No One Wants to Host the Olympic Games Anymore

image: the ruins of the former Olympic Village, Athens, Greece

File under: Nobody Could Have Predicted.

Who's going to host the Winter Olympic Games in 2022? We're down to two finalists and this is all so exciting!

Exciting, that is, until you find out the two finalists are the last ones standing because no other city in the world wants to host the games.

Oslo, Norway announced yesterday that it was dropping its bid to host the 2022 Winter Games. Oslo was the third city — after Krakow, Poland and Stockholm, Sweden — to submit a bid and later cancel it after either public opposition or an inability to secure the combination of public and private funding necessary to stage the event. St. Mortiz, Switzerland and Munich, Germany both considered submitting bids, but the people of those cities voted against it in referenda.

So instead of taking place in a snowy, mountainous country packed with some of the world's greatest winter athletes and ranked No. 1 on the United Nation's Human Development Index, the games will be held in either Almaty, Kazakhstan or Beijing, China — two nations known for their poor records on human rights, free speech, and corruption. Beijing doesn't even have ski mountains.

Gee, and might there be another reason so many bidders are pulling out?

How we got here is pretty simple: Hosting the games has become such a massive, expensive, and unpopular chore that it's getting harder to convince anybody to do it.

Who really wants to deal with the massively unpopular International Olympic Committee (IOC), the Switzerland-based governing body that's notorious for its corruption, general awfulness, and insistence on being treated like royalty through the bidding and hosting process? Andrew Jennings of the Nation called its 100-or-so members "ideal candidates for a perp walk" and "a foul band reeking of corruption" that's overseen an Olympic bidding process that functions like an elaborate, bribe-tainted courting ritual.

So, with an utterly corrupt bidding process, potential bidders being financially strapped, voters in (still nominally democratic) countries firmly opposed to the huge costs involved, who among the world community might still be interested in hosting the Olympics?

...it's possible that we're moving toward a state of Olympic affairs in which the most eager bidders and biggest spenders are autocratic and oligarchic nations. For them, the Olympics offers a convenient way for the wealthy to further enrich themselves, for the powerful to consolidate their power, and for governments and leaders to parade their influence and relevance in front of their own citizens, and the world.

Berlin 1936 anyone...anyone? That worked out pretty well as I recall in tamping down Germany's growing lust for another major war.

But don't worry, Olympics fans, there is at least ONE major world capital interesting in hosting the 2024 Summer Games:

The effort to bring the 2024 Olympics to the Washington, D.C. region took another big step Thursday.

Local nonprofit DC 2024 launched its public website around 8 a.m. The site is one of the first public efforts to build widespread support for the Olympics bid.

"Today's announcement that a leadership team has been formed for Washington 2024 means that our region's bid to host the Olympic and Paralympic games has kicked into full gear," said Arlington County Board Chair Jay Fisette. "...We agree with Washington 2024 that this is an historic opportunity for our region to be part of the Olympic Movement."

That's right folks, it's YOUR imperial capital! Which, come to think of it, fits the definition quite well of an oligarchic city looking for "a convenient way for the wealthy to further enrich themselves, for the powerful to consolidate their power, and for (the) government and leader to parade their influence and relevance in front of their own citizens, and the world."

I really can't wait.


Bonus: Sorry, Lola, you can't run fast enough to escape this fiasco

The Billionaires Do Not Care About the Integrity of ANYTHING

Hoo-boy, did Americans wake up out of their usual slumber and get all hot and bothered this week. There was consternation and gnashing of teeth from coast to coast and even out into the various territories. For a moment there, it looked like public anger would boil over and infuriated citizens would pour out into the streets in mass protest. Howard Beale, where are you when we need you? We’re mad as hell, and we absolutely are not going to take this shit anymore.

So what was it that stirred the masses from their media-induced numbness and fueled their growing outrage? Was it the latest war atrocity against innocent civilians overseas committed by a declining empire fighting a desperate rearguard action against the unceasing march of history? Was it the latest federal government bailout of Wall Street banksters who then turn around and send middle class jobs to the country that the Pentagon war pigs tell us is supposedly the worst geopolitical threat we face in the world? Perhaps likely voters are finally waking up to the fact that the approaching presidential election is a sham and that there is virtually no difference between the two major party candidates on any issue of substance?

Don’t be silly, Natch. I’m talking about the horrifically blown call by replacement referees at the end of the nationally televised Monday Night Football game that gave the Seahawks an “undeserved” victory over the Packers.

That’s what it comes down to. That’s what it takes to get the idiots upset in this stupid country. You can bone them up the ass for more than 30 years, slowly stealing their prosperity, security and their children’s futures, but goddamnit don’t allow a meaningless game between two groups of steroid-fueled, overpaid millionaires to descend into a comical farce. That’s taking things a bit too far.

What’s most amusing to me about this latest tempest in a Hologram teapot is that there actually is a very good lesson to be learned from this debacle even if you are not a sports fan. In fact, let me briefly summarize the issue for those of you who do not spend your autumn Sunday afternoons glued to your television screens. The NFL is run by a group of 31 billionaire owners (and the Green Bay Packers, who are owned by the city of Green Bay) who just signed a $20 billion national television contract to broadcast their mediocre games into every household in the land. That big, fat wad of teevee cash virtually guarantees that the owners will make a profit every year no matter how well they manage (or mismanage) their teams.

Moreover, for the past 30 years NFL commissioners have been steadfastly pushing league player personnel rules in such a way to encourage “parity” (mediocrity), meaning that the talent level on each team now evens out enough so that there are no true dynasties anymore and most individual games are closely fought contests. This “balance” is supposed to generate even more fan excitement and interest (and, not incidentally get them spending even more of their hard earned money on NFL merchandise). Unfortunately, there is one little problem that comes with parity, and that is the nature of the game itself, in which subjective penalties called by the referees in a tight contest—pass interference, holding and personal fouls in particular—can swing the results of an individual game one way or another and one bad call can negate the strenuous efforts of the players on the field.

So here you have a league in which the quality of play has already been deliberately watered down, resulting in many close games in which the quality of the refereeing is already crucial to maintaining its integrity as an athletic competition, and what do those billionaire owners with the $20 billion television contract do? Try to save a few paltry million dollars by locking out the regular referees and bringing in a bunch of incompetent scabs to replace them. There just could not be any more fitting metaphor for what the oligarchs who really run this country have been doing to the workers for the past 30 years with the complicity of the bought-and-paid for politicians.

Those sportswriters and fans who are now shrieking about how the integrity of the NFL has been damaged by the use of replacement referees are pissing in the wind. Obviously, the billionaires who run the league could not give a shit about the game’s integrity just so long as they can keep reaping billions of dollars in profits from it. Winning is nice, but making money is all they really care about. If you were to hold a gun to the head of any NFL owner and force them to answer honestly whether they would rather have their team win five Super Bowl Championships or receive a sweetheart new stadium deal with plenty of luxury skyboxes from the taxpayers of his state, I guarantee you that every single one of them would take the stadium deal over the Lombardi Trophies. That’s what separates them from the idiot fans who root for each team: the fans genuinely care whether the team wins or not.

