often than we're getting it right, but will we change? Yeah, right. Some chalk it up to learning experiences or personal growth. I say that is the position of an apologist. Experience and growth do not necessitate the kinds of callousness and cruelty so common in relationships.

Ask anyone with any political or religious clout and they'll tell you that marriage is as healthy as it has ever been. In my opinion, that is an historical indictment of marriage! Ask someone right of centre and they will tell you that marriage has been irrevocably harmed by immoral depictions of sex (and/or abuse) in the media and by same-sex marriage, or homosexuality in general. These are people profoundly in denial. Human relationships have been in trouble for as long as there have been human relationships.

More often than not we get into them for the wrong reasons and the ones we value most are often the ones are most harmful to us. Political alliances, sociopolitical acceptance/viability, family arrangements, financial security/wealth, great sex, physical attractiveness, size (in all its various meanings), increased status, social climbing, access to different/'better' social networks...could there be any more pointless and doomed reasons for relationships?

What happened to love, friendship, emotional support, respect, compatibility of personalities and partnership?

Physical attraction is great for 'catching someone's eye' in the first place, but it's got to be replaced (or ideally, augmented) by something more meaningful. Great sex is a really nice perk. Sex doesn't get great or stay great unless there's something behind it. For most people it's something that has to be continually worked on, which is a truism for relationships in general.

As far as size goes, the rule appears to be bigger is better for anything and everything, with the possible exception of noses. It is true that some men like exceptionally tiny women, though the reasons are generally not good. Even the smallest women seem to go nuts for the most enormous men. A two-foot height difference is perceived as no issue at all. These women often say that being in these men's arms makes them feel safe. The feeling of safety is just that, a feeling. An illusion. Given that the vast majority of violent crime is committed by the ones we know and love all that extra size really means is how much more effective he'll be at beating the crap out of her when he sets his mind to it. Who is protecting her from him? (Compare and contrast to the opposite situation when she is even so much as a half-an inch taller than he! No one will give that couple even odds at lasting as long as 5 days, or are puzzled or even vexed by the question "what do they in each other?"!)

All the other reasons cited above are forms of use. Either the relationship is a pretense for one person to use the other for advantages outside the relationship or for third parties to use both members of the couple for their own needs. There have been 44 Presidents of the United States. Guess how many have been unmarried. One. If you have political aspirations you MUST marry! It is so vitally important for politicians to be married that they, who have more to gain or lose from their public image than just about anybody else, will marry any one and sort out such trivialities as compatibility after the wedding, or better yet, after the election. And this is how so many morally bankrupt politicians find women -- whose only relationship concerns are status, wealth and power -- ready to stand by them after their legal and/or marital transgressions are exposed. That support can translate into weathering the storm and achieving re-election, or in the worst case scenario, works to her financial advantage during the divorce proceedings after he fails to be re-elected.

So, when will we learn? A tiny minority already have. Some of them actually achieve true happiness! Others don't 'fit' into (or capitulate to) the accepted (failed) politics of courting and are therefore eternally single. That's a real shame because they are the real 'keepers'. Unfortunately, our biases for stupid and horrible predictors of relationship success keep us from so much as noticing these diamonds in the rough. Not only do we suffer for overlooking them, they suffer from being overlooked time and again. Being continually overlooked does not preclude falling in love and being rejected. Try to maintain self-esteem when your very culture trains its members to not appreciate you.

And the rest of us, those who have been failing at love, when will we learn? I'm torn over which is the best, most honest or accurate answer, so I'll let you decide.

1) Never, AKA when Hell freezes over. Why? You have to admit that there is a problem in order to be able to fix it.

2) When we pass into the next life, assuming you believe in such things.

Granted, neither is particularly optimistic, but we've had the entirety of human existence to get it right and we haven't yet, so what cause is there for optimism?

Whatever group you've fallen into historically, I wish you the best of luck in finding the perfect relationship that may have been eluding you. Or, if you prefer, I'll wish you the best of luck that the relationship you are currently in becomes more perfect. Anything that helps love, kindness and acceptance win over the alternatives.

The Path To True Wisdom

2011-11-26T14:15:00.000-05:00

This is going to sound incredibly corny but I'm going to quote Weird Al Yankovic for the philosophy that will lead you to wisdom. Maybe you won't become an enlightened spiritual leader of billions but you will become an informed responsible member of society and a example for all humanity.

Everything you know is wrong,
Black is white, up is down and short is long,
And everything you thought was just so important doesn't matter.
Everything you know is wrong,
Just forget the words and sing along,
All you need to understand is everything you know is wrong.

Because of the method of delivery it sounds much sillier than it actually is. In fact, it isn't silly at all, it is the ultimate wisdom! Nothing, not even knowledge is absolute. Much of it is misinformation, or worse, disinformation! Even the most widely accepted facts may be based on pure fiction or downright lies. Even science is subject to new theories that model the truth better than the old, accepted knowledge. So, since any specific piece of knowledge may be completely false, and even the strongest pieces of knowledge may be proven wrong at some point in the future it only makes sense to accept that everything you know is, at least to some degree, wrong.

This is how young children learn. They have an inherent understanding that there is far more that they don't know then there is that they do know. This makes the knowledge that they currently hold highly subject to change or reinterpretation. This is how all furry four-legged animals start off being labeled as "doggy", then later get broken off into "doggy" and "kitty", and eventually come to have separate categories for hundreds of different animals from mice to elephants.

Somewhere along the line, we lose this propensity to reinterpret what we know. We 'grow up' and become preoccupied with 'being right' rather than 'getting it right'. By the time we are teenagers we place the feeling of independence above even safety and thus tend to want to reject anything that disagrees with our current view of the world. The fact that we have been exposed to virtually nothing by this point in our lives and the fact that our brains aren't even capable of handling many more complex ideas don't hinder our blatant manifestations of pride and disrespect.

It is during this brief period of transition where our knowledge is still somewhat mutable, but is becoming more and more resistant that we begin to 'create' terribly ignorant 'knowledge'. This is the process that teaches us to separate "person" into multiple categories like "black" and "white" or "Christian" and "Muslim", when the differences are far less significant than the similarities. It also pushes us to make patently false associations like coupling "poor" (or "fat") with "lazy", "rich" (or "religious") with "righteous", or "pretty" with "good" (and thus "ugly" with "evil").

If you keep in mind the fact that everything you know is wrong every time you are presented with information you will have done what most people never do -- conquer ignorance. A great many advances in science have been delayed by scientists being bogged down by what they were taught instead of exploring interesting independent ideas, philosophies or ways of thinking they had that are not consistent with their teachings. If the people noted for great accomplishments in history acted like the vast majority of humanity, the ones that don't appear in the history books, we would still be in the stone age. We would still think the sun and stars revolve around the Earth. We would think that the world is flat, and that it is possible to sail off the edge of the Earth. We would never has learned Einstein's Theory of Relativity and thus all nuclear power and nuclear medicine wouldn't exist. Virtually all societies would be ruled by autocrats, be they tribal elders, hereditary kings or vicious warlords.

You will avoid the pitfall of ignoring both empirical evidence and the truth sitting right in front of your nose just to protect the false and worthless comfort of 'being right'. Every single piece of human experience is influenced heavily by every experience that happened earlier. You'll have defeated the all-powerful preconceived notion. You will become immune to propaganda, and with a little luck, immune to hate. Continuous learning is one of the greatest virtues known to man. Learning, the ultimate utilization of God's greatest gift to man -- his brain -- is the best way to glorify God. When we allow what we think we know to make us resistant to knowledge we have turned from God and begun to do the Devil's work. If you accept this truth than it becomes fairly obvious that most of the world's religions have fallen from grace and have long since begun to do the Devil's work.

The worst that can happen if you are willing to consider a new truth is that you will discover it too to be wrong, in which case you can just continue on with what you originally believed. "No harm, no foul" meets "nothing ventured, nothing gained". At best, we can cast doubt on what we believed and become more open to greater, more universal truths. Maybe, by the time we pass from this world we might actually know something worthwhile, or better yet, have contributed something while we were still here.

It is most unfortunate that the people who most flatly refuse this philosophy tend to seek and somehow be given leadership positions. This is tantamount to the blind leading the blind. Actually, it is more like the profoundly blind leading the barely-able-to-see 'legally' blind. But, we only have ourselves to blame for their rise to power. By and large, we put them in those positions, which begs the question, "does that make us more blind than they are?" Even when men force their way into leadership so they may foist their personal choice of blindness upon others we can still blame ourselves for having let them. There are always ways to stop this from happening though they do tend to involve great personal risk, so naturally we make every excuse possible to avoid doing it, and then blame others for having let it happen.

This particular kind of blindness is called "ideology" and it is the worst kind of knowledge. It is particularly bound to the belief that what you currently know is the only and absolute truth and what you value is critically important while nothing else is even remotely important. And thus economy rules over ecology (or biology if you prefer). It's best to ignore Climate Change (AKA Global Warming) because it is inconvenient and doing anything at all about it would be disruptive to the economy. To that I say, "That is entirely theoretical -- it might be true that embracing new technology and new lifestyles may end up enhancing the economy. After all, if you haven't noticed, what we're doing right now isn't exactly doing so well!" Also, to that I ask, "how much money do you make after you are dead?"

Ideology is frequently based on no facts whatsoever and is therefore virtually immune to influence from actual truth or even direct evidence to the contrary. Ideology is more about emotion than fact. It is more about personal identity than fact. The world is becoming increasingly ruled by, and even obsessed with, ideology. The only way to combat this is to enter every situation with the basic understanding that everything you know is wrong!

Ford Declares War On Working Class

2011-11-25T19:06:00.000-05:00

Actually, he did that a long time ago. That was pretty much one of his campaign promises, but veiled in other words. He vowed to end "The War On the Car." Why was it necessary to champion the car at all? Did they need a champion? Were they the most put upon commuters? Not even close! Commutes using public transportation are always longer than commutes by car! If travel by cars wasn't faster there wouldn't be so many people insisting on using them! Nor would there be much need for taxi cabs and look at how many of them we have! In any case, in the absence of a "War On The Car" Ford needed something to attack. His choice has been to wage "The War On the TTC."

Twenty-something years ago, the TTC was the pride of the city. It was considered among the best in North America, if not THE best, and was World-Class! Now, it stinks and council has voted to make it even worse. Service levels and capacity limits will be rolled back near to 2004 levels. Ridership has grown every year since then, so in fact the TTC will be more taxed/stressed than it has ever been!

Why? Because it is expensive. Actually, all things considered (including costs at all levels of government), it's not that expensive and it's cheaper than the alternatives. The only reason it is relatively more expensive than a city mobilized entirely by private cars is that the Province and City have completely failed to monetize the use of cars! Actually, the city had monetized the use of cars! It had a $60 user fee in place. True to form, and by that I mean to do the worst thing possible for the health and function of the city, the first thing that Ford did was eliminate this fee. We can't have private citizens paying for the privilege of using public roads! Free car use and ownership is a divine right! If the City or Province (or both) instituted the proper monetizing of roads and cars then public transportation would be completely paid for! If anything, a ubiquitous mass/public transportation system is the divine right!

I knew this was coming, but the sheer scope has caught me completely off guard. Exactly ONE line that I take has escaped the cuts: the 127 Davenport is not going to see wait times increase due to a reduction in service. It's already fairly scarce. Every other bus line that I have been known to take regularly has been cut. For me that means: 10-Van Horne (which has already seen a significant portion of its schedule merged with the 169-Huntingwood route), 24-Victoria Park, 25-Don Mills, 34-Eglinton East, 39-Finch East, 54-Lawrence East, 63-Ossington, 85-Sheppard East, 139-Finch Don Mills & 190-Scarborough Centre Rocket. These are just 10 of 62 routes that have been cut.

If you live in Scarborough (or the Eastern half of North York), you got some extra Ford-love -- all but one of the major East-West routes East of Yonge Street have been cut. That means all of the following are cut: 53-Steeles East, 39-Finch East (as well as the 139-Finch Don Mills & 199-Finch Rocket), 85-Sheppard East (and the 190 Scarborough Centre Rocket), 54-Lawrence East and 34-Eglinton East. The only one not to get cut? 95-York Mills (which also serves Scarborough along Ellesmere Ave.) I have no idea why it was spared. (I suppose the 42-Cummer bus has also been spared, but Cummer/McNicoll isn't a major thoroughfare.)

Don't think that you've escaped the Scarborough cuts if you travel North-South or travel entirely within Scarborough! Also cut are: 9-Bellamy, 16-McCowan, 17-Birchmount, 21A-Brimley, 24-Victoria Park, 57-Midland, 67-Pharmacy, 68-Warden, 69-Warden South, 102-Markham Road, 116-Morningside, 129-McCowan North, 131-Nugget, 133-Neilson & 134-Progress. Now that I think of it, all but 2 of the North-South thoroughfares East of Yonge Street have been cut! (North York's 11-Bayview & 25-Don Mills are also hit; spared are 51-Leslie (already terrible) and 43-Kennedy.) Many of these routes were already near capacity! Even citing all these routes only manages to mention 25 of the cuts. There's 150% as many that I haven't mentioned!

My best guess is that Scarborough, North York and to an extent Etobicoke residents will suffer most. York, East York and Toronto are affected relatively less. In other words, the shortest commutes, the ones within the heart of the city, get by relatively unscathed and the already longer, more arduous and time-consuming routes have been slammed. Another implementation of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

The only thing that doesn't seem to have been cut are the subways! Apparently, Mr. Ford and his council think that 100% of Torontonians live on a subway line or drive everywhere they go. This is so far from the truth that they need a serious reality check! The vast majority of people need to take some form of public transportation to reach a station! For example, I almost never travel to or through any stations.

I actually wish that everyone owned a car. That way, we could arrange a day when we ALL drive to work. Upward of 2 million cars on the road at once. That's likely the only way to show Mr. Ford that by ending the mythical "War On the Car" he has actually declared war on the car... and every other form of transportation! (Has anyone else noticed that Mr. Ford likes to cut anything and everything that he himself has no use for? NIMBY at it's absolute worst!)

Here's a piece of advice to Mr. Ford. Try using the things you so cavalierly mark for cuts or elimination. Understand them before you bring the ax down on them. In particular, take the TTC. That way you won't be breaking the law every single day when you speak on your cell phone while driving. Your contempt for the law is very disturbing.

Reductions in public transit mean three things.

1) People that have significant commutes will now have to leave that much earlier. TTC-users already had commutes much longer than people who take the car. (This is true both on average and at the extremes. People who use Provincial Highways to commute to Toronto from exurbs do not count for three reasons. First, they are using Provincial Highways, not City of Toronto roads. Second, at least a major portion of their commute happens outside the confines of the City of Toronto. Third, they don't pay Toronto property taxes!)

Getting up earlier means people will be getting less sleep and creates more stress. Less sleep and more stress mean more sick time which hurts commerce. Less sleep and more stress also mean more real health problems, so it hits the Province of Ontario's health care system hard. Ford doesn't care. That's not his budget. To him they are separate matters. If he can find a way to pass the buck, he will, even if it means destroying the fabric of society. Sorry, Mr. Ford, to citizens, everything is interconnected and nothing can be looked at in a vacuum. Nothing in the real world can be.

2) People will switch to cars. This hurts the TTC budget as ridership will drop along with the levels of service. That means it hurts the City of Toronto's budget as they will end up having to make up the amount lost in fares. Further, congestion will get considerably worse as 1 bus translates into dozens of cars, or even hundreds! Parking will get considerably more scarce, resulting in widespread parking violations, further congesting streets. Increases in congestion and parking issues increase stress levels. Remember what increased stress levels do...

3) People that cannot or will not enact the solutions cited in #1 & #2 above will consistently be late getting to wherever they are going. This hurts business. This causes people incredible stress. Which, again, means more sick time and health care costs. This will cost people their jobs, which further hurts the economy. But, why should Rob Ford care? The City budget is financed by property taxes, not income! Let them all lose their jobs! As long as taxes don't go up at any level of government!

Politicians were quick to point out that the service cuts on Eglinton and Sheppard Avenues will be serviced long term by Ford's "impossible dream", privately-funded Sheppard subway extension and the Provincially planned LRT on Eglinton. The reason that any mention of this is completely asinine (for politicians seeking shelter from the fallout of their own decisions) is that there is the mere matter of a MINIMUM EIGHT YEAR GAP before either of these things become reality! (And one of them probably won't happen at all for lack of private funding.) This helps exactly ZERO people deal with the cuts that are coming NOW, and are therefore completely irrelevant!

So, Mr. Ford, by shifting the municipal planning focus from mass transit to the car you have effectively doomed ALL commuters, whether in cars or other vehicles, to increases in stress, congestion, travel time and pollution. Good show! Four negatives in one fell swoop of policy! That's like the tailor in the Grimm fairy tale "Seven In One Blow". Everyone thought the tailor so brave for having killed 7 in one blow! Little did they know that the seven he killed were just flies! Like the tailor, Ford is seen as a champion by many, but all he has done is kill flies. That won't stop him from boasting. (FWIW, the tailor goes on to kill giants and wild beasts using only his wit, becoming the hero he believed himself to be. Ford lacks the wit on which to fall back, but nonetheless believes himself the very model of heroism. Zero is more like it.)

Here's the real problem with service cuts. The effects that they tell you about are theoretical and not particularly rooted in day-to-day reality. The increase in traffic resulting from this war on public transportation will all too often keep buses from keeping to their official schedules. Buses will be even busier and wait times longer than the TTC is telling us. All it takes is a little bit of congestion, a little inclement weather, a minor fender-bender, a sick or injured rider, an unruly-to-dangerous passenger or a disabled bus to cause the entire route to break down. This happens much more often than you'd believe! Oh, and expect more fender benders as traffic congestion increases!

There are two other problems with the service cuts. The increase in riders per vehicle will mean that additional buses will need to be summoned to handle unexpected fluctuations in ridership more often. Rider stress will be at an all time high. Similarly, the drivers will be tested to their absolute limits. You think that the recent happenings in Ottawa were unacceptable? Just wait until you get a hold of the new TTC! Eventually, the buses start skipping stops because they can't take on any new passengers. If no one is getting off, the bus isn't stopping. This serves two purposes. The faster that bus can get through it's route, the sooner it can come back for another pass. (This tends not to have any real effect at all. The buses end up just sitting at their terminals in an effort to keep to the all mighty schedule rather than work to reduce any backlog of riders.) Second, stopping just creates an opportunity for an angry public to take it out on drivers, endangering drivers and further slowing the bus. The drivers aren't responsible for the policy or the schedule, that makes them every bit the victims that the riders are. So, if you happen to be waiting for a bus that comes every 9 minutes, you may be treated to a full bus that cannot take on passengers... every 9 minutes! There's no telling when you'll actually be able to get on and commence your journey! This isn't extremely common, except for when the weather is foul, in which case it becomes incredibly common! All those car drivers, walkers and cyclists that don't want to brave the weather get added to the daily ridership creating an impossible situation. If you get on at a terminal, you're probably OK because the vehicle completely empties at your stop. If not, good luck. You'll need it!

Further, the buses that are summoned to handle the fluctuations have to come from somewhere. Typically, they come from the affected route itself. What they do is declare a bus headed in the direction opposite to the main flow of traffic as a "short turn" bus. In other words, it turns around ASAP to add its capacity to the stressed direction. That means the people that happen to travel in the direction opposite to the main flow are forced off the bus and made to wait for the next bus. Every single time this happens the displaced riders bitch and moan, get a transfer and brave the weather, forced to accept an extra leg of their journey where they get absolutely nowhere. If they are lucky, the next driver won't get uppity about the fact that you are trying to use an inappropriate transfer at a non-transfer point. Also if they are lucky, they have a cell phone and can call ahead to warn of their impending tardiness. If they aren't lucky enough to own/afford a cell phone, they are screwed. Good luck borrowing one from one of your fellow riders! Actually, unless you want to experience a threat of bodily harm, I don't recommend even trying! With service cuts, this will happen even more often than it does now! If you have hockey gear, wear it for your TTC trips, you might need the protection from your fellow disgruntled rider! Since we're talking about it, why do the people travelling with the crowds get priority over the people moving against traffic? Was their TTC token worth more? Did they pay two fares? Is their getting to work on time more important?

Second, at least once a day on some route somewhere (and usually more often), a driver takes an unauthorized break. I'm not talking about when the driver puts the bus into park and wanders into a Tim Horton's. If they need to use the bathroom to drive safely, then let them use a bathroom now. If they need to ingest massive amounts of coffee in order to be alert while driving then they'd best get some coffee! (Ideally, people with difficulty concentrating on driving aren't working as professional drivers!)

I'm talking about when a bus scheduled to arrive simply doesn't. It's not just late, it fails to appear entirely. It might be that it was forced to turn around to deal with crowds traveling in the other direction, but not necessarily and certainly not at the times it tends to happen. The next bus you see is the next scheduled bus, which can be an additional 15-20 minutes later. If you've already been waiting 10-20 minutes that's unacceptable. How do I know that drivers/buses are taking a 'time out'? I board a particular bus relatively close to its terminal point. I can see the 4-digit identification numbers of the buses that head towards that turn around. When a bus finally arrives from the terminal after one or even two have failed to appear, at least one bus has passed in the opposite direction. Sometimes, the ID of the bus that finally arrives doesn't match that of any of the buses that headed toward the terminal. That means it was just sitting at the terminal instead of operating on the schedule it was supposed to.

When you point out the fact that you have waited for 1 or more buses that failed to appear the driver never seems to know anything about an interruption on the route. Had there been a breakdown, or a "short-turn" situation, they would have known. So, either one of their co-workers went AWOL, or they themselves were AWOL and now their playing dumb. The fact that the bus (or buses) that were headed toward the terminal aren't smack dab on the heels of the bus that finally showed up likely means that those drivers are taking their turn at having unscheduled, paid breaks.

This only seems to happen later in the evening, or at worst near the end of the afternoon rush. That means you can't just pick up the phone and report the event to the TTC complaints department. You have to wait until morning to do it. The TTC and its employees are banking on the fact that you will cool off or forget and not report it. But don't expect anything to happen even when you do. The TTC won't acknowledge that this occurs, nor do they seem interested in disciplining drivers. (Since 'officially' no interruption in service happened there is no reason for anyone to be disciplined!) The only justification I can come up with is that the drivers are so stressed out that they need to take an unscheduled break rather than be exposed to the public where they may 'snap'. However, if this were the case it would happen relatively uniformly across the system, and it doesn't. Only certain routes seem to be plagued by this problem, and at times where the number of potential passengers won't completely overwhelm a bus if 1 or 2 happen to go missing. That tells me it has nothing to do with stress, and everything to do with laziness and entitlement.

As of today, under ideal conditions it already takes me an hour or more to get just about anywhere! The only exception is when my destination can be reached by taking a single vehicle/bus, i.e. no transfers. The more transfers you have, the more time you spend going nowhere while waiting for your ride. This accounts for less than 5% of the city. The other 95% of the city takes me at least an hour to reach. For example, it can take me 90-120 minutes for me to visit my sister! By going out of my way to use the subway I can usually keep that closer to the lower number. Again, these are under ideal conditions. No rain, no snow, no construction, no car accidents. Add any of those and the travel time balloons. With the new cuts, who knows how long it will take! I fully expect to wait longer for buses and fully expect that they will be too full to take on passengers far more often than they are now. With the number of people travelling with strollers and personal shopping carts the buses fill up pretty fast. That and the fact that riders are notoriously bad at moving back, deeper into the vehicle makes actual capacity far less than theoretical capacity.

It was Rob Ford who declared war on public transportation, but it will be the TTC employees and ridership that are left to fare for themselves on the front lines. There will be casualties. Ford probably won't notice any change at all...until it starts to affect the length of his commute. Knowing Ford, he'll probably blame the increase in congestion on cyclists.

MLB's new CBA: Nothing To Cheer About in Toronto

2011-11-23T14:29:00.000-05:00

Local pundits are lauding Major League Baseball's new CBA. I don't know what they're reading, I don't see much to cheer about. I certainly don't see what Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos sees in it that could be considered positive.

Getting most of the headlines is the expansion of the playoffs from 8 to 10 teams. Currently, the 8 teams that make the payoffs do so on relatively even footing. If/when the playoffs are expanded to 10 teams, 6 teams will get preferred status and 4 will be also-rans. The 6 division winners will essentially get a "bye" into the second round of the playoffs. Another way of looking at it is that the 4 non-divisional winners that qualify for the 'playoffs' are actually quaoifying for a 'play-in'! This play-in will take the form of a winner-take-all single game. As far as I'm concerned they might as well forget the game and flip a coin.

In fact, MLB isn't expanding the playoffs, they are effectively reducing the playoffs to 6 teams with 4 additional teams getting to play in an extremely gimmicky one-off for the privilege to join the 6 'real' playoff teams. Anything can happen in a single game. Anything. A satellite could crash into the pitchers mound killing one team's ace effectively deciding the game for the other team.

OK, that's not very likely. Here are some things that are incredibly likely. Umpires can blow a call that is obvious to everyone but the umpires. Instant replay (more about that later) won't be able to help because it isn't allowed. Bud Selig's favorite thing about Baseball is the "human element" also known as the propensity for umpires to insinuate themselves into the result of a game by blowing a call. I don't think they do it on purpose, but they do it nonetheless. Their fallibility can decide a game just as sure as a player's outstanding athleticism can. A player can be called away from the game by the birth of a child. A player may feel it completely necessary to miss the game to observe a major religious holiday. A player could wake up with a crick in their neck that only lasts one day. Any of these things could be overcome easily over the course of a longer series but in a single game they become virtually insurmountable tragedies.

For the 2 teams that manage to persevere, or get lucky, and advance to the real playoffs, they are at a huge disadvantage. They were most likely forced to play their best pitcher as their entire season depended on the result of that one game. Now, their best pitcher is unavailable for the opening of their next series, giving an advantage to the team that got to rest their entire roster. (If they didn't use their best pitcher they were taking a huge gamble by risking their one shot of getting to the playoffs against a better chance of succeeding in the playoffs, should they actually get there. In this case, the huge disadvantage doesn't disappear, it manifests a game earlier!) So, that is yet a second advantage to the 6 division winners and a second handicap to the 4 teams that qualify as non-division winners.

