The Super Committee and an American Aristocracy

The Super Committee has failed. Given several months and the task of eliminating $1.2 trillion of the federal budget deficit over the next decade (when we are projected to spend over $44 trillion), they failed. So the question on the mind of many people across the country with regards to the deficit and the national debt is; what’s next?

Unfortunately, nobody has a crystal ball. Perhaps China’s recent meteoric rise will cool off considering that their manufacturing levels just hit a 32 month low. Perhaps Europe will pull itself out of its own debt crisis and will restore a little bit of hope to the economic markets around the world. Perhaps the United States will experience a resurgence or a development of a new market or industry that will propel our economy back to the status that it had ten years ago. Perhaps OPEC will just open the spigots and the price of oil will plummet back to where it was in the 90’s (around $22 a barrel) and the global economy will leap forward on the strength of cheap energy.

Nobody knows what will happen to any of those issues. China is somewhat likely to experience some sort of a slowdown but that is natural given the nature of their rise over the past few years (incredibly fast) and what is going on around the rest of the developed world. It’s possible that Europe can pull itself out of this crisis although with every report that comes out of that continent, the prognosis looks bleaker every single day. There are always new market and new industries to explore but the only question is whether or not they can survive on the open market and whether or not the United States can get their first. Lastly, the chances that OPEC opens the spigot when America has gotten used to oil prices between $75 and $95 per barrel are just on the other side of zero.

So when you throw all that in the hopper, what does that mean for the United States? To be brutally honest and in need of some serious sugarcoating, it means that the US economy is in for some rough times and it’s somewhat likely that it will be a period of years until we’re well and truly out of it.

How did we get here? Well, it’s a combination of factors (as it always is). In 2001, the federal government had a surplus of $128.2 billion and the national debt was $5.8 trillion. Inevitably, after the boom of the 90’s, the early part of the 00’s was significantly slower. After posting growth rates (in real GDP) of better than 4% each year from 1997 to 2000, the growth in real GDP fell to 1.08% in 2001 and then 1.81% in 2002. While real GDP grew 26.6% from 1994 to 2000, from 2001 to 2010, it grew by just 16.8%. I know that I’m throwing a lot of numbers at you but to give you a frame of reference, most economists consider 3% growth in real GDP to be a healthy economy. While 1% growth may not be “unhealthy”, it is considered poor and usually does not coincide with job creation.

Even worse than the actual downturn has been the wild swings our economy has undergone. In the period of time from 1994 to 2000, the average increase in real GDP was 3.92% per year with the lower and upper limits being 2.51% and 4.83%, respectively. From 2000 to 2010, the average was 1.66% but that set swung wildly between gaining 3.57% (in 2004) and losing 2.63% (in 2009). If you have the option of growing your economy 20% in the next decade by either growing 1.8% each year or gaining 10% one year and losing 8% the next, you should always take the slow and steady approach.

So now we know that the economy has been a bit of a roller coaster in the past ten years. This isn’t exactly news. What is news is that despite the unstable economy, the government has very infamously increased our national debt from roughly $5.8 trillion ten years ago to $14.5 trillion today. Can we continue to rack up a larger and larger debt and pass it on to future generations without taking any steps to actually pay if off? That question strikes at the heart of what I’d like to address in this post; a sense of complacency and affinity for the status quo amongst American citizens and the formation of an aristocratic class in modern America.

COMPLACENCY

The recession that hit our economy in 2008 and 2009 was arguably the worst economic climate since the Great Depression and we are still recovering from it. While the majority of the wrong-doing was simply the result of a skewed moral compass, there are rumors everywhere that some of the wrong-doing was actually illegal as well. This, among other things, helped to shape my opinion of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Why would the banking industry change any of the things they do because there are a few hundred people camped (oops, not anymore) outside their offices? The answer is they wouldn’t. The only reason they would change the way they do business is if Congress enacted more laws to govern they way they lend money or if the US Attorney started an investigation into their lending practices over the past several years.

This led me to say that if the Occupy Wall Street movement ever gets serious about getting things done and not just making a lot of noise, they need to be protesting in Washington, D.C., at the Capitol building. Why haven’t they? Why isn’t the country in an absolute uproar over the banking industry, Congress’ near inability to avoid a debt crisis, and Congress’ inability to reach a deal that would involve modifications that amount to somewhere between 2% and 3% over the next ten years? The short answer is we’re complacent but there’s more to it than that.

The other part of the reason is for as bad as things are, they really aren’t that bad. It is true that in 2009, our inflation adjusted GDP actually decreased for the first time since 1991 but it dropped by only 2.63%. Since then, our economy has posted economic growth in nine consecutive quarters. Between 1929 and 1933, the United States lost 46.2% of its wealth or 26.7% when it is adjusted for inflation. We currently sit at 9% unemployment but that is nothing when you think about one in four Americans being out of work at the height of the Great Depression.

The reason that there aren’t more Americans in the streets calling for drastic reforms is simply because it isn’t that bad right now. The vast majority of Americans are still working, they are still getting paid, and they are still paying their bills. For the citizenry to mobilize and march on our government and demand changes, it will have to get a whole lot worse than it is now.

AN AMERICAN ARISTOCRACY

A simple internet search on the definition of aristocracy reveals five primary results (at least that’s what you get on dictionary.com). The definition that I think is most appropriate in the case I’m going to present is the second one; a government or state ruled by an aristocracy, elite, or privileged upper class. Historically, when the term aristocracy is thrown around, the line between the aristocracy and everyone else is drawn along monetary lines. Also, historically speaking, the wealthy were also the ones who governed the country or had the most influence over those who did.

The United States Congress is a different sort of aristocracy. They are not among the highest paid people in the country and if you compared their salaries to even professional athletes, the difference is staggering. A salary of $400,000 as a government employee means that you are more than likely calling the White House home these days whereas that same salary in Major League Baseball or in the NFL means you are struggling to hold onto a job. Before you start feeling sorry for our elected officials, many of them do come from family money and at the end of the day, their salary is much higher than most of the rest of us.

If not money, then what is the divide between the aristocracy and the rest of us? Is that even an accurate term to use? I believe it is and the divide is power. Representatives and Senators wield a truly tremendous amount of power and will do many things to hold onto that power. Many of them say that they are acting in the best interests of the country and their constituents but how true is that?

Let’s examine the case of the Super Committee and the entire debate surrounding the deficit and debt situation in this country. Republicans want to cut federal spending to reduce the deficit and Democrats want to increase taxes before any spending cuts take place.

For any concerned citizen, that should be the first red flag. Nobody is talking about eliminating the deficit; they are simply talking about reducing it. They are basically admitting that the national debt will continue to grow regardless of what the long-term effects of that might be.

In a perfect world, the two parties would come to some sort of agreement where they meet in the middle and everyone has to give a little of something. That is compromise and children learn that at a very young age. It is the only way our country can function with such large philosophical divides between the two dominant parties. Federal spending should be less and taxes should be increased to help cover the costs of Congress’ mistakes. In the long run, I can talk for hours and hours about the benefits or detriments of government influence in the economy but this conversation is not occurring in a vacuum. It is happening in a country with a $14 trillion debt, a $1.6 trillion budget deficit, and absolutely no plan to change either problem.

Clearly, we do not live in a perfect world and compromise has not happened and is not likely to happen. Why not? Put yourself in the shoes of a Representative or a Senator. If you are a Democrat, you can point to all the good that is being done by federal programs and you can point to how many people’s lives are better because of aid from everyone’s friendly Uncle Sam. If you are a Republican, you can point to the fact that taxes are quite low right now. You can say that lower taxes lead to a freer marketplace and the market can direct the economy instead of the government. Let us set aside for one moment that that is exactly how we get such a massive budget deficit. If you are that Republican, you won your election by promising to never raise taxes. If you are that Democrat, you won your election by saying that government benefits would never be cut.

What you have is a system in which nobody is willing to budge. Despite what they say, it is not in the best interest of the voters, it’s in their own best interests. A Republican who is willing to raise taxes and a Democrat who is willing to cut benefits are the same thing; unemployed. In the system we currently have, Democrats and Republicans can hold their party line and not move a single inch towards center and two things happen; they keep their jobs and the government spends far more money than they have to spend.

I’m not here to debate the merits of their respective positions. There are many federal programs that Americans would not be able to function well without in the short term. It is entirely possible that lower taxes could potentially spark economic growth and that would in turn create more tax revenue and get our government back on its feet. All of those theories look great on the drawing board but the fact of the matter is that nobody has ever seen an economic climate like we have now. Much like John Maynard Keynes after the Great Depression, economists will be breaking new ground and creating new theories in the wake of this global economic cycle.