It’s the same thing across all aspects of American society. Yesterday, I posted again about Bain Capital closing the Sensata manufacturing plant in my hometown of Freeport, Illinois, and sending the jobs off to China. You would think that such a horrendous action would rip the heart out of anyone who really cares about this country and about the welfare of its citizens, but clearly the sociopathic assholes who run Bain Capital and the poodle politicians they keep in their back pocket—from Willard Romney to President Hopey-Changey—do not care about America any more than those NFL owners do about the supposed “integrity of the game.”

Always remember that when everything in a society becomes a commodity to be bought and sold without sentiment or feeling, that society eventually reaches the point where nothing is sacred or has value for its own sake. Those who would defend the “right” of the oligarchs to do as they please should always bear in mind that what separates us as American citizens in the early 21st century from the historical human norm when life for most people was truly “nasty, brutish and short” was that brief period after World War Two when America temporarily built a more equitable and just society that allowed most citizens and not just the oligarchs to enjoy the fruits of fossil fueled prosperity. The game has since changed, the age of abundance is coming to an end and all of that is now being ripped away. So you should ask yourself: is it more likely after the dust settles that I will be one of the tiny minority of global oligarchs who rule the planet with an iron fist, or instead will I be one of the vast majority of hopeless peons who are exploited to death so that their rulers may extract every last ounce of value from our resource depleted world?


Bonus: Classic George Carlin

I Sure Am Glad the NFL is Back

I've mentioned here before that at one time I was an NFL season ticket holder. So why did I give it up? Well, it was a combination of the skyrocketing ticket costs, the league's increasingly mediocre level of play, the media hype that has reached insane levels, the seemingly endless displays of superficial patriotism and the advertisements that bombard you continuously from the moment you set foot in the stadium...oh, and also so I don't have to ever again be in physical proximity to clueless idiots like the people who appear in the video above from opening weekend. Seriously, what a fucking freak show.

You want to know why America is going down the shitter? It's because people like these alleged adults are not only walking around free, but are actually allowed to vote. And remember, these are morons who are somehow still prosperous enough to be able to scrape together the cash to attend a ridiculously overpriced NFL game. Yep, instead of spending hundreds of dollars and battling the traffic and the crowds I spent much of this past Sunday afternoon napping on my couch and reading a book...and I'm a happier man for it.

But hey, fan stupidity isn't always grim. Sometimes, it's even good for a laugh:

Miami Will Wallow in Shit After Horrible Baseball Stadium Deal

image: just that hideous abomination pictured above alone cost the taxpayers of Miami a cool $3 million.

Back on December 4th in my post, "SEC Investigating Dirty Baseball Stadium Deal in Miami," I highlighted a story of how officials of Miami-Dade County got fleeced by the ownership of the Miami Marlins, and may have been bribed to get them to approve a new taxpayer funded stadium:

The Marlins pushed the limits on exactly how much a team can hold its city hostage. They cried poverty and threatened to move unless they got a new stadium while refusing to disclose their financial records – records that were later leaked and showed a team swimming in tens of millions of dollars in profits and funneled millions more to a corporation run by team owner Jeffrey Loria.

Miami-Dade County commissioners nevertheless voted 9-4 in favor of taking out loans that will cost the county $2.4 billion over 40 years to help build the stadium in Little Havana, about two miles west of the city. Critics across south Florida panned the deal, which gives the Marlins all stadium-related revenue and imbued the team with a new attitude entering this offseason.

That story was bad enough, but now comes word that while the Miami-Dade County commissioners were showering taxpayer money on scumbag billionaire Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria, a dire crisis was building up elsewhere in the county. From the Miami Herald:

Miami-Dade County’s three main water treatment plants and nearly 14,000 miles of pipelines are so outdated it would take more than $1.1 billion just to replace the “most deteriorated, vulnerable sections” of the system, a newly released internal study shows.

Corrosion is so pervasive in the county’s water and sewage-treatment plants, and pipes that move water and sewage, that initial repairs could take from three to eight years, the five-month study found.

Each day 300 million gallons of waste and 459 million gallons of drinking water pass through the county’s system — the 10th largest water-and-sewer utility in the nation.

“The infrastructure we have out there is aged,” said John Renfrow, director of the water and sewer department. “Many of the pipes with leaks out there were built at the same time. It reminds me of an apartment where all the lights are put in at the same time, and you know how all the lights go out at the same time.”

Federal regulators told the county two months ago that it must perform repairs and upgrades. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Justice, along with the state Department of Environmental Protection, are expected to take another four months discussing with Miami-Dade how to fix and pay for a system that Renfrow said is “being held together by chewing gum.”

The study, requested by Commissioner Barbara Jordan, shows the majority of the initial fixes — about $736 million of immediate work — is needed for sewer lines. Water lines would take another $364 million to repair.

The county’s main water treatment in Hialeah, and two sewage plants, on Virginia Key and in South Miami-Dade, are 56, 45 and 87 years old, respectively.

Fixing wire and concrete erosion in pipes would cost about $10 million, and fixing water mains, tanks and pumps would cost another $129.4 million, the study estimated.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but obviously Miami-Dade County had better things to do with its money than build a fucking baseball stadium.

But hey, I guess at least the citizens of Miami now have a great baseball team to cheer for while they hold their noses because of all their stopped up toilets, right? Wrong, Natch. Here's Yahoo Sports with that tale of woe:

Here is how the con worked.

The Florida Marlins owners whined, and they brayed, and they swore up and down that they couldn't afford the new stadium necessary to raise their payroll from embarrassing levels and compete annually. And they got it, the vast majority on the taxpayer's teat no less, this gleaming new gem from which they would fatten their pockets by taking all of the ticket and concession and parking and advertising sales, every last cent, no matter how unseemly that felt.

To allay fears, they changed their name to the Miami Marlins, their colors to a rainbow vomiting, their image to reflect the city, hot enough that the New Yorker would profile them and Showtime would broadcast a documentary on them and free agents Jose Reyes and Mark Buehrle and Heath Bell would take the money. People actually bought into the thing, recognized them as a real team and not just some affiliate run by a couple of swindlers who had already screwed Montreal and were primed to do the same to another city.

It wasn't ever going to end any other way. You knew that. You knew. When Jeffrey Loria and David Samson are involved, it can't end any other way, because they know no different. Loria is the owner of the Marlins, Samson the president, and they're turning the Miami Marlins into a chop shop. Anibal Sanchez and Omar Infante were traded first this week, to the Tigers. Then Hanley Ramirez, who until this year Loria regarded as the franchise, to the Dodgers. Next could be Josh Johnson, their homegrown ace.

That would be $32.75 million shed within a week, bringing the Marlins from their $100 million dream back to the bottom quarter of payrolls in baseball.

And Miami is stuck with $2.4 billion in stadium debt service for that.

This would be falling-down funny if it weren't so very sad. Two charlatans, ripping off a major American city and laughing all the way to the bank.

In other words, the Marlins are still a shitty baseball team that is once again dumping its star players via trades in order to save money.