This is much worse than it sounds. The 1987 Minnesota Twins made the playoffs by winning the AL West with a mediocre record of 85-77 (4 games better than a .500 81-81 season). The 2006 St. Louis Cardinals lowered the bar even further by winning the NL Central with only 83 wins! What is amazing is that both went on to win the World Series. Anything can happen in the playoffs when teams are given an even footing! You can argue among yourselves as to whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. In both cases, more than one team missed the playoffs with better records by virtue of the fact that they were unfortunate enough to be in a stronger division. These 2 teams shouldn't even have been given the honour of making the playoffs! But, because they won their pathetically weak divisions they got the same ticket to ride that the other playoff teams got.

So, now that we're going to have a two-tier playoff system, we're going to be giving teams like the '86 Twins and '06 Cardinals an extra leg up on teams that finish with vastly better records! What is so magical or significant about winning arbitrary divisions, anyway? Thanks to Selig's second favorite thing about Baseball, the unbalanced schedule (more about this later), those other teams with better records achieved those better records by playing significantly harder schedules! So, they are better than the division winners by difficulty of schedule AND overall record, but they will be rewarded with the ignominy of having to win a play-in just to take their rightful place in the playoffs, playoffs sullied by these relatively terrible teams! Hey, I have an idea! Let's just decide the World Series by drawing lots! Long straw wins! It's actually more fair, but it has nothing to do with baseball talent or acumen. Neither does the proposed system.

Presumably, this decision is based on the fact that a number of Wild Card teams have won the World Series and this offends Selig's delicate sensibilities. Again I ask, what is so magical about winning arbitrary divisions? How does it merit a greater right to playoff success than finishing with a better record against tougher opposition? The Wild Cards winning the World Series has been GOOD for Baseball. Without it, the competitive balance that Selig says is fine -- it isn't -- would be that much worse! Selig apparently is completely clueless about nearly everything.

The next most talked about section of the new CBA is that the Houston Astros will be moving to the American League West. I have already stated elsewhere that this is a terrible idea! Not only is a terrible idea, but Bud Selig actually paid $65 million to make it happen! That is probably the worst money spent in human history! Rather than rehash the entire argument again, I'll summarize.

Selig must recognize that Baseball has some problems and I guess he wants to do something about it. His solution is to create symmetry. Both leagues will have 15 teams. All 6 divisions will have 5 teams. What awesome symmetry! Newflash...it is entirely meaningless! If Selig wanted to balance something he should have started and ended with balancing teams' schedules! What are the consequences of this pointless change?

More interleague play. This is bad.
Fewer meaningful interleague rivalries. This is bad.
A new Houston-Texas rivalry. This is good, but it comes at the expense of doubling the number of times that Houston plays on the West coast, which is monumentally bad for both Houston's competitiveness (jet lag) and television ratings (money).
More games with the Yankees and Red Sox. Everybody wants this except the teams forced to be in the same division as these two Goliaths. It might increase Houston's revenue by a couple of percentage points, but the increase will be less than the losses incurred by the West coast road trips and their associated loss of television ratings.
The illusion of parity. All illusions are bad. Why is it an illusion? Doesn't having 6 teams in one division make it harder to win and having 4 teams in a division make it easier? Not in and of itself! It depends on who is in the division! Also, look at the empirical evidence. Since Milwaukee moved to the NL Central to make it a 6-team division, every team but the Pittsburgh Pirates have made the playoffs. The Pirates are always among baseball's lowest spenders, so this is no surprise. They almost always allow their stars to leave when they reach free agency, or preempt their leaving by trading them before they get their chance to leave. Competitive balance in the NL Central is far better than in the AL East! It is even slightly better than the NL East. Both only have 5 teams. Also, the relative ease of making the playoffs in the AL West is not significantly better than in any of the other divisions just because they only have four teams. Symmetry only results in parity when all the constituent elements (teams) are equal. They aren't. Haven't been for decades. A big fat illusion. The only teams that will experience any change at all in terms of playoff chances are: the Rangers, Angels, Athletics and Mariners will have a slightly harder time making the playoffs; the Cardinals, Pirates, Cubs, Reds and Brewers will have a slightly easier time making the playoffs.

Balancing the divisions structure is pointless. Here's a medical analogy. Baseball has a treatable case of throat cancer. (It's probably from all the smokeless tobacco.) Don't worry, Dr. Selig is going to operate! After surgery, Baseball has a brand new facelift. A very interesting strategy, using a facelift to treat internal cancer. Things look very pretty on the surface, but the cancer is still there. Perhaps an internist and not a plastic surgeon should have addressed the problem? If the cancer continues to be ignored it will eventually kill the patient. In this case, surgically excising the cancer requires the balancing of the schedule, not the structure. Alternately, the structure can be thrown out entirely, getting rid of divisions and letting the best teams with the best records make the playoffs, period. Selig will never do either. The perceived evil of added travel expenses and the perceived benefit of 'better' rivalries supports his inaction. Deeper analysis proves that these surface issues are relatively minor compared to the negatives of the current system.

As far as paying $65 million to the new Houston owner to make this happen, all I can say is that this must be a symptom of insanity. I wouldn't pay 65 cents to the new Houston owner to move the team. Actually, I wouldn't TAKE $65 million FROM the new Houston owner to move the team! It will cost MLB far more in the long run.

If having 15 teams per league was so beautiful and important, why did Selig move HIS Milwaukee Brewers to the National League to create that asymmetry in the first place? Instead, he could have moved Kansas City to the AL West and had Milwaukee stay in the AL Central. How does this compare to having Houston in the AL West? They're in the same time zone. Actually, they're a lot closer than that implies. Houston is less than 1 degree of longitude farther West than Kansas City. (Time zones are 15 degrees wide.) That is trivial! It works out to about 50 miles. Kansas City had spent its entire history in the AL West until Selig's creation of the AL Central, and would have been fine remaining there.

No, there were other, ulterior motives for moving the Brewers to the NL Central and there are ulterior motives for moving Houston to the AL West. The only thing in common with these 2 changes is that they both benefit Milwaukee. Selig has a history of providing windfalls to his home town and home team. Here's an example that involves Houston. For Hurricane Ike, Selig mandated that the Astros play 2 home games against the Chicago Cubs in Milwaukee despite the proximity to the visiting Cubs. The home ballparks for the much-closer-to-Houston Texas Rangers and Atlanta Braves were both available to host the games but were passed over in favour of a special treat for the people of Milwaukee. It wasn't bad enough that the Astros were distracted by the severe and dangerous weather that was threatening their homes and their families. No, they had to play in Chicago's backyard. The displaced Astros were subsequently victimized by a no-hitter by Carlos Zambrano (the 1st ever at a supposedly 'neutral' site) and recorded just 1 hit in the following game. In the midst of the playoff race, this decision and its impact deeply affected the playoff race and team seeding with 8 NL teams holding winning records at that moment. Selig's Milwaukee Brewers benefited from these events by qualifying for the playoffs as the Wild Card team. Surprise!

What other wolves-in-sheep's-clothing are in this bundle of joy called the CBA?

MLB is moving into the 20th Century by instituting blood tests for HGH. MLB becomes the 1st of the "Big 4" North American team sport leagues to address HGH. MLB says it waited until reliable testing could be found. The World Anti-Doping Agency has been testing athletes since the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. No one has been caught yet! Before you break out the champagne, consider the specifics of the testing. Testing will be mandatory in Spring Training.There will be 'random' testing during the off-season. Testing will only take place during the season if there is deemed to be 'reasonable cause'. This is a great step forward, but it is also largely meaningless. Here's why:

The best available methods are still extremely poor.
HGH exits the bloodstream within hours of having been injected under normal circumstances. The chances of 'catching' an athlete in the midst of an HGH coping cycle are very slim. If an athlete has any notice at all they can make efforts to flush their system before the test, making the window of opportunity for a successful test even smaller. I'll believe that the 'random' testing is truly random and without advance notice when they catch a high profile player and not a moment sooner.
Athletes that 'fear' the test will change their training methods to work around testing.
'Reasonable cause' is wide open to interpretation. You can also bet that the MLBPA will do everything in its power to appeal/block any attempts by MLB to test during the season on these grounds. Again, if the athlete has any advance notice at all, they can make efforts to flush their system. The MLBPA will do whatever it can to protect its players from the looming spectre of 50-game suspensions, 100-game suspensions and lifetime bans.

MLB is planing a study to determine whether random testing during the regular season is warranted. They don't need to waste money on any study. It is warranted!

So, by and large, this is much ado about nothing.

In the title of this blog entry I implied that the new CBA is bad specifically for Toronto. It is, in many ways. Toronto is a somewhat unique market. It has elements of a small market and elements of a huge market. The current GM and President (Alex Anthopoulos and Paul Beeston) have instituted various methods to try and be competitive in the toughest division in professional sports without throwing vast amounts of money out the window. Toronto may have the potential to be nearly as big a market as New York or Boston but that reality hasn't arrived just yet, and won't any time soon. Here are some of the things that Anthopoulos has done in recent years that he won't be able to do anymore.

Traded for catcher Miguel Olivo and then refused his contract option. This resulted in Toronto receiving a compensatory draft pick when Olivo was signed by another team as a free agent. This is no longer allowed.
Trade Aaron Hill and John McDonald to Arizona for Kelly Johnson in what could be a win-win-win deal. Hill was having a terrible season and was projected to be neither a Type-A nor Type-B free agent at season's end. That meant that holding Hill could mean losing him to free agency and receive no compensation whatsoever. Johnson was projected to be one of the last/lowest Type-A free agents. Should Toronto decide not to seriously pursue Johnson for next year and subsequently lose him to free agency, they would receive TWO compensatory draft picks. Not going to happen anymore.

Both item #1 and item #2 are being eliminated in one fell swoop of the pen. From now on, you can't receive compensation for any player that wasn't on your roster for a full year. No more creative thinking for GMs. Thinking outside of the box will get you smacked! Anthopoulos' greatest asset was thinking outside of the box.
There will no longer even be Type-A or Type-B free agents. Now, to qualify for any compensation, you have to offer your free agent player a 1-year qualifying offer within 5 days of the end of the World Series. Further, this offer must at least match the average of the top 125 salaries. Anything less and they get to walk Scot-free. If you fulfill this requirement and lose your free agent you will receive a single sandwich picks between the 1st and 2nd round of the Amateur Draft. No longer can you receive a second pick from the signing team. Thus, the cost of retating your own free agents is going up. Way up. This favours the richest teams like the Yankees, Red Sox and Phillies. It puts more emphasis on spending megabucks on free agents and de-emphasizes amateur signings. It gets worse. It definitely hurts Toronto.
If you sign someone else's free agent, you lose either a 1st or 2nd round pick in the Amateur Draft. I can't figure out what happens to these picks. They don't go to the team that lost their free agent as they have in the past for Type-A free agents. I can only guess that the picks simply evaporate, disappearing. This hurts the rich teams, but only somewhat. These teams already tend to be successful so their picks tend to come very late in their rounds, minimizing the value of the lost 'asset'. In the event that a weak team tries to buy its way out of the basement, the top 10 picks are protected from this mechanism. Further, since it no longer goes to the victimized team, generally a poor/low-spending team, it hurts the little guy. The only real winner here? The players. Another rule change that hurts Toronto.
The non-tender deadline is moved up to December 2nd. This gives GMs less time to decide what to do with their borderline assets. This hurts the poor more than the rich. Fully determining the pool of free agents before the Winter Meetings is a nice benefit for GMs, but again, it favours the big spenders. This isn't Toronto.
The way the Amateur Draft is handled is changing. Teams will be allotted a pool of funds for signing their amateur picks. This pool will range from $4.5 million to $11 million depending on position. Presumably, the larger pools go to the weakest teams, but that isn't clear yet. Teams are limited to this pool of funds for signing all their picks in the 1st 10 rounds. This includes all sandwich picks! Further, any amateur signing bonus greater than $10,000 counts against the pool even if the player is picked later than the 10th round. Teams can exceed this pool allotment b yup to 5% with relative impunity. The punishment is just a fine. If they exceed the allotment by more than 5% they start losing draft picks in subsequent drafts! In other words, exceeding your allotment by more than 5% and you are gambling that your picks this year will be more valuable than your early round picks in the next or next two drafts. This is a massive gamble!
This is great for teams that don't value the amateur draft or have stringent policies against paying amateurs significant signing bonuses. Since Anthopoulos became Toronto's GM the amateur draft has been where he has been the biggest spender! This is a serious blow to Toronto!
What is more insidious is how this will change the behaviour of potential draftees. Amateurs that are just looking for a big payday will be forced to at least strongly consider signing with the have-nots. Those are the teams that will have the money to spend. Players will have to weigh the benefit of signing with a winner or a cash cow. By that, I mean that the amateurs and their agents can clearly inform franchises that they will be seeking huge money, sending a signal to teams with limited pools to look elsewhere for talent. Or, they can waive their 'right' to a big payday and sign on the cheap with a winning franchise. In any case, players will always have the right to refuse signing and go back into the draft in subsequent years. Currently, players don't really have to decide much as the winning teams are generally the biggest spenders in the draft, too.
There's more. Players being drafted out of high school will have increased incentive to refuse paltry signing bonuses in favor of scholarships from colleges and universities. This happens now if and only if the player thinks he came be drafted higher and command a higher signing bonus when he is next eligible for the draft (2 years). With signing bonuses being severely curtailed, high schoolers may actually see more financial benefit from receiving a (mostly) free education even if they don't end up commanding a better signing bonus in the future. Most players don't make the big leagues and have to worry about life after baseball. This will steer them away from the minor leagues and into schools. Overall, this is good for ALL GMs. Signing players out of high school is inherently riskier than signing college players. Until now, this is one of the ways that teams sought philosophical advantage. Some teams, like the Blue Jays, would sign a fair number of "high ceiling" high school players. Other teams, like the 'Moneyballers' in Oakland, focus on lower risk and cheaper college players. Going forward, there will be more and more players opting for school before baseball, removing the option from GMs like Anthopoulos and eliminating one form of competitive advantage for franchises.
We're not done yet. Amateurs have four reasons to 'choose' a prospective team. The size of their potential signing bonus offer, the likelihood of success on the field, the potential for off-field income and the 'destination' status of the home city. Imposing these changes limits the attractiveness of the 1st reason, signing bonuses. This places additional emphasis on the other 3 reasons. All three favour big markets. The big markets are the big spenders and for the most part they buy their success on the field. The bigger the market, the greater the potential for off-field income. Finally, the perception of the reputation and history of a franchise is strongly influenced by the size of the market. It also somewhat favours financially mid- & low-tier but storied franchises like St. Louis and Cincinnati in the NL and Detroit, Baltimore, Oakland or Cleveland in the AL. Expansion teams need not apply. This hurts Toronto, the only team with the dubious (in the mind of often unworldly amateurs) distinction of being outside of the United States, perceived as a small market with poor potential for off-field income or on-field success. Those World Series wins were a lifetime ago. Half of the players eligible for the 2012 amateur draft hadn't even been born when the Jays last had succcess!
But that's not all. The very best athletes have more than one option on their plates. They are multi-sport athletes. Colleges and universities have a limited number of full and partial scholarships to offer ballplayers. Less than half of any college's baseball team typically earns a scholarship. There is only so much love to go around. By and large, college football teams are able to offer full scholarships to their entire rosters! So by limiting MLB franchises' ability to sign amateur athletes at 'what the market will bear' MLB is going to be sending potential superstars into other sports. The overall talent pool for baseball will shrink! This is terrible for everyone! Thanks, Uncle Bud! You win in your battle with union and in the process cut off your own nose. Being noseless suits you!
No matter how you slice it, the changes in the Amateur Draft hurt Toronto enormously, and possibly more than any other team!
The way international free agents are signed is changing, too. Like the Amateur Draft, teams will receive a pool of money to spend, but it will be equal for all teams. Teams that have no interest in the international free agent market can trade their pool or portions of it to other teams for other assets. Again, this may hurt Toronto more than any other team. GM Anthopoulos has seriously beefed up the scouting department since he arrived and much of that is focused on the international market. Toronto has made significant international free agent signings every year since he became GM. Their future ability to do this is going to be radically limited by the imposition of a budget.
Toronto may gain some benefit from this next change, but likely only for another year or two. They qualify only barely for this benefit and any improvement in revenue will likely eliminate them from receiving the benefit. What is it? Between the 1st round of the draft and the sandwich picks there will be "competitive balance lottery" picks. 6 picks will be up for grabs for the 10 teams with the lowest revenue. The 4 that miss out in this lottery will be eligible for 6 more 'lottery' picks after the 2nd round, but they will have to compete with the rest of the 'revenue-sharing payees' to get them. These picks may be traded -- they are the only picks that can be traded! For the time being, Toronto may benefit as I believe they are among the lowest 10 in revenue. I could be wrong. Please note that this is based entirely on revenue, not profitability. Increasing the payroll and increasing the net operating loss does nothing to qualify for this tiny benefit. If, as is generally expected, Toronto starts to see some additional success on the field, revenues will go up and they will lose access to this benefit (assuming they have access now).
The rules for qualifying for salary arbitration are changing, too. Instead of the players with 2-full years of service plus the top 17% of 1-year-plus players qualifying it will now be the 2-year players and the top 22% of the 1-year-plus players qualifying. More players qualifying for arbitration earlier is great for the players, bad for the franchises and worst for the low-budget or frugal teams like Toronto.

That's an awful lot of reasons why things have just gotten a lot darker for baseball fans in Toronto. Sure, there's that extra play-in spot (in each league), but good luck with that! Knowing the luck of Toronto sports franchises in the next 100 years the Blue Jays won't qualify for Wild Card spot #2, and even if they do they will then lose the 1-game play-in. More likely, they will qualify for Wild Card spots #1 (which so far has been a full-fledged ticket into the playoffs) and lose the 1-game play-in to the inferior 2nd Wild Card team. That's just the way it is in Toronto sports history. (OK, I suppose there's a remote chance they might win a 1-game play-in, but if they do, their absolute best player will suffer an injury during the game ending all hope of success in the real playoffs.)

Is there anything actually positive in the CBA?

Well, for one, there's no strike or lockout. That would have been the death knell for the league.

The top amateur prospects, both domestic and international will be subject to drug testing. This might tease out a few frauds, but catching cheaters in 1-shot testing is next to impossible.

They'll be phasing out the super-fragile and extremely dangerous maple bats, but players currently using them may continue to do so. It could take 20 years to entirely eliminate them. Why MLB doesn't invest in Ash tree farms around the world so there will be a sufficient supply of quality wood I'll never know!

There are two real, purely positive pieces of news in the CBA (for everyone, not just the players).

First, instant replay is being expanded. Fair/foul and trapped/caught are added to the list of reviewable plays. We're making progress, but we'e not quite there yet. Getting it right should be the most important thing officials do. I still say that the fans place zero value on Bud Selig's favorite thing in baseball, "the human element", i.e.the chance of umpires bungling calls. If you ask a typical fan how much money he's willing to spend for the human element you'll probably hear the answer "nothing". If more than 0 cents of every ticket goes to paying for the human element it is too much. It's obvious why he likes the human element. Human psychology predicts that the vast majority of mistakes will favour the home team, the star player and/or the 'popular' team. (Popular doesn't necessarily mean better.) All of these things are good for marketing and bad for fans. If it's bad for fans it's bad for baseball. Time and again, Selig has shown that what is bad for baseball is good in his book! And that's why the owners love him and why he'll probably die before relinquishing the role of Commissioner.

Second, the use of smokeless tobacco is being restricted. Well, sort of. Players can still use chaw, but they can't carry it in their uniforms and can't chew during an interview. I imagine that they will still be seen spitting tobacco juice onto the dugout floor every time the camera happens to look in that direction. I also figure that they will still take their at-bats with their cheeks overly full of poison. Part of the mythology of chaw is that the cheek bulge helps batters see the ball better. R-i-g-h-t... If that's all it is then chewing gum would be just as helpful and far less lethal. Still, it's a start.

Overall, Selig seems to have decided that he needed to 'win' something in the battle against the union. What baseball really needs is a salary cap, but that would be hard to get, and would probably lead to another work stoppage. Why they didn't force the issue when they had the chance during the last work stoppage is a good question. Now it is a holy grail that may never be attained. Instead, he went for little victories in the form of cost-cutting affecting amateurs. They have no rights, so that is easy! Unfortunately it does virtually nothing for the over all competitive balance in baseball. It merely pits the focus squarely on fee agency which suits the union just fine! Player salaries will go up as teams find it harder to win big in the draft. Qualifying offers will go up, another big win for the players. How exactly did Selig 'win' in this CBA? In any case, that's the story he's going to be telling and, by and large, he decides what spin gets placed on everything because the media lets him.

I had really high hopes for this CBA and mostly I feel I've been let down by the process and the participants. It's been like this for 15-20 years and there's little chance of improvement. Why exactly do I still care? Oh yeah, I love the game. I wish I still felt the same way about MLB.

A New Low For Ford

2011-11-21T18:31:00.000-05:00

Today the Mayoralty of Rob Ford will hit a new low. If you've been following Toronto politics for the past year (and then some) then you know how incredible an achievement this is -- the bar had already been set astonishingly low! More specifically, it will take place tomorrow at 12:01 AM.

Toronto will follow the dismal leadership displayed in Vancouver, New York and Oakland in dismantling the local Occupy Movement in St. James Park. Occupiers in Vancouver peaceably left their territory after a court ordered them to vacate. New York and Oakland instead saw violence as police forced the issue. The members of Occupy Toronto have indicated that they won't leave voluntarily so a confrontation is looming. The Occupiers have stated that they will utilize passive resistance methods including linking arms and lying down rather than cooperating with any attempt to forcibly remove them.

Is it remotely surprising that the Occupy Movement is being dismantled worldwide? Of course not! The generation of people responsible for the protests in the 1960s are now the wealthy people being protested. It was OK for them to protest against the powers that be then, but now that they are on the other side of the equation they are exerting their political muscle to quash peaceful protest today.

Decades ago economists and social critics cited the 80-20 rule, where 80% of wealth was owner by 20% of the population and vice versa. Today, the number is closer to 88% being held by the top 20%. In the past 3 decades the average pre-tax earnings of the 'least' 90% of American citizens actually dropped by $900. When you factor in inflation, wealth and earning power has actually dropped much, much more. The top 10%, on the other hand, saw their average pre-tax earnings grow by an amazing $700,000! If allowed to continue soon enough we will reach the 99-1 rule, where 1% of the population has 99% of the wealth and 99% of the population has to fight tooth and nail for their share of the final 1%. There won't be enough to go around. We are headed for Armageddon and it has nothing to do with religion or even with any god...unless of course you worship money.

Perhaps the most distasteful of all the economic statistics regarding the dangerously increasing concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands is that the Global Economic Crisis actually accelerated the problem! This is completely understandable even without complex statistics and mathematics. Consider what happened during the crisis. The typical citizen saw their home taken away due to foreclosure, leaving them with debts and no collateral assets. Jobs were lost and unemployment rose. Jobs increasingly converted from full-time jobs with benefits to lower paying part-time jobs without benefits.

At the same time, the people responsible for the crisis literally laughed all the way to the bank! The financial institutions that mismanaged money and paved the way for their own insolvency were bailed out by the government. That means tax money taken from the poorer 90% went to support institutions largely owned by the richest 10%. So, instead of taking losses for mismanagement and malfeasance the public took a bath instead. Isn't that a tenet of capitalism and evolution for that matter? (What is capitalism if not financial evolution? Survival of the financially fittest.) Shouldn't the dinosaurs have been allowed to die off? Making matters worse is the answer to the question, "What did these companies do with all that money?" For the most part, we don't know! When the government handed it out in haste they neglected to put in place adequate measures to track its disbursement and subsequent use!

What do we know for certain? The CEOs, senior Executives and Boards of Directors that were most responsible for the workings and policies of these institutions received huge bonuses on top of the salaries that they hadn't earned! Their argument was that their talent was necessary to recover from the crisis and had they given them even a penny less they would have left to go to other corporations leaving them rudderless during a crisis. When the 'talent' was steering the ship directly into an iceberg and they threaten to go I say "let them!" The lowest mail-boy couldn't have done any worse! If these companies had chosen to relieve the greedy and foolish responsible for the crisis of their duties it would have cost even more! Their contracts almost always include massive "golden parachutes" that trigger even if they are terminated for cause! So getting rid of the dead-weight would have cost a fortune AND left the companies leaderless.

In the case of the Credit Rating Agencies like Standard and Poor's, who more than any other person or group are responsible for the financial meltdown had their bottom lines completely untouched by the crisis. (Why are they responsible? The are the ones that rated the securities based on distressed mortgages as AAA must-buys right to the bitter end. If they had given these securities a rating appropriate for the level of risk that they represented then the entire disaster would never have happened. But, what do you expect when the people that pay you to do your job are the ones issuing those securities? That's right, the financial houses that issue the securities pay Standard & Poor's and other CRAs to rate their securities. Given who is paying their bills, is it any surprise that CRAs rated garbage as top-notch investments? What if they had been honest? They'd lose their funding and disappear, allowing another, less honest company to do what they were ethically unwilling to do. Scruples are an extremely expensive thing to have these days.

The only way to fix the problem is regulation. America and most other democracies are allergic to regulation and the allergy is getting worse all the time. Somehow, the powers that be, also known as "the 1%" in Occupier terms, have managed to convince the other 99% that capitalizm is a benevolent entity that will look after everybody. In practice nothing could be further from the truth. Even in theory this isn't true! People misquote the father of modern economics, Adam Smith, as having stated in his landmark work "The Wealth of Nations" that "the Invisible Hand" will look after the less advantaged. Nowhere in the entire book is this stated even once. The only mention of "the Invisible Hand" is in terms of guiding businesses and investors. What I mean by that is that should a need arise, i.e. a market, the Invisible Hand will guide investors and businesses to direct their money and efforts to meeting that need. If they are the first, only and/or best at meeting that need they will be financial success stories. Similarly, if a market starts to dry up, the Invisible Hand will guide investors and businesses out of that market into more profitable ventures. Nothing about charity, nothing about social consciousness, nothing of the like...at...all! It's a big fat lie.

