Is this the latest update in the ongoing saga of the NFL "bountygate" investigation of the New Orleans Saints? No, this is the story of player injuries and suspensions levied against the 2011 coaching staff of the Tustin Red Cobras Junior Pee Wee team for 10-and-11-year-olds in a California Pop Warner youth football league. (See "Pop Warner rules no bounty system for Calif. team," in USA Today, November 9.) [personal communication]
Lemming alert: "Frank Rich on the National Circus: The Fiscal Cliff Is the Y2K of 2012," December 5. [personal communication; excerpt]
The breathless and phony countdown to the fiscal cliff—What if they can’t agree? What if we fall off? Can America possibly survive?—is media hype, a desperate effort to drum up a drama to keep viewers and readers tuned in now that the election is over. It’s a Road Runner cartoon, Beltway-edition. And it’s going to end with a whimper like the similarly apocalyptic, now long-forgotten Y2K scare of the turn of the millennium. Everyone knows the Republicans are going to fold—the Republicans know they are going to fold—and the only question to be resolved is when and on what terms. They have zero leverage. It’s not only that they lost the election; they continue to decline in national polls, with the latest Pew survey showing that 53 percent of Americans will blame the GOP (and only 27 percent will blame President Obama) if there’s no deal by January. The party has no national leader still standing except John Boehner, who can’t even command the loyalty of his own caucus in the House. Let’s hope that Obama, who is showing the admirable take-no-prisoners toughness he lacked last time around, continues on his current firm path once the Republicans start to buckle. There is a lot more at stake in the negotiations beyond the upper-echelon tax rates that the GOP will soon have to retreat on.
Breaking-news alert, December 1: "As Companies Seek Tax Deals, Governments Pay High Price:"
A New York Times investigation into the incentives that governments offer businesses has found that states, cities and counties are giving up more than $80 billion a year to attract or keep the companies and the jobs that they provide. The beneficiaries come from virtually every corner of the corporate world, encompassing oil and coal conglomerates, technology and entertainment companies, banks and big-box retail chains.
But the cost of the awards is certainly far higher. A full accounting, The Times discovered, is not possible because the incentives are granted by thousands of government agencies and officials, and many do not know the value of all their awards. Nor do they know if the money was worth it because they rarely track how many jobs are created. Even where officials do track incentives, they acknowledge that it is impossible to know whether the jobs would have been created without the aid. [subscription communication from The New York Times]
On December 4, former Republican House Majority Leader Richard Keith "Dick" Armey resigned his role as chaiman of FreedomWorks, a conservative Tea Party group, over what he reportedly termed "a matter of principle," and is reportedly receiving an $8 million payout for doing so This is noteworthy for three reasons: 1) it reminds us the long-time Texas politician, one of the "Texas Six pack" Republicans elected in 1984 and a co-writer of the "Contract with America" that was part of the "Republican Revolution" of the 1990s is still alive; 2) it reminds us that only in politics can you leave your job over a "matter of principle" and receive $8 million for doing so; 3) most importantly it gives us reason to recall his quote from the time of Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal about what would have happened to him if he had been caught having an affair. "If I were in the President's place I would not have gotten a chance to resign," Armey said at the time. "I would be lying in a pool of my own blood, hearing Mrs. Armey standing over me saying, 'How do I reload this damn thing?'" [personal communication]
Since the 1980s, the American business cycle has been based on financial and credit bubbles, and therefore on the enrichment, through the capital markets, of a very small number of people in a very few places. Truly we have become a 'trickle-down economy'—as we were not before. A rising tide may lift all boats, but recent business cycles have been more like waves, whereby certain sectors and areas ride the peaks before crashing to the shore. This is a sign, surely, not of the social evil of inequality per se but of the instability of bubble economies, closely associated with inequality of income, wealth, and power, for which we now pay a fearsome price. –James Kenneth Galbraith, Inequality and InstabilityLimerick of the Week:
The Pope is now a Tweeter, he goes by Pontiflex.
When a Tweetee receives a Tweet, he genuflects.
The latest Papal Tweet
Bordered on indiscreet:
"Resist the temptation to have protected sex."
On the Zig-ism... I think Romney said the same at all of his fund-raising banquets.
ReplyDeleteKen, indeed. To think that for a period back in the nineties (when I was an enthusiastic member of a Toastmasters club), I used to think that pedaling such simplisms was a fine and honorable profession. And how I did admire Ziglar and others who were so skilled and successful at it!
DeleteBut Ziglar seemed to make a good case for helping others in order to get helped oneself (it was a core principle of his success as a salesman), for he also recommended moral values to caution people who tried to follow the principle from using it for purposes of exploitation and self-aggrandizement.
To the Lemming Alert, I have to say, "Amen, Brother!"
ReplyDelete