So how long do you suppose it will be before we start hearing rumblings about Miami-Dade County possibly having to declare bankruptcy because it can no longer afford to maintain its basic services? Meanwhile, instead of occupying a prison cell as they should, scumbag Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria and Team President David Sampson will be sitting pretty in the owner's box of the cushy new baseball stadium they built with money kindly donated by the taxpayers of a community that no longer can even afford working toilets.

God bless America.


Bonus: "Aw, Shit Man"

The Empire Will Eat Itself

Yesterday was of course Independence Day in America. A day we celebrate in earnest even though many of us have no real fucking clue what it is that we are actually celebrating. It's a day when dozens of nimrods across this great land invariably blow off various body parts doing things with fireworks that they were never designed to do and challenging old Charles Darwin to take his best fucking shot.

If there is one single annual Fourth of July event that sums up just how badly America has gone astray, it would have to be the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest held every year at Coney Island. Not so much the contest itself, really. After all, Coney Island was was always a place of seedy entertainment. No, it's the fact that it has become a major televised spectacle and has helped launch a professional sports league called, I shit you not, Major League Eating. That America's whole economy has become based on mindless consumption is bad enough, but now we've gone and made a major spectator sport out of it and put it on fucking ESPN.

In that spirit, I thought I would share this enlightening story from Deadspin, which attempts to answer the age old question, what happens when these guys have to poop after the contest?

The Nathan's Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest is a lot of things—patriotic, promotional, repellant—but above all, the contest is a study in misdirection. Like so many of Coney Island's storied card sharks and freak shows, the contest succeeds by distracting its audience, plying them with sideshows between and around the twenty minutes of actual competitive consumption. Mookie Wilson, Greg Louganis and Miss New York dived into a 15-foot apple pie, somebody pulled a pick-up truck with his hair, MarShon Brooks played HORSE against a randomly selected crowd member. The action was deliberately brisk, but it couldn't vanquish my reasonable, pressing question, the question that would be on anyone's mind.

What are the post-contest poops like?

Every competitor I spoke to or heard speak yesterday maintained that they would not be throwing up at any point, before, during, or after the contest. Forget the skill and determination required to eat 50 or 60 hot dogs in 10 minutes: the true test of wills comes after that, when the media descends on the eaters in the Coney Island heat—an atmosphere that can turn stomachs even before Nathan's stuffs them.

Some competitive eater code dictates that they may not, under any circumstance, admit to feeling even a little nauseated. But they have to be. An eater must walk around for the rest of the day full—literally full—of hot dogs (packed, as an oppositional pamphlet reminded us as we left, "with fat, sodium and cholesterol"), the water they dunked them in, and what Major League Eating euphemistically calls "detritus," which is to say, chewed-up hot dogs they mistakenly spat out, but then had to re-swallow because otherwise they would have been docked points or disqualified.

But let's say the competitors were being honest about not vomiting. If all those dogs don't come out one end, they have to come out the other. So I sought answers. Do they race to the bathroom right away? If not, how long would it be until the post-contest dump? How does that dump compare to a regular dump? Do toilets get clogged? Are they just in the bathroom the rest of the day?

I found someone who I thought had been on stage—he was a bit of a mess, as eaters often are post-competition—and jabbed a tape recorder in his face to ask about his next shit. Part of me wishes that he had been a bystander, as I briefly feared, if only because that would have made his unhesitating response ("Not fun!") pretty amazing. But the eater in question was actually Micah "Wing Kong" Collins, ranked thirteenth in the world by Major League Eating. He once ate 84 ounces of baked beans in 58 seconds. The man presumably knows from shits, and yet, when pressed, he said his post-hot-dog contest evacuation would probably only take 10 or 15 minutes, and would likely occur about three hours from the time of our chat. Pretty standard stuff.

Lee Vilinsky, a first-time competitor who received lusty boos for having the temerity to be from Canada, echoed Collins' sentiments. Though he wouldn't say when, exactly, he could expect to rid himself of the day's work, Vilinsky speculated that the result would be "Not pretty."

Patrick "Deep Dish" Bertoletti seemed like a good candidate to give me more detail. The third-place finisher at 51 hot dogs, Bertoletti, who ate in a Speedo, seemed like the answer to a poop enthusiast's prayers. "There's Porta-Potties back there, I think they might just explode, to be honest." Alas, he was joking—apparently those Porta-Potties generally go unused. Bertoletti said he'd need a good eight hours before he had really digested the 51 dogs, and he was disinclined to predict size or intensity that far into the future. Bertoletti claimed to have "tons more space" in his stomach, and explained that what separates Chestnut from his competition is the ability to eat until he's at true capacity without succumbing to tangential roadblocks, such as throat soreness, or fatigue. I was more interested in the poop, but hey, spare a thought for Bertoletti: he ate 51 hot dogs in 10 minutes and still lost by 17. He needed to vent.

Runner-up Tim "Eater X" Janus, eater of 52 hot dogs (and burper of 18.1 seconds) grew contemplative when asked about his next poop. After a pause, he shook his head and said only, "You gotta live with the consequences of your actions." (We bet the average American hears this a lot on July 4.)

With four interviews in the books and the crowd dispersing, I'd only learned what the poops wouldn't be like: not fun, not pretty, not immediate, not inconsequential. Would I get any positive comment on what it's like to crap out scores of hot dogs? A media scrum formed around the only remaining eater, winner Joey Chestnut, who answered questions like, "How did you eat so many hot dogs?" very professionally ("I used my mouth") despite the sweat pouring from his body, and the fact that he'd just eaten 68 hot dogs in 10 minutes. Chestnut was dismissed after a minute or two and the scrum dispersed, but he stopped for one last question on his way out. Suddenly sheepish, I asked, "Mr. Chestnut, what will your next bowel movement be like?" Resplendent in victory, sweatier than anyone I've ever seen before in my life, Chestnut thought for a moment and then said confidently: "Picture-worthy."

Even better than the article was this delightful little nugget from the reader comments:

As the friend of a girl that dates one of the top three finishers and having attended the Nathan's private after party every year I can tell you that they all puke it up 100% of the time. Every contest, no matter the food. The euphemism is "vacating."

I have come to know way more about this "sport" than I truly ever cared to--the training involves drinking gallons of water regularly to expand the stomach but with the immediate need to puke it back up before suffering from water poisoning. The eater my friend dates has been in the hospital because he was "training" but didn't puke it back up in time. Water poisoning is apparently pretty serious. I Wikipedia'ed it.

Anyhow, the real funny stories come at this Nathan's after party every year--these guys are complete social outcasts that all the sudden become "stars" one day a year and totally act like douchebags for a night. But not like actual douchebags, like what nerdy kids think douchebags should act like. One of them always ends up getting shitfaced and being kicked out, only to have a gaggle of weird-ass eating groupies (not really all that attractive, but still--actual fucking groupies) attend to him on the curb. Then he usually pukes more.

In conclusion: they all puke. A lot.

The Founding Fathers would be so proud.


Bonus: This video isn't even a parody anymore.

How A Teenager With A Fake Escort Service Duped Darren Rovell And CNBC

This story is just too damn funny. Want to know why the mainstream media so thoroughly suck balls these days? Maybe part of it is because it hires "reporters" who do things like base their stories on Twitter conversations. Here is Deadspin with the details:

An 18-year-old high school senior named Tim was bored one day last November when CNBC's sports biz guy, Darren Rovell, sent out the following tweet:

If you are losing a paycheck/business because of the NBA, I want to tell your story. Email me at lockoutstories@gmail.com.