But this big fat lie has taken root in our society and is widely accepted as 'fact'. The vast majority of people that believe it have never even heard of Adam Smith or "The Wealth of Nations", but they consider themselves experts when it comes to understanding capitalism. Ignorance is rampant. Who fosters this misinformation? The 1%, who largely HAVE read "The Wealth of Nations" and known damned well that it says nothing about capitalism being fair or equitable or having mechanisms to help the desperately poor. It behooves them to delude the public into thinking that the system looks out for them. And we trust them, because we lack the knowledge and sophistication to disbelieve and because it is easiest to just eat what we are being fed indiscriminately. Politicians are split on this matter. Some are educated and are part of the conspiracy and others are ignorant and therefore can't help. The few that know the truth are seldom elected and even less often re-elected as the hype- and propaganda-machines operated by the 1% work to purge them from positions of leadership.

The other major secret of capitalism and economies is that the concentration of wealth kills economies. The wealthy can't spend what they earn. It just isn't possible. Most of what they earn just sits and doesn't contribute (directly) to the economy. Indirectly, some of it gets invested in business ventures, or private bonds, government bonds, T-Bills, or a dozen other kinds of investment. Investment in and of itself does nothing for the health of an economy. You can fund a billion new businesses if you really wanted to, but they would nearly all fail. As things are most businesses fail! In other words, much invested money is thrown out the window as far as the economy is concerned. Yes, in the very short term there are jobs created which may lower unemployment which DOES grow the economy. But this is a short term change.

What happens to this 'wasted' investment? Much of it is erased in the form of bankruptcy. Bankruptcy is terrible for the economy. For every dollar of debt that is wiped out by bankruptcy there is a dollar of revenue/profit on someone else's financial books that gets wiped out. When businesses go bankrupt invariably private citizens are forced into bankruptcy, further shrinking the economy. When the banks foreclosed en masse on America, thousands of families went bankrupt erasing huge amounts of money from the economy. At the same time, investors like Donald Trump grew their empires obscenely.

(They bought thousands of properties at seriously depressed (i.e. fire sale) prices. Eventually, the market value of those properties will return to their 'true' value and their be sold for incredible profits. Why do they do it? Because they can? Why can they do it? Because we let them. Exploiting distress is the dark secret of wealth. Even playing the market is exploitation of distress. For every tycoon that sees their stock holdings go up, there is some schmo that sees the value of their modest holdings evaporate. On very rare occasion, the process works in reverse.)

But what is the net effect on the economy? The hit taken by the loss of homes, jobs and nest eggs is much larger than the gains made by tycoons. The economy shrinks.

At the same time that the ultra-wealthy have money doing nothing for the economy, the poor have needs that go unmet. If some of the wasted/idle money of the ultra-rich found it's way into the hands of the poor and even the middle class, it would be spent immediately! They would buy not just more, but also better quality items to replace inferior goods that don't completely meet their needs. This spending would directly grow the economy. The increased demand would force companies to expand their production or ability to provide services which would increase employment. Thus it is completely intuitive, and completely true, that the economy grows when the financial base is broader.

Looking at the economy from the supply side is pointless. Companies are not obliged to turn profits into jobs or to expand or anything else that might be beneficial to a society. They are perfectly within their rights to funnel that money into the hands of their owners, and many do! Giving corporations free money, which is exactly what governments are doing by reducing their moral and ethical social obligations by reducing taxes, guarantees nothing with respect to new jobs or growing the economy. The only guaranteed way to grow the economy is to grow demand/consumption. The only way to do this is to spread the wealth.

All Western governments of the past 40-50 years have been facilitating the flow of money from the middle class and poor to the rich. In the case of Left Wing governments it may have been in a naive and misguided belief that it would stimulate the economy. In the case of Right Wing governments it was a conscious and deliberate attempt to funnel money into the hands of the wealthy, their primary ideological imperative, and had nothing to do with growing the economy, though that is their official public political story. And we've been buying it like it was a 90%-off warehouse sale.

Related lies include the fact that taxes are inherently evil and uniformly crush economies by placing 'artificial', unnecessary and dangerous constraints on business. By the same logic, laws are 'artificial', unnecessary and dangerous constraints on human behaviour. Does anyone on the planet actually believe that? Does anyone actually believe that people would play nice together if there were no such thing as laws or punishment for crimes to coax them into playing fair? Even with laws there are those who think these rules don't apply to them!

What applies to laws applies to taxation and regulation. Businesses are self-interested and completely focused on profits. Nothing else matters. If businesses were allowed to, they would do things that were self-destructive in the quest for greater profits. For example, if businesses could operate without any labour costs they would! What a geat way to maximize profits! The fact that 99% of the population would have no income as a result of this free-labour operation falls on deaf ears. What difference would that make? Well, you'd have no one to buy your product/service because 99% of the population would have no money at all! It's really tough to make a profit without any demand for your product/service!

Taxes and regulations help shape a society into something of which it is worth being a part. For example, if there were no taxes there would be almost no roads. Those that did exist would run directly from the driveways of the most wealthy to their places of employment and a very small number of other favourite haunts, like their children's school, their church etc. There might be a road to their local airport. No other roads would exist because they would provide no benefit to the only people that can afford to have them constructed, the ultra wealthy. All other transportation would have to use corduroy roads, cobblestones or worse! Trucking would almost completely cease. Railways and airports would be the only forms of mass transportation. If you happened to live, work, learn or worship near this money monger you'd have the benefit of using their roads. But don't count on it being free! Those same people who are dead against their roads having tolls would apply tolls to 'their' private roads -- you better believe it! And if you can't afford their price, it's off to the mud roads for you! Did you think they got rich by giving stuff away?

Similarly, there would be no armies, navies, air forces, etc., only private militias. If a foreign power decided to bring war to domestic soil, you would have absolutely nothing to protect you. What private militias that did exist would be primarily focused on police-like actions, namely protecting property from trespassing, theft, vandalism, etc., not from stopping military actions. Good luck mobilizing those separate militias as a united defense against an enemy...there aren't enough roads for that to happen. Why will militias be law-focused rather than war-focused? War machines are brutally expensive and generally just sit around doing nothing. Protecting against the extremely unlikely event of foreign attacks does not do well in a cost-benefit analysis, so it most likely won't get done by any of the ruling class. If anything, they will all trust that one of the others will do it and they will receive the benefits of someone else's investment. So even with tax- and government-free anarchy the rich won't have their theoretical utopia.

Wait a second, why does there have to be no government just because there's no tax? Without taxes to fund them, what can a government do? Nothing. Nothing can be done without money. There's no point in having a puppet or figurehead government if they have no budget. Don't expect the rich to create a government. They don't need one. All the laws they need can be enforced by their militias. And the only power they recognize is that of money and raw capitalism. Government would be irrelevant.

Wouldn't the poor rise up? They'd try. They'd fail. Where would they get weapons? Ammunition? No one would see it to them. The only way they could get it is to steal it and they'd be seriously out-manned and outgunned when trying to do that, too. Smuggling? The rich would control the borders. Nothing they didn't want to come in would get in. Anything that might threaten their absolute power wouldn't get in, or it would be confiscated and be added to their arsenal. The dreadfully poor and completely powerless would once again be medieval serfs at the mercy of their masters, or worse. If the master has no use for them they would be reduced to savagery in whatever wilds remained, or they will be slaughtered outright -- why let them live as potential raiders and defilers of property when you can so easily be done with them?

The closest thing in "The Wealth of Nations" to social policy is the theory that "man has to work." In order for health, sanity, and self-esteem man must work -- because he is 'wired' that way. This is so steeped in Christian religious philosophy it isn't funny. This also happens to run completely contrary to the prevailing belief that the poor are poor because they 'want to be'! By that, the belief means that the poor aren't willing to do what it takes to better themselves. They are lazy. Sure they are...and so are fat people. (If you don't know, that, too, is a complete myth!) So, what we have here is a completely hypocritical elite that controls knowledge, information and culture to perpetuate the status quo since it benefits them exclusively. This has always been an accurate description of humanity.

The most accurate definition for capitalism is, "The economic system whereby greater and greater wealth is legally concentrated into fewer and fewer hands." That is capitalism at its core. Everything else it does is incidental. That core could be considered evil by people of good conscience.

Like virtually everything else in life, it is a matter of 'too much of a good thing'. Here's an analogy. We all need iron to survive but too much of it is toxic. We need to control our consumption of iron through the regulation of our diet and judicious use of supplements if we want to ensure the health of our bodies. Capitalism is like iron. We need to regulate and supplement it to ensure the health of our bodies (the economy).

Toronto's Mayor Ford isn't just rich, he's of the inherited rich. It's largely daddy's money. Sure, he runs daddy's company now, but he started with it all. His upbringing is deeply entrenched in the myth of capitalism and he probably believes all the lies he's been taught. So it is entirely expected that he will act in a heavy-handed manner to quash any effort to bring the attention of the 99% to the truth that is just waiting for their acknowledgement! His most loyal followers fall into the same categories as politicians -- some are in on it and want the message quashed (the well-moneyed Right-Wing voter) and others are completely ignorant and see the Occupy Movement as 'dangerous anarchists', just as the 1% wants them to think (the citizens of Etobicoke and others seduced by his "gravy train" mythology). Either way, his beliefs and his base both urge him to shut down the free, peaceful and legal protests by whatever legal wrangling necessary, or by force if it comes to that, and it probably will. Society would be in serious trouble if the truth became widely known!

Actually, that's nonsense! Only the stranglehold of the ultra-rich on all trappings of power would change. Taxes would go up, regulation would flourish, forcing businesses and industries into practices that approach being even remotely ethical, moral and environmental. Wealth concentration would slow down. I'm not sure there is anything that can be done to stop the concentration of wealth, or even possibly reverse it. We may have moved beyond the ability to stop it. But just slowing it down is a worthwhile goal! As we speak it is accelerating!

My final words are these. We in the West have looked at the Arab Springs with a combination of hope, disgust and pessimism. Just as we hope that changes in Egypt and Libya will create more egalitarian, possibly secular, democratic societies, we look on at the senseless violence and obsessive and illegal wielding of, or clinging to, power in Yemen and Syria with disgust and disdain. In all cases we wonder if the President-for-life, one-party systems will simply become Islamist States like so many other Muslim nations before them. Things aren't looking particularly good on that front, but that's not the point.

The point is what pathetic hypocrites we are! The Occupy Movement is our Arab Spring! They are EXACTLY the same! The oppressed are gathering to bring attention to their plight and are hoping that people are paying attention. We aren't! We look on at the activity in the Middle East with mild curiosity and interest but ignore what is happening right under our own noses.

Here are some truisms...

Familiarity breeds apathy.

Success breeds complacency.

Laziness breeds inaction.

Ignorance breeds contempt.

Fear breeds distrust.

Change is hard.

We have it pretty good compared to the Third World, and even though things are getting steadily worse for the vast majority of us, it is easier to bury our heads in the sand and hope it starts getting better than to engage and actually do something about it. We naively hope that someone else will solve our problems and then when someone actually tries, we deride them -- a form of self-inflation, leveling and bullying -- or worse, we completely ignore them. Either way, we doom ourselves to what we fear most. So long as things are even remotely comfortable in our lives we avoid action as it entails conflict, which we hate. Eventually, the window of opportunity will close and it will be too late to help ourselves -- we'll require outside intervention to improve our lives as was the case in Libya (or Afghanistan, or to a lesser degree, Iraq). As is the case in most of Africa, only there we aren't intervening and things are desperately bad. Can you say "genocide?"

In the Middle East, it is true that there is familiarity, laziness, ignorance and fear, but not so much success, and they have something that largely we don't have -- desperation. They are trying to get things done and they at least seem to be succeeding. They have met some resistance. That is unavoidable. There will always be slugs resistant to all forms of change including any form of improvement, including and possibly especially, self-improvement. There will also be people that are currently exploiting the situation to great success and fear that they will suffer if things change (either through loss of opportunity or through punishment for their crimes against their fellow citizens). But their fate is largely in their own hands. We have left our fate in the hands of those least interested in our well-being. To them, we are a means to an end (wealth and power), tools to be discarded once our function is complete (i.e. we're broke and can't make them richer anymore). We need to shake off complacency, reign in our contempt, conquer our apathy and inactivity and overcome our distrust if we ever hope to effect change and thrive as our parents and grandparents did. Opening our minds to the implications of messages that we are seldom allowed to hear would be an amazingly good start!

What are you doing about it?

2011 AL MVP Announced Today, AKA BBWAA SUCK!

2011-11-21T14:38:00.000-05:00

The members of the Baseball Writers Association of America almost universally suck! Virtually none of them deserve the honour of being able to vote for Major League Baseball's major awards. They have shown year after year to have no ability to exercise sensible judgement skills. This year's crime will be in naming Detroit Tigers starting pitcher Justin Verlander the AL MVP.

Don't get me wrong, Verlander had a great season! He won the pitching version of the Triple Crown and was a unanimous selection for the AL Cy Young Award, as he should have been. But he has no business even being considered for the MVP. Pedro Martinez had a better year in 2000 and he didn't win, so even for those that think that pitchers should win, the bar has been set and Verlander failed to clear it.

In a vacuum, you can argue that any and all players should be eligible for the MVP. After all, the "P" stands for "player" not "position" or "position player". This is a really weak argument and holding this opinion shows a remarkable inability to think logically or critically.

There are two primary awards for baseball players. One is the Most Valuable Player Award and the other is the Cy Young Award. The Cy Young Award goes to the most outstanding pitcher. The MVP goes to the most outstanding player. Player is not defined, nor should it have to be. If pitchers were meant to be considered for the award then there wouldn't be a separate award exclusively for pitchers. It wouldn't make sense to have one.

(There is a third award, the Hank Aaron Award, given to the best offensive player in each league, but it has nowhere near the value or cachet of these two venerable awards. If an argument is to be made that pitchers belong in the MVP race, then the Hank Aaron Award needs to be elevated to a status equal to the other two.)

Here's an analogy. Quebec decides to separate from Canada and produces its own currency. They decide on the follow coins to be minted as legal tender: a penny, a dime, a quarter, another different-sized quarter (similar to a nickel), a 3rd quarter the same size and weight as the dime (but a different colour), and a dollar coin. What is wrong with this hypothetical design? For one, there are redundant coins. If you have one 25c piece, you don't need another. It is a waste, it is pointless, it is illogical and it is confusing. Second, there are 2 identically sized, shaped and weighted coins. This is enormously confusing. People are going to accidentally spend 'quarters' when they meant to spent 'dimes' and vice versa. You can probably count on people telling you when you've accidentally underpaid (or intentionally tried to pull a fast one) but if you accidentally overpay, kiss your money goodbye. Even worse, try to pick the right coin if you're blind! Third, there is no 5c coin. Arguably you don't need one -- a country could get away with nothing but pennies but it would be inconvenient for people to deal with such a silly coin system. However, even though you don't need one, it makes total sense to have one.

How does this relate to baseball? As in coins, it makes no sense to have multiple coins representing the same value, or in this case, multiple awards for the same subgroup. Similarly, it makes no sense to have no 5c coin, here represented by an award exclusively for everyday position players. Finally, 2 different coins that are virtually indistinguishable from one another representing different values is what the BBWAA is trying to turn the MVP and Cy Young into.

The only way that it makes sense for there to be two separate awards is for them to represent two different types of contribution and thus two different types of players. You could argue that pitchers are more important than everyday position players and should thus be eligible for both. Nice try. You're showing evidence of independent thought, but you're not quite there yet. If pitchers were more important than position players then you would only need one award, the MVP, and pitchers would win it more often than position players because they are 'more important to their teams'. But that isn't the case. There are two awards, and again I say the only way they make sense is if they are completely separate!

There are two types of baseball writers that vote for pitchers. The first thinks that pitchers are typically more valuable than position players. This is similar to the popular and misguided belief that quarterbacks are integral to football and goalies are integral to soccer and hockey. Try to win with a superstar in these 'prime' positions when you have gross deficiencies in other positions. All positions are equally essential to winning. That is a big part of why these are called 'team' sports and not individual sports with the 'main' athlete having secondary 'helpers' -- consider golfers and caddies. Even in rowing, the coxswain -- who doesn't actually row and doesn't even need to have any athletic ability (! -- just an excellent sense of timing/pacing) -- still wins a medal when his 'team' wins a race! In fact, rowing teams without a good cox seldom excel, so you could call this non-athlete the 'prime' player of that sport!

Any single weakness can undermine a team completely! No position is more vital than others. In baseball there is an axiom that "good pitching always beats good hitting." This is always true except for the times when good hitting beats good pitching. Amazingly, both happen with about equal frequency. Still, we've got perception issues and the BBWAA doesn't recognize a difference between perception and fact. What they perceive to be true must be true even if the facts refute it. Even baseball management and owners have similar perception problems. I believe that the average salary for pitchers is higher than that of position players, but not by much. It is also true that more money is wasted on bad pitching than there is on bad hitting as pitchers can 'lose it' at any time. So, even in salaries there is no real evidence that pitching is more important than hitting.

Besides, an equally compelling argument can be made that the 'key' player on the diamond isn't the pitcher but the catcher! Catchers are generally acknowledged as the most valuable/important position player to any team. This can be shown by the simple fact that catchers typically are the worst hitters and runners on any team. (Some shortstops may be weaker hitters, but not all. Further, the shortstop is generally considered an elite fielding position just like the catcher is.) If catchers' contributions without the bat weren't of paramount importance then weak hitting catchers would never make the majors!

The idea that pitchers deserve the MVP is even more ludicrous in the American League than in the National League. At least in the National League pitchers are responsible for taking their turn at bat! Sure some of them are absolutely terrible hitters but some actually help their own cause when hitting! In the American League pitchers are spared that indignity by the Designated Hitter Rule. The only times they ever have to pick up a bat is during a handful of at bats during Interleague play and during the World Series, assuming that they actually play one of these games in a National League park. Not all do!

The second type of baseball writer that casts MVP votes for pitchers are the lazy kind. If the best position players vying for the award are hard to separate from one another, i.e. hard to rank, take the easy way out, i.e. cop out, and vote for the most outstanding pitcher. If two stallions finish a race in a dead heat, we name co-winners of the race. These baseball writers would declare the #3 horse as the winner because it's a mare and it's easier than having to decide between the two faster stallions and in sports, particualrly North American sports, no one is ever comfortable with ties or co-winners! It somehow offends the sports-fans' and sports-writers' delicate sensibilities.

Here's yet another, completely different reason why pitchers should never be considered for the MVP and why they have their own, private award. Pitching and hitting are so different that they simply cannot be compared. There is no uniform, mathematical or logical method to use to decide whether a performance in one role was better than another performance in the other role. That leaves the only methods as personal feelings, biased opinion and hunches. Nothing should ever be decided on fuzzy feelings, biased opinions and hunches!

The'official' rules for how to determine who should win these awards are vague at best. Here are the BBWAA guidelines for the MVP:
(1) actual value of a player to his team, that is, strength of offense and defense;
(2) number of games played;
(3) general character, disposition, loyalty and effort;
(4) former winners are eligible;
(5) members of the committee may vote for more than one member of a team.

Nowhere does it say that a team must make the playoffs, or even contend for a playoff spot. In fact, there is nothing that indicates that a player should be judged by the performance of his teammates, at all! But the vast majority of the BBWAA won't give a player on a mediocre team the time of day. Part of item number 1 is pretty much ignored. A player's defensive play almost never comes into play, with the obvious exception of pitchers. Item number 2 speaks very loudly that pitchers should NOT be eligible as they don't come close to appearing in enough games. Similarly, last year's AL winner, Josh Hamilton missed a ton of games due to injury! So, summarily, the BBWAA ignores its own rules and votes for pitchers with alarming regularity. Item number 3 is completely ignored. Barry Bonds won 7 MVPs. Has there ever been a bigger jerk in baseball? Need I say more about that?

I do? OK, how about 2003.

Alex Rodriguez has an outstanding season for the last place, 71-91 Texas Rangers. Carlos Delgado also has an outstanding season for the 86-76 Toronto Blue Jays. Between the two of them they led the AL in virtually all offensive categories (Delgado led MLB in RBI). Rodriguez had a marginally better season in a ballpark designed for hitters (e.g. the Rangers won the AL HR derby with 239 on the season). They finish 1-2 in the MVP race in spite of the fact that neither team was close to a playoff spot.

Rodriguez almost certainly should have won the MVP in 2002, but the BBWAA in its infinite wisdom gave the award to Miguel Tejada. Why? Because Tejada played for the 1st place Oakland Athletics and Rodriguez played for the last place Texas Rangers. A-Rod had better stats than Tejada in every category (except team wins, which is not something within his, or any one person's control)! A-Rod led the majors in 2002 with 57 HR, 142 RBIs & 389 total bases, the 1st time someone led in all 3 categories in almost 20 years. His 57 HR were the most since Roger Maris' hit (a then record, and probably still should be) 61 in 1961. Again I ask, where does the talent of your teammates fit into the qualifications for the MVP? I'm absolutely positive that some of the ballots cast had been influenced by "writer's guilt" for having snubbed A-Rod the year before. Stated another way, A-Rod was likely given votes based on career performance (or a 'lifetime achievement award'). I seem to have missed the part in the instructions where previous years' performances were in any way relevant. Certainly, A-Rod's 2002 was far better than his 2003. Similarly, Delgado's 2003 was better than Tejada's 2002. And yet we're stuck with the results given to us by a clueless and possibly corrupt BBWAA.

Getting back to qualification #3...Rodriguez has always been a private to surly individual and has been dogged by all kinds of bad press. A-Rod received the nickname "The Cooler" for the tendency for teams to cool off when he arrived and heat up when he left, which seemed to occur with all three of his teams -- the Mariners, Rangers and Yankees. His own teammates called him "A-Fraud" for a perceived lack of clutch performance. He has also been frequently associated with marital infidelity including keeping the company of strippers and prostitutes. This ended his marriage. And last but not least, A-Rod is a confessed user of PEDs and wouldn't you know it, the period he 'allegedly' took them (allegedly because he probably took them outside of the limited period to which he he confessed) just happens to be 2001-2003, the years in question.

On the other hand, Carlos Delgado has always been a model citizen. He was as positive a person as anyone is likely to meet and was also always considered a club leader. His smile was famous throughout baseball and he was great with fans and the media. Even more telling, Delgado won MLB's Roberto Clemente Award (in 2006) for his community contributions, something with which he had been very active throughout his career. (He even had charitable interests in Toronto long after he had moved on as a free agent to the Mets.) Finally, at no point has there been any credible connection made between Delgado and the use of PEDs. I'm not even aware of any non-credible connections attempted!

The only knock against Delgado was his silent, almost completely unknown protest of the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. In his mind, the playing of "God Bless America" in New York City had become a symbol of support for these 'immoral and unauthorized' wars. Delgado would disappear into the clubhouse during the playing of GBA rather than stand at attention in the dugout with the other players. The only reason I don't think that this cost Delgado any votes at all is that it didn't happen until 2004, or at least didn't come to light until then. Had it been known in 2003, he would not have finished as high as 2nd in the MVP since undoubtedly members of the BBWAA would have punished Delgado for his incredible and admirable show of conscience, deeming it "Unamerican". There would have been ballots where his name was conspicuously completely absent.

(A-Rod's charitable claim to fame is a $4 million donation to his Alma Mater, the University of Miami, for which he was rewarded with their renaming their baseball stadium after him and placing him on their Board of Trustees. Is it really charity if you get rewarded for it?)

The only other obvious differences between the two players are that A-Rod is an American Hispanic having been born in New York City. Carlos Delgado is an Afro-Hispanic Puerto Rican, i.e. not American and black. I don't know whether this had anything to do with any of the votes cast that year, but it would be entirely consistent with prevailing American attitudes.

Not everyone agrees with me. Not everyone understands logic, either. BleacherReport.com published this article on the web 2 months ago: MLB Writers Who Won't Vote a Pitcher for MVP Shouldn't Be Voting at All. I've read the article. In my humble opinion, it's complete garbage. It tries to use one injustice to justify another. It also gets hung up on the semantics of the word "valuable". If the title confuses you, just look at the guidelines for the award as you're supposed to! Complete crap.

I guess the wild frontier justice style of handing out these awards can be considered part of their appeal -- or their major flaw, depending on your personal view. It certainly leads to lots of debate and controversy, as well as some huge snubs and unfairness. In addition to the MVP guidelines mentined above, here are some of the definitions for the awards from around the World Wide Web.

Baseball-Almanac.com on the MVP:
"It is considered by Major League Baseball as the only "official" most valuable player award and symbolizes the pinnacle of a player's personal achievement during any single season of play."

Wikipedia.com on the MVP:
"The Major League Baseball Most Valuable Player Award (MVP) is an annual Major League Baseball (MLB) award, given to one outstanding player in the American League and one in the National League."
Elsewhere on Wikipedia it refers to it as follows:
"Kenesaw Mountain Landis Most Valuable Player Award: given to the best all-around player"

Notice the phrases 'personal achievement' and 'outstanding'. These directly contradict the BBWAA practices of electing pitchers and ignoring 'outstanding personal achievement' because they weren't surrounded by outstanding teammates.

I will give members of the BBWAA some credit. Two years ago they gave the American League Cy Young Award to "King" Felix Hernandez, who is, in fact, a superlative pitcher. What made this decision remarkable is the fact that Hernandez finished with a 13-12 record for the Seattle Mariners. How the members of the BBWAA managed such an enlightened position to elect a pitcher with only a marginal record but can't get the MVP right is beyond me. After all, the BBWAA are clearly hung up on the importance of wins for MVP candidates, yet somehow they can see past that for the award for the player category where wins and loses are tracked! This makes absolutely NO SENSE!