Given all of this and given the budgetary process of the United States government, a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution is one of the most reasonable steps that Congress could take at this point in time. I’ve read the text of the proposed amendment that was put to a vote just over a week ago and the language is not inflammatory at all (you can read the full text at this site http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.J.RES.2:). To paraphrase, it simply says that except for in a time of war, the budget must be balanced. There are other provisions but that’s the guts of it. There were no amendments and nothing that had anything to do with hot button issues such as religion or abortion. The amendment was defeated well short of the required number of votes for passage for two main reasons; Congress likes to spend money and they have no incentive not to and our deficit crisis is much like the common flu – it must get worse before it gets better.

Drastic spending cuts and drastic tax increases, both of which I view as necessary for the long-term viability of our nation’s economy, will hurt in the short run. Reduced spending will cause certain services to be reduced and that will make some people’s quality of life less. Increased taxes will perhaps mean that some small businesses will be irreparably harmed to the point that they have to close their business. This will spiral downward until we reach a bottom of sorts and then, things will start to get better. How long it will last and how bad it will get are questions that nobody can answer but I can tell you one thing with absolute certainty. It will last through the next election cycle and that is the single biggest reason why nothing is getting done with regards to these problems. The elections.

It is far easier to go into a conference room and face many of your constituents (some of whom are down on their luck and unemployed) and tell them that the big bad party is responsible for this mess and if people had just listened to you, things would have gotten done.

It is nearly impossible to go into that same conference room and say, yes, I sacrificed some of your livelihood. I’m sorry. At this point in time, Congress has spent us into a corner and if we don’t act now, it will get far worse very quickly. I acted in what I believe are the best interests of the country as a whole. When was the last time you heard an elected official say that? Hmm, interesting, you have heard it before from the White House. So what’s the difference between the White House and Congress?

TERM LIMITS

The President is limited to two terms. The vice-president can spend far longer in the White House but always playing second fiddle. If he ever wants that chair behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, the clock starts on his two terms.

Congress has no such limits. 7% of currently serving members of Congress (37 out of 534, the 1st Congressional District of Oregon is currently vacant) have been in their seats longer than I have been alive (27 years and change). Roughly 44% of both houses (44 of 100 in the Senate and 192 of 434) have been in their current positions for longer than 10 years.

If you examine the tenure of all of the current members of Congress, a disturbing trend emerges. The overwhelming majority of Congress (64.4%) has either been in place for more than 10 years or has been on the job less than 1 year. To me, this says that the American public is not taking the time to do their duty as voters. When faced with the choice of somebody new or someone who was elected last time and didn’t make things happen immediately, they are choosing someone new. When asked to choose between someone new and someone who has served their district for 20 years, they are going with the one they know. In a foundering economy, it should be the ones who have been there the longest that have the most to fear, not the least. Why are John McCain (25 years in the Senate) or John Kerry (27 years) so much better equipped to handle this problem than a 30 year old Ivy League graduate with a BA, MA, and PhD in economics? When we are examining the credentials of these Representatives and Senators, the fact that they were serving when there was last a budget surplus should not be a point in their favor, it should be a point against them.

You say that you were in the Senate from 1998-2001 when there was a surplus every year and our net budget surplus was $559 billion. That’s great, where were you the last ten years when there was a net budget deficit of $6.48 trillion? Were you just taking those years off?

This strikes at the heart of my underlying opinion. People should not go to Congress thinking that it will be a career. They should be willing to sacrifice their heart, mind, body, and soul for a period of a few years to make the country as good a place as they can and after that, they can go on the lecture circuit. I believe that I can speak for many Americans when I say that I don’t want Representatives and Senators making decisions based upon keeping their jobs. I can’t say they do categorically in their first terms, but in their second terms, presidents have relatively little pressure upon them and they can step back and see the bigger picture. This is what we need desperately out of Congress.

THE ONLY PROBLEM THAT MATTERS

There are many problems with my utopia but as the above heading might indicate, there is only one that matters; the system we live in.

235 years ago, we set out on a grand experiment in republican democracy. We have had our rough moments but overall, the experiment has gone very well. When the framework of our nation was first put down on paper, there was an overwhelming fear of a single monarchy-like figure. Thus, the executive branch was made the weakest, constitutionally speaking, and the legislative branch was made the strongest. Overall, again, I would say this has served us well but in this case, it has helped cause the illness that afflicts our great nation.

A balanced budget amendment would be wonderful. The only problem is that by far the most commonly used method to amend the constitution is for both houses to vote on it. Now we’re asking them to curtail the money that they get to play with on a daily basis… it’s not likely that that will ever happen.

In order to put term limits in place, the Constitution would have to be amended. As unlikely as it might be that Congress would pass a law putting limits on how much money they can spend, it is infinitely more likely than Congress willingly putting in place a law that limits how long they can wield the enormous amount of power they have.

The onus to keep a rein on Congress falls to you and me, citizens of the United States of America. If Congress is to blame for the current economic crisis that we are in, we are responsible because we enabled this activity. At the end of the day, we have the true power in this government. No matter how much money a special interest group gives to a particular candidate, if everyone pulls the lever for the other guy, the other guy wins.

We have a sacred duty. If we don’t like what is happening in Congress, we have to tell them. If they don’t listen, we have to tell them in a language they understand; do this or you’ll lose my vote. Don’t just vote for a candidate or a party because that’s what you’ve always done. Demand answers from the candidates or your Representative or your Senator and when they give you an answer, verify it, don’t just accept it.

Above all else, when you are choosing a Representative, or a Senator, or a President, try to think beyond yourself. The best interests of the country are not always in line with your own best interests. Put your ego aside and I beg you “…my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”

I Am Thankful

Holidays always mean different things to different people. For some families, Christmas is the time of year that the entire family comes together and celebrates the season. For others, holidays aren’t as important as those family get-togethers in the middle of April or August that have nothing to do with anything.

For me, the best holiday of the year is Thanksgiving. Every year, the family would get up early (or the kids would get up early) and then my mom and my sister would spend hours preparing the hors d’oeuvres for the meal later that day. We would then go over to the house of our best family friends sometime early in the afternoon. What would follow was always a little different but so similar it’s not even worth discussing the differences. The kitchen would be alive with activity, the living room alive with football. For what felt like an eternity, food would go into the oven and then come out, filling the house with smells so good that you are reminded why you only have this holiday once a year. The smells would be so good that if you had to endure that for more than an hour or so without eating, rioting would have broken out and the non-cooking half of the family would have gone on strike. In their infinite wisdom, the cooks prepared the hors d’oeuvres first so we would have something that was delicious to stuff in our faces while the rest of the food was cooking.

Late in the afternoon or early in the evening (or as Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory would say, the “prevening”) word would filter through the house that the turkey was nearly ready. Everyone would start to converge on the kitchen and would look out over the sea of side dishes and wonder how we could possibly eat this much food. Usually there was a football game still on and for as big a fan as I am, I don’t think I’ve ever watched the end of the game in that time slot.

At long last the turkey would come out and what would follow is quite possibly the most excruciating period of time of the entire day. All the cooking is done and all that remains is the most important part; the carving. By now everyone is hungry and all the food is cooked; it’s a miracle that we actually make it to the dinner table every year.

When the feast is finally ready to be consumed, it is time for one of the traditions that (for me at least) has never gotten old; the serving order. We have done:

Youngest to oldest
Oldest to youngest
Shortest to tallest
Tallest to shortest (my personal favorite)
First birthdays to last (within the calendar year) and vice versa
Alphabetical by first name and the opposite

Those are just a few of the more common themes that we’ve used over the years. In the last few years in the quest for something original, they have gotten very interesting (take your birth month, add one month, then line up in alphabetical order by month… ties are broken by birth date in ascending order) but sure enough, no person has ever gotten to serve themselves first or last two years in a row.

The food has always been great but I can honestly say that it could have been Spam and I still would have enjoyed it just as much. Spending time with that splendid group of people has provided me with some of the fondest memories that I have and some that I’m sure will be some of the best I’ll ever have. I look forward to starting new traditions of my own when I have a family of my own but they will always be trying to live up to a nearly impossible standard.

To all of you out there that made those memories what they are for me (you know who you are), thank you.

WHAT AM I THANKFUL FOR?

I am grateful for many things in my life and I just wanted to take this opportunity to mention a few of them. It is a truly impossible task for me to say each and every thing that I am thankful for and if I happen to leave you out, I am truly sorry.

I am thankful for my girlfriend. She has been an enormous part of the last four (and a little bit) years of my life and has never asked me to change who I was and has loved me for who I am.