— darren rovell (@darrenrovell) November 17, 2011

The NBA lockout was still on, and Rovell was looking for a new angle. Tim decided to have a little fun with him. He created a fake email account with the name "Henry James" and the handle hankinthebank1@gmail.com. He sent a note to Rovell's Gmail:

I run an escort service in New york, mostly for away teams players after games but I get some knicks and nets players also. They are the high rollers and im not getting the constant business that I need to stay running.

Rovell was into it, according to their email exchange, which Tim has kindly sent to us. Rovell replied:

Henry,
I can keep you quiet but can you at least give me financial details — how much do players pay typically? what do they get?

Tim/Henry:

Ya I appreciate you keeping me quiet. Some girls are few hundred dollars an hour, some can be a few thousand dollars per hour, they get anything and everything, especially the younger guys. They mostly have their people contact me to arrange it so I rarely deal directly with players.

Rovell:

what percentage of your business is nba then? and how much money would say you're losing? what cut do you then get?

Tim/Henry:

Well its a high profile operation so I get a lot of athletes depending on the season but between entertainers, athletes and just wealthy people 30 percent roughly is NBA related during NBA season. This far into the season ive probably lost 25,000 dollars maybe more, its hard to tell because were working with lower profile clients in replacement for less money. I take anywhere from 65 to 80 % of the cut depending on how long the woman has been working for me.

Rovell:

this is so fascinating to me. so it's either players or people who come into town to see games that the business is coming from. is there virtually no replacement or you are so tapped into the nba players and their managers that it's harder to get other business because you've done it for so long?

one more thing, typically what is the cheapest woman and what is the most expensive woman? i assume it's by the hour and what is the typical # of hours?

Tim/Henry:

There are replacements but they aren't as consistent and not nearly as high paying. Cheapest girl is around 350 or 400 an hour most expensive is 4,000, anywhere from 2 to 6 hours usually

Are you doing a report on this?

He was indeed. The 18-year-old's gag made its way into Rovell's CNBC.com report a few days later:

A 30 percent decline seems to be the magic number, even for Henry, who runs an escort service in New York that he says charges between $400 and $4,000 an hour, depending on the woman.

Henry says he takes between 65 and 80 percent of the total cut to match the players and other high-profile fans, who are with the client an average of four hours.

"There are replacements but they aren't as consistent and not nearly as high paying," Henry said.

Where did Tim come up with these prices? "I came up with that completely off the top of my head," he tells me. "I didn't even Google it." The 30 percent figure, he adds, was "made up and it turned out to be the magic number!"

Rovell used the escort story as Twitter bait:

The real stories of the NBA Lockout including NY escort service whose biz is down 30% bit.ly/sYC8nh

— darren rovell (@darrenrovell) November 21, 2011

The story took off. Business Insider picked up the escort angle and turned it into a post of its own. So did Yahoo, Slam, Pro Basketball Talk, and many others. (Somehow, we missed this one.)

On Monday, Tim sent us an email, explaining what he'd done. Why had he waited all these months? He says he had forgotten about it, until a friend had texted him out of the blue and told him to send it to us. And what did his friend say?

"He said he's just such a douche on twitter all the time he just got fed up," Tim says in an email, "which I agree with."

Gee, this almost makes me want to join Twitter, given how easy it is to fool the fools whom the bigger fools in the teevee audience actually think know what the fuck they are talking about.


Bonus: "Turn off the teevee...it's killing us, we never speak"

Teabagger Hypocrisy Porn: Curt Schilling is a "Parasite"

If you're a baseball fan, you'll remember Curt Schilling as a talented pitcher who retired a few years ago after helping the Boston Red Sox win their first World Series in nearly 90 years. Schilling also has always worn his conservative politics on his sleeve, which is how he ended up next to Chimpy Bush in the picture above. Like many other "free market" conservatives, as it turns out Schilling not only has no scruples about suckling at the public teet, but also has the stones to beg for a bailout when things go south. Here is Talking Points Memo with the story:

Curt Schilling is a hero to New England baseball fans, known for his performances in high pressure situations. But as a businessman, he’s in big trouble, and not the kind he can pitch his way out of.

The former MLB all-star’s start-up video game company, 38 Studios, missed a $1.1 million payment to the state of Rhode Island on May 1, and things have only gotten more complicated since.

Rhode Island lured 38 Studios away from Massachusetts in 2010, in exchange for $75 million in guaranteed loans. At the time, then-Governor Donald Carcieri, a Republican, considered the company a chance to jump-start a new business sector in the state. The company promised to create 450 jobs in three years. Massachusetts officials declined to match Rhode Island’s offer. Earlier this year, the company’s first game, “Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning,” came out to positive reviews. “It sings with infectious, engaging excellence,” raved The New York Times.

But the company missed a payment earlier this month, and Schilling was forced to ask for more public assistance this week, The Boston Globe reports. The company said it did not have enough money to make payroll for its nearly 300 employees. The Rhode Island official who oversaw the loan guarantee resigned on Wednesday. And the troubles reached an absurd high point on Thursday, when the company hand-delivered a check to the state for $1.1 million before warning that it didn’t have the funds to cover it.

“38 Studios arrived at [Rhode Island’s Economic Development Corporation] at 5 p.m. with a check. Upon learning from the CFO of 38 Studios that there were insufficient funds in the account to cover the check, EDC returned the check to 38 Studios,” Christine Hunsinger, a spokesman for Governor Lincoln Chafee, told The Providence Journal on Thursday. “EDC remains willing to accept payment with readily available funds.”

Late Thursday, Schilling took to his Facebook page to offer a few words on the situation.

“To all the prayers and well wishes to the team and families at 38, God Bless and thank you! We will find a way, and the strength, to endure,” he wrote.

But some people aren’t offering an well wishes.

“We got hoodwinked; we got played,” Republican state Representative Robert Watson told the Globe. “How many millions of dollars does Curt Schilling have? He can’t write a check? It’s Rhode Island that is supposed to provide the money? I think not.”

On Friday, Globe columnist Brian McGrory unloaded on Schilling, who over the years has made no secret of his conservative politics.

“Schilling spent no small amount of time in his career preaching the Republican mantra of smaller government and personal responsibility. He did this fresh off the historic Red Sox World Series win when he backed George W. Bush in the 2004 campaign. He did it on the stump on behalf of John McCain in 2008,” McGrory wrote. “Smaller government? Call me crazy, but I’m betting that wasn’t exactly what Schilling was extolling when he sat behind closed doors on Wednesday pleading with the members of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corp. to put more public money behind his fantasy video game venture.”

How fucking stupid is the state of Rhode Island to be giving out such large sums of money to such an utterly worthless "business" venture? And just how big a fucking hypocrite is Curt Fucking Schilling? And why don't the morons who support wingnuts and teabaggers ever fucking catch on that they are being totally conned by fuckers like him?