So, to summarize, too many members of the BBWAA are hypocrites and/or idiots. They should all turn in their voting rights for people that actually know what they are talking about. (Jeff Blair, a local BBWAA member turned in his voting rights recently, no longer wanting the responsibility or aggravation. Presumably this had to do with the Hall of Fame vote and the use of PEDs. Regardless of the reason for the decision, I have enormous respect for Blair for having given up that honour. For whatever reason he no longer felt up to it and gave it up. Dozens of others should follow suit.) They are using this honour to make pseudo-political statements contrary to the instructions they have been given. The moment they deviate from the formula they should lose their vote, whether they want to give it up or not. The honour and responsibility of having the vote is not a license to become a petty tyrant doing things the way they see fit, the rules be damned. Don't get me wrong, there is still room for individual opinion, but not for ideology. Ignoring players on mediocre or losing teams is ideology. Ignoring qualification #2 and voting for pitchers is ideology. Ignoring qualification #3 and the defense portion of qualification #1 is ideology.

Maybe with these bad seeds removed, future honours awarded will actually make sense. I expect nothing to change before I die. The only hope is that the Commissioner of Baseball will step in a clarify things -- which is to say none. This won't happen with Selig and I expect Selig to be replaced by his own younger clone -- the owners got away with a puppet Commissioner for 20 years and they will keep on electing puppet Commissioners until the US Congress steps in and stops them. This simply won't happen because it would be political suicide to 'interfere' in the affairs of all-sacred Baseball. So, let me be clear: there is no hope for change. This is just another thing wrong with baseball with no relief in sight. If you don't like it, you don't have to. But get used to it, it's here to stay.

[Editor's note: Verlander didn't just win, he won by a landslide! Complete garbage! This is the 2nd year in a row that Jose Bautista has won the Hank Aaron Award and been robbed of the MVP. Bautista is a superlative defender! How could he win the Hank Aaron, and be a better defender than his competitors but not win the MVP?]

Sidney Crosby Is Back! For How Long?

2011-11-21T10:58:00.000-05:00

After 10 long months out of action due to a pair of concussions received in rapid succession, Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins will make his return tonight. Crosby is widely thought to be the best, most talented hockey player in the world and his absence has left an enormous hole in the NHL. He has been practicing at full speed for weeks if not months so this day was been anticipated in the worst way.

There are two related questions that arise as a result of his comeback. 1) Will opponents be out looking to make a name for themselves by gunning for Sid? 2) How long will Sid be able to play before his next, or worse, his last, concussion?

Why so pessimistic? History and psychology. Hockey has already had a death that is suspected to have been brought about by concussions. In 1968, the Minnesota North Stars' Bill Masterson took a bodycheck that caused him to fall backwards to the ice. He struck headfirst. It wasn't a vicious hit. Some even called it 'routine'. Something other than raw force cause Masterson to lose his balance.

At the time, no one in hockey wore helmets. Jacques Plantes had just introduced the goaltender's mask not to be used to protect an already existing injury 9 years earlier. Plantes was frequently derided as being a coward for wearing the mask. His response was comparing tending goal without a mask to skydiving without a parachute. At least one goaltender was still not regularly wearing a mask as late as the 1970's!

Helmets were frowned upon at least as much as masks had been. "We were not allowed to wear helmets. You would get traded if you did. It was a no-no in no uncertain terms. You were a yellow belly if you wore a helmet." -- J.P. Parise, Masterson's teammate in 1967-68. Only Andre Boudrias dared challenge the Minnesota policy -- he was traded the following season to the Chicago Black Hawks.

Apparently, blood sprayed from Masterson's mouth and nose due to the impact with the ice and he is rumoured to have said, "Never again" before passing out. (It is more likely that he passed out immediately.) The impact didn't just cause a brain hemorrhage it damaged his pons, pone of the most ancient parts of the brain involved with the regulation of sleep and breathing. Damage was so extensive doctors couldn't operate and Masterson died two days later.

In the days before Masterson's fatal injury he had suffered another big hit. His head had struck the glass surrounding the playing ice quite hard. Earlier this year, in a "Toronto Star" forensic investigation it has been concluded that Masterson did not die from a brain bruise resulting from hitting the ice. World renowned Toronto neurosurgeon and concussion expert, Dr. Charles Tator, concluded that Masterson died from "second impact syndrome," a rare occurrence where a 2nd concussion happens soon after an initial concussion that never healed, causing rapid and severe brain swelling. "My interpretation is that the seeds of this catastrophic injury were sown days before," said Dr. Tator.

It is not known for certain if the hit against the glass caused this first injury, but it could have. There were signs that Masterson was already injured when his final game began. Here are some facts and quotes uncovered by the Star in its investigation:

"I’ve never said this to anyone before. I’ve never thought that it had anything to do with that hit. I think he had a (pre-existing) cerebral brain hemorrhage." -- Wren Blair, Minnesota North Stars coach & GM.
"I saw Bill’s head after he was just checked from behind and it just looked like his eyes were in the back of his head. I thought he was out then and just went fast right down." -- Mavis Managio, Minnesota goalie Cesare Maniago’s wife, who had a clear view of Masterton’s fall from her seat in the stands explaining that the routine bodycheck left him unconscious even before he hit the ice.
"He had been complaining of headaches. He’d got hit and even that night he said ‘Gee, I’ve really been getting these migraines and they’ve been with me for about a week.’" -- Minnesota goaltender Cesare Maniago of a conversation he had with Masterson while celebrating Maniago's 29th birthday -- the night before Masterson's fatal injury.
"I’d said to our trainer, ‘Do you ever look at Billy when the game’s on?’ His face is blood red, almost purple. (The trainer) said, ‘Yeah, I notice that too.’ I said, ‘I wonder if we could have him checked. There’s something wrong.’" -- Wren Blair (again)
Carl Johnson, Assistant GM of Minnesota’s farm team in Memphis, said he was told that Masterton had blacked out while on line rushes during practice.
"I really believe he was injured before the fatal blow. I know that in our training camp he got hit hard a couple of times. And he got hit a few games very hard at the NHL level. His aggressiveness got him." and "He wasn’t the most talented guy in the world but he really wanted to play. . . . He wanted it badly. I’ve never seen a person work so hard. He’d never show when he got hurt. He never laid down." -- John Muckler, head coach of the North Stars' farm team in Memphis and subsequent NHL coach with the Edmonton Oilers.
"My mother, before she died, talked about it. He was having some headaches. My feeling is that he may have gotten a minor concussion playing or practising on some other day . . . and when he got hit the second time, he had that head whip and when that happens, you can go unconscious in that split second before you fall." -- Bill Masterson's son Scott, a former professional kickboxing champion who was 3 at the time of his father's death.
"I’ve always thought of this after, that when he complained (of headaches) at least he could have put on a helmet for a couple of days. But it was frowned on, really." -- Masterson's 1967-68 teammate, Wayne Connolly.

The NHL honoured Masterson by naming an award after him. Here is the definition of the Bill Masterson Memorial Trophy from Wikipedia:

"The Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy is awarded annually to the National Hockey League player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship, and dedication to ice hockey. The winner is selected by a poll of the Professional Hockey Writers' Association after each team nominates one player in competition. It is often awarded to a player who has come back from career- or even life-threatening illness or injury."

It's ironic that perseverance is exactly what killed Masterson. Athletes have two reasons to ignore injuries, even serious ones. First, they are afraid that they will lose their jobs. This is a reasonable fear as players in various sports have lost their regular job when another player excelled in their absence. Second, sports culture is steeped deeply in machismo. If you're hurt, you're soft. If you wear protection, you're weak. If you acknowledge pain, you don't want to win enough. This obviously irrational and self-destructive culture has to be changed, but good luck with that! Culture change of any kind is difficult and beliefs this deeply ingrained are almost impossible to displace.

To Crosby's credit, he took his sweet time in coming back. He had the benefit of better medical understanding of brain injuries than his predecessors. Ian Laperriere. Marc Savard. Pat LaFontaine. Eric Lindros. There have been a great many NHL players, many of them stars or super-stars, whose career ended or was severely curtailed by repeated concussions. Most, if not all, came back too soon and were knocked back out of the game in short order. Also, it seems as though Crosby's doctors may have made breakthroughs in the treatment of concussions, so maybe he won't be as fragile as those that have gone before. Or, maybe the treatment isn't that miraculous and the absence of symptoms doesn't imply he is injury-free. We don't know. We won't know until it is a matter of hindsight.

Going back to those 2 questions, will players gun for Crosby and will Crosby be able to last... I don't like the most probable answers. Most players won't use Crosby's possible frailty as an excuse to headhunt, but some will. The ones that will are the ones that tend to dole out 'illegal' injuries in general. They also tend to be marginal players that wouldn't have jobs if they couldn't be used to neutralize or 'take out' the opposing team's skilled players. So yes, I think Sid is coming back with a big fat target on his back. His absence has been bad for the NHL in terms of press, publicity and profits. Some minimum-salary goon is going to put his own tenuous job over the health of the game and the industry by taking Crosby out. It's just a matter of time.

The real question then becomes "How will Crosby's body be able to handle violent checking?" I was highly doubtful that Crosby would ever be the same player he was before his injuries. History shows that players' skills have declined due to brain injury. Crosby's primary talent is being able to 'see the ice' better than anyone else on the planet. According to reports of his play during practice Crosby's skills remain as fine as they have ever been, which I find astonishing and miraculous. I guess it remains to be seen whether this ability to excel in practice will translate to success during games.

Still, I have serious doubts about the ability of the human brain to take this kind of punishment over and over. In fact, I'll be surprised if Crosby plays more than another 25 games in the NHL, regardless of the level of play he can achieve. Between intentional hits and accidental hits something will test Crosby's ability to handle physical play, and soon! I hope for his sake, the sake of everyone who cares about him and for the sake of the continued success of the NHL that Crosby has a long and storied career still ahead of him. I just find it hard to believe that we're going to get that fairy tale ending. Either way, it's a pretty good bet that hockey fans will enjoy every game Crosby plays from tonight until his retirement. Again, let's hope that's a long, long time.

More Bad Government: Afghan Immigration

2011-11-18T19:47:00.000-05:00

Canada's Conservative government has found itself caught between three different aspects of its Right Wing ideology.

Ideology #1: Support the War Machine

Right Wing policy dictates that you support the war machine unequivocally. This means supporting soldiers and their causes, veterans and their causes, military contractors and their causes, and a generally Hawkish stance on just about everything. In this case, there is an issue of fulfilling a promise that helped support the Canadian military in their mission in Afghanistan.

Ideology #2: Immigrants Need Not Apply

Right Wing policy also dictates that immigration is overwhelmingly bad. As result, you can expect a tightening of the rules concerning all aspects of immigration, including refugee claimants. The only possible exception are wealthy immigrants that pay their way into the country and (hopefully) come to spend their wealth locally, stimulating the economy. This theory tends not to happen in reality, but ideology is ideology and reality seldom matters. In this case, Afghanis that assisted the Canadian mission as interpreters in Afghanistan are seeking to immigrate to Canada. This can be viewed as repayment for taking on a job with such a high mortality rate or for assisting Canadian soldiers and helping keep their mortality rate lower by helping them communicate effectively with the locals.

Ideology #3: Don't Tell the Public Anything

This particular nugget of Right Wing ideology borders on neo-fascism. Sometime it actually crosses that line. This Government has shown a resolute refusal to let any information about the workings of government, decision making and implementation of policy. Freedom of Information access requests are illegally ignored or refused on the grounds of national security. Not even the courts can sway this Government to fulfill its legal obligations to the people of Canada. Apparently, everything that happens in the governance of Canada is a matter of national security. Here, this ideology rears its ugly head in the form of punishing someone who dared breach the wall of silence and informed the public of what is actually going on.

If you want to be particularly critical of this Conservative Government you could add another ideological stance:

Ideology #4: Promises Are For Elections, Not Policy

This one is fairly self-explanatory. The Government will fulfill the promises that Canadians generally don't want because they fit the Government's ideology. But promises that swayed middle- and lower-class Canadians to cast a ballot for the 'Party For Plutocracy' (governance by the wealthy, for the wealthy) will uniformly go unfulfilled.

To tie these together, what is happening is the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) has been dragging its heels in general on a Government promise refused to help Afghanis that assisted the very recent Canadian military peace mission in Afghanistan relocate to Canada. Further, they have actually refused to admit interpreter Sayed Shah Sharifi. In the eyes of the CIC Sharifi exercised 'terrible judgement' in speaking to the Press about the frustration he was feeling about the delays in processing his immigration request. What he should have done is sat silently and suffer the stress over the molasses-like CIC. And if the slow progress turned to no progress or a denial then he should have quietly accepted the reneging on the Government's promise, as though that is their imperial right.

So what we have is a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. In the case of this Government it would be more accurate to say that the Right hand doesn't know what the other Right hand is doing. When Conservative ideology ends up being at odds with itself you can be reasonably certain thet the Government will make the most incorrect choice, and by that I mean the one that is worst for Canadians. Failing to live up to the promise of granting admittance to interpreters endangers the ability of future missions to obtain local allies for any tasks, including interpreting. This is a slap in the face to the military, every soldier that served in Afghanistan and every member of their families. It is bad enough that the Government is doing what it can to shut down the borders, but now they are promising people admission and then quietly refusing them. And when someone dares break their Vow of Silence meant to keep Canadians unaware of what is happening in their own country you can expect punitive action.

Perhaps, before this matter is resolved, the Government will do the right thing instead of the Right thing. It is perhaps more likely, however, that the matter will drag on until the Press and public have tired of it and/or forgotten about it entirely and then thy will do the most wrong thing, as they seem to be doing now.

As the instances of misbehaviour and bad governance pile up, I have to wonder how many, if any, of these issues will be recalled by the Canadian electorate when called upon to vote once more. That is so far in the future that there is ample opportunity to even forget Syrian- or Iranian-style wholesale slaughter of citizens that dare disagree with the Government's ideology. (Maybe this will be the fate of the Occupy movement?) Canadians certainly didn't hold the Conservative Government to task for their political and/or ethical indiscretions as a minority government! Now that they are a majority it only makes logical sense that the indiscretions are going to get larger and harder to ignore or forget. I have full faith in the bulk of my countrymen to manage to ignore and forget everything no matter how serious, personally relevant, or even criminal, they may be so long as they are presented with the promise of a reduction in taxes by a single penny. That's what they have always done and I suspect it is what they will always do. And so long as this Government is allowed to manage the flow of information even tighter than Bush-Cheney-Rove what manages to enter the public consciousness/domain will only be the tip of the iceberg.

Canada is in trouble. Big trouble.

Congratulations to Dwayne De Rosario!

2011-11-18T11:11:00.000-05:00

Dwayne De Rosario was named the MLS MVP for 2011. This is fantastic for him, but it is also fantastic for Canadian soccer. Canada is a country with a decent soccer heritage but not much in the way of soccer performance on the world stage. They are putting a lot of effort into improving their world ranking and making a run at a World Cup appearance.

De Rosario had the unique experience of having been traded twice this season. First he went from his hometown of Toronto to NY, then from NY to DC. The second trade was because NY had gross deficiencies on defense and needed to bolster that part of their roster. Doing that meant parting with an offensive asset that they still wanted. The first trade was motivated by money.

De Rosario made a poor judgement call by miming the signing of a check during a goal celebration. He was upset that he was being paid far less than the 'designated players' on the team when he was outperforming them by a large margin. The TFC response was to deny him and ignore him and when he wouldn't back down, they dumped him. TFC is a wealthy franchise. Their parent company is worth somewhere between 1.5 and 2 billion dollars. De Rosario would have been pacified by anything resembling a raise of at least $400,000, effectively doubling his salary. He wanted more, but I think he would have settled for something symbolic like a doubling of his salary along with the prestige of being a 'designated' player.

The decision to dump him provided proof to many that TFC is one of the cheapest tightwad franchises in MLS, and possibly in all of sport. Their parent company already had a reputation for being tightwads. The crown jewel of the organization, Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment, is the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Leafs are widely considered to be tantamount to a license to print money. Prior to the imposing of a salary cap in 2005 the Leafs could have spent as much as necessary to bring success on the ice. They were always among the top spenders, but never came close to even trying to break the bank. The Maple Leafs haven't made a Stanley Cup appearance (the NHL Championship series) since 1967, the longest drought in the NHL by far. The other teams that are close are all expansion franchises that haven't really 'made it' yet and may not have had time to make it. Most franchises have had multiple Stanley Cup appearances during that period. The other 5 "Original Six" franchises have won the Cup at least once each in the 40+ year Toronto vacuum of success.

Given the lack of success and a near limitless cash flow it would be logical to spend whatever it took to get the talented free agents to achieve success. It never happened. The team was more concerned with financial prudence than winning. They were pretty much alone in the entire league with that philosophy. Some point to the fact that for the most recent history of the franchise the majority owners are a pension fund rather than the more traditional philanthropic, obscenely wealthy, vain, egotistical, offended-by-losing individual owner. Pension funds exist to make money. Winning is irrelevant to them. The only thing that matters is maximizing return on investment. If winning turns out to be necessary for profitability then winning would be a priority. In Toronto, every game is a sell-out and tickets are generally brutally expensive, so winning is clearly not necessary for profitability. So no one that had control of the purse strings really cared to win.

Now that the NHL has a salary cap that option is no longer available. MLS has a salary cap, too, but it also has a pressure valve or escape clause in the 'designated player'. Teams are allowed up to 3 deisgnated players and their salaries don't count against the cap. Theoretically, there is no limit to how much a team can spend on their designated players. At the time, Toronto had less than their designated player allotment. It would actually have eased their salary cap situation by declaring De Rosario a designated player as his current salary would come off the books. In it's infinite wisdom, TFC management and coach Aron Winter decided that it would be better to dump De Rosario than pay him. There was an outcry in the city when this happened, but what could fans do?

They could stop attending, and many did. Season ticket sales are down and dropping. The stands had bare spots for the first time in team history, which is a mere five years long. Not surprisingly, TFC has never made the playoffs, and in general haven't even been close. This year, they would have had to increase their point total by 40% just to tie for the final playoff spot (33 pts vs 46 pts)! As long as they remain in the financial black, they will remain tightwads. If the fans' boos and dismay turn to outright rejection and it hurts the bottom line, there may be a change.

Today, I wonder what TFC management and Aron Winter are thinking. They knew when they let De Rosario go that he was among the very best in the league. He had been runner up to the MVP twice before and had been named to the Top XI (the MLS version of a First All-Star Team) many times. His outstanding performance this year -- he was tied for the league lead in goals, 4th in assists, 1st in total points (by a landslide), and the only player with double digits in goals and assists -- under very difficult conditions (having to learn to play with new teammates, not once but twice in a single season!) were completely worthy of the MVP award. Does TFC regret it's decision to get rid of MLS's best player? I doubt it. I don't think these executives think that way. In their minds, they are infallible. Their original reasoning justifies their decision no matter how De Rosario plays. He could lap the field in scoring and they would still think dumping him helped the team.

So, as far as intelligent, objective people are concerned, DeRo wins the battle in the court of public opinion and laughs both last and best. With more roster decisions like this, it will take another decade before TFC enjoys it's first playoff game. The biggest losers are the soccer/football fans of Toronto. Here's hoping the black turns red, and soon. It's the only way Toronto's fans have any hope of having something worth cheering.

Everybody Wants It All

2011-11-17T22:46:00.000-05:00

Have you noticed that everybody wants it all?

It doesn't really matter what 'it' is, people want it all. Today, there is no such thing as 'enough', nor is there any such thing as 'too much'.

For a start, we can talk food. All-You-Can-Eat restaurants/buffets are enormously popular, at least in North America. You can find them for almost any kind of food. Chinese food, Indian food, sushi, Italian food, breakfast/brunch fare, you name it! As a whole, we're already fat. Why do we need all-you-can-eat meals? It appeals to our sense of getting good 'value', but we fail to account for the adverse affect it has on our health when calculating that 'value'. We aren't satisfied being full, we want to be stuffed. It's the same as OD-ing on drugs. The blood rushes from our brain to our stomach and we enter a mild altered state.

Retail/wholesale shopping has an equivalent to all-you-can-eat. It's called all-you-can-carry. For a flat price, fill your tote bag or cart. It's nowhere near as common as all-you-can-eat, probably because there's too much variation in value for items people can cram into their bags. Also, the profit margins are probably thinner for these other goods. Finally, food is an absolute need for everyone, while there are few if any consumer products that are absolute essentials and can be applied to the 'you can never have too much' philosophy. People also run out of space to keep 'stuff'.

People want it all in love, too. Good luck finding someone who doesn't want to find someone who is intelligent, funny, beautiful, sexy, empathetic, personable, rich, has a heart of gold and, of course, is healthy...and fertile. This is even true for people who themselves embody none of these characteristics. No matter what kind of person we happen to be, we think we deserve all these qualities in a mate. Is this related to the general sense of universal entitlement that is so prevalent today? At least in love people do in fact settle for less, but then they are seldom happy. Also, settling or not, they aim for the stars! I wonder if this is why relationships are treated with such disrespect, replete with cheating and/or divorce/break-ups the moment someone perceived as 'better' comes along. What is this 'committment' thing you speak of? Never heard of it. Can you get it at an all-you-can-eat?

I could go on, but it's all pretty much the same.

Once upon a time, we were satisfied with 'enough'. Now, many of us are never satisfied. This is behind the drive to accumulate wealth to obscene degrees. Sure, it is nice to be 'comfortable', a step up from 'satisfied', but we don't stop there. We never stop. More, more, more! (Cue scene from "Oliver!".) Somewhere along the journey we lose sight of our needs and even our wants, and the pursuit of wealth becomes an end in and of itself. Since there is always more available, unattained and unrealized, the urge is never satisfied. I wonder if the urge would be satisfied if someone actually managed to obtain everything. The entire world in the possession of one person. Actually, I guess it would have to be the entire Universe or there would still be something that they hadn't yet obtained. Would they be satisfied? Would they be happy? Would they lose their mind because there is nothing more for which to strive/compete? If you ask me, we all lose our minds long before this stage. Would nearly everybody life live so deeply in debt if this weren't the case?

It can't just be plain old consumerism, can it? I mean, it's impossible to actually consume that much. A person only has so much time with which to consume. How many cruises can one person take? How many Monet's does one person need? How about cars? Houses? I think the level of wealth being achieved today is beyond the point of maximum consumption. They could eat, shop, be entertained and travel 24/7 and they would still have wealth left over. They would be so busy consuming that they wouldn't have any time to appreciate or enjoy it! I imagine they would justify the excess wealth as "something for my children to live on." If extended over an unlimited number of generations I guess there is no limit to how much we can consume and therefore no limit to our appetite for wealth.

I wonder, is there something wrong with the human mind, heart and/or soul that a person can be so consumed with consumption that they fail to see or care about the nearly endless throng of people with next to nothing or less? Is it a disease, or a madness...or is it the heart of the human condition? Do we want things just to keep them out of other people's hands as though other people's wealth/success harms us in some way? Are we any different than a wolverine in a frenzy, killing far more than it could possibly eat? The more closely you examine man, the more he resembles a mere beast. Perhaps if he used God's gift to him more often this wouldn't be true. If you're not keeping score, God's gift to man is his advanced brain, capable of both creativity and cruelty nearly beyond comprehension. Most people have their brains on autopilot for most of the waking day. Some nearly shut it down entirely with mindless activities (e.g. reality TV) and 'what-was-I-just-daydreaming-about' lost thoughts. I certainly think that if people stepped out of themselves for a moment and used their brain's full potential they might strongly question their insatiable urge for more. They might even find time to be happy, and satisfied.

Houston Astros May Move To the American League. Why?

2011-11-17T21:05:00.001-05:00

I don't get it.

The Houston Astros are for sale and the prospective buyer wants in on the condition that the team move to the American League. I don't understand why, or how it is good for Baseball.

In 1997 the Milwaukee Brewers, the Commissioner's team, moved from the American League East to the National League. The main/official reason for this was to ensure that there were an even number of teams in each league. They could have placed the expansion Tampa Bay Devil Rays in the National League but they didn't want both Florida teams in the same league. That meant someone had to move. It's good being king. Selig's team was given the task of 'evening' out the leagues. The fact that the American League salary structure and power dynamics were starting to form a two-tier system of haves and have-nots certainly had nothing to do with the decision to bail to the lower-payroll and more evenly balanced National League. (Selig also desired to move Milwaukee to the National League because the city had previously been a National League team, when they were the home of the Milwaukee Braves.)

So, for all those reasons, both the official and 'double secret probation' reasons, I get why the team moved. This time, I don't get it.

I've thought about it and can come up with lots of changes that will happen as a result of the move. Some are good, some are bad and some are pretty much neutral. Here are the reasons I've been able to identify:

1) Increasing the number of games with intrastate rivals the Texas Rangers
Moving to the 4-team American League West with the Texas Rangers would increase the number of times they play against one another from 6 games to 18 games, or when only considering home games, from 3 to 9. Is the incremental gate for 6 games really that important? I suppose this is good for Houston, but is a relatively small gain.

2) Increasing the number of games with America's favorite teams, the Yankees and Red Sox
Currently, Houston has no real relationship with either of these teams. That means that on average they meet once every three years for a 3-game series. This might be at home and it might be on the road. I suppose you can count on a home series against these teams once every 6 years (on average). If they move to the American League (West) they will play 4 - 6 games against each other each year. That works out to one home series of 2 or 3 games each year. The Yankees and Red Sox are the biggest road draws in MLB so this benefits Houston, but again, not by much. After all, it actually hurts their chances of on-field success.

3) Getting out of a crowed division
Currently, Houston is in the Majors only 6-team division. In theory, that makes it harder to make the playoffs than if they'd been in any other division. I say in theory because the 5 other teams of the National League Central Division are habitual dogs and under-performers. It is considered one of the easiest divisions to win in Baseball, and the increased number of games against weaker teams means it is a good place to qualify for the Wild Card playoff spot, too. They would be moving to Baseball's only 4-team division, making the size all 6 of MLBs divisions a uniform 5 teams. The American League West is also a relatively weak division, but is considered tougher than the NL Central. Currently, the Rangers are in ascendancy. In recent years, the LA Angels of Anaheim (I hate that name) have been strong, winning the World Series once, the Oakland Athletics have been over-achievers with one of the lowest payrolls in Baseball, and the Seattle Mariners have also been strong off and on through the years, though they are certainly in 'off' mode right now. In addition, the Astros will now have to face the Red Sox and Yankees 8 - 12 times a season, a trial they haven't had to deal with before. All in all, I can't see how moving makes it easier for the Astros to win.