I am thankful for Captain. This painfully cute little mutt has taught me many things about responsibility and has given me an ever so shallow look into what it’s like to be a parent. I still maintain that he is the cutest dog in the world and I beam whenever other people tell me how cute he is or how nice he is.

I am thankful for my friends. Over the years, you have been there for anything I’ve needed to get through issues that run the gamut from serious to all between my ears. You’ve provided the shoulder to cry on and the smack upside the head, right when they were needed the most.

I am thankful to have a roof over my head and food on my plate. Far too many people have to struggle for these basic needs.

I am thankful to have a job. I work hard every day afraid that it might be my last. I am thankful for all the people who have taken a chance on me and I’d like to think that if they had to do it over again, they would make the same decision.

I am thankful to live in a country where I can have a blog that is akin to an online extension of my brain. I can put every little thought I have on here and I do not have to worry about government censorship or oversight.

I am thankful that I live in a country where I am free. I’m not going to quibble about the definition of free and I’m not going to go into the limits of those freedoms (as relatively few of them are truly unlimited); I’m going to simply say that I am free and I’m glad.

I am thankful for my failures. I know that it sounds strange but I would not be the person I am today if it were not for my failures. I have fallen and I have learned to get back up again. This has led to a feeling of absolute empowerment; I believe that the world is mine for the taking in a way that I haven’t believed since I was a small child and knew everything. This feeling has helped me leave my comfort zone and has expanded my horizons in ways I’ve never dreamed of. It has helped me embody a couplet which came to me from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe via my dad:

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it
boldness has genius, power, and magic in it”

Above all else, I am thankful for my family. To my mom, my dad, and my sister; I can’t possibly thank you adequately for everything you have done for me in my life. Instead, I will say a small phrase that sounds and feels grossly inadequate but I will say it and mean it with every shred of my heart and soul:

Thank you for being you.



All of my best wishes to you and yours this Thanksgiving.

Football 2011

Before I delve into the bulk of this post, which will be about the NFL, I feel compelled to say a few words about the now annual chaos that is the BCS. From a fan’s perspective, I love the chaos. #2 Oklahoma State, #4 Oregon, and #5 Oklahoma all lost this weekend with only one of them (OSU) losing to a ranked team. Now, it very much looks like when everyone wakes up Monday morning, SEC teams will be ranked #1 (LSU), #2 (Alabama), and #3 (Arkansas). Still on the far outside looking in is undefeated Houston, now 11-0 and ranked #11 before this weekend’s action. Note to Cougars fans – you cannot play for the BCS championship when your signature win is over UCLA.

Chaos is good and bad for the BCS. It makes it far more difficult to determine who the two best teams in the country are. However, when it comes to the actual BCS bowl games, you have far more quality teams and therefore the potential for better match-ups and more viewership. The nightmare scenario right now for the BCS would be if Arkansas can beat LSU next weekend. Then the only undefeated team would be one that hasn’t played anyone significant and while it might be easy to eliminate them from the national title conversation, how do you eliminate… umm, anyone else?

The BCS is overdue for a restructuring and the rumor is that it’s coming in the next couple of years. The most interesting scenario which I’d personally love to see is the BCS would be responsible for the national championship game only. Their formula would determine the top two teams in the country and they could then receive bids for stadiums to host that game (Jerry Jones and a (almost) record BCS crowd at Cowboys Stadium anyone?). The advantage to this idea is that gone would be some of the most unpopular aspects of the BCS. There would be no automatic qualifying conferences so Connecticut would not be forced to get hammered by a top ten Oklahoma team. There would no longer be a two team limit, which is going to completely screw the SEC this year (under current rules, if Georgia were to beat LSU in the SEC Championship Game, the SEC would potentially have teams at 12-1, 11-1, 11-2, and 10-2 and they could all be ranked in the top ten and deserving of a trip to a BCS bowl… and only two of them can go.

Lastly (for the NCAA section), do I think there will be a playoff someday in big-time college football? Absolutely not. Do I think there should be one? No, I don’t and the reason is simple. Under the current format, you have to play perfectly to make it to the title game and win it all. Last March was one of the more exciting NCAA Men’s Basketball Championships that I’ve ever seen but does anyone out there (outside of Indianapolis and Storrs, Connecticut) think that Butler and Connecticut were the two best basketball teams in the country? Of course they weren’t. They played the best over that month-long tournament; they got to the final not because they were the best team but because they were the hottest team. If you change the FBS system to a playoff, the same thing will start to happen. When I look at the list of NCAA Division-I FBS champions, I know that they were one of the best teams in the country. You can rarely say that anymore with March Madness.

NFL

The seasons is just past the halfway mark and while some playoff races have shaped up and are all but determined (I’m talking to you Seahawks, Cardinals, and Rams) others remain intriguing and most likely will until Week 17. This season has had it all but as far as this blogger is concerned, some stories stood out amongst the rest.

PHILADELPHIA EAGLES

Today, the one who dubbed the Eagles the “Dream Team” will actually get to start for the first time. Due to Michael Vick’s broken ribs, Vince Young will get the start today for an Eagles team that is all but out at 3-6.

What went wrong? So many people thought they were going to win the NFC if not the Super Bowl. How did things go off the rails so quickly? Well, as is usually the case with teams not living up to expectations, it has been a combination of things but to me, one stands out above the rest; quarterback play.

Last year, everyone thought Vick had turned the corner and had finally learned how to be a pocket quarterback in the NFL. If he did, he somehow forgot nearly everything he learned. This year he is the quarterback that he was in Atlanta. He is still a supreme physical talent and a dynamic playmaker but anymore, that is not the most important part of being an NFL quarterback. If you look at four of the best quarterbacks in the NFL (in no particular order; Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, and Aaron Rodgers) they are at their best when they are surrounded by the playmakers. Their job is more one of distribution and leadership than leading by example. Michael Vick was very good in Atlanta when they had a great running attack and they just needed him to make a couple big plays every game. In Philadelphia, they need him to make numerous big plays every week and he isn’t the type of player who can do that consistently.

Other than that, your guess is as good as mine. The defense has needed some time to gel and not having a training camp hurt them greatly but their offense is a far greater concern. DeSean Jackson’s antics have been a distraction and he might not be back next season and this strikes a deeper chord than Vick’s passing. On a different team, Jackson would be kept in line by his fellow players. The teams I can think of off the top of my head are the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Baltimore Ravens, and the New England Patriots. In those places, veterans who have dominant personalities control those locker rooms and nothing goes on without them allowing it to happen. Where is that type of presence in Philadelphia? The short answer is that is doesn’t exist.

PLEASANT SURPRISES (LIONS AND 49ER’S)

One year ago, the Lions and 49ers were 6-10. The main difference is that there was no expectation for the Lions to compete with the likes of the Bears (11-5) or the Packers (10-6). The 49ers were picked to win the NFC West and nearly did, finishing just a game behind the Rams and Seahawks (7-9). The Lions were on the upswing at the end of the year, winning their last four games while the 49ers were just bad with a rookie holdout and then a head coach getting fired.

This year, they are both in line to make the playoffs. The Lions are 6-3 and while they have taken a couple of rough beatings in the last few weeks, they still control their own playoff fate and should make it to the playoffs. They are a case of having numerous high draft picks and actually getting a couple of them right. Matthew Stafford, Ndomukong Suh, and Calvin Johnson have all been playing at a very high level this year. However, I think one of their more important players has been Jahvid Best, the diminutive running back that has been out with an injury since their first loss to San Francisco. They started 5-1 with him and have lost two out of three since he went out. His home run ability out of the backfield as either a runner or a receiver has been sorely missed.

There has been a lot of talk lately about the Lions being a dirty team and I wanted to address that briefly. First of all, I have no problem with guys playing hard and playing rough. Of everything I saw (which I’ll freely admit is far from everything) in the first several weeks of the season, I didn’t see anything outside of the unwritten code of conduct on a football field. I saw a bunch of guys with a hard edge looking to make their opponents pay – that’s not dirty, that’s football. Despite the lack of visual evidence, the rumors persist. Last Sunday against the Bears, it was out in the open for everyone to see. Suh ripping the helmet off of Jay Cutler should have gotten him thrown out of the game. If you aren’t allowed to grab a guy’s facemask and you’re not allowed to grab his back collar and pull him backwards, why are you allowed to tackle a guy BY THE HELMET?

Unfortunately, this wasn’t even the worst transgression of the evening for the Bears – that dishonor belongs to Matthew Stafford. I understand that throwing interceptions is frustrating but nothing, I repeat nothing, gives Stafford the right to drag down a defensive player by the head, similar to what Suh did to Cutler. If it had been the ball carrier, I might have been able to give him a pass but it wasn’t, it was a blocker. Every quarterback should know that if you throw an interception and become a defensive player, you are not protected in any special way; if you go for the ball carrier, you are fair game to be blocked. What makes it even worse is the ball carrier had just passed Stafford and he still threw DJ Moore to the ground.