But wait, it gets worse. Here's Deadspin with what it all means:

Here's what this means: 38 Studios doesn't owe another payment until next May. More than that, the company is now in good standing and becomes eligible for tax credits. The governor doesn't like it, but those were the terms of the loan. 38 Studios has applied for more than $20 million worth of tax credits spanning two years, credits they've already said they plan to sell to another firm for cold hard cash.

C'mon Governor Chafee, grow a pair. If that sniveling little worm, Chris Christie, can go all Tony Soprano on the "Snookie" tax credit down in New Jersey, certainly you could put an end to this abomination if you really wanted to.


Bonus: Just because the Dropkick Murphys are from Boston...Curt Schilling is as full of shit as the narrator in this song

Idiot Vikings Fans Pressure Minnesota Legislature To Approve Billionaire's Sport Stadium Taxpayer Subsidy

image: Morons in full tribal regalia bow down to billionaire sports chieftain who just robbed their community blind at their behest

Back on December 4th, I posted the second of the two stories about the difficulties that the Minnesota Vikings were having in lobbying extorting the Minnesota legislature in an attempt to have taxpayers subsidize the construction of a new stadium for their crappy NFL team. Back then, it looked like common sense might actually win out for once and deny the Viking's billionaire owner his new taxpayer subsidized sports palace, but alas, no such luck as reported this week by the blog Field of Schemes:

Sure enough, the Wilfs are not going to look a gift stadium in the mouth: The Minnesota Vikings owners agreed yesterday to pay an extra $50 million toward a new Minneapolis stadium, roughly splitting the difference between the $100 million hike the state house wanted and the $20 million increase the state senate approved. The revised legislation reconciling the two bills was approved in the house by a 71-60 vote at 3:30 this morning, and now heads to the senate.

From the sound of things, the Vikings have also agreed to the "blink-on" taxes on tickets, parking, and memorabilia that will go into effect if the state runs short of gambling proceeds to pay its share of the stadium; the Vikings did get back an exclusive five-year window to get an MLS team to play in the new dome, however.

So the final tally is:

The state will put in $348 million, either from electronic pulltab gambling proceeds or from stadium user fees if that's not enough.

The city of Minneapolis will put in $150 million in cash plus $189 million over 30 years for operating costs, a total that (counting the cost of borrowing the money, since the taxes to pay for it will be tied up paying off the convention center for the next few years) should come to around $375-525 million in present value.

The Vikings will put in $477 million, plus $327 million over 30 years for operating expenses. The team will get 100% revenue from NFL events, while the city and state will get money from the occasional monster truck rally.

There are a couple of lessons you could take from all this. On the one hand, it shows that when state legislators make demands, team owners who previously said "not one penny more!" can actually find quite a few pennies in order to protect a nearly billion-dollar windfall. On the other, it shows that if team owners ask for the moon and the stars, they can usually count on being bargained down by only a couple of lesser planets.

And the billionaire asshole in question couldn't be more tickled pink as the transcript from an interview with a local sports radio station posted by Deadspin:

Q: What was it like to know you'd be getting a new stadium?

"I slept well knowing that we're going to get a new home. And that the fans were so excited really made me excited to get going in building this stadium. It's great."

Q: How much of a difference do you think it made that fans made a huge push with their legislators?

"It was the key, the key, to getting this done. The passion of the fans coming out in support of this, holding their emotions after all these years, and when it really came down to crunch time, the passion of the fans carried us over the top. I can only thank, on behalf of the ownership, all of the fans out there. You guys were responsible for getting this done. … Without that passion, without that support that we've learned over the last seven years … is something that we're excited about."

That's right, Minnesota Vikings fans care more about whether millionaire and billionaire fat cats have comfy sky boxes in which to plant their ample asses and while away some leisurely autumn Sunday afternoons than they do about whether their teachers still have their jobs, or their roads are in proper repair, whether there are enough police on the street to deter crime, or any other vital public service that has been feeling the squeeze from recent budget cuts. And don't forget, this is the same city where a major highway bridge collapsed just a few years ago, killing 13 people and injuring 145. Behold the glorious deeds which occur when Idiocracy meets assholocracy.


Bonus: I never really believed that Lou Reed ever wanted to play football for the coach

Tennis Racket Maker Prince Sports Files for Bankruptcy

If you are old enough to remember the 1970s, you'll recall a time when it seemed like EVERYBODY was playing tennins. Not so much anymore. Here is the story from Bloomberg:

Prince Sports Inc. sought bankruptcy protection citing as much as $100 million each in assets and debts, and the maker of the first oversize tennis racket plans to change its business model to become more competitive.

Among the largest unsecured creditors listed in the Bordentown, New Jersey-based company’s Chapter 11 documents filed today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware, were Da Sheng International Holding Ltd. of Taiwan and Pais International Ltd. and Marshal Industrial Corp., both of Hong Kong, each owed more than $1.9 million in trade debt.

Declining demand “combined with increased competition over the past five years” and a drop in “consumer discretionary spending” led to the bankruptcy, said Gordon Boggis, chief executive officer, in court papers. The company plans to cancel secured debt in exchange for new equity as part of its reorganization plan.

Prince, whose rackets were used by major champions including Jimmy Connors and Martina Navratilova, was founded in 1970 when Bob McClure invented the “Little Prince,” the first ball machine for home court use, in his garage in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1976, the company changed the sport by inventing the first oversize racket. The “Prince Classic” measured 110 square inches, had a much bigger “sweet spot” than traditional wooden rackets and became one of the best-selling rackets of all time.

In 1977, Prince produced the first graphite racket, which is still being used by professionals including doubles major champions Mike and Bob Bryan of the U.S. and former world No. 1 Jelena Jankovic of Serbia.

I believe the only way Prince can "change its business model to become more competitive" is to start making something else other than tennis rackets.


Bonus: Anyone for tennis?

Twitter = The Idiocracy Chronicles

According to the old saying: "it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." Maybe we should upgrade that to: "it is better to stay off of Twitter entirely than to send out messages showing the whole world what a fucking idiot you are."

There was a time not all that long ago when a person might say a dumb thing, but it at most would be heard by a handful of people and then immediately dissipate into the ether. There was no permanent record of it to come back and haunt the speaker, and even those who heard the words would probably not be able to completely agree as to exactly what was said.

But nowadays, thanks to the dubious miracle that is Twitter, millions of morons pollute the collective consciousness every single day with their "thoughts," giving the rest of us a horrifying glimpse at just how addle-brained many of our fellow citizens really are. I could do a whole separate blog just on this subject, of course, and put up about a dozen posts a day like some Twitter version of People of Walmart, but to prove my point I'll stick to the one example as reported by With Leather:

Depending on who you ask, the Cincinnati Reds probably gave up too much young talent in a deal for pitcher Mat Latos this offseason, but when Walt Jocketty wants a guy, he gets that guy, damn it. Unfortunately, Latos isn’t off to a hot start this season (0-2, 8.22 ERA) but in fairness he had to pitch against the St. Louis Cardinals last night and they pretty much own the 24-year old in his brief career in the majors. The Cards are now 3-1 against Latos since his rookie season, and his ERA in that span has too many digits for me to process without my Texas Instruments graphing calculator.