4) Balancing the divisions, leagues
As I mentioned earlier, moving a team from the NL Central to the AL West would balance the 6 divisions at 5-teams apiece. It would also balance the leagues at 15 teams apiece. If the standard 162-game schedule is going to be maintained, all 30 teams have to be playing most of the time. The only way to achieve that is for there to be at least one Interleague series happening all the time.

In my humble opinion, this is a terrible situation! For one, it likely means that there will be yet MORE Interleague games than there are currently. Outside of the natural rivalries, like Houston-Texas(Arlington), Interleague play is suffering declining popularity. The only reason that IL games appear to have decent attendance is that they take place during the prime part of the season schedule (e.g. no cold April games while kids are still in school) and often fall on weekends. Also, the few popular natural rivalries boost the overall numbers making IL play seem more popular than it really is. So, more is bad! Further, MLB would lose the natural IL rivalry of Houston-Texas as they would become divisional rivals. Further still, the requirement to have at least 1 IL series running at all times almost assuredly means that the games WON'T be between natural rivals. I assume that MLB will still have the 2 stretches of games where all the teams are playing IL games. (Currently, with 16 NL teams and only 14 AL teams, 2 pseudo-random NL teams play each other on any given day during the IP section of the schedule.) Finally, if there's always at least 1 IL series happening the 'specialness' or 'novelty' of IP with be eroded even more than it already has been! This is a big, fat negative for all of MLB.

If this is unavoidable, and of course it is not unavoidable, they are choosing to do it, then there is one thing that MLB can do to renew the 'freshness' and popularity of Interleague play. They can reverse the rules. Instead of playing the rules variation according to the home team's league, play the rules according to the road team's league. This way, American League fans will have an opportunity to watch teams playing National League rules and vice versa. Other than the multi-franchise cities (NY, Chicago, LA, the Bay Area) fans never get this opportunity in their home city, even during the World Series (since the home park determines the rules set there, too)! Even if they do this, I still think the 2 15-team league model is a terrible idea.

5) Diluting the relevancy of Interleague play
This is completely detailed in point #4, but is worth naming specifically as an independent effect.

So, as near as I can see it, there are slight positives for Houston to change leagues and huge negatives for the other 29 teams if they move. In fact, the negatives are so horrendous they may even outweigh the positives for Houston, too! I don't even see how it benefits any of the owners or Selig himself! So, again I have to ask "why?" If you know, please fill me in. I'd love to understand why this is good for MLB.

If it happens, and it probably will, it won't be the first thing that Selig has done that has been nothing but bad for Baseball.

[editors note: My bad! I totally forgot #6...

6) Time Zone changes
In the NL Central, Houston faces two teams in the Eastern Time Zone (Cincinnati and Pittsburgh) and three in the Central Time Zone (Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Louis). With Houston being in the Central TZ this is a good fit. It is reasonably easy to travel East as this is not the direction that causes jet lag.

With Houston in the American League West, they play one team in the Central TZ (Texas) and three teams in the Pacific TZ (LA of Anaheim, Oakland & Seattle). This is quite bad for Houston. Instead of traveling one time zone East for 18 games they will now travel 2 time zones west for 27 games! West is the direction that is considered hard to handle and hard and thus harder to succeed.

Forget what I said before -- the net effect of moving to the AL West is BAD for Houston, and BAD for the other 29 teams. Tell me again why this is good for Baseball, Bud. Please, tell me!

End editor's note.]

The London Rippers

2011-11-17T19:49:00.000-05:00

It seems that London's has a new baseball team. The team's origin is a deal made on October 1st by some American owners with local council to use the local ballpark for Fronteir League play. They decided to take a name that would jump out and grab you (or in this case, stab you) something that couldn't be ignored. Marketing theory at its best.

Welcome to the London "Rippers"! Yes, they chose to have serial murderer Jack "The Ripper" as their central theme, though they claim they don't. Their logo has a stylized Jack "The Ripper" looking very menacing in Victorian garb. He wields a bat and dall, only the bat looks more like a billy club than a baseball bat. Their mascot is "Diamond Jack", which along with the "Rippers" nickname proves without any doubt that the serial murderer of women is, in fact, their inspiration. If it wasn't, why not choose "Diamond Jim" or "Diamond Fauntleroy" for that matter?

This may be the worst marketing decision ever made! Worse than New Coke!

To call this gambit insensitive is an exercise in understatement. This choice is intentionally disrespectful. It's disrespectful of every person who can trace their relationship to one of Jack's victims. It's disrespectful to anyone who has lost someone to a murderer. It is disrespectful of every woman that has been attacked in any fashion and every person that cares for these women. That should leave just about nobody to appreciate their marketing 'genius'. Sure, the owner has a corny, thin veil of an explanation that the similarity is 'coincidental'. If it is coincidental, why does even he consider the theme 'edgy'. Edgy doesn't begin to address how wrong this is.

The pathetically contrived 'back story' is that "Diamond Jack" is a"Phantom of the Opera" inspired character. A rogue that is not wanted anywhere because he always 'rips' the covers off of baseballs when he hits them. So, he creates his own team to have a place to hang out. GIVE ME A BREAK! Do they really think that anyone is going to swallow that tripe?

Part of the problem is that the owner came up with this plan on his own. At no point did he consult with city officials -- or the public for that matter. Ideas that get acted upon before they've been vetted almost always turn out badly and this is perhaps the perfect, classic example.

Already, within 48 hours of the 'brand's' unveiling the public has given its verdict: FAIL! Megan Walker, executive director of the London Abused Women’s Centre is on the case. She stresses what should have been obvious to even the most obtuse person, that this theme is disrespectful of women in general and even more disrespectful for people with specific experiences. She goes on to predict that the team will fail miserably, noting that the last local team, the London Werewolves -- an allusion to both a popular song by Warren Zevon in 1978 and a popular (fictional) 1981 horror movie -- also failed and that was with the approval of the community. Without it the team is doomed! The owner thinks the public has overreacted. Nonsense! This is EXACTLY the reaction he was looking for. There is no way that the team could have gotten even half as much attention with ANY other name. It was chosen entirely for shock value and shock it certainly has.

Politicians have picked up on the pulse of the city and have also expressed their concern. London has been very proactive about ending violence against women. Actually, they're pretty much leaders where this is concerned. David Martin, the obviously mentally or morally challenged owner, has said a great deal about the controversy. Here are some quotes...

His response to the political flak and fallout:

“The mayor was in attendance [at the unveiling of the team nickname, logo and mascot Tuesday night]. Everything was fine last night.”

“That’s probably the way a politician would answer [the controversy].”

His stance on why there's controversy:

[It's] “negative spin” [from a] “loud minority.”

On the idea itself:

“It’s a great logo. It’s a great look. We took a lot of time putting it together and thinking the storyline out.”

No doubt! I'm sure it took a lot of creativity to come up with a rationalization for getting away with a Jack "The Ripper" theme. Again, this was done to shock and outrage. It follows the woeful incorrect and mostly immoral or amoral philosophy that 'there is no such thing as bad publicity'.

So far, I've intentionally been leaving out one key detail. This isn't happening in London, England. It's happening in London, Ontario, Canada! If this had happened in England, someone who really wanted to make a case for the legitimacy of this 'brand' could say that Jack "The Ripper" is not just a 19th Century serial killer. He's a piece of London's history and culture. They effectively 'own' the legacy and phenomenon that is "Jack." London, Ontario has absolutely no connection to Jack "The Ripper" other than the fact that the cities share the same name. So, not only is Martin using a terribly insensitive and insulting 'brand' but he's using it without even a remote connection to the history, folklore or mystery that surrounds "Jack." He has absolutely no leg to stand on for justifying this pathetic 'brand'!

What is it about White, Christian (Western) society that makes them think that they can do whatever they want whenever they want and if it offends someone, that's their problem!? I've got news for those people that think the world has gone too far in political correctness and is oversensitive about everything. It isn't that they are oversensitive, it's that you are completely insensitive. Frankly, I think it borders on being sociopathic, being completely unable to place one's self in other people's shoes and see how things appear/feel for them.

"The Rippers" certainly aren't the first team nickname in ridiculously poor taste. There are tons of teams that have stolen Native American culture for their own fun and profit. Why this is considered acceptable but a hypothetical sports team from Mississippi that called itself the N-----s is considered obviously wrong! Here's the short list of nicknames that 'white man' has no business using to represent themselves, but does anyway:

Atlanta Braves
Chicago Black Hawks
Cleveland Indians
Edmonton Eskimos
Kansas City Chiefs
Washington Redskins
...and MANY more college/university/high-school nicknames

It wasn't enough that Europeans came to North America and leveraged the fact that they had more technology than the indigenous peoples to slaughter them and steal their land. By doing so, they showed that they were technologically 'superior' to the dozens of cultures and civilizations that they destroyed and inferior to them in EVERY other way!. Today, many wonder if worshiping rampant technology was somehow better than living in harmony with the land. The ongoing collapse of the environment says otherwise.

What gave them the right to kill indiscriminately? Does the Bible authorize it? Does it even condone it? Where does it say it's OK to kill and then steal so long as the 'enemy'/'others' have something you covet? To me, that's 3 out of Ten Commandments broken and all the while they felt they had the moral imperative to sin! To this day the vast majority of people think that the actions of this era were just and that modern society has no obligation to apologize or provide reparations. Now, centuries later, the descendants of those butchered, marginalized and criminalized peoples are all too often living on the fringes of society, frequently with the worst kind of poverty and addiction. If they're lucky, they have been 'granted' land by the government on which they can live as they please. Only they can't, because the quality and quantity of the land is pathetic and in some cases quite distant from their traditional territory. They are also forced from time to time to accept 'white man's law' which directly prevents them from living as they please. BTW, how do you 'grant' someone something that already belongs to them? No, it wasn't enough -- now, they misappropriate their cultural symbols as though these symbols have something to do with European heritage or history. It's a mockery. It's an insult. It's completely wrong.

But it won't change. We still live with that same sense of moral superiority and refuse to consider that our actions infringe on other's freedoms or identities. We still believe 'might makes right'. We live it every day, both politically and in terms of economics -- what are modern capitalism and class warfare if not 'might makes right'? Ultimately, sports are more important to the typical North American than the sum value of the lives of every single Native American that ever lived. They don't matter. "Didn't we beat them into submission enough? What the hell are they whining about? Maybe we should have gotten rid of all of them while we had the chance?" Disgusting!

The only possible exception to this rule is the Florida Seminoles. Florida State University had the surprising good sense to consider changing their nickname out of deference to and respect for the modern Seminole people. But the Seminole tribe spoke up and lobbied for the retention of their name. To them, it was a source of pride. In the end, they are the only people whose opinions matter! If they accept the nickname as a form of respect and acknowledgement then that's that. To the best of my knowledge no other tribe has EVER stepped up to support a team nickname that refers to Native peoples, so none of the other franchises get a pass. For teams to justify a 'brand' that refer generically to Native Americans they would have to get permission from ALL tribes.

Only slightly less offensive are the following:

Calgary Hitmen
Oakland Raiders
Minnesota Vikings
Pittsburgh Pirates
Tampa Bay Buccaneers

The Raiders, Buccaneers and Pirates all refer to the same thing, the same culture. When exactly was piracy an aspect of American culture? There were pirates and privateers from every seagoing culture in the world. If they are associated with any one location it's likely the islands of the Caribbean and those of the South Pacific. Besides, why is it OK to celebrate criminals? While we're doing that why not the Rapists, Embezzlers or Killers?

The Calgary Hitmen derive their name from one of the original owners, world famous and local ex-WWE wrestler Bret "The Hitman" Hart. Further, it is supposed to be an allusion to hockey's ubiquitous bodychecking, which is often called 'hitting'. Unfortunately, the logo features a 'player' that is reminiscent of "Jason", the goalie-mask-wearing serial killer from the "Friday the 13th" movie franchise. If he carried a goaltender's stick then he would just look like a goaltender, but he carries a normal stick and holds it in a fashion somehwere between the wielding of a long gun (e.g. Tommie gun) or an axe. Which forces one to think of the original meaning of "hitman", namely that of a murderer-for-hire generally employed by "the Mob." Actually, I don't think most people need a cartoon-like character on the logo to make that connection. Again, and maybe completely inadvertently, this is an example of glorifying criminals. Try to explain to your 4-year old son taking in his first hockey game what a "hitman" is.

The Minnesota Vikings are only marginally offensive. Actually, it's possible that they offend no one. In 2005 17% of the Minnesota population could trace their roots to Norway. Another 10% came from other Scandinavian countries. These numbers were likely much higher generations ago, but are now falling steadily as immigrants settle in Minnesota and the Hispanic population outstrips the growth of the other demographics. If this 25%-or-less-and-falling of the population wanted to lend their heritage and culture to their professional football team, then more power to them. As far as I know, the team was named to reflect Minnesota's traditionally strong Norwegian background. 2 of the 5 businessmen that founded the franchise in 1960 were of Norwegian descent. One of those owners went to a high school whose nickname was also the Vikings, but that was in Wisconsin where Norwegians make up less than 10% of the population. He also owned a professional football team prior to the Vikings and it was the Duluth Eskimos, so he already had a history of misappropriating the culture and heritage of others. Besides which, Duluth is 1000 miles removed from actual Eskimo (now considered a pejorative term, replaced by self-referential names including Inuit) habitat. I am not aware of the public having been consulted about their feelings regarding being represented by the team nickname "Vikings" This is perhaps most important because of the standard inclusion of a cartoonish, stereotypical reflection of the culture it adopts. At least here, there IS a cultural connection of the local people to that of the nickname, and if they chose it or openly accepted it, no harm, no foul.

"The Rippers" puts all of them to shame for sheer political incorrectness. Let's hope that Martin steps outside of himself for just a moment and allows the idiocy of his idea to penetrate to his consciousness. Unless the city boycotts the team I doubt he'll have any such revelation. Decisions like this have nothing to do with ethics or morals, they are entirely about money. So long as the money rolls in the name will remain the same. If tumbleweeds start to blow through the bleachers, the "Rippers" will have a new name in a heartbeat.

Starts and Fits

2011-11-17T09:28:00.000-05:00

Sports fans are funny. They can be totally bipolar and no one says a word. This year has provided great examples.

In the NFL, the Buffalo Bills and Detroit Lions got off to amazing starts of 4-1 and 5-0 respectively. Fans of those teams and sportscasters alike raved about how improved the teams were and were already talking playoffs and even championships. We're now into Week 11 of the NFL season and things look very different.

In the NHL, the most financially successful team has been the least successful team on the ice for over 40 years. That would be the Toronto Maple Leafs. Less than two weeks ago they stood atop the NHL standings for the first time in more than 17 full seasons. In this case it was almost exclusively the fans that went bonkers. By and large, broadcasters had been teased with temporary success and eventual failure for too long.

Skeptics and cynics laughed at the excited fans. They truly were fans -- that is fanatical. Logic is discarded. Calm is a foreign concept. People had jumped aboard the bandwagon, and drank deeply of the Kool-Aid. When you consider the fact that these fans have had virtually nothing to cheer for, nothing but grief for years and more, you can understand why people might be inclined to want to go off the deep end.

Here's a bold prediction! None of the three will make the playoffs! I'm not even sure any will make it a close call! The teams just aren't used to winning. As such, they lack a culture of winning. The Leafs may have the second most Stanley Cup championships (behind the Montreal Canadiens) but that is ancient history. The Bills lost umpteen games in overtime last year, extremely rare in the NFL, perhaps showing that they lacked the talent or guts to win. The Lions have been the NFL's losingest team for over a decade. That and injuries to key personnel will ultimately keep them all from success this season. Bills, Lions and Maple Leafs fans will have to deal with beleaguerment for at least another season.

Good starts do not make good seasons. They can be an important part of a good season, but can always just be statistical anomalies. All three teams have struggled of late, each for their own reasons. In some cases, injuries played a significant part. In others, it was just a matter of reality setting in. Buffalo has fallen to 5-4 and Detroit to 6-3. Detroit is still positioned to make the playoffs but Buffalo isn't. If you project their recent play for the rest of the season both will fall short. The Leafs are still tied in points for the lead in their division but have basically been in free-fall for two weeks. They are rated 2nd in their division behind the Buffalo Sabres since they have 1 fewer win (and 2 extra loses in extra time). They are only 3 points ahead of the miss-the-playoffs cutoff line. The Boston Bruins are only 4 points behind with 2 games in hand and are surging. Projecting their current record would still place them in the playoffs, but their most recent pace would guarantee them permission to play golf immediately after the regular season ends for the eighth straight year. With their starting goaltender out with "concussion-like symptoms", the local vernacular for a concussion, there is no telling when he will return. Without him, the team will surely fall. To make matters worse, of late they are only getting scoring from 1 of their 4 forward lines. Radically unbalanced scoring like that makes it easier for opponents to completely neutralize your offense.

Will all three teams missing the playoffs teach fans not to count their chicken before they've hatched? Not a chance! Where would the fun be in that? When you are used to your team being terrible you are even more desperate to celebrate every minor victory and even moral victories. It would be nice if rabid fans didn't get so drunk on the relative success of their teams that they become belligerent and hostile towards anyone that dares doubt, but don't hold your breath for that to happen any time soon. Reason and fanaticism just don't mix well, so it's understandable that manners and tolerance are in scarce supply.

Now, if we can only get the 7 billion people in the world to limit their fanaticism to ultimately inconsequential matters like sports, what a wonderful world it would be.

Basketball Is In Trouble

2011-11-15T13:49:00.000-05:00

Of all North American professional team sports, the indoor leagues are in more trouble than the outdoor sports. They are definitely at a disadvantage in terms of venue attendance as indoor arenas are almost universally smaller than outdoor stadiums. But today, the gate is not close to being the main source of revenue, so the blame lies elsewhere.

Interestingly, the indoor team sports (basketball and hockey) have smaller rosters than the outdoor sports (baseball, football and soccer), so the cost of athlete contracts are minimized and they are still in trouble.

The NBA might be on the brink of complete disaster. Or it might be on the brink of exploiting its players in a manner that hasn't been seen since the advent of free agency in the 1960s and 1970s. The players have been locked out for many months. There is no end in sight. The owners have decided that they aren't making enough money and have decided that they will boost their profit margin on the backs of the athletes. At the same time the owners have refused all requests to back up their claims with proof in the form of financial numbers. Outside observers note that revenues have climbed every year for decades and the industry pulls in multiple billions each year, yet somehow, the owners are not only not making enough, but actually losing money!

First of all, I believe that anyone who makes a claim and refuses to substantiate their claim is almost assuredly lying, or at the very least, stretching the truth to an absurd degree. No rational person would give their trust in such a situation, but that is exactly what NBA owners are telling the players to do -- "just trust us!" Second, most owners are multi-billionaires that have been incredibly successful in their other business pursuits. The notion that they can't find a way to make their multi-billion dollar industry profitable without forcing a 15-20% rollback in player salaries as well as dozens of other structural concessions in collective bargaining is absolutely ludicrous! If they were this inept at business they never would have become wealthy in the first place!

What appears to be happening is that the owners feel they aren't making enough money by being franchise owners and operators. In other words, their invested money would do better in other ventures, which implies that the opportunity cost of being an owner is very high. The logical thing to do in such situations is to reinvest your capital in more profitable ventures. That is what business is about! But owners are alpha males of the first order. By and large they made their obscene fortunes by being ruthless and cutthroat. Getting out of the sports franchise ownership business would feel like losing to them. These people never lose. They manipulate the rules until it is impossible for them to lose. Winning is the only option. Charlie Sheen to the nth degree. So, instead of recognizing that sports franchise ownership is not a high return industry and moving their money to better investments they have planted their feet into the ground and will move mountains to make it a more profitable industry and anyone in their way will suffer!

For what it's worth, most intelligent people recognize that sports franchise ownership is not a money maker. Few if any owners are making their fortune on sports entertainment. Pundits basically refer to franchises as "toys" for the ultra-wealthy. They are status symbols and allow former and wannabe athletes to live out their sports fantasies at the ownership and management level. Anyone who purchases a sports franchise in the 21st Century and expects it to be their bread and butter is delusional. The NFL makes money, well, except apparently the Detroit Lions who are managing to lose money. Given how Detroit has been hit as hard or harder by the economic downturns of the past decade than any other North American city perhaps this is not completely unexpected. A select few MLB franchises make real money and only a few more operate at a profit at all. The NHL has some franchises that make money but other than the Toronto Maple Leafs none of them make significant profits. Why the NBA owners think that they should universally be making money hand over fist must be a product of ego and hubris as it is certainly not based in realism.

And then there's the players. NBA players are not very sympathetic. They may represent 'labour' in this dispute but the typical fan cannot identify millionaires as 'labour'. It is only relative to the billionaire owners that they seem to be the disadvantaged 'poor'. In a battle between billionaires and millionaires no one gets the public's sympathy.

That does not mean that the public doesn't take sides. They definitely take sides. In almost all cases fans and the public both side with ownership. It's completely ironic but explainable too. In a society weaned on The American Dream the public is predisposed to look favorably on the wealthy. No one looks beneath the surface and asks questions like "how did they become wealthy?" Surely some billionaires became super-rich by pure entrepreneurship. They saw a market need that was not being addressed, formed a company to fill that need, did the job better than anybody else and became rich by making life better for their customers.

This is not the typical story. Most people come to extreme wealth in less than entirely wholesome manners. Taxes are avoided either illegally or by lobbying politicians to reduce their tax burden. The 'bribe' known as lobbying is cheaper in the long run than meeting their moral and legal tax obligations. Monopolies and oligopolies are formed and the public gets gouged. Monopolies are leveraged into other markets in grossly anti-competitive fashion. Companies with potentially threatening new innovations are purchased before they can come to market and affect the bottom line. The pending innovation is sometimes incorporated into the established company's products and is sometimes quashed -- which is never in the public interest. Stereotypically, the wealthy don't bother to watch on whose heads and hands they step on the way up as they have no intention to ever allow themselves the indignity of having to climb back down. In rare cases laws beyond the scope of Antitrust are broken in various cost-cutting measures meant to improve the profit margin. Likewise, ethics are often a casualty of big business. Manufacturing is shipped offshore to sweatshops employing children to reduce costs, regardless of the drastic negative effect the lost jobs have on the local economy and regardless of the human rights violations happening on foreign soil away from prying eyes. Polluting is rampant and either hidden or environmental agencies are paid to look the other way. Ultimately, few fortunes are built in a fashion that will get the profiteering decision makers into Heaven. But we are awed by their success, nonetheless, and put them on a pedestal as paragons of virtue, wishing we could be like them.

The players on the other hand are perceived as opportunists who have little to no value to the economy outside of their athletic ability. In other words, if they didn't have their sport in which to make a fortune they would be working class stiffs living paycheck to paycheck. As such, athletes should take whatever pittance the owners throw their way and be thankful for it. The fact that the athletes are often more highly educated than the owners actually works against them! The public is alienated by education and intelligence as they can't relate to either. "Dubya" managed to portray the educated as "the elite", people to be held in scorn and marginalized, while portraying the super wealthy as "the ordinary guy"...and America ate it up, hook, line and sinker! What is incredibly ironic is that the likelihood of a person escaping the ranks of the poor or middle class and becoming wealthy through sport are greater than their chances to become wealthy by other means. Sportsmen and athletes are the very embodiment of the American Dream and yet we look at them with disdain.

Here's some common sense that seems to be lost on the masses. On the whole, money is not made in sports on the acuity of owners or management. It is made on the skill and popularity of the athletes. How many NBA owners can you name? For most people the number is two, the most notorious two -- Mark Cuban and Michael Jordan -- or less! If the owners are mostly unknown, how can you attribute any portion of ticket sales or television revenue to the owners? The athletes are the only commodity of sports and have every right to demand as much money as the market is willing to bear. That is the nature of capitalist, free market economics. (Actually, I think the entire industry is broken and all parties should be making no more than 10% of their current earnings, with the other 90% either being 'returned' to the consumer in the form of lower ticket prices or being contributed to worthy charities.)

Another piece of common sense is that the contractual concessions and salary reductions the owners seek amount to a request for the players to protect the owners from themselves! When a player signs for $30 million dollars a year, or $1 million for that matter, no one is holding gun to the head of the owner forcing them to offer that contract! The owners would never make the kind of decisions they make in sports in their other businesses! So, because the less affluent billionaire owners suddenly can't seem to manage a budget they are going to take it out on the players. It all comes down to the egos of the owners. They cannot abide losing so spend money they don't have in a vain attempt to win. They all end up doing it, so overspending doesn't guarantee anything beyond blowing their budgets. (When only some of them do it, like in MLB and the English Premiership (soccer), money does buy success.)

Another deep dark secret of the NBA is something known as BRI -- Basketball Related Income. Ticket sales, direct television, Internet and radio contracts and sale of merchandise and memorabilia (replica uniforms, caps, etc.) count in BRI. ALL the NBA contract negotiations revolve around BRI. What the owners aren't telling you is that they are making a mint off of their franchises in areas that don't count as BRI. For example, a great many of the franchise owners also own various media. They use their franchises as cheap or free content for their media. All the money made by these media wings of the owner's conglomerate doesn't contribute a penny to BRI. Generally, these moneys are comparable to the BRI itself! So, while the team as an independent business unit may be losing money on paper the owners are making very tidy sums as a result of league operations. The NFL, for all its failings, doesn't make a distinction between profits made directly and indirectly from the operation of the league. Good for them for being so up front. The NBA, however, does make that distinction. It's like a huge tax shelter -- they make money but avoid paying taxes by an act of accounting. IMHO, this kind of obfuscation are merely lies of omission, and are thus still lies.

[Small tangent]
For what it's worth, creative accounting is being used everywhere by owners and management to exploit investors and employees alike. Tens of thousands of investors and stars of Hollywood motion pictures whose contracts call for a percentage of profits have never seen a red cent because, on paper, movies that grossed hundreds of millions of dollars seemingly lost money. If they lost money, how are the fat cats in control making money hand over fist? Lawsuits stagnate in court -- studio lawyers ensure that it costs these cheated investors more money in legal expenses to recoup their rightful earnings than the earnings are worth. This is done because human greed knows no bounds and because they know they can get away with it! Justice is indeed blind, but not in a good way.
[end of tangent]

Finally, like much of the financial world today, money isn't make on the operation of business. In terms of public holdings the proceeds from the operation of business are paid out as dividends. Dividends represent a very small portion of the growth of wealth. The value of the stocks themselves is what matters these days and often the value of stock has little to do with actual earnings or even earning potential. Speculation and psychology play a big part in stock valuation. Sports franchises are exactly the same. The owners don't make much money from the operation of these franchises. They make the real money by selling the franchise for twice what they paid for it. In general, franchise values, particularly for prestige franchises, only go up, so there isn't much in the way of risk involved in ownership, in spite of what the owners and their PR machines (including their League Commissioners) tell you.