DJ Moore should have been ejected for his reaction; Stafford should have been ejected for starting the whole thing.

NOW THE 49ERS…

The 49ers, so bad a year ago (far worse than their 6-10 record) are now 8-1 and are sitting atop the league’s worst division (hotly contested by the AFC West). If they win today and the Seahawks also lose, they will clinch at worst a tie for the NFC West’s best record… with almost 40% of the season to go. This would be akin to a baseball team clinching their division in early August – it just doesn’t happen. So how has this turnaround happened?

A lot of people point to the influence that Jim Harbaugh has had on that team and it certainly can’t be overlooked. He has brought an edge to that team that it was missing and I think he will have success in the NFL. I think the most important thing he’s done this year is express his confidence in Alex Smith. The oft-maligned seventh year pro from Utah has never had a completion percentage better than 60.5% or a passer rating higher than 82.1 until this year. Right now those two marks stand at 64.0% and 95.8, respectively. Just to prove that he isn’t the game manager that everyone says he is, last week against the 6-2 Giants with Frank Gore proving less than effective, Smith threw the ball 30 times for 242 yards and led the 49ers to victory.

It’s beginning to show now that perhaps all he really needed was someone to believe in him. Now it looks like he’ll be quarterbacking either the #1 or the #2 seed in the NFC and with Frank Gore behind him, it’ll be very hard to bet against them come January.

INDIANAPOLIS COLTS

Everyone knew that this team was in decline. Last year they started 6-6 and had to win their last four just to win the AFC Colts division and Peyton Manning posted his lowest passer rating since 2002 (91.9 – which still ranked 10th in the league). Then the lockout happened and Manning couldn’t consult with one of the therapists he trusts the most who happened to be on the Colts’ training staff.

Then he missed the first game of the season and once his consecutive games streak was over, the team and Manning decided that he shouldn’t rush back and should come back when he is 100%. Without Manning, everyone knew this team would miss the playoffs and would struggle to finish 8-8.

With 6 games remaining, the Colts have a solid grip on the #1 overall pick in next year’s draft and have a decent chance to become the third team ever to not win a game in a season and the second to go 0-16. This is yet another illustration of just how much Manning means to the Colts. Not only is he the offensive coordinator in everything but name, the entire roster is built around him, even on the defensive side. One of the reasons they have been so bad against the run the past several years (including during their Super Bowl run) is if you have a big lead, the other team can’t afford to run as much. Those were the types of leads that Manning would give them and virtually no other quarterback in the league could. This team is a house of cards and Manning is the glue that holds them solidly together; without him, they couldn’t win the Big Ten and would struggle to win the Big East.

I don’t believe in conspiracy theories with regards to the NFL draft. I don’t believe that it’s more than coincidence that Manning misses most of the season when there is a guy in the draft pool (potentially) who might be able to replace him. This team was built around #18 and without him, they are just downright terrible.

GREEN BAY PACKERS – AARON RODGERS

On the other end of the winning spectrum are the Packers, who enter today’s game with the Buccaneers 9-0 and playing some of the best offensive football that has ever been played and so far their success starts with Aaron Rodgers. His worst game of the season (by passer rating) was in their 27-17 win over the Bears when Rodgers was 28-38 for 297 yards with 3 touchdowns and one of his three interceptions for a rating of 111.4. Just four times this year has Rodgers rating been under 120 while the last three weeks, he’s posted a rating over 140 each time.

Since 1970, there have been 1,252 instances of a quarterback throwing at least 196 passes (to qualify for the rate statistics, you have to average at least 14 pass attempts per team game and the season used to be 14 games long so 14 x 14 = 196). Amongst those, in the four main components that form the NFL’s passer rating formula, Aaron Rodgers ranks:

1st in completion percentage
2nd in touchdown percentage
6th in interception percentage
2nd in yards per attempt

This is where things get a little skewed in my opinion. Coming into this year, the greatest single season performance by a quarterback did not come from Dan Marino or John Elway or Roger Staubach or Drew Brees or Tom Brady. It came from Peyton Manning.

People remember the high flying Patriots offense led by Brady’s 50 touchdown, 8 interception season but many forget that just three years before that, Peyton Manning had an even better season. The difference? Manning’s Colts never went 16-0.

Yes, Tom Brady threw one more touchdown pass and threw for 249 more yards than Manning. Brady also had 81 more attempts than Manning. This is the best way to normalize things; this is what the seasons for Manning and Brady would look like if each threw the ball 500 times.

Name – Completions-Attempts-Yards-TD-INT
Manning – 338-500-4,585-49-10
Brady – 344-500-4,157-43-7

Manning’s season was better as evidenced by the fact that his passer rating was better. Aaron Rodger’s isn’t trying to best Brady’s 2007 but Manning’s 2004. So what would Rodgers numbers look like if normalized to 500 pass attempts? In a word, ridiculous.

Rodgers – 364-500-4,863-47-5

IT’S A BIRD! IT’S A PLANE! NO, IT’S…

(Paraphrasing Kung Fu Panda)

LEGEND TELLS OF A LEGENDARY QUARTERBACK, WHOSE QUARTERBACKING SKILLS WERE THE STUFF OF LEGEND!

The most polarizing player in the league right now and perhaps ever is Tim Tebow. His delivery is slow, his reads are slower, but he has boatloads of “intangibles”. Currently, the Broncos are 5-5, just a half game behind the Raiders in the AFC West, a division which could have four 5-5 teams at the end of play today. When Tebow took over as the starting quarterback, the team was a lifeless 1-4 with Kyle Orton at QB. Since then, Tebow has looked good at times (last five minutes of games) and horrid at others (entire 60 minutes against the Lions). However, in a division with a team that just lost is starting QB (Kansas City), a team who last win was against Denver in Week 5 (San Diego Chargers), and a team that just picked up a new quarterback after a strange sort of hold out (Oakland Raiders), they are far from out of it and in some way could be considered the favorites.

Before we go further into the Tebow-mania, let’s take a quick look at the schedules upcoming for the Raiders and Broncos…

The Raiders have four games left that they should win; today against the Vikings, Week 13 in Miami, Week 16 in Kansas City, and Week 17 against San Diego. At this point I’m writing off San Diego because they made a huge mistake when they let Darren Sproles go and now New Orleans has one of the most dynamic offenses in the league. On top of that, they finally started quickly and didn’t dig themselves a hole and since their 4-1 start, they’ve lost 4 straight and now have to play the Bears to right the ship. Anyways, those four wins would make the Raiders 9-4 with games left against Chicago, Green Bay, and Detroit. I don’t see them winning any of those three and finishing 9-7.

The Broncos make or break game is next week against the Chargers. It will likely pit 5-5 Denver against 4-6 San Diego trailing 6-4 Oakland. If Denver wins, they can keep pace with the Raiders and keep pressure on them. If San Diego wins, they are back in the hunt since 9 or 10 wins will likely take this division. Let’s just say the Broncos win to get to 6-5 (and Tebow-mania finds a new high); after that they have Minnesota and Chicago followed by New England and Buffalo before finishing with Kansas City. Unless Tebow finds some more magic, I would see 8-8 as a realistic record for them.

The problem with that is this Broncos team has won three straight to get back to 5-5 in a manner that completely defies logic. Can they beat New England? Of course not. Can they beat a team that has been to the AFC title game each of the last two years? Absolutely not… oh wait, they just did.

You have to throw everything out the window when it comes to this team and they will go as far as their defense (led by remarkable rookie Von Miller) and Tim Tebow’s legs can carry them. Can they make it to the playoffs? Yes, I believe they can. In the glance ahead at their upcoming schedules, the only stretch I saw was Denver beating San Diego and if the Chargers lose today, that might not be that much of a stretch. What if Denver beats Buffalo and Oakland loses to Miami or San Diego?

I am a fan of Tim Tebow and it has nothing to do with his religion, his politics, or his ability as a quarterback. I think that he is a nice and humble young man and in this era of professional sports, I cannot possibly ask for anything more.

Kickoffs are just under an hour away so I’m sure some of what I’ve said here will be rendered moot by the end of the day but that’s just one of the many great things about sports; no matter how long you follow a sport or how much you know about it, on any given day, something can happen that completely defies logic.