But who needs stats when criticizing a guy is just plain easier? At least that’s how some Reds fans looked at his awful game last night (5.2 innings, 8 ER) and they took it out on the person who deserved it most – Dallas Latos, Mat’s wife (Bill's note: sarcasm alert).

Wow...stay classy, asshole. Tweeting that sexist garbage to the pitcher's wife just because your sorry ass team is getting its head kicked in is bad enough, but notice that the moron is holding a baby, presumably his, in his Twitter picture.

Idiocracy, the movie, had it right. We're going to hell because the idiots are doing most of the breeding and the smart people are dying out:

Friday Rant: Craven Miami Marlins Suspend Ozzie Guillen Over Fidel Castro Remarks

I’ll admit that I have a soft spot for controversial Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen. I grew up a fan of the hapless Chicago White Sox, and for my first four decades of life on this planet despaired that I would ever get to see my team appear in a World Series, let alone win it. Then in 2005 Ozzie was the manager who achieved what so many previous White Sox managers, including the legendary Tony LaRussa, failed to do: he led the Pale Hose to a baseball world championship.

Moreover, Guillen is not one of those purposely colorless athletic figures who give bland, unenlightening statements to the press in every interview hoping never to offend anybody. He is instead refreshingly brash and unafraid to speak his mind, even if he can at times be combative and quite often doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. As a fan, part of the attraction of having Ozzie manage your team is that you are never really quite sure what he is going to say or do next.

Unfortunately for Ozzie, he switched locales this past offseason from the chilly shores of Lake Michigan to the balmy climes of South Florida. And whereas jaded Chicagoans were much more inclined to just write off his more outrageous pronouncements as “Ozzie being Ozzie” especially as long as he kept winning, clearly Miamians, especially those of Cuban descent, have much less of a sense of humor.

So it was that Ozzie found himself in considerable hot water this past week for these remarks he made in an interview with Time magazine:

“I love Fidel Castro… I respect Fidel Castro, you know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but that motherf****r is still here.”

The funny thing about this whole stupid media manufactured controversy is that what Guillen said is really not all that different from another comment he made back in 2008 in an interview with Men’s Journal:

"Fidel Castro," he said. "He's a bull---- dictator and everybody's against him, and he still survives, has power. Still has a country behind him. Everywhere he goes they roll out the red carpet. I don't admire his philosophy. I admire him."

Clearly, these are not so much political statements as expressions of admiration for a man who has been a survivor on the world scene for decades despite having many powerful enemies. And really, how can you NOT admire Castro at least for that? Was Castro a dictator who came to power through violent means? Absolutely. But he was not much different in that regard than the man he replaced, Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar. What’s more, by 20th century standards Castro was hardly the most brutal dictator out there, and in fact he was no worse than many other dictators that the United States has actually supported during that time.

So now, Guillen has been suspended by his team for five games and forced to apologize just for expressing a candid opinion while right-wingers cackle with glee. The same right-wingers, I might add, who would no doubt be outraged had Guillen been suspended for making some intemperate remarks about Obama—because it is only kosher for those assholes to complain against “political correctness” when it is being wielded as a weapon in their direction.

I initially tried to avoid writing about this story because it depresses me immensely, but it just kept mushrooming until I felt compelled to say something about it. First off, Ozzie Guillen is a baseball manager. He has absolutely no influence over American foreign policy, and his opinions count in the grand scheme of things for exactly the same amount as mine do…in other words they don’t count for jack shit. The idiots who were out there protesting his remarks need to get a fucking grip already. Or better yet, if they are so damned concerned about what is going on Cuba maybe they ought to just pick up and go back there.

Secondly, regarding the craven ownership of the Miami Marlins, it would be one thing to put out an official statement affirming that the opinions expressed were the personal opinions of Ozzie Guillen and not the Miami Marlins baseball club. But by suspending Guillen they have set a very bad precedent in which any fringe group with a chip on its shoulder will demand a suspension for anyone in their organization who says something they perceive as offensive. Considering that the team employs a large group of rich young male athletes—a demographic not exactly known for its sensitivity, particularly towards women—they really should have thought this action through a little better.

But lastly and most importantly, this incident has once again aimed the direct spotlight at America’s absolutely asinine foreign policy towards Cuba. The last time that tiny island nation posed any legitimate threat to the United States was when President Kennedy stared down Nikita Khrushchev and forced him to withdraw the Soviet nuclear missiles that were being installed there. Since the end of the Cold War and the loss of its Soviet patron, Cuba has essentially lost the ability to project its power or even much influence beyond its own borders.

The country today, where the aged and infirm Castro is no longer even the president any more, has little significance on the world stage. And as for the regime still being technically “communist,” like in China and Vietnam that term no longer has much if any remaining relevance. Cuba is certainly not a democratic society, but given just how tightly the billionaire oligarchs control American politics and how most U.S. government policies involving support for big business, war and empire change little if at all no matter which party is in power, one could reasonably make the same exact argument about this country.

It is long past time or America to get over its petulance about its failure to dislodge Castro after he thumbed his nose at us after the revolution. His side won and the side of the Cuban exiles in Miami lost. In that they are no different than the losers of any war throughout world history, and in fact are living much better lives than do most unfortunates who have ever found themselves in that situation. They can continue to whine and moan about the downfall of the corrupt, gangster-ridden regime Castro replaced, but the rest of the world has rightly moved on. As for Ozzie Guillen, if because of this stupid flap he stops running his yap he'll become just another supremely uninteresting sports personality.


Bonus: A sweet little tune from the criminally underrated Florida indie rock band, The Silos, off of their classic 1987 album, "Cuba"

Peak Cable Television?

Bad enough that idiot box has become little more that a corporate propaganda machine aimed at idiots...but the idiots now have to pay more than ever before for the privilege of being brainwashed. Here is MSNBC with the details:

If you're one of those people who complain that there’s nothing to watch on TV today even though you have a gazillion channels, you’re not going to be happy with this news – turns out, you’re paying more for cable.

The monthly rate for pay TV has been rising at an average of 6 percent annually and hit $86 a month last year for basic pay and premium-channel TV, according to a reported released Tuesday by market research firm The NPD Group. The uptick in licensing fees - which are the fees cable and satellite providers pay for programs - is driving much of the increase, at a time when consumer household income has hardly budged.

At this rate, NDP estimates consumers will be paying an average of $123 a month in 2015 and $200 a month by 2020.

The study was based on a quarterly electronic survey of 1,000 U.S. households.

Not surprisingly, the rising costs are making many consumers pull the plug on premium television. Today, there are five million fewer U.S. households viewing pay-TV services due to the mortgage crisis, the NDP research found, adding that those who did cancel service were prompted to do so because of economic reasons. But overall, the number of pay-TV subscribers has not declined substantially because of “bulk-service pay-TV contracts with apartment complexes and homeowners’ associations that have allowed pay-TV operators to retain subscriptions in vacant homes,” the study said.

Among the pay-TV cord cutters, most are still viewing their favorite shows via free Internet TV, traditional free broadcasting, and video-on-demand services such as Netflix, NDP reported.
The growth of lower-cost options, as well as cash-strapped consumers, is the reason the total number of subscribers of paid TV dropped to 100.9 million in the second quarter of last year, compared to 101.4 million in the first quarter, according to a IHS Screen Digest report released in September.