Frankly, the athletes experience more risk than the owners! How many times have you heard someone tell a child that their chances of making the big leagues are somewhere between slim and none and they had better place a lot of attention and effort on a back-up plan just in case they fall short of their professional goals and their dreams of making it rich in sports. Perhaps you've done it yourself. Kids are highly resistant to listening to adults, especially parents. Somehow they always seem to think they know better than the people who have experienced everything they (the kids) have and much, much more and thus have earned the wisdom of age. A child's intuition, hope and tenuous grasp of logic generally wins the day. For what it's worth, the kids that don't invest any time in a backup plan and devote themselves exclusively to their dream are often the ones that make it. Of course, talent is required but hard work and unswerving dedication go a long way, too. In either case, the amount of time and money invested in the quest for a professional sports career is much riskier for a have-not kid than any risk the owners experience by operating a franchise! Yes, the owners put up more money, but their return on investment is astronomically higher than that of athletes. (Not many athletes complete college and those that do often have degrees that are little more than a piece of paper. The athlete that graduates with a (functional) degree in law, medicine, engineering, hard science or education (or other profession) are few and far between. Their degrees generally qualify them for virtually no form of gainful employment.)

Based on news coverage, it is pretty clear that the owners had no intention of bargaining in good faith. They had a goal in mind and nothing short of achieving that goal today would suffice. (In other businesses, management might seek smaller concessions today and seek further concessions in the next Collective Bargaining Agreement, but the NBA wants it all now! They aren't willing to risk the possibility that the economic reality of the NBA might improve in the future, jeopardizing their ability to leverage further concessions from the Player's Union in subsequent CBAs.) The players have moved significantly from their starting position. They have accepted the fact that they are going to come out losers in these negotiations even though they don't accept the assertions by the NBA that they are leeching money. Ownership hasn't really moved. What little movement there was merely changed completely unrealistic and unfair positions to less unrealistic and unfair positions. This is standard practice -- the owners never expected to achieve the originally offered deal.. You always ask for more than for what you are willing to settle. In this case, the demands were so radical and drastic that the starting position was simultaneously comical and desperately sad. The owners weren't even hiding the fact that they were bargaining in bad faith. They issued ultimatums like "take this deal or the next offer will be much, much worse for you." (The point of bargaining is for two differing positions to move towards each other, not away from each other.)

Given that the owners had no intention of bargaining in good faith, the players were left with two choices. They could let the owners get away with highway robbery and take a bad deal. The other option was to reject the bad deal and walk away from the farcical negotiations, specifically pointing to the owners' bad faith, and dissolve the union. Unions are only worth something to its members if it can do a better job negotiating contracts and working conditions than the individuals could manage separately. There's no point in paying dues to an organization that can achieve nothing.

The absence of a union opens the door for an Antitrust lawsuit against the NBA. The only recourse for players is to appeal to the courts of law. All major team sports have been in violation of America's Antitrust legislation for a century. Baseball, America's National Pastime, received exemption from Congress from Antitrust laws. That having been said, if it could be demonstrated that this exemption was no longer in the best interest of the American People it would disappear in a heartbeat. None of the other sports leagues have similar exemption. The assertion of Antitrust violations have never really been tested in court. The NFL Player's Association made a weak attempt to challenge the NFL earlier this year. The initial results favored the players but ultimately a higher court overturned the ruling and sided with ownership.

If the players succeed in their court claims that the NBA is operating in violation of Antitrust laws it is unclear how this would affect future operations. There is no reason to believe that such a ruling would directly result in better contracts for players. In fact, there may be no change in internal economics at all. Worse, the owners may decide to be punitive on top of being greedy and offer even less "to make up for lost revenues resulting from the lockout." First of all, the owners are locking out the players, not the players striking against the owners. Games aren't being played because the owners refuse to stage them. Any "lost revenue" is a result of owner decisions, not player malpractice or malfeasance and the owenrs have no leg to stand on demanding recompense. Second of all, the NBA is claiming that owners are losing money by operating under the current CBA with current player contracts. If they would lose money by operating, then surely they are saving money by locking out the players! In that case, there isn't a single dollar that needs to be "made up"! The owners would simply be using this as an opportunity to further pull the wool over the public's eyes and gouge the players even deeper.

In the terrible eight years suffered under Dubya, the Supreme Court was stacked with very thinly veiled ideological conservatives. With Republicans having control of all three Houses (Representatives, Senate and White) there was nothing that could be done to prevent these politically incorrect, politically motivated and basically unethical appointments. The bottom line is that the players have no hope whatsoever of wining this matter in the courts. They may win in a local circuit court. They may win in the Court of Appeal. But they are guaranteed to lose when the matter reaches the Supreme Court which is completely in bed with Big Business and the super-wealthy.

But it doesn't really matter...it won't get that far. Obscenely paid lawyers representing the owners will use every trick in the book (and will probably invent a few new ones!) to delay the procession of this case through the courts, that is, if they can't derail it entirely! Only a couple of the owners make a substantial portion of their income, directly or indirectly, via the operation of the NBA. The rest will continue to have annual earnings on the order of $100 million upward to $2 billion! If the NBA never plays another game, they will simply write off the franchises as losses and gladly take the associated tax breaks.

All but a couple of the players make their money directly from their NBA contracts. The few that could live off of their significant endorsement deals will find those deals disappearing -- players that don't play make poor spokespersons for sponsoring companies. So, in effect, all the players make their living from the operation of the NBA. They can't afford to continue to forgo 'average' annual incomes of $4 million when the 'average' player has a career lasting only 4 years. (Significantly more than 50% play 4 years or less.) They are making a stand on moral grounds and they can't possibly win. Given that this contract dispute is part of a larger phenomenon of the rich getting richer faster and to greater extremes than ever before and the middle class (and relatively speaking the players are the middle class of that particular subsection of the economy) seeing their standard of living rapidly eroding the players are essentially taking one for the team, meaning us. The best they can really hope for is forcing the American media and American public to take a long, hard look at what is happening on their watch. It is unlikely that the media will be paying attention, and if they don't the public won't even be aware of the significance of what's happening.

My personal preference is that the owners be forced to sell their franchises -- at a major loss, the cost of their hubris -- to owners that recognize that sports ownership is a 'big toy for big boys' and a status symbol and have no expectation to make significant money. You may feel that this makes no sense. Neither does multi-billionaires extorting cities and states for hundreds of millions to billions of dollars to build brand-spanking new, state-of-the-art stadiums that they will completely own using only public money. The gravy train for the ultra-wealthy financed on the backs of athletes with the little guy's hard earned and scarce dollars needs to stop. (Don't even get me started on how the NCAA and its member schools exploit student athletes!) The new reality for the NBA will involve much lower levels of BRI due to lost goodwill / bad publicity and everyone will make less. This is reasonable when you consider the true value of their contributions to society relative to (relatively) poorly paid teachers, doctors, scientists and engineers. It is disgusting how entertainment is so enormously overvalued by modern society! Still, the split of revenue between the anonymous owners and star athletes will be more equitable and reasonable. Preferably this happens sooner rather than later.

Of course, this is not going to happen. The players will watch potential income evaporate every single day they are locked out. This is money they can never get back. In the end, they will come back to the table and take half of what the owners were offering before. Why? Because the system failed them, because the owners can get away with it and because the players have no other options.

There is a remote chance that the players will try to form their own league, owned by the players, and the NBA will become obsolete. NBA franchise values will become $0. I suspect that should this option be pursued by the players that the owners will sue on imaginary grounds and the courts will somehow agree with them, putting the kibosh on the players' attempts to be self-sufficient. Besides, the players would need somewhere to play these games and the owners they are being oppressed by are the very same owners of the athletic venues they would need to use. The owners could play it one of two ways. They could laugh at the players and their upstart league telling them to go to Hell. Or, they could charge 100 times the going rate for the rental of their facilities. Again, it all boils down to the fact that the players can't win. The deck is not only stacked in the owners favour, it is marked, too, and the owners know exactly what the next cards are going to be. Further, the dealer is an owner that can deal from the bottom of the deck without any chance of being detected. The owners cannot lose! The society that we've built and are so proud of has set things up so that the just cannot win. Power and money buy justice.

Even if/when the NBA once more puts the squeak of rubber soles back into the arenas they aren't out of the woods. Officiating in the NBA is an exercise in politics. The popular, big market teams get the calls. The superstars get the calls. The home team gets the calls. NBA officiating is terrible. In part this is human psychology. Officials cannot completely separate themselves from their own thinking or the human desire to please others. They please the audience by calling in favor of the home team. They please the most influential players, the superstars, by making calls in their favor. They please their bosses, the NBA itself, by ensuring that the most lucrative and popular teams make the playoffs and go farther in the playoffs by making calls for the big market "in" teams. All of these are subconscious processes and to some extent unavoidable. Regardless, officials should be aware of these inherent biases and be consciously avoiding them! They don't appear to be combating anything. The fans and pundits that are most steeped in testosterone and have been "drinking the Kool-Aid" for years will tell you that's just how it is. It is up to the journeyman, rookie and unheralded player, the visiting teams and the have-not franchises to suck it up and overcome the adversity. I'll never understand why inherent and obvious unfairness is explained away as a fundamental part of competition.

Also, it was revealed a number of years ago that at least one NBA referee (or exactly one, depending on who you believe) was corrupt and taking money on the side to call a game a certain way or ensure a certain outcomes for gamblers and gangsters, like "making a spread". He claims he wasn't alone and that he's been made a scapegoat so the league can say it dealt with the 'isolated' problem when in fact it continues unabated. He may be a bitter and miserable cheat that got caught and got punished (he was convicted and received prison time) and is trying to make himself look better by creating a conspiracy theory...or, he could be telling the truth. The public will never know, unless somehow another cheat is exposed. Given the prevalence of proven corruption of soccer officials, and the proliferation of legal and illegal gambling, corruption probably has a greater hold on all professional sports than anyone is willing to admit.

In the cases of both inherent bias and blatant corruption the league seems not to particularly care. They are making money and that is apparently all that matters. TV contracts are more lucrative when the most popular players and teams go the farthest in the playoffs, ultimately/hopefully winning championships. So long as this is happening, the league seems disinterested in exposing or changing anything. The NBA has the greatest disparity of any professional league and thus more dynasties than any other league. More than any other sport you can count on the same teams making the playoffs year after year and the same teams missing the playoffs year after year. The emergence of a team from the also-rans to the elite almost never happens. The self-centered and self-interested owners will tell you that this is because the 'good' teams universally have better management. Posh! NBA officiating paves the way for the maintenance of the status quo. Also, salary cap or no salary cap, the best players all end up playing for the 'good' or 'traditional' markets because everybody knows that's the only path to winning. If the owners' claims of poverty are even remotely true, is it any wonder that the have-nots aren't making (enough) money when they cannot succeed on the court? It isn't the players causing the problem, it is the league and the owners that are at the root of all the NBA's problems, but it will be up to the players to solve them, mainly in the form of financial givebacks -- money is the ultimate band-aid -- and the (relative) poor will support the wealthy-beyond-belief.

Basketball is in trouble.

Ladies Golf Is In Trouble

2011-11-14T20:42:00.000-05:00

This will be a brief entry since it is a simple problem and was touched on briefly here: Men's Golf: PGA Tour.

The LPGA is in trouble.

The main problem that the LPGA is experiencing is the dominance of Asian, mostly Korean, golfers. There's nothing wrong with having Korean champions. However, it is unfortunately true that their success is bad news for the overall health of the LPGA.

Why? Americans are notoriously fickle about who they cheer for and who they label as their heroes. Foreigners have never been popular in American sports. The media does better portraying foreign athletes as villains for American athletes to overcome than it does embracing them. A good question rises from this: is the media demonizing foreigners making it difficult for Americans to embrace and cheer for them or do Americans naturally spurn foreigners and the media simply know which side their bread is buttered on?

Either way, foreign success generally means Americans tune out and find other things to do with their time. The LPGA already has to deal with the enormous gender bias present in American society. Men are almost completely disinterested in consuming any women's sports, amateur or professional. This is almost assuredly a symptom of discrimination. Men who desperately try to portray themselves as not being sexist pigs argue that the women just don't play the sports well enough to warrant watching them. That's total BS. If men loved the sport they would watch anybody play it, including totally inept children. Their insistence on watching men only has more to do with idol worship and vicarious dream fulfillment than any lack of skill, imagined or real, that female athletes may have. The rest is entirely sexism. As a result, tournament purses are tiny when compared to their male counterparts. Virtually all events on the Champions' Tour, formerly known as the Seniors' Tour, and even some 'minor league' men's golf tour events have larger purses than LPGA events! Advertisers and sponsors know that LPGA audiences are smaller and pay accordingly. The fact that many corporations seem to value male customers more than female customers and that LPGA audiences are predominantly female make matters worse. (BTW, I've never understood this -- is women's money less green than men's, or is this an institutional admission of significant gender inequality in earning, and thus spending, power?)

The only exceptions to this disinterest are the not-as-rare-as-one-would-think female athletes that become sex- or fashion symbols (past or present), like tennis' Anna Kournikova, Maria Sharapova, the Williams sisters, Gabby Sabatini, and Caroline Wozniacki; figure skating's Katarina Witt; downhill skier Lindsey Vonn; the endless WWE and UFC divas; volleyball's Gabrielle Reece and Misty May; cycling's Elizabeth Hatch; racing's Danica Patrick and Ashley Force; swimming's Amanda Beard; and golf's own Natalie Gulbis, Maria Verchenova and Jan Stevenson. They get men's attention, but not because of their athletic exploits. It is questionable as to whether these male viewers count as consumers where advertisers are concerned. Perhaps they are considered to not be in the right, ahem, frame of mind at that time to be influenced by advertising?

Of the three LPGA icons mentioned above one has long since retired (there is no equivalent of the Champions' Tour for women) and one hasn't yet made an impact on the golf course. Only Gulbis is relevant and popular with men. Michelle Wie could conceivably join that list. She has the looks for it and also has the game, but is perhaps too squeaky clean to do the kind of modeling that propels women to sex-symbol status.

While we're on the topic of Wie, she should be a reason for people, male or female, to tune in to the LPGA, sex-symbol or not! Unfortunately, she's spent a significant part of past decade (she started competing at 13 and she's 22 now) trying to make it among the men instead of learning to win against or dominate the field of women. She never did manage to make a cut on the men's tour events in which she received a sponsor's exemption and I think it has been much too much of a distraction for her. She hasn't yet won a major championship, although she has been runner-up and is still quite young. She has the talent to be #1 and the beauty and personality to be the iconic American LPGA champion but hasn't yet realized that potential. She also has major appeal in Asian markets for obvious reasons. At least she's stopped chasing the Woman Power dream of competing with the men. When Annika Sorenstam tried to achieve the same milestone she had already been at the very top of the LPGA leader board for years. She earned the right to eschew the LPGA in favor of making a breakthrough for women in the PGA. I blame Wie's father for this distraction at a point far too early in her career.

In any case, the foreign dominance has been exacerbated by the fact that many of the Asian champions haven't been able to communicate effectively with their American audiences. Instead of speaking in fluent or even marginal English, of which they were incapable or uncomfortable doing, they spoke in halting, broken English or through interpreters. It is difficult for a winsome personality to shine through under these circumstances. This has alienated an already unwelcoming American audience.

Recognizing this problem, the LPGA attempted to pass regulations requiring players to learn English. This didn't go over well. The foreign players (and their home nations) cried foul and amazingly so did the American public. Complaints cited the rule as being discriminatory and basically unenforceable. Does the fact that Americans largely rejected this attempt at making Asian players more US-friendly mean that they are ready to embrace non-English-speaking Asian champions? Of course not! It means that the American public is fickle and wants to be able to have things both ways. They want to have their cake and eat it too. In other words, Asian players shouldn't be forced to learn and communicate in English, the expectation is that they should do it of their own accord, presumably for love of the American paycheck if not the American public! If it hasn't already happened then it's probably not going to happen and the American public will forget that they shot themselves in the foot by complaining and will continue to be disinterested due to foreign player dominance.

I don't know what the solution is. Maybe the problem with their earlier attempt at regulating communication skills was that they did it openly? Maybe this is something that has to be done behind the scenes? How you would keep such an effort under wraps is beyond me but that might be the only 'easy' way out. Barring that, the LPGA has to hope that the trend changes and some American players begin to dominate. And, as sexist as it may be, it really wouldn't hurt if they also happen to be totally hot super cuties!

Ladies golf is in trouble.

Professional Sports Is In Trouble

2011-11-14T18:52:00.000-05:00

Pretty much every (North American) professional team sport is in trouble and some solo sports are too. They are in danger of making themselves obsolete, and pricing themselves out of the reach of the common person. They have rules problems, money problems and even corruption problems. I'll touch on each sport here and then devote a separate blog to each.

(Links will be active as soon as I post the associated blog. If the link doesn't work, check back in a day or two and it will work.)

Men's Golf: PGA Tour
Without a competitive Tiger Woods, what is it?

Women's Golf: LPGA Tour
The predominance of Asian players is alienating the western fan, you know, the ones with money.

Basketball: NBA
With billionaires locking out millionaires everybody loses.

Baseball: MLB
It all start with Selig.

Hockey: NHL
Concussions, concussions, concussions. Oh, and fighting too.

Football: NFL, CFL
The NFL is perhaps the only league that isn't in trouble. Multi-billion dollar TV contracts will do that. Still, they only narrowly avoided serious trouble by ending the labour dispute (owner/league instituted lock out) in time to have a complete regular season this year. They did manage to lose some preseason games and while they are only exhibition games they do affect the bottom line.
The CFL is in trouble and has been for years. The bigger the market, the lower the interest in the CFL. Further, the NFL has changed the way they draft and employ quarterbacks which may prove to be the death knell for the CFL.

Soccer: MLS
MLS has the same problems that all of soccer/football has: poor officiating and potential corruption. Throw in middling talent and you don't have a recipe for success.

Golf Is In Trouble

2011-11-14T18:38:00.000-05:00

For the past 15 years (or so) the PGA has enjoyed unprecidented popularity and it can be explained in two words: Tiger Woods.

There was so much hype about this young amateur that he couldn't possibly live up to the expectations, yet he did! As his popularity and notoriety grew and he transitioned from amateur to professional the PGA and their TV partners began to design broadcasts around Tiger. Watching the PGA on television was a bit like being in the gallery and walking the course along with Tiger. Between his shots they aired highlights of the rest of the field and ran the all-important commercials.

This formula worked for more than a decade. Sponsors flocked to the PGA and committed record amounts in sponsorship money. Purses grew by leaps and bounds. Profits for the PGA and the networks that aired it grew as well. America and the world was fascinated by the enigmatic golfer and his quest for history. When he won it was good for golf. When he struggled it was good for golf, so long as they were short term struggles. He had an ungodly streak of leads held and a knack of reeling in the leaders in unlikely final-day comebacks. He was on pace to be the first athlete billionaire mainly because he had countless corporate sponsors.

The drama, or circus, that was Tiger peaked at the 2008 U.S. Open. He managed to win the tournament and immediately thereafter revealed that he had basically done so on one leg! Surgery soon followed and everyone was confident that he would rehab well and resume his assault of Jack Nicklaus' record 18 major "Grand Slam" Championships. The 2008 Open was Tiger's 14th major and he was only 32 at the time, giving him plenty of time to break the Nicklaus record. (Nicklaus was 46 when he won his final major, and Tiger is considered one of the fittest golfers on the tour so should be competitive for years to come.) The moment Tiger left the tour for his surgery and rehab television viewership dropped almost 50%!

2009 was an up and down year for Tiger. His play was inconsistent by his standards. He won 6 tournaments but none of them was a major. It was the first time in 5 years that he had failed to win a major and only the 4th time in his career that he had failed to win at least one in a season. Actually, he missed the cut at a major for only the second time in his professional career, the other time being immediately after the death of his father, Earl. For him, this is a disappointing year -- Tiger's focus on Nicklaus' record 18 majors is unrelenting. Still, he managed to win the FedEx Cup for the second time in its then 3-year history. His PGA 2009 season winnings of $10.5 million were the third highest of his career.

Then Armageddon struck Tiger's life. It was revealed that Tiger had had an extramarital relationship and it was later revealed that he'd done so with over a dozen women! When this became public his marriage melted down. He had a car accident in his own driveway and may or may not have been fleeing from his angry wife, Elin, who may or may not have brandished a golf club breaking the windshield of Tiger's Cadillac Escalade. The official story is that she 'liberated' him from the car when the door jammed as a result of the crash. The chaos in his personal life forced Woods to step away from golf indefinitely as he tried to repair his broken life.

That didn't really work out well. He finally spoke to the media about what happened in a very artificial, orchestrated press conference where only invited persons were admitted and he took no questions from the gathered press. So, really it was a public statement, not a press conference. Public reaction to this was not favourable for Tiger. Within the year his marriage ended in divorce and his idyllic life was permanently shattered. His quest to become the first athlete billionaire was for all intents and purposes over as the divorce settlement effectively halved his wealth. Further, he lost most of his endorsements and sponsorships drastically reducing his earning power as well. 2010 saw Tiger play very little professional golf and he was not as competitive as he had been in the past. He managed 2 Top-5 finishes in majors but the other 2 were only Top-30 finishes. He suffered from poor health and suffered even more from poor play. He didn't even qualify to compete for the FedEx Cup tour championship.

2011 was every bit as bad a year as 2010 and worse. He missed two majors and missed the cut in a third. He also ended a 12 year working relationship with caddie Steve Williams. Williams took the news incredibly badly and IMHO showed extreme poor taste and poor sportsmanship in his reaction. Williams' relationship with Woods had made him extremely wealthy and he showed no gratitude or appreciation for that instead choosing to portray the break as a betrayal. (It is estimated that Williams' share of Tiger's winnings was about $12 million!) The reasons Woods gave were actually in Williams' best interest, which proved to be true when Williams and new pro golf partner Adam Scott promptly won the 2011 World Golf Championships - Bridgestone Invitational. Williams chose to rub this in Woods' face and later in the year made an allegedly racist comment about Woods. Williams' defense was "I had a lot of anger in me about what happened (with Woods) and it all came out."

During this attempt at a comeback television ratings and tournament galleries have not been the same as when Tiger was in his prime. If Tiger doesn't recapture the golf game that made him so successful it is likely that these will both erode even further. Part of the problem is that for a dozen years the PGA and its television partners have focused so intently on Woods that the public doesn't really have any kind of relationship with most, possibly all, other golfers. When others succeed, few seem to get excited about it.

Making the problem worse is the overall play of American golfers. Of late, international players have been dominant and the American viewer has always been fickle when it comes to rooting for 'foreign' athletes. This dynamic is even more extreme for the LPGA where Asians have dominated for some years now. Too many of these champions speak little to no English and communicate with the media through interpreters. This makes it difficult for the American fan to embrace them. The PGA doesn't really suffer from this problem as their 'foreign' champions are largely European (and many of them from the English-speaking UK), Australian, English-speaking Africans, etc.

So, the PGA and golf-broadcasting TV networks are reaping what they have been sowing for more than a decade. Too many golf fans are actually Tiger Woods fan and have very little to cheer about right now. Too many skilled golfers are effectively anonymous to the American golf enthusiast. The fact that Tiger's squeaky clean image, albeit sterile and typically laced with profanity, has been badly tarnished making him seem as much a villain as a hero has driven others away from golf entirely. It may be too late to fix this and recover lost audiences or even retain those that remain, but even if it isn't, the PGA and TV don't seem particularly well equipped to make any kind of change. They seem adamant to sink or swim on the fortunes of Tiger Woods. If the Tiger of old never returns the PGA is going to fall on hard times. Audience and gallery sizes will continue to drop, sponsorships will become less lucrative or dry up entirely and events may even cease to exist.

Golf is in trouble...

Sexual Abuse of Children & Penn. State

2011-11-10T13:32:00.000-05:00

After the events of the past week at Pennsylvania State University I really need to talk about sexual predation of children. It has been called the worst and largest epidemic on the planet and I believe that to be true. It is the only current pandemic.

Unless you are speaking to a pedophile, you are unlikely to find anyone sympathetic to those that use children to satisfy their perverse and unnatural urges. I will never call them 'needs', the term that pedophiles and sometimes medical practitioners use. Their lives would go on with equal quality without indulging in their habitual crime against humanity so it clearly isn't a need. In spite of the fact that these predators have no open allies, laws and courts fail to understand the seriousness of the crime and fail to impose penalties commensurate with the offenses.

This is even more true in Canada than in the United States. Recent high profile cases in Canada have resulted in pathetically weak sentences. Two years less a day. Five years, but out on parole long before then. When released, the offenders are free to move anywhere in the world to begin anew and little if anything is done to warn their newly adopted communities of the threat that has just descended upon them. So the cycle continues -- this is a virtual guarantee.

Unlike many other criminal behaviours pedophilia has proven almost completely resistant to therapy. The damage is too fundamental, affecting too many parts of the brain and too many aspects of the psyche to be repaired. In the absence of cure, I think the world would be satisfied by repression of the behaviour, but pedophilia will not be repressed. The irony is that some pedophiles are wracked with guilt because of their urges and actions and are still not able to stop. I guess this is why you almost never hear of one-time offenders. Pedophiles always seem to have a huge roster of victims by the time they are brought to temporary justice. Often allegations against them are made and they somehow wiggle free of any repercussions. It is only years and many victims later that they are finally made to pay for their deviance and predatory actions.