Packers; 16-0? No
Colts; 0-16? Yes
Broncos; playoffs? No (just barely)
Manning; MVP votes? Absolutely
Rodgers; MVP? I’m not even going to answer that one…
Packers; back-to-back Super Bowl wins? Yes

The $1.6 Trillion Monkey on our Backs and the $14 Trillion Gorilla in the Room

Status quo (noun) – the existing state or condition

The status quo is comfortable. It’s peaceful, predictable, and overall not-too-bad… it’s also leading us straight to a disaster of potentially epic proportions.

THE PROBLEM

Three months ago, members of Congress came startlingly close to allowing the United States government to default on our national debt of over $14 trillion. Congressmen and women stood up in front of the assembled legislators and railed against the system that we have and said that something needed to be done. In their wisdom, they formed a small committee, dubbed the “Super Committee” (I now suspect by themselves). This small group of people, half Democrat and half Republican, was given the task of reducing the government’s budget deficit. They were also given a deadline; November 23rd. If they failed to come up with a certain amount of deficit reducing stuff (spending cuts, revenue enhancements, or a combination thereof) then budget cuts of $1.2 trillion would automatically kick in starting in 2013. Apparently these budget cuts are so drastic that we absolutely can’t allow that to happen. Unfortunately, if you believe the reports and the rumors coming from Washington these days, that’s exactly what is going to happen. If the so-called “Super” Committee cannot come up with some sort of compromise in the three and a half months that they had for this job, I personally view this as an epic failure to do the job that they were sent to Washington to do.

Don’t talk to me about the economic repercussions of raising taxes. I know what they are.

Don’t talk to me about the sob stories of all the people that will be worse off if the government has to roll back its benefits. I’ve heard many of those sob stories.

The fact of the matter is that We, the People of the United State of America, sent those 537 people to the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House to make the decisions that us mere mortals can’t even conceive of making. Someone has to make the hard decisions about what is more important in the country today, tomorrow, and ten years from now. Unfortunately, both sides of the aisle seem far more interested in holding the party line at best and moving the party line farther from center at worst than they do in compromising.

In my sometimes-not-so-humble opinion, it is despicable that the federal government has accumulated a debt in excess of $14 trillion. Say what you want about how our economy is still strong (it is) or how much better our prospects look in the short run compared to Europe (much better), I don’t care. In May of 2010, the average American who worked year round full time earned an average of $44,416.18. At that rate, it would take one person 315,200,452 years to pay off the nation’s debt. Put differently, it would require 315,200,452 people to dedicate an entire year’s wages to this effort and they wouldn’t be able to spend any money on such luxuries as food and shelter. That is more than double the workforce of the United States. What’s even more amazing is how the steps taken by Congress to curtail the truly incredible level of federal spending are laughable.

“Wait a minute!” you exclaim. “$1.2 trillion is no laughing matter!”

This would be true if those budget cuts were going to be focused in one year. However, they are going to be spread out over the next decade. If I am not mistaken, the way these cuts are laid out is such that they are far deeper in year eight of the plan than year two. However, it does not change the fact that it isn’t enough.

It is estimated by the US Census Bureau that in the fiscal year 2011 (10/1/10 through 9/30/11), the US government took in $2.1737 trillion and spent $3.8188 trillion for a budget deficit in one year of $1.6451 trillion.

The average annual budget cuts proposed by Congress would be $120 billion.

Cuts - $120 billion
Deficit (FY ’11) – $1,645.1 billion

Desperate times call for desperate measures. The government, Democrat and Republican alike, have spent us into a corner and there are very few things that will get us out of it. As much as it will pain everyone in Congress and everyone in the nation, it will require drastic spending cuts AND increases in taxes.

THE SOLUTION

Do I have a solution? Yes.

Is it overly simplistic? Absolutely.

Is there any other way? I’d love to hear something better.

In 2011, as I mentioned above, the federal government took in $2.17 trillion in revenue and spent $3.82 trillion for a deficit of $1.65 trillion. Please forgive discrepancies due to rounding - two decimal places are much better to deal with than four or five. This gap is just too big to bridge with one side or the other doing all the compromising which leads me to my solution.

The federal deficit is $1.65 trillion. Republicans are responsible for half and Democrats are responsible for half. If we assume that Republicans will look to cut spending and Democrats will look to enhance revenues in the form of new taxes, then we can very easily see what the scope of the federal government will look like.

The government spent $3.82 trillion last year. If they were tasked with trimming $825 billion worth of fat from that budget, that would be a 21.6% decrease in spending. Several candidates for the GOP nomination have even floated sound-bites with regards to specific spending cuts that they would make happen if they were voted into the White House. Rick Perry very famously wanted to cut the departments of Commerce, Education, and Energy and he was hoping that people out there in the real world wouldn’t look it up to see what that would mean. Forget for a moment the implications of actually eliminating those departments and focus just on the money. Last year those three departments spent a combined $135.9 billion. So my question for Governor Perry and the rest of the GOP candidates is quite simple; after you get rid of the “luxuries” that were brought about by Democrats that we can no longer afford, what are you going to cut next?

Those three departments represent a paltry 3.6% federal spending in a year where our expenses outpaced our income by 75.7%. This problem is far more serious than legislators in Washington are acting like it is.

The simple answer on the spending cuts side also has the advantage of being the most fair; cut 20% off the top of each department. Yes, vital services will be cut. Yes, these are beyond drastic measures but let me ask you this; what happens if the debt ceiling doesn’t get raised the next time around?

Now, to the Democratic side of the house…

Federal income last year was $2.17 trillion and they need to find a way to add that same figure; $825 billion. Income taxes comprised $956 billion, corporate taxes provided $198 billion, and “Social Insurance and Retirement Receipts” provided $807 billion. Clearly these three don’t add up to that full number but they did provide just over 90% of the government’s income so that is where the action needs to happen. A little bit more math says that in order to meet their needs, they would have to increase those three areas by 42%.

To sum up, the budget for the federal government has been reduced by 21% and the tax revenue brought in by the government increases by 42% and that could balance the budget. If that doesn’t give you an idea of how far our government has gotten out of whack, my guess is that nothing will.

WHY?

So why am I ranting and raving about this all of a sudden? Because of a proposed constitutional amendment that (according to a CNN poll) slightly less than 75% of Americans want enacted; a balanced budget amendment.

Why do we need it? The answer to that is simple; Congress needs to change their ways and never come back to the way things are being done right now. The only thing I see that can stop them from relapsing is a constitutional amendment.

The automatic cuts as a fallback in case the “Super” Committee couldn’t agree was a good idea… until several prominent lawmakers (principally among them Senator John McCain) said that the cuts are too drastic and, paraphrasing now, since Congress came up with this plan, Congress can amend it or eliminate it. On top of that, we have a candidate for the Republican nomination (Governor Perry again) say that if the automatic cuts hit his desk as president, he would not allow them to go into effect.

Essentially, the situation we have is that one of the more important pieces of economic legislation was passed in August and now, three and a half months later, we have very powerful people saying that we can and should ignore large portions of those laws they helped shape.

We’re all in this together. Republican, Democrat, Independent, Left, Right, Up, Down, Charm, and Strange. We need a group of people to serve in Congress that don’t care about a second term. We need people to make the tough decisions and think of ALL Americans in times like these. We need our lawmakers to stop assigning blame to those who they think are responsible for our circumstances (which comes across as “everyone but me and my friends”) and start working together to find solutions for our problems. We need 537 people pulling on the same end of the same rope because there’s a $14 trillion gorilla on the other end. Instead we have some people on each end of the rope and the gorilla has the middle; dangling it in the air like a puppet master or an amused child.

I believe in America and I believe in her economy. I believe that American workers are the best and smartest in the world.

I don’t believe in our elected officials. If I could speak directly to Congress, my message would be simple;

Restore my faith.

On the Long Road to Acceptance...

Imagine that you are a fly on the wall somewhere in the vast NBC complex and you overhear this conversation.

Producer: Alright, who has an idea for next week’s show?

Writer: I think I have something. We have a true living legend of a football coach – the guy’s been coaching for more than half a century. The suspect is one of his assistant coaches and he’s also a former player. He uses his position to set up a foundation for kids and he runs youth football camps and that’s where he selects his victims.

Producer: Not bad, not bad. Do we open with a murder? Is he killing these kids too?

Writer: No, I had a better idea. A graduate student who is an assistant to the team walks in on the coach having sex with a young boy in the locker room shower.

Next week on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit…

It’s not a bad episode is it? The coach comes out and tries to deny and eventually tries to defend himself and all the while, Detective Elliot Stabler (played magnificently by Christopher Meloni) does his very best to not beat the snot out of the suspect with his bare hands. Do me a favor and keep this scenario in mind for a few minutes.