“As pay-TV costs rise and consumers’ spending power stays flat, the traditional affiliate-fee business model for pay-TV companies appears to be unsustainable in the long term,” said Keith Nissen, research director for NDP. “Much needed structural changes to the pay-TV industry will not happen quickly or easily; however, the emerging competition between S-VOD (subscription video-on-demand) and premium-TV suppliers might be the spark that ignites the necessary business-model transformation of the pay-TV industry.”

Indeed, something’s got to give: $200 a month for cable may end up getting some consumers pulling out their dusty old rabbit ears; that is, if they still work with digital TV.

I linked to a story just the other day which explained that one of the big reasons for the increased fees is that billionaire-owned professional sports teams are charging more and more money for the rights to broadcast their games so they can afford to pay their multimillionaire athletes. It looks like the greedy assholes who run the media and entertainment industry won't be happy until they have squeezed the last dime out of the idiots and the whole industry collapses.


Bonus: Released a half-century ago, this song is still as relevant now as it was then despite the dated references

The Bubble Sport Goes Completely Insane Again

For those of you who are not big sports fans and may not realize it, today is Opening Day in Major League Baseball. Once again, hope springs eternal, with every team starting out with a blank slate, dreaming of the possibility of October games and World Series title. I’ll admit, I became hooked on baseball as a kid watching the Big Red Machine back in the mid-1970s, and despite souring on it for awhile after the so-called “labor” dispute that resulted in the cancelling of the 1994 World Series, it has always been my first sporting love.

Like so many other things in America, however, the influence of big money has greatly tarnished America’s game. Beginning in the 1970s, player salaries began to escalate to previously unimaginable heights thanks to the efforts of an aggressive players union. I remember being shocked as a kid back in 1977 when slugger Reggie Jackson, one of the very first superstar free agents, signed a contract with the New York Yankees that would pay him over a half-million dollars per year. But Jackson’s union wasn’t through by a long shot, and over the next 20 years would aggressively confront the owners and stage a couple of strikes which would wipe out large portions of the 1981 and 1994 seasons. The end result could not possibly have been more ironic, during a period in which labor unions in general greatly declined in power and influence and the wages of the average American stagnated in real dollar terms, a professional association representing a group of professional athletes won more and more concessions until Alex Rodriguez really broke the bank by signing a truly staggering $250 million contract with the Texas Rangers in 2001.

Not, however, that we should at all feel sorry for the exclusive billionaire boys club that represents Major League Baseball owners. Starting in the 1980s, no group benefitted from the 30-year debt fueled bubble and the coddle-the-rich tax policies ushered in by Reaganomics. Even as player salaries were exploding, the values of major league baseball teams were rising even faster. Franchises that exchanged hands for $10 million back in the 1970s were suddenly going for hundreds of millions of dollars. And because nearly every city that hosted a major league team was eagerly ready to rape its own taxpayers to build new stadiums featuring revenue generating corporate skyboxes, life was truly good for the fat cat owners.

The only blip on the radar screen was the aforementioned dispute that resulted in the cancelling of the 1994 World Series. At the time, it seemed that the millionaire players and billionaire owners may have finally gone too far in antagonizing the fans. Attendance actually dropped for awhile and the brilliant “leaders” of the game began desperately searching for a way to put fannies back into the seats. Realizing that “chicks (and everyone else) dig the long ball,” what they came up with was a nefarious scheme to “juice” the baseballs and to look the other way while the players juiced themselves so they could hit more home runs. Soon, roided up Goliaths with swollen heads and shrunken testicles were bashing the livelier balls out of the park in record numbers, eventually shattering the two most sacred numbers in all of American sports: 61 and 755. Integrity of the game be damned, we've got millions of tickets to sell.

Baseball finally seemed to at least partly reclaim its senses during the middle of this past decade. Public outcry over steroid use finally helped purge the sport of that particular scourge. Free agent contract awards also leveled off, and for more than a decade no other player signed a contract for even close to the amount of Rodriguez’s deal. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, in fact, baseball owners became particularly stingy about giving out the big money, no doubt recognizing that their sport, lacking the massive national television deal that so buoyed the NFL, was far more dependent on the now financially distressed fans for its survival. Attendance, which had been steadily growing since the late 1990s, leveled off in the wake of the crash.

Then suddenly, this past offseason all restraint fell by the wayside and Major League Baseball has resumed throwing money around like there is literally no tomorrow. The Miami Marlins, who had always had a reputation for being a notoriously cheap franchise that would trade star players rather than pay them the big bucks, went all out after a shady, taxpayer funded new stadium deal, giving out over $200 million in free agent contracts to several players. Not to be outdone, the Los Angeles Angels, Detroit Tigers and Cincinnati Reds each paid out well over $200 million for just one player, bringing the 2001 Rodriguez deal much closer to the norm.

But even all of that paled in comparison to the mind boggling figures involved in the recent sale of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Prior to this past month, no major league team had ever fetched more than the $845 million the Cubs were purchased for in 2009. Yet despite that precedent, the Dodgers were sold to a new ownership group for the staggering sum of $2.15 billion, a figure as unprecedented today as the Rodriguez contract was a decade ago.

Right about now, those of you who have indulged me to this point in the article are probably very reasonably asking: “so what does this have to do with peak oil and economic collapse?” Well, the fact is that baseball wouldn’t be throwing around these incredible dollar amounts if the sport wasn’t confident that it is going to see vastly increased revenues going forward. It is, of course, the fans who ultimately pay those nine-figure salaries being doled out to star players and whose support is what increases the value of a franchise well into the ten-figure range. The billionaires who made these decisions clearly believe that in the near future the economy is going to start booming again, and that the average fan will have plenty more money in their pockets to blow on attending baseball games and buying lots of overpriced food and memorabilia at the stadium.

Obviously, I don’t subscribe to that theory. It is really hard to imagine that with all of the headwinds facing working and middle class Americans—underwater mortgages, massive student loan debts, skyrocketing health care costs, tepid job market and high gasoline prices to name a few—that they are suddenly going to experience a surge in their disposable incomes. And all of that is not even counting what will happen when the economy does finally slip back into recession.

The fact is that Major League Baseball, which benefitted greatly from the loose fiscal policies of the bubble years, is now in the process of blowing the biggest bubble of all at precisely the worst possible time. The sport is setting itself up for a spectacular blow up akin to the way Las Vegas kept building larger and more lavish casinos right up until the moment when the gamblers stopped coming in such large numbers and the local economy cratered.

So, as I said before, it’s Opening Day. Hope springs eternal for every baseball fan, who can for at least this one day imagine that this will be the year their team makes it to the World Series. Enjoy it while you can, because the idiots who run the game have virtually ensured that the sport is heading for a very spectacular downfall.

Let’s play ball!

Addendum: Here's a little story from Deadspin about how if you have cable or satellite teevee, you are subsidizing billionaire sports team owners, whether you want to or not.