Some people think that pedophilia isn't a disease, at least not in the strictest sense. They paint it more as similar to a bad attitude or a simple lack of morals and ethics. Others say that it is the result of similar trauma experienced in their youth. This is garbage! It is not true that all pedophiles were abused themselves. Some do it spontaneously. Further, not every person who was victimized sexualizes children. I contend that these apologist theories are invented by pedophiles themselves. Also, if sexual abuse of children was simply a result of moral or ethical defect, why would so many pedophiles feel remorse? If they were truly morally bankrupt then they would see nothing wrong with their actions (see NAMBLA) and would instead claim to be the victims of persecution by a corrupt society. They would insist that children are supposed to be used in this fashion and those that don't do it are in fact the defective ones. Pedophiles with this view constitute a minority of the whole, not the majority, further proof that it is not merely the result of moral or ethical deficiencies.

So, why are these cancers not treated sufficiently seriously? Why are they not excised from society the way tumors are from a diseased body? The answer is simple. Money.

Short-sighted politicians, lawyers and judges, our lawmakers, are obsessed with money. The entirety of society is obsessed with money so this is not really that surprising. Still, we expect that people in those positions of power would be more morally upstanding. Instead, they follow the money, and in their opinion, child predation doesn't hurt the economy so it isn't that important. They couldn't be more wrong on multiple fronts. By their view, taking 'productive' members of society, i.e. the pedophiles, and placing them in jail hurts the economy and costs the State further money to house, feed and care for them while incarcerated. In their world view, it is a no-brainer. Penalties should be token attempts to appease an angry public so that they result in as little financial impact on the government's tight budgets. Our quiet complaints for longer sentences, which given the incredibly high occurrence of re-offending are the only logical way to protect the public's interest and safety, are ignored for financial reasons. These same politicians have no compunctions about wasting trillions on pork barrel spending or tax cuts for multinational mega-corporations and the wealthiest citizens (or in some cases to line their own pockets) but a hundred thousand dollars a year (at most) to keep a dangerous predator off the streets is too high a price to pay. It's pathetic and our tolerance of it is even more pathetic.

What lawmakers fail to understand is that the victims of these crimes are given a life sentence. They carry the scars of abuse their entire lives and you better believe that it keeps them from realizing their full economic potential. Millions of hours of productivity are wasted due to sick days, sometimes called mental health days, caused by the stress that they cannot escape. The fact that society seems to care so little makes this stress much, much worse. Each time a pedophile is slapped on the wrist the victims and their families (if they even know about the abuse) receive blows to the gut. Each time a pedophile is released or is found to have re-offended the victims suffer more than the criminal. The cost to the health care system for the scars of abuse is incalculable. Also, victims are often left with such despair that they believe that their only remaining course of action is to kill themselves. Suicide also has a negative economic impact. So, lawmakers' apathy and failure to examine the issue in stark detail leads them to believe that they are taking the financially prudent course of action, i.e. minimal consequences for pedophiles. And in doing so, they are actually hurting the economy. Another job well done by our elected officials!

Another indictment against the government and courts is that children are not adequately protected. The punishment doled out for a man who rapes a woman is almost always greater than what is levied against those that commit the same crime against children. (The gender of the child is not relevant.) How is this logical? Are crimes against children more palatable, tolerable or more understandable? Few people, if any, would suggest that children aren't more helpless, powerless and vulnerable than women, yet our protection of them is weaker. We like to call children "our future" but by our lack of detemination seemingly have no compunctions against exposing "our future" to the worst forms of abuse.

The only reason I can come up with for this illogical policy is that children cannot vote. Children cannot make politicians pay for their inaction. Sure, they grow up and eventually have the right to vote. I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if their tendency to waive that right was much higher than in other populations due to complete disillusionment with the system. And who could blame them? Whether they grow up to vote or not politicians are banking on two outcomes. First, politicians hope that by the time child victims are old enough to vote they will be caught up in political ideology and will vote and lobby for reasons other than their nightmare experiences. Second, politicians are gambling that they will have left politics by the time the children are granted an electoral voice so no political price can be paid. In other words, by and large, politicians, like most human beings these days, will do every single self-interested thing that they think they can get away with and on the other hand will do nothing more for others than they absolutely must for survival. Under this microscope, we don't seem to be a very moral or ethical society. We hardly seem like a society at all! Where have civility and civilization gone?

In Penn State, a member of the athletic department staff has been accused of sexually abusing many boys over the past 15 years. This is terrible but is hardly international news. What makes this situation news is the fact that rumour of this activity has been floating around for almost all of the years in question! Assistant coach Sandusky 'retired' in 1999 at the age of 55. This is incredibly young for a college coach to retire. Actually, it is the prime of life in terms of coach careers. The first rumours of his clandestine activities came up just prior to his 'retirement'. This begs many questions. Did he retire or was he forced to resign? If the univeristy knew of these activities and forced the resignation/retirement doesn't that mean that they knew of the allegations? Further, while Sandusky was no longer an assistant coach at Penn State he still had full access to the university's campus and athletic facilities. Why? Sandusky was the leader of the children's charity he founded in 1977, The Second Mile (which it seems may have served as the vehicle for him to access children to prey upon). Was this sufficient reason to continue to allow Sandusky access at all levels? Why did the charity need access to college facilities? Aren't allegations cause enough to force the university to disavow all connections to the man? Or was this just Old Boys' Club mentality at its worst?

I'm going to point out what I consider a formality. Everything that has emerged falls under the category of allegations. Officially, until a court of law has determined his guilt Sandusky has done nothing wrong. Had there been one allegation, I would concur. A couple of days ago the number of boys that have made claims of abuse was reported as eight. Since then the number has grown reportedly to about 20. In my mind, with this many grievances it becomes difficult to maintain sterile objectivity and continue to maintain the innocence-until-proven-guilty-they-are-only-allegations posture. Almost impossible, actually. To say things don't look good is a huge understatement.

The results of the 1998 investigation are surprising given the fact that seemingly nothing was done. Sandusky admitted to having showered with boys and even to have hugged a boy while in the shower. Presumably both were naked at the time. He admitted that this was wrong and said he would no longer shower with boys. While it is true that hugs are not inherently sexual doesn't taking showers with boys and naked hugging speak of colossally bad judgment? Isn't this type of decision making cause to force the termination of whatever relationships allowed Sandusky access to boys in the first place. In this case, the campus polive and child welfare agency didn't think so. The fact that this matter was investigated primarily by campus police is ludicrous. Didn't anyone suggest that any campus organization lacked sufficient separation from the matter to be completely objective? One of the boys was identified as "victim 6" in the police reports. That means that in 1998 there were already at least 6 boys that had made allegations against Sandusky. The system completely failed these boys and all the boys since.

It has been suggested that Penn State is far too politically powerful in State College, PA to be held accountable for anything. Over the years it seems that these is cause to believe this. With the mess hitting the fan this past week the university has shown itself unused to, if not unable to, act decisively and ethically regarding this scandal. Last night they took a huge step in addressing that criticism by relieving both the university president and head coach Joe Paterno of duties. All that remains is for them to cancel the upcoming game, the three remaining games on the season, suspend the football program indefinitely and perhaps cancel the playoff game that is scheduled to take place in State College and they will have addressed matters to everyone's satisfaction. It's called damage control and ensuring the safety of the players, coaches and fans.

Everyone's satisfaction except apparently the students of Penn State. They demonstrated last night against the firing of coach Paterno. Paterno was made aware of the crimes that were taking place in the showers in 2002 when a graduate assistant reported having witnessed a sexual act between Sandusky and a boy. Paterno took this information to university administration. The university seems mostly to have buried the information. They did bar Sandusky from holding youth sports camps on campus, but did nothing when he merely relocated his camps to the university's Behrend campus, just outside Erie, PA, which continued until 2008. Paterno also seems to have done nothing after handing off to the university administration. At no point did his moral compass or even his curiosity compel him to follow up on his report to see what was happening. He was apparently satisfied that the matter as closed since Sandusky continued to have access to the university's facilities. Yesterday, Paterno said "I wish I had done more", and that the entire situation was "one of the great sorrows of [his] life."

In spite of logic, morality and Paterno's contrition, Penn State students demonstrated in protest of Paterno's dismissal. My reaction to this is to suggest that their parents immediately demand a total refund for all tuition paid over the course of these students' academic careers are Penn State on the grounds that they haven't learned anything! They are completely clueless. They are placing the good of the football program and the legacy of coach Paterno above the health and safety of at least 8 boys over the course of at least 40 counts of sexual impropriety. They somehow think that Paterno's dereliction of duty and failure to meet his moral obligations are not grounds for dismissal presumably since he officially met his legal obligations. The law is a strange thing. It is a living thing. Its development often lags behind the needs and desires of the society it is meant to serve. To argue that Paterno's satisfaction of his legal obligation allows him to wash his hands of all guilt is both naïve and offensive.

Obviously, crimes of this nature happen becomes criminals feel the need to offend and victimize others. But looked at from another viewpoint, crimes of this nature occur because we let them. On the one hand we rail against the crime and cry out for justice and/or punishment. Less often, we call for protection of children and less often still we call for compassion and understanding for the victims. When presented with vague evidence or some other indication of potential wrongdoing we tend to be evenly split.

Some of us act immediately. Those that have experienced the terror of this crime personally or secondarily flock to this banner as do most people who generally advocate on the behalf of children. The rest of us do what is easiest for us, which is nothing. In other words, we act solely in self-interest and laziness. "Don't rock the boat." "It's not my problem." "Let someone else do it." "It's probably not true anyway." "If it is true, it will come out without my action/intervention/sticking my neck out." Other motivators include disbelief. It is uncomfortable for us to think that the people close to us are bad or are doing bad things. That would reflect poorly upon us. After all, we chose to associate with these people -- if they are bad, we too must be bad, and that can never be admitted however true it might ring. In short, we make excuses. We come up with excuses to ignore our responsibilities and we all suffer as a result.

Tangent:
The back-story or origin behind the popular comic book character Spider-Man provides an allegory for this dynamic. Peter Parker, the man who has become Spider-Man uses his miraculous abilities to seek fame and fortune. He is presented with an opportunity to stop a burglar from stealing the money made from ticket sales and gambling on the wrestling matches in which he just competed. He was there to get paid for his performance. Instead of stopping the burglar, something he could have done with minimal effort given his new abilities, he gets out of the way and allows him to escape. This burglar goes on to kill a man while trying to make his getaway. That man turns out to be Peter Parker's uncle Ben Parker. By his own inaction, Peter had enabled the murder of his uncle. This is exactly what happens when we take the easy path and look the other way when wrongs occur, thus ignoring our moral responsibilities to look out for one another.
End tangent.

The bottom line is that each of us is 100% responsible for everything we do, or don't do. Further, we are completely responsible for all the consequences of our actions and inaction. No one would suggest that you can assume that other drivers on the road will look out for your safety -- it is up to you to assume 100% of the responsibility for your safety since you can count on others (eventually) failing to live up to theirs (intentionally or otherwise), putting you in mortal peril. This concept applies universally. Even Smokey the Bear had it right -- "Only you can stop forest fires." Don't wait for someone else to do it. If you have no qualms about letting others handle it you can rest assured that others will do the same allowing heinous and horrible things to happen. It is in our power to stop it, but only if we stop passing the buck. Politicians need to be pushed to do what is right, because what is tends not to be politically easiest.. So, go push! Force the powers that be, representatives that we elect to wield our power, to do what is right. Increase the penalties for crimes that are being taken too lightly.

In passing, I say the following without endorsing it. It is my attempt at thinking outside of the box. If the only way to protect society is to incarcerate offenders indefinitely, and this is deemed a budgetary impossibility there is one other option. We can turn our back on the Ten Commandments and other moral/religious imperatives and utilize the death penalty. It's a double-whammy. We kill, violating Commandment #5, and we judge harshly violating Matthew 7:1-2 ("Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.") Oh, right. Many of us already utilize the death penalty. Ironically and hypocritically, it is often the case that the more fervently religious the person, the more likely they seem to support the death penalty.

Currently, the death penalty is even more expensive a proposition than life terms without the possibility of parole. The cost for state-appointed (and funded) lawyers and court time for near endless appeals and requests for clemency often dwarf the cost of incarceration. If we are going to kill criminals/people (and I don't think we should) there is a way to make it cost-neutral or even a money maker.

Televise it.

The Romans had the gore and violence of the Coliseum as a fate of choice for criminals and enemies of the State. The modern day equivalent is television. Put it on Pay-Per-View and recover the costs of applying the law by letting the private citizen pay the burden of those costs. There is no question this would attract an audience. Primarily the viewers would be proponents of the death penalty. Who better than they to foot the costs of execution? Executions the world over are already public. Clearly we don't object to people seeing state-imposed / state-sanctioned killing. How is airing it any different than admitting a gallery?

We flock to watch boxing and mixed martial arts. Some people watch auto racing hoping for the spectacle of a lethal crash. Many people watch hockey simply in hope of watching a fight. Traffic jams abound when there is the slightest form of accident because other drivers can't help but rubberneck looking for carnage. We have a nearly insatiable appetite for violence. Some would relish such telecasts, a fact which scares me. Friends and families of victims will watch to witness 'justice'. Some will watch to witness what they consider a state-sanctioned crime of the worst order. Others will watch out of simple curiosity. It is a disgusting option for sure but is it really any more violent than the contents of popular movies? Is it more violent than the news? There have already been (inadvertent and live) depictions of execution by terrorists (including beheading) on television and society managed to move on. I imagine that we'd manage to get past this proposed practice as well.

I guess I'm saying to let everyone stand witness to the practice of killing criminals. Perhaps, we will become so outraged when confronted with the reality of execution that we will turn around and finally end the barbaric practice. What a moral victory that will be! I mean, isn't it high time we moved beyond the Hammurabic Code? Sadly, as far as public budgets go, we'll be back at square one. I think this would be a small price to pay for an end to moral relativism and/or situational ethics.

Get Him To The Greek

2011-11-02T12:51:00.000-04:00

Here are some more thoughts about the financial and political crisis that has a stranglehold over Greece and threatens to overwhelm the entire world.

Some pundits have suggested that the proposed Greek referendum is a good idea. They feel that putting the matter into the hands of the people is a win-win. If they accept the austerity measures and bailouts then the government will stabilize somewhat and the process with be smoother than if the measures are rammed down a reluctant public's collective throat. If they refuse the measures and bailouts they are effectively seceding from the European Union by choice, which is far more palatable than being forced out by the other EU members.

If Greece was vacuum sealed then I would agree with this position, but it is not. Everything that happens there will affect the entire EU, and for that matter the entire world. Seceding from or being expelled by the EU will not be a neat formality or a mere change on paper. There will be extreme consequences for both parties. Spillover will be equally extreme. The rich will get richer and the middle class and lower will be squeezed harder and harder.

The global economy is already so fragile that this kind of turbulence is almost certain to be disastrous. The only countries that are doing reasonably well right now are emerging economies. Here, doing well is entirely relative. India and China are dominant mainly due to overwhelming numbers and providing cheap labour for outsourcing foreign (Western/G-20) corporations, but in the case of China decades of intentionally impoverishing its people while the government (and politicians) stockpiled incredible and obscene amounts of money and subsequently using that wealth to buy the world.

That having been said, even China's economy is barely growing, this according to their own economic ministries. To make matters worse, China is fueling their economy with the worst forms and extents of pollution on the planet, the worst forms and extents of human rights violations and with extensive criminal activity. (Who knew that communists would outdo the world's staunchest capitalists at greed?) China is home to the bulk of the world's knock-off and piracy industries, stealing from trademark and copyright holders with impunity. They are also widely suspected and/or known to be the world's leaders in industrial and political espionage stealing further wealth from other nations and corporations. Their self-imposed isolation from the rest of the world has allowed them to do this more or less unhindered. At this point, the wealth and power of the government has grown to the point where it is the equivalent of "too big to fail." Other countries have virtually no leverage or influence over China and are suffering without hope of justice. Every once in a while China 'cracks down' on the knock-off and piracy in what is pretty much exclusively for show. These crackdowns do very little to stem the tide and are few and far between. They merely allow the government to claim that they are 'working on the problem' when they really have no interest in preventing international crime that economically favours China.

So, basically the whole world is teetering on economic disaster. This is not surprising. For the past forty years the global middle class has been under assault by the financial elite, the juggernauts. Governments and corporations have 'conspired' to make this so. Every right wing government lowers taxes on the ultra-wealthy and on corporations, often drastically. They hide this behind minor tax cuts to the middle class and small business. So long as people think they are getting something out of the policy changes they are placated. Right wing governments also sell off money-making government properties and assets since right wing policy dictates that all business should be in private hands. It is not relevant whether the property makes or costs money, provides an essential service or would hurt the public if privatized (e.g. cuts to essential service or price hikes to increase the return on investment). This means that subsequent left of center governments' hands are more or less tied when it comes to trying to restore their ability to provide services, which in general acts as a financial leveler. They can ill-afford to raise any taxes without raising a hue and cry from the public -- even those that would receive net benefit from the change react with their gut. (People are generally not very sophisticated nor particularly far-sighted.) So, inexorably, over time, this tug of war favours the political conservatives.

From the World Wars to the 1970's the middle class flourished and as a result the global economy did as well. Since then, the process has reversed with greater and greater concentrations of wealth moving into fewer and fewer hands. Economic 'growth' has been frictional, or even fictional! Allow me to explain.

It has been largely population growth that has fueled the global economy and when the population growth (primarily in the Western economic powers) ebbed, so did the economy. Also, the bulk of economic growth for the past fifteen to twenty years has been fueled on ever-increasing personal debt. Citizens owe more than they every have in human history. They are only borrowing against their children's future so most people don't care. The same thing is happening with the environment -- current practices leave the burden of payment upon future generations. Now that more and more people realize that they cannot justify further borrowing to fuel their addiction to consumption and spending the economy has stalled, stagnated and in some cases shrunk. Instead of spending people are paying down debt or saving, particularly since they have little to no confidence in their local economies.

This too is not surprising. All you have to consider are needs, wants, liquidity and dergulation. People have to spend on needs whether they feel poor or flush, though they will cut corners if they are forced to. People will be lavish on wants when they think they can afford it but will stop spending entirely when they can't justify the expenditure.

When wealth is concentrated in few hands few people are willing to spend on wants. Individual people can only spend so much on wants before they run out of things to consume or time to consume them. Excess wealth is amassed and/or invested, and investment is not limited to domestic concerns. The rest of the population is left to spend only on their needs which they can't avoid at prices sufficiently low that they can afford them. The net result is relatively low spending.

In the opposite scenario wealth is distributed among the entire population. The middle class gets to spend on wants as well as needs and doesn't have to cut corners on their needs either. The wealthy still have more than enough disposable income/wealth to spend to their hearts' content. The net result is greater total spending and a more robust economy.

Further, the wealth held by the richest people come sin many forms, many of which are not liquid. Among these forms are corporate holdings, real estate, fine art and jewelry. This wealth does not help the economy because it doesn't do anything. The greater the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands means more and more money tied up in non-liquid assets and a smaller economy.

Finally, a general lack of regulation and further deregulation allows money to further concentrate reducing the size of the economy. Had there been proper regulation on credit rating agencies, banks and other financial houses the economic meltdown of 2008 would not have happened. It is not surprising that some people became obscenely wealthy (or wealthier) from this global crisis. With tens of thousands of American foreclosures someone ended up buying a lot of property for a song. Surely more people made a mint selling (short) before the crash and buying back at severely depressed prices. Like the Greeks, the banks were bailed out even though the crisis was of their own making. (Amazingly, the first thing they did with bailout money was richly reward their corporate executives for a job miserably done. Public outrage stemmed this practice somewhat but it continues to this day and money has not been paid back to the public.) It happens every single day but it is magnified a million-fold when there is a crisis.

With forty years of increasing wealth concentration it is entirely predictable that the overall economy has suffered and will continue to do so as long as this wealth dynamic is allowed to continue.

All the while, governments have been running deficits. (Initially it was thought that inflation would devalue these debts into trivial amounts, but the deficits continued and the debts grew too large for inflation to render moot.) Overall, this has more to do with reduced revenues (i.e. taxes) than increased expenditures, though the 'needs' of aging Baby Boomers, through ballooning pension and health care costs, are now reversing that trend. Historically, governments only ran deficits when at war, which is notoriously expensive, and to a lesser extent during recessions in order to stimulate the economy back to growth.

Continuous deficit has led to record debt and thus record debt financing, crippling the ability of government to provide services to anyone but their creditors. Mostly, this means banks, corporations and foreign (mainly the Chinese) government but does include private citizen holders of government bonds. The wealthier are able to hold these bonds to term, typically realizing interest greater than inflation. Others are frequently forced to liquidate them early, incurring penalties and ending up with returns below inflation. The more crisis there is the more defaults there are and the greater the disparity. More importantly, governments are too small and too strapped to effectively stimulate the economy during recession. So, even in times of debt the rich get richer and the middle class (and lower) suffer.

Crisis, which is what we are talking about, is a huge boon to the rich and a disaster to those of more moderate means. There is a reason why it is said that war is good for business. Crisis leads to distressed assets. Distressed assets are holdings that have to be liquidated quickly due to an immediate need for cash, typically to pay debts and obligations. Who buys these distressed assets? Donald Trump and the rest of the uber-rich. Books (written and sold by the wealthy, including Trump, further enriching them) about how to use crisis to further your own financial position are commonplace and popular reading. But it is unfortunately true that you need money in order to make money. Pretty much only the wealthy have enough access to money to capitalize on distressed assets.

The securities ploy of 'selling short' works in exactly the same way. The rich, the only people who can guarantee payment if they prove to be incorrect in their speculation have almost exclusive access to this financial transaction. Basically, one 'sells' other people's stock holdings, in order to buy it back later at a lower price, restoring those other people's holdings. The transaction is entirely virtual. The difference in price between selling and buying becomes pure created wealth, unless you are wrong and the stock prices rise in which case you have to cover the difference immediately. (Hence the restriction to the rich. Risk of this nature is not a viable option for the poor and middle class.) The ridiculous part of this transaction is that it is completely speculative. At the end of the day there has been no investment in business. The number of shares held before and after the transaction is the same and the businesses themselves do not benefit in any way. It is just a legal form of gambling for the most privileged only things aren't entirely up to chance. All it takes is good information, good instinct, good timing and a basic understanding of human psychology to make crazy money. A little insider information or leverage on the market through rumours, innuendo and timely information leaks always helps and is very difficult to prove. Crime pays, you just have to be rich enough to commit the right crimes.

So, the poor Greeks are rocking the boat and threatening to capsize it entirely, meaning they are refusing to live up to their responsibilities, which will only result in making them poorer, along with most of the citizens of the modern world, and the wealthy will laugh all the way to the bank. The net result of this transfer of wealth is to further shrink the economy putting more people out of work and into the poor house while the obscenely fat get fatter. Governments will ultimately have to raise taxes on the wealthy or face complete collapse for an inability to maintain the welfare state and other social services which keep the disadvantaged populace appeased.. The nouveau poor will rebel either toppling governments or resulting in mass death at the hands of the police and military (arms of the government/wealthy)...or perhaps both will happen. Basically, what is happening in the Arab world (see Libya, Yemen and Syria) will spread everywhere only the rich will be calling the shots (directly) more than the government has.

Greece itself is in danger of becoming a distressed asset to be bought, absorbed, annexed or defeated militarily. Someone or someones, who definitely is/are not Greek, will stand to gain millions, if not billions, as a result. The Greek people *have* to suck it up and pay the piper for years of neglect and abuse. Failure to do so will not only cook their goose but the geese of the poor and middle class around the world.

Greece is just a symptom of a larger problem. This is where we are heading and virtually no one understands, knows or cares. They will, but likely only after it becomes too late to fix, like it seems to be awfully close to being in Greece.

Worst Legislation Ever!

2011-11-02T01:53:00.000-04:00

On Tuesday November 1st, the Canadian Federal Government, or as it likes to be known, the Harper Government, unveiled the worst piece of legislation in my lifetime and possibly in the history of this, or any other, presumably democratic country!

The purpose of this bill is to eliminate the Long Gun Registry. Libertarians and anarchists, groups that broadly intersect gun owners, don't like the registry. This is not surprising as they disapprove of all forms of government information gathering. If they could get away with driving without driver's licenses or even license plates, the certainly would. Not only are these 'wretched' forms of government 'interference', they cost money! That's like a tax! Nothing is more evil than taxation!

I deride this attitude openly. John Donne, a 17th century Christian scholar, stated that "no man is an island," yet these people continue to strive for exactly that ideal. Ask nothing of them for they will do nothing for you. Not surprisingly, they stick to this philosophy right up to the point where they need something from someone else, like the services of a specialist like a doctor or engineer. Every society on the planet agrees that man is a social animal but libertarians and anarchists disbelieve. They would live free of the influence of others -- of civilization. I say let them, and point to Antarctica as a perfect place for them to set up their new world vision free from interference. The penguins pretty much keep to themselves.

This same population almost universally supports the Conservatives in every election at every level of government. A few break off and support fringe parties that move even farther to the political right, which in my opinion is 100% based on ignorance, ideology, selfishness and greed, or alternately insanity. (I wanted to be more provocative but I couldn't figure out how.) So, it is no wonder that this government is all too eager to kill the Registry. They promised to do so in order to win those ideological and one-issue votes and now they're following through. Of course, the reason they gave for doing this was that it was prohibitively expensive! What price does one put on piece of mind? What price does one put on the rational effort for promoting safety? Governments, particularly conservative governments, promise, lie and renege with alarming regularity but for this issue you better believe they're going to follow through. 'We', and I use that term loosely, gave them a majority government so they can do anything they want. They pretty much did that ignored all the rules and the interests of the Canadian people with a minority government so expect them to be on their worst behaviour!

Never mind the fact that doing this is in the "best" interest of absolutely no Canadians. In other words, it ill-serves even the ideologues that most fervently support it. How and why do I say this? Every police force and agency in the country has come forward in favour of keeping the Registry. Chiefs of police tend to be fairly politically conservative -- some even run for office as Conservatives -- but they completely sided against their elected government on this issue. Quite simply, it helps them do their primary job of protecting citizens. This is not just theory, it is historical fact. Clearly, protecting the citizens from the potential of violent, gun-related crime is not a priority for this government. Protecting them from 'big government' is by far a more real and pressing concern! Don't you agree? This is ideology at its very worst! What's worse is that it is cosmically stupid and can't be rationalized at any level, at least not any more than cutting off your nose to spite your face!