There’s only one problem…

GRIEF

Everyone in the country knows that one of the bigger jokes is the NCAA. On one hand they trumpet the virtues of the student-athlete who cares about getting his degree and is learning valuable lessons on his way through college by playing sports. On the other hand, there is Division I (Bowl Subdivision) football and Division I Men’s Basketball. When I look at water polo or field hockey or rugby or underwater basket-weaving (a very competitive sport, so they say) I can think about the student-athlete without gagging.

When I look at Division I Football (Bowl Subdivision) and Men’s Basketball, I can’t help but think that I can add up the GPA’s of the entire teams on both hands. There are always exceptions – for instance, if I remember my facts correctly, the presumptive top pick in next year’s NFL draft has a GPA over 3.5… from Stanford. So what exactly am I getting at with all of this?

When it comes to big-time college football and basketball, the players are not there to get a degree or to spend four years in college. They are there to enhance their draft stock and hopefully play professionally in their sport. The sad truth of the matter is that everyone exploits these kids for their freakish ability to jump high or to throw a football fifty yards downfield while four three hundred pound behemoths try to rip his head off. Yes, I said EVERYONE.

Fans exploit the players to the extent that they want to watch the event.

Universities exploit them by selling tickets to said events.

The NCAA exploits them by negotiating ridiculously lucrative television contracts to air the biggest events.

The coaches exploit them (perhaps worst of all) because they are the coach’s meal ticket. If a coach recruits good players, the team does well. If the team does well, the coach either gets a raise or gets offered a job at another university with greater pay and responsibility.

So again, I’ll ask, where is this heading? It’s heading towards recruiting violations and the illusion of the amateur athlete and how the former is making a complete mockery out of the latter. I can think of four huge programs that are either under investigation or were recently for awful recruiting violations in the last ten years and all of them have either played for or won a BCS National Championship… and I thought about it for about thirty seconds.

I don’t think that college athletes should be paid. A number of them get some form of scholarship and if you went down to the college students on Wall Street, I’ll bet that they would value that a bit higher than the players who receive them do. I don’t like recruiting rules but they are the rules and if you break them, you should be punished. When it comes to texting a player too much, I can live with that. You lose a scholarship this year, don’t do it again. When it comes to supposedly offering a guy’s family $180,000 to convince him to come and play for your university, that’s way too far. I don’t think college titles should be bought (at least not in that fashion). They should be earned by the coach taking the time to go out around the country and meet the guys and convince them to come to State University. Alas, it goes on despite the efforts of the NCAA’s enforcement staff.

Years ago, when I was young and naïve, I denied that anything like this could possibly happen.

As I got older and watched the news of it happening on Sportscenter, I got angry at the coaches that so flagrantly broke the rules.

As I saw the unfathomable proliferation of these practices throughout college athletics, I softened my stance on paying players (maybe it would reduce a lot of these problems after all).

When I heard people actually articulate the details of paying players, I got depressed when I realized that it could and would never happen.

And finally, at some point last season, when the presumptive (and eventual) Heisman Trophy winner was leading a team towards the BCS National Championship Game (which he won) I gave up and accepted that this was the way big time college sports was always going to be. There were always going to be rule breakers and people would always put up with them. After all, if it actually happened, why should Auburn University care about the $180,000 they supposedly paid the Newton family when they went 14-0 and won the national title? How much extra money did they make during that season?

As you can see, when it comes to the awful corruption that is rampant in college sports, I went through the five stages of grief. I firmly believe that I went through all the stages and came out the other side and accepted it so easily because after all, these players are making million upon millions of dollars for the universities and the NCAA so why should they not get a little on the side for themselves? After all, it’s not like they’re hurting anyone…

JERRY SANDUSKY

As much as it pains me to write this, the idea for an episode of NBC’s Law & Order: SVU about a serial child molester is not fiction. At this point I must point out that nothing has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt yet so there is not yet a perpetrator, just a defendant.

Jerry Sandusky played football at Penn State under coach Joe Paterno and later returned to the team and was an assistant coach there for just over three decades. During that time he founded an organization that that reached underprivileged children through different programs and camps and it is here, prosecutors allege, that he selected his victims.

In paperwork filed with the Centre County District Magistrate Judge’s office at the end of last week, Jerry Sandusky is accused of 40 counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse of someone under 16, aggravated indecent assault, indecent assault of someone under 16, indecent assault of someone under 13, and corruption of minors. These crimes were allegedly committed against eight different boys from 1996 to 2005. The details are still coming in but if you’re wondering what some of the details of the alleged offenses are, you can find the Grand Jury Report here – http://assets.espn.go.com/photo/2011/1107/espn_e_Sandusky-Grand-Jury-Presentment.pdf

In this report you will find that a graduate assistant testifies that he walked into the locker room and witnessed Sandusky having sex with a boy he described as being about ten years old in the showers. According to testimony, he called his father and asked what he should do. The next day he went to head coach Joe Paterno and told him what he witnessed. Paterno then contacted his boss, athletic director Tim Curley, and told him of what the graduate assistant had told him.

This is where the waters get a bit muddied. If you read the testimony presented by Mike McQueary (the graduate assistant), Joe Paterno, Tim Curley, Gary Schultz (Vice President for Finance and Business at Penn State), and Graham Spanier (President of Penn State University), it appears at best that the three men in the middle of this chain of communication (Paterno, Curley, and Schultz) were guilty of simple misrepresentation or misunderstand of the story being presented to them. At worst, it was an attempt to sweep the whole incident under the rug and cover the whole thing up to protect a man that had given 36 years of his life to the football team.

President Spanier testified that he was told a story of “Jerry Sandusky… and a younger child and that they were horsing around in the shower”. How we got there from McQueary saying he thought anal sex was involved is more than a mystery; it’s potentially criminal. I should note at this point that both Curley and Schultz are now facing perjury charges because of what they said to the Grand Jury.

So what is the point of my telling you this sordid tale and what is the tie to recruiting violations? It’s the culture of “we can do whatever we want”. This particular event involving McQueary allegedly took place nine years ago. NINE YEARS! Sandusky was more or less given an emeritus position with the football team since his retirement in 1999 and has had virtually unfettered access to Penn State athletic facilities since then. Can anyone explain why?

So now, my feelings on the entire corrupt system have gone into reverse big time – all the way from acceptance to blinding rage. Even if we put aside the Pennsylvania state law that requires all instances of possible child abuse to be reported to certain state agencies, how were the police never contacted? How and why did “anal sex” become “horsing around” when the matter came before the university president?

One potentially devastating answer to those questions swings back to what I was talking about earlier: college football is a huge business and when you look at these events through the lens of what the PR hit will do to your bottom line, all of a sudden there is a tremendous motive to make sure this never sees the light of day. Every time the Nittany Lions play at home, they fill their stadium (which seats an estimated 107,000) to capacity and those people all buy their fill of concessions and beer. Now imagine that number goes down 5% because of this news. Now imagine they are eligible for a BCS at-large bid but no BCS bowl wants to select them because they don’t want the bad publicity. Now they are playing in the Gator Bowl instead of the Orange Bowl with its $15 million payout. I hope that this isn’t the reason why this issue was never given the due attention is required but it is simply too big of a motive to just dismiss.

FALLOUT

The last thing to be determined in this case is what is the fallout going to look like for all parties involved? Given the charges levied against Sandusky, if he is found guilty on half of them, it’s entirely possible that he won’t ever be a free man again and if he did indeed violate the trust of these children, he deserves far worse than he will get.

According to the Grand Jury Report, McQueary was found credible and Curley and Schultz were not. If they are found guilty, they should go to prison. I don’t know what the penalties are for perjury in the state of Pennsylvania but I know that they should be severe.

McQueary is a wildcard and he has already inspired some conspiracy theories of his own. For instance, why did he go from a graduate assistant to a position coach within the Penn State football community? Did it have anything to do with the fact that he called his father and then Joe Paterno instead of the far more natural instinct to dial 9-1-1? I know that that is a serious accusation and I have no evidence whatsoever of his any wrongdoing on McQueary’s part. I simply find it strange that a grown man (he was 28 at the time) would call his father and then the head coach instead of the police when he sees a 58 year old molesting a 10 year old. Whether it was happening or not is beside the point; according to his testimony, that’s what he thought was happening.

Lastly, we come to Joe Paterno. He coached his first game for Penn State in 1966 and if I had my way, he coached his last game for them three days ago. The district attorney has already said that Paterno has not been indicted and everyone attached to Paterno has been quick to say that he fulfilled his legal requirement by notifying his superior, the athletic director. Morally, I find his behavior in this matter to be reprehensible. What he should have done is call the athletic director and notify him of the report that Paterno had just received and that he was calling the police to report the alleged offense. The fact that he took no steps that have come to light as of yet other than to notify his boss and he also allowed Sandusky to keep his access to Penn State’s athletic facilities (he was reportedly in the football facilities as recently as last week) is nothing short of absurd and for his whole role in this, Joe Paterno should be ashamed.