Part of the problem is that extremely dangerous, non-hunting related weapons were tracked in the registry and without it there is absolutely no record keeping at all for these semi-automatic weapons and sniper rifles. Why Canadians are legally even allowed to own these guns is completely unknown to me. To not register them is just asinine! No rational person would even suggest it!

Canada, welcome to the United States...only worse. Why worse? Since the implementation of the Long Gun Registry, all of the other forms of record keeping regarding such weapons have been eliminated since they were now redundant. The Conservatives have absolutely no plans to reintroduce any of these safety methods and precautions. As far as they're concerned it would defeat the whole secret purpose: reducing the size and scope of 'government interference' and to remove 'limitations' on the 'freedoms' of Canadians.

The only problem with that is that there were no limitations on freedoms and some government functions are absolutely essential! Eliminate something else! Surely there has to be something less critical! As far as freedoms go, no one was ever prevented from obtaining, keeping or using long guns in legal fashions. That's not for what the Registry was used. All it does is provide law enforcement with a tool to trace guns used in crimes back to their owners. Gun owners have a reputation for not reporting gun loss and theft which has in some cases limited the usefulness of the Registry, but the fact remains that most gun crimes are committed by the lawful owners of guns. This is because, as often as not, gun crimes are crimes of passion, not organized or street crimes and for this the Registry is indispensable. (Why wouldn't they report lost or stolen guns? For the same reasons that they don't want their guns traceable -- they despise and distrust all forms of government, even the ones they elect!)

For the small price of smaller government, for the first time in more than four decades, there are no measures for recording or tracking long guns in Canada. Sorry officer, we just don't care to help you protect the citizenry. You'll have to solve those crimes without trivially easy to maintain clues. Presumably, gun owners are immune from crime, unless of course they are committing it. If crime dares to touch their lives I presume they will simply hunt down the perpetrators, or the ones they think are the perpetrators and shoot them with their untraceable guns. No need to both the police, after all, they are just an extension of despised and distrusted government. The inmates are officially running the asylum.

Instead of maintaining this essential crime-fighting tool the Conservatives will do more ideological things to, at least in their minds, compensate. They'll increase the penalties for crimes committed. It has been shown that prison terms are not an effective deterrent. On the other hand, belief in getting caught rather than getting away with it has been shown to be an effective deterrent. Without the Registry, criminals have more reason to believe they won't be caught, and why not? It makes perfect sense. Life terms or even death sentences won't compensate for that loss of deterrent. Since there will be less deterrent, there will be more crime, but don't worry. The Conservatives plan to build more prisons for all the additional criminals and their longer sentences. Frankly, the main thing this accomplishes is that it increases the magnitude of the nightmare of the wrongly accused and convicted. And surely without the essential crime solving tool that the Registry is, there will be more and more wrongly convicted people as well as more unsolved crimes. Another win for the people of Canada! Thank you, Conservatives ideologue morons!

But even this is not enough for the Conservatives. It is not enough that they change the law now. They want to make it as close to impossible for Canadians, or their future governments, to change their minds. They plan on destroying all the already collected gun registration data. In other words, they aren't willing to pay one red cent to keep track of the most dangerous personal weapons known to man but they are willing to spend money to ensure that rebuilding or replacing the Registry will cost countless megabucks. Changing one's mind is the only intelligent thing to do when you get new or better information that indicates that you previously made a mistake. The Conservatives are building their own insurance policy against future information. They want their policy to exist regardless of whether it is ultimately proven right or wrong. In their minds, it is their right to force what could always be a mistake on Canadians in perpetuity. Claiming with absolute confidence that this is not a mistake is purely ignorant and quite insane. They call it the clarity of the mad! Destruction by its very nature is the mark of bullies, villains and small minds. It is infinitely easier to destroy something than it is to build something. It is never a good idea to destroy something unless there is a strong, concrete plan to rebuild or replace. This Government not only has no plan to rebuild or replace, they want to make it nigh onto impossible for anyone else to ever rebuild or replace. What they are doing is the political equivalent of burning the crops and then salting the earth so nothing will grow there forevermore. They are doing this to Canadian soil!

It is wrong. It is corrupt. IMHO, it is evil. It empowers criminals, what else would you call it? And it is entirely typical of the bunch of yahoos that are currently running the country. Ideology rules and logic is the enemy. Thought is not valued. If you are bright you are 'the elite' and to be marginalized. Remember that tripe from down south? I'd like to say that we can still hope that they won't do anything else so damaging to Canadian culture and the Canadian people, but we all know they will. They're just getting started! They were only elected in May! We can expect four-and-a-half more years of this downright criminally negligent form of 'leadership'. May God help us all, or better yet, may God stop the Conservatives or at least force them to see the error of their ways. A few (say ten?) well-targeted and obvious plagues would come in handy right about now... (It's a biblical reference. The conservatives will get it.)

Toronto Blue Jays: Off-Season 2011-2012

2011-11-01T23:56:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to the underdog St Louis Cardinals, the new World Series Champions!

Tony LaRussa is retiring. Too bad he didn't retire last year. A championship couldn't come to a less likable guy. LaRussa is notoriously known for arrogance. Can you believe the excuse he made for the pitching roster mistakes made in Game 5? And he keeps calling his relief pitcher "Rapinsky." Try "Rzepczynski." This isn't even a good mispronunciation -- the "R" is silent for gosh sake! If not bothering to know your own pitcher's name isn't enough (let's give him a break...Rzepczynski only came to the Cardinals in late July -- he only had three months getting used to him) he forgot who his team just defeated when interviewed during the post-Game 7 celebrations! Now that's arrogance!

In any case, the topic at hand is not the Cardinals or the World Series, it is the Toronto Blue Jays and their plans for the off-season.

The Jays dodged two bullets already and it's only the 1st of November. First, the Jays' General Manager Alex Anthopoulos announced a change to team policy regarding their staff. No longer woulf the Blue Jays let any staff member take any job, promotion or otherwise, anywhere, any time they wanted to go. Now, staff would be restricted from talking to other clubs about demotions or lateral transfers. This was dodging a bullet because rumours were hot and heavy about the rival Boston Red Sox's interest in John Farrell as their potential new manager. As far as the public knows this was just a rumour, but where there's smoke there's often fire.

The second bullet came today when Assistant GM Tony LaCava allegedly turned down an offer to become the Baltimore Orioles new General Manager. Apparently, in the eyes of LaCava, it is better to be Number Two in Toronto, were things are arguably looking up, than being Number One in lowly Baltimore. This may be even more true when the majority owner Peter Angelos and his historical meddling ways are factored into the decision. When Anthopoulos was named GM I worried that it spelled the end of the relationship with LaCava, an extremely valuable employee/asset. Fortunately, my worries were unfounded, at least so far.

Now comes the part that fans love to speculate about most -- personnel signings. Edwin Encarnacion's option was picked up. Jon Rauch's was not. Neither of these decisions is particularly surprising. Encarnacion had a poor start to the season but caught fire later on, providing enough reason to stay with him. Rauch was largely ineffective all season long, a season which included injuries, making himself expendable.

Now the real fun begins. The Jays have question marks at a number of positions. Other positions are well represented but could still be improved. The biggest needs are in the bullpen and at second base, with starting pitching, left field and first base as lower priority needs.

The two biggest names in free agency are Milwaukee's Prince Fielder and St. Louis Cardinal Albert Pujols. Both are first basemen. Another excellent first baseman, Joey Votto, who happens to be a local product, may be available from the Cincinnati Reds for the right price.

The best pitcher who might have been available won't be. C.C. Sabathia renegotiated his contract (signed an extension) with the New York Yankees. He'll be a Yankee for 5-6 more years. Who can blame him for re-upping with New York. Given their spending practices and the nature of free agency, they represent the best chance a player has of winning the World Series before a single pitch has been thrown. They've only won once in the last ten years, but they've been in the playoffs year after year. It just goes to show that no matter how much better one team may be than another, anything can happen in a short (playoff) series. The rest of the starting pitchers on the free agent market are not aces and are not likely to be big impact acquisitions for anyone.

There are two closers that may appear on the market. Boston's Jonathon Papelbon and Milwaukee's Francisco "K-Rod" Rodriguez are both A-list firemen and are expected to declare themselves free agents this off-season. The winning bidders will likely overpay for what they receive in spite of the fact that both are still effective -- that's the nature of current free agency in baseball.

Papelbon is older than Rodriguez so is less attractive a long-term investment and further, he resembles nothing more than molasses when pitching. He is the pitching version of "the human rain-delay." Slow play is one of the biggest problems in baseball today and I find it deplorable and highly annoying. In general it is a form of gamesmanship and I hate all forms of gamesmanship. In my opinion, gamesmanship is the opposite of sportsmanship. Sportsmanship is about respecting the game and your opponents, while gamesmanship is about manipulating or even breaking the rules of a sport in order to gain ill-gotten advantage over opponents. Respect is the furthest thing from the mind when engaging in gamesmanship. I won't cheer for Papelbon even he is in the hometown Blues. I can take or leave Rodriguez, something that is more or less true about how I feel regarding all free agents. They tend to be real, and real expensive, gambles.

The best bets at second base are...well there really aren't any good bets at second base. The Jays can re-sign Kelly Johnson, who they obtained from the Arizona Diamondbacks for Aaron Hill and John McDonald. Both Hill and Johnson were having off-years and a change of scenery was hoped to do them both a world of good. Hill responded reasonably well in Arizona, but Johnson failed to impress in Toronto. If they offer Johnson, a type-A free agent, arbitration and he subsequently signs with another team, the Jays will receive a compensatory draft pick and a sandwich pick (a pick between the first and second rounds of the draft). If they don't ign Johnson, they could go after Hill. Arizona opted to not pick up Hill's contract option for 2012 (at $8 million -- I thought it was 10...), so he too will probably be a free agent, unless he signs a contract with Arizona for some smaller amount. Arizona wants him back and will not be due compensatory picks if they lose Hill.

The Jays may be best off if they can lure Hill back and get the picks for losing Johnson. Most people will think I'm crazy for saying that, but for whatever reason I think Hill has a higher chance of bouncing back than Johnson. In any case, I wouldn't be surprised if the Jays end up with neither and have to scramble to fill the position with a warm body. If that happens they can pretty much put off hopes for the post-season for another year.

The Jays GM has stated that he'd rather make a splash in a trade than in a signing. I think that's insane. Free agency costs money. Money is replaceable. The owner, Rogers Blue Jays Baseball Partnership, a division of Rogers Communications, has plenty of money, but they have been exceedingly frugal with it. There is nothing wrong with trying to avoid bad deals and trying to get the most out of your money, but as far as winning is concerned it is just money. I agree that keeping your money is smarter than spending it on junk just to spend it or to appear as though you are willing and eager to spend. Having a higher payroll doesn't inherently increase or decrease your chances of winning. If a signed deal goes sour, it's a sunk cost and you move on.

On the other hand, trades cost player resources. In other words, trades hit your team's on-the-field performance, either today when trading roster players, or in the future when trading prospects. Once those assets are gone, they are gone. They are not easy to replace While Toronto has one of the strongest farm systems in MLB that only gets you so far. If all you do is trade away prospects you will quickly run out of them. Also, when a trade deal goes sour the opportunity cost is blatantly evident to fans when the players and prospects traded away are performing for some other franchise. Of course there is the possibility that you traded away what amounted to junk, in which case the fans don't care, but management does. When trades go bad for your trading partner they are less likely to trade with you in the future and that's bad.

Compared to the perception and visibility of trades, money is largely invisible. The only risk with money is a potential fan perception that bad money spent will prevent the team from spending money in the future. There should be no direct relationship between bad money spent anf d the potential or willingness to spend more money. The merits of each potential signing should be looked at independently, within reason. In things get out of hand and your budget and performance resemble that of the Mets then management needs to look in the mirror and wonder if it is competent enough to do the job.

Beyond the general reluctance to spend money the franchise is also leery of signing long contracts. They have good reason to be. The most recent long contracts signed have all turned sour. B.J. Ryan blew out his arm. Or maybe he just got off the juice. Who knows. He went from a strong major leaguer to a has been in one off-season. Vernon Wells failed to develop into a superstar which is what he would have to become to live up to his contract. Unfortunately, the timing of his fee agency dictated the terms of his contract. It wasn't really out of line for that year. Also, the team was under a lot of fan pressure to resign Wells after they had made a big deal out of not re-signing their franchise player Carlos Delgado a few years earlier. Finally, Alex Rios more than failed to live up to his contract -- he turned out to be a dud. Not only was his performance criticized, but also his attitude and work ethic.

In general terms, the longer the contract, the greater the risk. Not only are free agents declining assets with diminishing returns but there is always the risk of serious career-altering or career-ending injury. The longer the term, the greater the risk of an injury occurring and the more money for which the team may be left on the hook for a worthless and untradable asset.

That having been said, it seems pretty much everybody is doing it. By everybody, I mean everybody successful, with the exception of the Tampa Bay Rays and possibly the Florida/Miami Marlins. It must be a Florida thing. The Jays' GM and President both say that they will put their hopes on higher pay for shorter term. The theory is that players will be able to test the free agent market a second time a few years down the road and end up with more money over the course of both contracts than they would have received from one long-term contract. There's just one problem with this. Most players and nearly all agents will go for the contract with the most guaranteed money. Why? For the same reasons that the Jays are reluctant to sign long-term contracts -- injuries are unforeseeable and no lucrative contracts will be had after a major injury. If they sign a long-term contract it acts as insurance against injury. The player is paid regardless of their level of ability to perform. The player under long-term contract is paid like an A-list free agent even after they drop below journeyman-level talent/ability due to injury.

So, the Jays are kidding themselves if they truly believe that they can compete at all in a free agent market with such a policy. More likely, they are well aware of this and are just trying to appease restless fans with a nice story. When you factor in the minor inconvenience of cross-border employment, the fact that the team has not been in the playoffs for 18 years and has no recent tradition of competitiveness, and the fact that they are stuck in the same division as the juggernaut New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, the #1 and #3 spenders this past season (and always in the top 3 spenders), that amounts to no hope whatsoever of attracting free agents to Toronto. They have to hope that the player wants to live in Toronto for the merits of the city to have any real chance of signing anyone of consequence. Or they can grossly overpay, which goes against their philosophy of the past 10 years, dating back to previous owners and management.

What hope does that leave? Do the Jays have to become the Tampa Bay Rays? Do they have to finish last in the Majors with over 100 losses a year for 10 years straight in order to fully seed a farm system enough to sustain a run at the playoffs? Perhaps, perhaps not. In any case, there is one other option. Yu Darvish (short for Yu Darvishsefad -- he's Japanese-Iranian), a Japanese pitching phenom is going to be auctioned off this year. In order to sign Japanese stars you have to first 'buy' the rights to negotiate with the player from their current franchise. There will be a massive bidding war.

Baseball has a long and storied tradition in Japan, and players are likely to prefer storied franchises. If they had been left to an open market it is likely that they would all end up in LA, NY, Boston or Chicago, with a lesser chance at Philadelphia and St. Louis and maybe even Seattle, which has Japanese connections and is a Pacific Rim team.

But it isn't an open market. The team decides who gets to negotiate with Darvish and it will almost assuredly come down to who offers them the most money. Once that's done there is still the small matter of negotiating a contract with Darvish, who will likely command a respectable star salary. In all, this is an incredibly expensive process and proposition. Why would the Jays be more philosophically amenable to this situation over signing an expensive, domestic fee agent to a long expensive contract? If you amortize the cost of the negotiating fee and contract over the length of the contract it is exactly like they say they want it -- higher pay for shorter term. That is assuming that Darvish will even accept a short- or medium-term contract! Also, Darvish is only 25, significantly younger than any of the other available free agents. Fielder is close, but Fielder doesn't even remotely resemble what one would call a traditional athlete. While his youth is an asset he is expected to age badly. Darvish has no such concerns, well beyond the universal risk of signing pitchers.

The only other wrinkle in this proposition is that Japanese pitchers have not fared nearly as well in MLB as Japanese hitters have. This is unlikely to dissuade any potential suitors.

I believe that the Jays will make a run at Darvish, but I cannot say with any confidence that they will win the right to sign him. The Yankees, who have Sabathia, a surprising Ivan Nova, an unreliable Phil Hughes, an even more unreliable AJ Burnett and retreads; and the Red Sox, who have Josh Beckett and Jon Lester, then Clay Buckholz (who missed most of the season with a stress fracture in his back), Daisuke Matsuzaka and John Lackey (who are both out due to Tommy John surgery) and the ancient Tim Wakefield (who having won his 200th game this season may very well retire) both have big question marks in their starting rotation and neither seems to have even heard of budgets. The Red Sox have a new GM, Ben Cherington, who may be looking to make a splash right out of the gate.

Beyond the (likely slim) possibility of Darvish, I expect GM Alex Anthopoulos to be true to his word. I expect minor bullpen signings since they need warm bodies after this years trades and disappointments. I suspect there might be a big trade coming, but I suspect that people won't like what the Jays give up. That's it. No major signings and not much for fans to get excited about. The 2012 Jays will go as far as their starting pitching will take them. If it bounces back expect up to 90 wins. If it doesn't, they may finish below .500. Another blah year, with no real hope for the playoffs unless and until Bud Selig announces an expansion of the playoffs. Even then, the Jays will have to leap frog at least one of New York, Boston and Tampa Bay. One might not be enough, with the wild card(s) possibly coming from other, less competitive divisions. They've finished behind all three division rivals four years running and have not placed above New York (who have made the playoffs every year since the strike except 2008) since the Jays' World Series win in 1993 and have only placed ahead of Boston twice in that same period (1994 -- by 1 game (strike year so no playoffs and so hardly counts), and 2006, by 1 game).

I'm not bullish on their chances until the playoffs change and not much more bullish thereafter due to their inability and unwillingness to go after and sign impact free agents. Only time will tell...

Greece Is the Word

2011-11-01T20:59:00.001-04:00

Greece. It's the cradle of modern civilization. And now it is hell bent on digging the grave of modern civilization.

The European debt crisis is serious business and Greece is at the eye of the storm. Of all places, Greece should take the matter most seriously since the Greek economy is the main cause of trouble. Instead, they are treating it like a joke.

The Greek government announced that they will be putting the recommended, and very necessary, austerity measures to a referendum. What the Greek government is really saying is "we lack the political fortitude to agree to these measures, and similarly lack the will to take responsibility for our own mess." Instead, they are putting it to the people. You have exactly two guesses as to what the result will be...and one guess doesn't count.

The people are going to reject the austerity measures. What they are really saying is: "It's in the world's best interest to not let us fail, no matter how hard we try. So, why should we break our backs to fix things when we can just sit back and enjoy the sunshine while you continuously bail us out?"

These are the same people who, by and large, have been habitually neglecting to pay any taxes for years...and the government has let them get away with this gross dereliction of duty! Greece is a relatively socialist country. Socialist government requires heavy taxation to fund the extensive social programs. The people of Greece were all too happy to partake of the social programs, but somehow felt too put upon to pay their taxes. Who did they think was going to pay for all those cushy social programs?

Besides, austerity is hard! Their recent behaviour -- as it relates to taxes -- shows that the Greek people are all about taking the easy way out. By not pursuing habitual tax evaders the government enabled the public's misbehaviour. Really, why would anyone in their right mind choose the hard path when presented another option? The trick here is that there is no other option! They will reject the measures in favor of no solution at all!

The message is clear. Let someone else clean up our mess. It's not our problem.

The rest of the world begs to differ. Sorry, folks, no one is going to pay you to do nothing. In fact, no one is going to do anything more for you. Your fellow European Union member countries and banks are already bending over backwards to help you! You committed the 'crime', it's your turn to do the time. Your years of living fat have come back to haunt you. Your government can pass the buck to your unwilling public in hope of finding an excuse to keep you, the Greek voters, from ousting them in the next election, but it won't do them, or you, any good.

In the real world you don't get to walk away from your responsibilities without repercussions. If you accept these measures in the much too delayed referendum, and if you accept it I'll eat my hat, you'll suffer some economic hardships. If you refuse them, you'll suffer more. Have you really considered what the alternatives are? Here are some possibilities.

* Ejection from the EEU. Your former friends will call in their loans and you won't be able to pay. Welcome to the Third World. That will lead to...

* The collapse of the Greek currency and bank system. Actually, since you tossed out the Drachma in favour of the Eurodollar you don't even have a currency to collapse! (Therein lies the biggest part of the problem!) Massive poverty and starvation follows, with little hope for improvement short of charity from wealthy nations. Since you were the architects of your own demise, unlike the true Third World, don't expect much sympathy.

* A complete loss of sovereignty and independence. If you're lucky, some neighbouring country will peacefully absorb your sorry asse(t)s and rescue you. You'll probably be marginalized in the new joined state and will be unlikely to ever see the same socioeconomic power you enjoy now in your children's children's lifetimes. If you refuse that too, then prepare for war, with no ability to pay or supply your soldiers. Surely at least one of your (wealthy) neighbours covets your natural resources and will be only too happy to take them by force, especially since you can't really afford to do anything to resist their military might. After all those years of fighting to regain sovereignty and independence you're now ready to throw it away and over what? A need for laziness? An insistence upon corruption? A refusal to accept responsibility? Individual greed?

Wake up and smell the καφές! Do what's right, take responsibility, save yourselves or be prepared to truly suffer.

Poaching In Baseball

2011-10-25T13:25:00.000-04:00

The aftermath of the Boston Red Sox's epic miss-the-playoffs collapse is still a hot story.

Today two stories have emerged. First to be announced was the signing of Ben Cherington as the GM replacement for outgoing Theo Epstein. Epstein may have left on a decidedly low note but he leaves big shoes to be filled having won two World Series after an 86-year drought. Epstein has gone on to the Chicago Cubs and subsequently poached the General Manager of the San Diego Padres, Jed Hoyer, for the same position with the Cubs, making it a lateral move. Lateral moves are frowned upon in sport in general and particularly in baseball. The Cubs were required to pay compensation to the Red Sox for Epstein since he was still under contract. Presumably the Cubs will have to pay the Padres further compensation for Hoyer. Fans in Chicago should worry about the state of the farm system with all this compensation being paid out for front office staff.

Boston has yet to fill the managerial position vacated by Terry Francona. There will always be speculation over whether he left of his own accord or was pushed out by owner John Henry but the official story is that he resigned. Regardless, there have been rumours and speculation about the likely candidates to fill the position.

That's where things get a bit sticky. The Boston Globe reported that the Boston Red Sox had internal discussions about hiring Toronto Blue Jays manager John Farrell. Farrell had spent four years as the pitching coach for the BoSox before taking the Toronto manager position last year. Leaving after only one year on the job is still taboo even in this age without loyalty or respect for signed contracts.

The Blue Jays have an extremely friendly policy regarding non-player personnel. Specifically, they allow any employee to break their contract if they want to leave for another position elsewhere. Presumably, this policy is meant to enhance the reputation of the ballclub within the culture of Major League Baseball. Such a employee-friendly policy has the potential to influence future players and personnel decision regarding accepting employment with the Blue Jays organization. Their policy goes even further and states that they won't seek compensation for staff poached while still under contract.

This is ludicrous! Loyalty has been dead in major leagues sports for quite some time. Employment decisions are almost always based on two things: money and winning. Money generally means signing the most lucrative contract offered but this can be tempered by a desire to be in a large media market where their income from advertising and endorsements will be maximized. Still, the bottom line is paramount for today's athletes. The other factor, winning, can influence the decision as well, especially for people nearing the end of their peak years or the end of their careers and especially for people who have not had the privilege of having won before. Winning also impacts potential income from ads and endorsements so there is financial synergy here. Not much remains after these two factors are considered. The only significant exception to this rule is Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Cliff Lee who stated that his decision to sign with Philly was strongly influenced by the availability of a first rate children's hospital -- Lee's son Jaxon had leukemia and is currently in remission. Lee had previously played with the Phillies in 2009 having been a trade deadline acquisition.

Players demand trades on a regular basis. One interesting example occurred last year when Kansas City Royals pitching ace Zack Greinke demanded a trade. Greinke has an issue with anxiety and stipulated that he not be traded to big market teams where the pressure is intense. This is another example of a player that did not place money and winning as the deciding factor in employmenr. The Royals ended up trading him to the Milwaukee, home of Bud Selig's Brewers, which happens to be the smallest market in Major League Baseball.

The Toronto Raptors has had to deal with multiple players that simply refused to play for the team, forcing them to make a trade from a position of weakness, to outright release the player from their contract via buy out. There appears to be a significant cultural bias against playing for the NBA's sole Canadian team. Some say this is due to the fact that the team lacks a reputation for competitiveness in its short history. Others point to passport hassles, lack of availability of ESPN, reduced exposure to the American media which reduces potential future income, and the tiny differences in culture between Toronto and similar American cities. Apparently this tiny difference is particularly significant as it pertains to African American culture. It has been suggested that Toronto's Black community is different than in America. This is not surprising given that racism has always been less prevalent in Canada than in America, but one would think that a good thing. Apparently not as players seem to prefer familiarity over equality.

Given that loyalty is dead the Blue Jays' policy seems naïve or worse, makes them seem like pushovers that aren't committed to winning. Nothing could be further from the proof but perception is everything when it comes to predicting human behaviour.

The Blue Jays need to change this policy. It is one thing to allow staff to leave when they no longer want to stay. After all, what kind of job performance would you expect from a disgruntled employee? It is quite another to allow carte blanche movement without compensation. This policy makes the franchise seem like a minor league development team for the big market teams. This is already becoming true with respect to players given the lack of a salary cap in MLB. The Pittsburghs, Tampa Bays and Kansas Citys of MLB have little to no chance of retaining their emerging star players who instead move to the big markets following the big money. No team can afford to extend this impotence to front office staff.

It seems that Blue Jays management has come to their senses as there is a press conference scheduled for today. At least I hope they have. Presumably they will change their policy to place restrictions on personnel movement. This might include a policy of demanding compensation and/or may include restrictions on lateral movement or movement within the American League East Division.

I guess we'll see.