So what do I think should happen? I think the university should clean house and make an example of the man that has won more than 400 games, three Big Ten titles, and two national championships. The university needs to come out with the message that this behavior was unacceptable and the fact that it took nine years for this issue to be properly dealt with is worse. It’s despicable how one of the “good guys” could let this go on right underneath his nose.

COACHES AND POWER

The last issue I’d like to address is an issue that has reared its ugly head twice in the last year. When it came to light that Ohio State coach Jim Tressel had indeed known about the violations long before the NCAA found out about them and had lied about his knowledge, the obvious question posed to university president E Gordon Gee was if he would be firing Jim Tressel. His response?

“No, are you kidding me? Let me be very clear. I’m just hoping the coach doesn’t dismiss me.”

When this scandal at Penn State started to take off, the same implication was made by journalists and analysts alike; Joe Paterno wouldn’t be fired because he’s Joe Paterno and he’s bigger than anyone else at Penn State.

I understand that I just compared a situation where players got tattoos in exchange for memorabilia and one where an assistant coach molested young boys on university property but the problem I’m bringing up is the same in both cases. The coach has so much power that it is explicitly stated that he can do the firing if he wants to. Universities are so desperate for a good football team that they are more willing to appease a coach with questionable morals rather than upset the fan base that pays the bills.

At least when Woody Hayes assaulted a player on the field of play, he was fired within 24 hours. Joe Paterno was supposedly privy to knowledge about something far, far worse.

Nine years later, he’s still employed.

INCENTIVE

The current state of affairs and the current state of a movement (Occupy Wall Street) and a countermovement (We Are the 53%) are nothing short of fascinating. There are some specific and some general grievances on both sides but fundamentally, I think the issue is simply a difference of opinion and when it comes to opinions, there are no right answers; there is only belief.

OCCUPY WALL STREET

Occupy Wall Street began September 17th (according to the about page on their website) and since then the movement has spread to cities across the United States and around the world. It seems that the essence of their movement is they want to eliminate the greed and corruption amongst the top 1% of wage earners (leading to the catchy populist slogan “We Are the 99%”). Furthermore, OWS “is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations.”

In theory this is a noble goal but in practice eliminating it is extremely problematic. I spent some time a while ago surfing through some of their discussion forums and the one theme that I found is there are some seriously pissed off people including one fanatic who advocated replacing our system of money with a system of hugs and kisses (“would you rather be rich is money or rich in hugs and kisses?” is a question he posed) and then would not debate his points openly with any commenters and instead used extremely profane language to put them down. Alas, this is to be expected on public internet forums. What I did notice were some radical themes that kept coming up; eliminating the monetary system (and going to a more communal economic and social structure) and bringing down capitalism (and redistributing the ill-gotten gains of the wealthy few) to name just two.

What I find most fascinating about the OWS movement is their lack of specific goals and I’ve heard theories from both sides of the issue as to why that is. From the people who are not yet convinced that this is a viable movement, they say that one of the biggest advantages to not stating any specific goals is they can declare victory at any point and nobody can refute them. When someone points out that nothing tangible was accomplished, they can simply reply that their goal was to raise awareness. The flipside of the coin is some people believe that in the life of this movement, it’s too early to state specific goals. Rather, you need to let the movement progress by itself and you have to see where it will go without trying to steer it in any particular direction. As far as I am concerned, I have an extremely difficult time getting revved up about this movement because I don’t know where it is going and anyone who says they do know where it’s going and the endgame is flat-out lying. If you ask ten different people what their purpose for being out on the streets of the Big Apple is, you are liable to get ten different answers but they all seem to center around two things; the banks and the government.

It has bothered me to an extreme degree that by saying “We Are the 99%”, they are attempting to demonize 1% of Americans. According to the Census Bureau, right now there are an estimated 312,571,660 people in the United States. That would mean that 3,125,717 people are responsible for the economic state of affairs in this country and they need to have their wealth repossessed and redistributed to the masses…

Something doesn’t add up here. How much did Alex Rodriguez and his $25-30 million salary contribute to the mortgage crisis? Did the doctors and lawyers that make more than $500,000 a year cause bankers to give mortgages to people who couldn’t possibly pay them back if the market should take a downturn? My point is simply to say that if we’re going to go after greed and corruption, we need to make sure that we are going after the greedy and the corrupted, and not those that are taking advantage of their education and skill set to earn a wage that is on par with what they would earn on the open market for their services. It is my personal belief that the number of people truly responsible for the mortgage and banking crises is far smaller than 3.1 million. However, “We Are the 99%” is a far catchier slogan than “We Are the 9,999 out of 10,000”

So what it comes down to, as far as I’m concerned, is who do you want to blame and what do you want done? Before I can lend a shred of personal support to this movement, I need that question answered in a satisfactory manner and blaming a group of people because of how much money they make is blatant discrimination and I refuse to be a part of it.

There are some legitimate issues that people have raised in conjunction with this movement and they have nothing to do with eliminating our monetary system or redistributing wealth. Money should not equal influence when it comes to our political system. Personally I believe that eliminating it entirely is impossible but a reduction in that level of influence would be very welcome to me. Most importantly, some protestors are saying that the bankers who broke laws (which helped bring about the mortgage crisis) need to be brought to justice. I could not possibly agree more. However, it seems to me that those viewpoints are somewhat marginalized and the vast majority of people are decrying their personal situation and many of them are asking where the government is to catch them when they fall.

They talk about student loans, they talk about the lack of affordable healthcare, and mostly they talk about unemployment and underemployment and they ask where the government is to help them. In a nutshell, I believe that this viewpoint is terrible. It sounds tremendously good in theory that when the average American is knocked down for one reason or another, their kindly Uncle Sam is there to help them back on their feet but this is where that fantasy needs a reality check. We live in a country where the federal government has run a budget deficit of more than $1 trillion each of the last three fiscal years (with 2011’s figure of $-1.65 trillion an estimate). Why, why in the wide world of why should that entity spend MORE money?

“They shouldn’t spend more, they should spend the money they have better.”

I completely agree. The size of the federal government has ballooned in the past twenty years under both Republican and Democratic presidents. Measured by the difference in expenditures from the last year of their predecessor to their last year in office, federal expenditures rose by 29% under President Clinton, 64% under President Bush, and so far 28% under President Obama. From 1992-2011, federal expenditures have increased by 176% ($2.43 trillion) while federal income (most of which comes from taxes) has increased by only 99% ($1.08 trillion). There are two exceedingly simple ways to make up this enormous (and growing) disparity; cut spending or increase revenue in the form of taxes.

WE ARE THE 53%

Relatively soon after the OWS movement started, another anti-movement started as well; We Are the 53%. The number is a reference to a study done by a non-partisan government organization that estimated that only 53% of Americans actually pay federal income tax due to the deductions and tax thresholds below which all federal tax monies collected are refunded. The 53%ers message to the 99%ers is simple; stop waiting for your handout and go get a job.

I believe that this is an overly simplistic interpretation of the OWS movement and I expressed my disbelief that anyone would ask the government to spend more money in our current budgetary and economic climate. However, I do believe that their point is valid. Life is hard but if you grab hold of your bootstraps and pull hard enough (through honest hard work) you will find yourself living the American dream. My sense is that that is the gist of the of the 53%ers message. If I’m wrong, please feel free to set me straight.

INCENTIVE

I’ll bet you were wondering where that word would come into this whole foray into a very contentious situation. Hopefully your incentive for reading this far has been to find out what incentive has to do with all of this.

As I was surfing around the forum page on OWS’s website (found here - http://occupywallst.org/forum/ - warning, some language not appropriate for all audiences) a few thoughts started to gel in my mind. The next morning, I read a paper first published in February of 1848 and was nothing short of shocked to find some of the same rhetoric as I was seeing on that forum page. The paper? None other than the Manifesto of the Communist Party, written by Karl Marx.

I am not saying this to demonize the OWS movement. I do not think that communism and socialism are dirty words; I didn’t live through the tense times of the Cold War. My shock was due to surprise, not outrage. Since some of the people involved in the OWS movement were advocating that we move further from capitalism (if not just do away with it completely) I thought it prudent to know the other side of the spectrum and thus, was inspired to read this document. It is a well written, well thought out, and extremely incendiary piece. I can also see how any person of modest means that feels oppressed would find the theories put forth extremely appealing.

It is necessary to keep some perspective about us though. As wide as income and wealth inequality are in this country, they are not nearly as far apart as the separation between the serfs and the tsars in Russia in 1917. Anyone who says our economic climate is as bad as that is just wrong.

This leads us to two great questions that are very difficult to answer:

First, where on the economic spectrum between pure capitalism and pure communism should we fall?

Once there, what role should our government play in the economy?

The second question cannot be answered without first answering the first so let’s tackle that one first. The economic term for a marketplace where all wealth is seized by the government and is distributed evenly is an Egalitarian market. The problem with this system is there is no incentive.

The price that you get for a good or service is most likely set by the State; there is no incentive to make a better product.

The wage that you earn is the same no matter what your individual skills or education or experience are; there is no incentive for you to chase down opportunity.

The wage that you earn is the same no matter how much work you put it; there is no incentive to put in the extra time and effort to make more money because you won’t.

These are the pitfalls of the communist model. The system is Utopian but the problem is that Utopia does not exist in the real world and it is in the real world that communism fails. This is the part of me that agrees with the 53%. Why should I have to go to work for 40 hours a week and work hard and then pay taxes that I don’t get back every spring so other people can sit back and collect unemployment without ever having to work a single day? This is a part of our government and our welfare state that simply enrages me. I am sure that many of the unemployed that are currently occupying Wall Street would rather be working; I’m not talking about those people. I’m talking about the ones who see government handouts as an alternative to working; not as means to get by while finding another job. That is a large reason why we have an enormous deficit and an enormous debt but that is an issue for the second question I posed and I’m not done answering the first one.

So what happens when you introduce incentive into the markets? Some people work the same as always (be it little or lots) while others work harder. They work 50, 60, even 80 hours a week, staying away from their families except for a few minutes before and after dinner (after work and before bed), in order to be rewarded for their hard work… and they are. Some people go to college, sometimes even working terrible hours at a bad job to pay for their schooling because they know that when they finish and achieve a degree, whether it’s a bachelor’s, graduate, or professional degree, the market will reward their work with a higher wage… and it does.

Incentive is the fuel that drives this country more than anything else. It’s not that we necessarily want to be the best, it’s that we know that if we put in more work, we will be better. Capitalists strive to be better while communists do not. If that doesn’t show you exactly where I fall on this particular issue, let me make it just a little more plain. Capitalism brought about peace in a way that arms and peace talks could not. There is free enterprise in Russia and China where thirty years ago there was not. China is going to overtake the United States in terms of overall economic size (in terms of Gross Domestic Product, or GDP) within the next few years and it’s all due to that free enterprise and the desire of their people to get better economically and more importantly the incentive that is now in front of them. They see what they can achieve if they work for it… and so they are.

In short, the government should not dictate who gets what job or who gets how much money. The market is extremely efficient at doing just that and an economy driven by free markets is called capitalism.

From this point forward, I’m going to assume that we’ve chosen a capitalist model instead of the communist model and the reason is simple; the second question I posed was about the government’s role in the economy and in a communist model it’s simple… collect all money and then distribute evenly. In a capitalist society, it’s far more complicated. According to famous economist Adam Smith, there is an “invisible hand” that will move the market to an equilibrium point where a certain number of a good is produced and the market as a whole want to buy that same number of that good at a certain price. If the price is too high, producers want to sell far more than people want to buy and this creates a surplus. Gradually, the producers will realize that if they want to sell more and thus make more money, they can’t charge that high price. As they lower the price, people buy more of that good and the producer makes more money. The opposite is true if the price gets too low. This is one of the simplest and most powerful theories in all of economics; the theory of supply and demand.

There are many things that can upset this delicate balance but in our society, one dominates over all the others; the government. The vast majority of the time that the government interferes in the market, the overall efficiency of the market is decreased. For most markets, this is a bad thing but for a select few, government influence is a good thing. For instance, a side effect that does not factor into the price of a good is called an externality and they can be good or bad. The textbook example of a negative externality is pollution. Before environmental legislation (such as the Clean Air Act or the Clean Water Act) was passed, there was no incentive for certain industries to reduce the level of pollution that they produced while making a good. Thus, harmful chemicals were put into the environment and the people at large were harmed.

For a more specific example, let’s look at gasoline. Benzene was used as an “octane enhancer” for many years due to its octane number of 120. The only problem is that benzene is extremely carcinogenic. The federal government mandated that gasoline can no longer have benzene in it and because of that, the public is better off.

The other example of government influence benefiting the people at large is the steps that the government has taken to ensure competition in the marketplace. In short, monopolies are bad for the economy as a whole and they can easily exploit the people who buy their products. Starting with the Sherman Act in 1890, the government has levied fines in the billions and has taken the drastic measures of breaking up companies that seek to reduce competition in the marketplace. Unless you bought gasoline that originated from BP, the odds are fairly good that they last time you filled up your car, you bought gasoline from a former part of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Empire.

Other than those rare cases, the government is a hindrance to economic efficiency, plain and simple. Where capitalism gets sticky is the difference between efficiency and equity. Just because a market runs efficiently and the quantity of a good supplied equals the quantity of that good demanded does not mean that the allocation of resources is fair. This is yet another role of the government and this is an issue that I believe is central to the points of both OWS and the 53% movements. Both sides think the redistribution of wealth is unfair; social conservatives believe that too much is taken in the form of taxes and handed back to the people who are less economically fortunate. The social liberals believe that more money should be reclaimed from the wealthiest Americans and given back to those who can’t afford as many luxuries.

There is no right or wrong answer when it comes to tax policy and social aid programs. Social and fiscal conservatives have a model that is more economically efficient and is also more heartless. Their liberal counterparts have a model that is far less economically efficient but people don’t need to worry about starving to death if they lose their jobs. I personally believe that there is unbelievable room for compromise. Government agencies have had their budgets increase to the point that there is an incredible and distressing level of wasteful spending. If you want those agencies to operate more efficiently, all you have to do is reduce their budgets. Tell them that they need to do the same job with 10% less funding and after the shock of having their budget cut wears off, they will find a way to make it work. The flip side of the coin is our economy is balanced on a razor’s edge and something needs to be done about it. I would support a moderate increase in taxes under one condition; every penny of those new taxes goes towards paying off our $14 trillion debt.

Fanaticism is the enemy in this case. Winston Churchill once said that a fanatic is one who “can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject”. If we are going to rebuild this economy and make it bigger and better than ever, we need to work together. We need to find the central ground, socially and economically, where most of this country’s citizens reside. The Democratic and Republican parties are straying further and further from the center of the political spectrum in a dangerous game of one-upsmanship that very nearly caused us to default on our debt and plunge us into a depression that would have lasted for years if not decades… all to make a point. That cannot be allowed to happen. All of this leads me to the last point that I’ll make in this ode to our society and economy – there are 537 people who owe their jobs to us. They work for us. We need to remember that…

THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE

There are 435 Representatives, 100 Senators, a Vice-President, and a President that wield enormous power because we, the people, of the United States of America, handed it to them. If we want something bad enough and we perceive an injustice, we need to stand up and let them know in a unified voice that this is what we want and we’re willing to elect different people until we get it.

Some of the few issues that I’ve heard from the OWS movement that I think are legitimate points are the corruption in our political process and the fraud perpetrated by some bankers that helped bring about the mortgage crisis three years ago. One of my single biggest issues with the Occupy Wall Street movement and the “We Are the 99%” people is nothing can be resolved on either of these issues by picketing bankers on Wall Street. As long as the focal point of this movement is Wall Street, nothing substantial will be accomplished. So what should these people be doing and where should they be picketing (or demonstrating perhaps would be a better word)?

They should be demonstrating at the corner of East Capitol Street, NE and 1st Street, NE…

At the US Capitol building!

If you want money to not buy influence in politics then say that you won’t vote for someone who accepts money from certain lobbies and if they don’t tell you who their campaign contributions are coming from, don’t vote for them.

If you want bankers to be indicted for fraud because they had appraisers artificially inflate the price of homes so they could make more money, tell your Congressman, Congresswoman, or Senator that if they don’t go after these people, you won’t re-elect them. Tell the President that if he doesn’t direct the Department of Justice to look into this, you won’t send him back to the White House.

The federal government works for us at our pleasure. We reshape our government every two years and yet many people do not realize the awesome power we as citizens have. The problem is that power is only useful if it is applied well.

The Occupy Wall Street movement might just be doomed to fail because they are yelling and screaming at a group of people (bankers) who have no incentive to listen. Just a few miles to the south (227 miles by car) is a group of people who do have the incentive to listen to us, the citizens of this country. And that group of 537 people can command the attention of the bankers that helped cause this recession.

Until that happens, OWS is just tilting at windmills.