Bonus: "Put me in, coach...I'm ready to play today"

The National Football League Is A Nonprofit Organization

Only in America, where the public is completely asleep at the switch, could a collective of filthy rich billionaires who run sports franchises receive tax exempt status for their operations. Here is Business Insider with the dirty details:

You may not know it, but the National Football League is a nonprofit organization. It may seem absurd that a collection of teams that generated at least $9 billion in revenue last season would be given tax-exempt status, but the NFL is technically classified as a 501(c)6 organization.

The article then goes on to describe just how absurd this is:

It seems inconceivable that the NFL is not “engag[ing] in a regular business of a kind ordinarily carried on for profit.” How are their efforts to maximize profits any different than those of Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association or the National Hockey League? As far as the NFL’s “net earnings,” the nonprofit was actually in the red in 2009, according to its latest available return. Virtually all of the leagues $192.3 million in revenue in 2009 came from “membership dues & assessment.” While the NFL doesn’t explain how much each clubs pays in dues, it averages to about $6 million per team. NFL owners don’t have to pay taxes on those dues, as they are considered donations to a nonprofit. Meanwhile, the NFL had $234.6 million in expenses in 2009, but the “nonprofit” paid $53.6 million to 8 individuals. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell earned $9.9 million in 2009 (and will earn $20 million by 2019) but he wasn’t even the highest paid individual. NFL Network President Steve Bornstein was paid $12.6 million by the “nonprofit” even though NFL Network is part of NFL Enterprises, LLC. In other words, the only reason the NFL is operating in the red is because of the massive salaries it’s paying its key executives.

It seems even more inconceivable that a country that has been running trillion dollar plus budget deficits for the past four years didn't close this particular tax collection loophole a LONG time ago. But that's America: land of the billionaires, by the billionaires and for the billionaires. And the rest of us sit back, drinking shitty beer, eating crap food and mindlessly cheering on their tax exempt league, and caring more about where Peyton Manning is going to play quarterback next year than we do about how these same billionaires and others like them are ruthlessly destroying America's prosperity while they laugh all the way to bank.


Bonus: "I'm amazed at the TV stations...I'm amazed what they want me to believe"

Friday Rant: Billionaire Mark Cuban Has Some Money Making Advice For The Young Uns

I haven't done a Friday Rant in awhile, so hopefully I'm not out of practice. For those of you who don't follow the NBA, Mark Cuban is the owner of the world champion Dallas Mavericks. His net worth is in the billions of dollars, and apparently he is a flaming asshole to boot. That's the only explanation I can come up with for what compelled him to write the article below for Business Insider:

Every kid needs to make some money, right? You want a job. You can’t get a job. You need experience. You got no experience. High School and College kid problems.

But fear not. Not every job has to be a career. Money plays. You don’t need brilliant ideas. Sometimes you just need to make some money for the summer. Or to pay for your braces. Or to pay for the phone bill your parents killed you on. Whatever you need cash for, it's always a problem that needs solving.

To solve your big money problems, sometimes you only need to solve simple problems. Sometimes you just need to be creative. I’m going to give you 2 ideas any student going to any school can do to make more than minimum wage.

1. Shoelaces.

Say what? Shoelaces. I said it.

I guarantee you that if you go to the parking lot of any high school or college football game with a bunch of shoelaces in team colors that you bought for 2 bucks a pop, and put up a sign and 2 chairs, you can make money. Not football season? Go to where ever there are people in your community. Flea Market. Basketball Game. Dance recital. Wherever people who go to your school show up, you show up. You set up your sign and your chairs.

On the sign you put something like ”Get in the YOUR-SCHOOL spirit.” I will re-lace your shoes with “YOUR-SCHOOL” color laces for $10 (small schools), $20 bucks (big schools with more drunk alums or lots of rich people). If you want to make it even more fun, you can add “I will lace them in 5 minutes or they are free”. If you are really enterprising, you can put up on the poster about 5 different ways to lace the shoes and charge a premium for anything but “Missionary” lacing.
Easy money. Guaranteed.

2. Become an expert in programming All-in-one T.V. remote controls. People are buying a single remote control to replace all the remotes they have. No one really wants to take the time to figure out all the options. No one wants to take the time to learn how to program the stupid remote. In fact it pisses them off that it takes far more time than they have to do something they bought the stupid remote to do.

To help solve everyone’s problem, go to a local electronics store and find out what remotes they sell. Go to the local Walmart, Target, Best Buy, etc, etc. if the grocery store sells remotes go there too. Find out what the most popular sellers are. How do you find out which are the most popular? You ask someone.

Then, you become an expert in programming those remote controls. The worlds best expert. Once you know your shit, go back to the store with business cards with your email/cell phone number on it and the following:

Your Name
I will program any Remote Control for $20
I Have a Phd In Remote Control Programming
Cell #/Email/Website

Then you go to all the stores and tell them that their customers will be far happier if they send them to you to program the remote. You will program it exactly like they want it, connecting to any and all devices. All the store has to do is let you put up a stack of cards next to the remote control; maybe a little sign. Then you give a sheepish grin to the manager of the electronics or remote control section of the store and tell them how this is really important to you and how you will do a great job, you promise. Then every couple days you go back to the store and talk to the salespeople who work there and remind them about your PHD in Remote Control Programming and how if they send you enough business, you might be able to spiff them a commission.

Then you damn well do a great job or some other kid is going to steal your remote control programming business.

There you go. Easy breezy money. Nothing fancy. Nothing complicated. Just some hard work, some customer service and the ability to be nice to people and thank them when they pay you and tip you.

I don't think I have ever in my life read such an arrogant, condescending pile of fucking rubbish. Shoelaces and universal remotes? That's this psychopath's advice to young people who need to raise tens of thousands of dollars just to be able to afford a college tuition these days? It sounds like something a bitter, dried up old prune confined in an assisted living facility might say right before they serve him his tapioca pudding, but according to his Wikipedia page, Cuban himself is only 53 years old.

I'm not saying it is bad advice for young people to be industrious or entrepreneurial, but could Cuban have picked two more inane supposed money making schemes for his article? How much of a fucking market could their possibly be for colored shoelaces at a sporting event? Great, let's get 'em started early peddling cheap shit people don't need. That's how we got into this fucking mess in the first place.

And exactly how would you react if some kid you don't know handed you a business card saying he could program your remote control for $20? Even if you are so inept that you can't follow the instructions, would you trust him to come to your house? Or would you more likely suspect that he might be wanting to case the joint so he could rob you later?

Take this tripe for what it is, an attempt by someone who is looking to morally justify why he has billions of dollars while others are destitute. "Hey, I gave 'em some advice as to how they can work hard and pull themselves up by their bootstraps, so what the fuck else do they want from me?"

Actually, I have a better idea, Mark. How about we tax the living fuck out of rich pricks like you so that maybe young people won't have to become debt slaves just getting a college degree or going to a trade school? After all, those who are the most successful in any society should have an obligation to give the most back to that society that enabled them to have such success. I'd really like to put that proposal to a vote in a free and fair election in which you and your 0.00000001% billionaire buddies are prevented from financing political attack ads against it.

Yep, "let 'em sell shoelaces" has become the new "let 'em eat cake," with the difference being that the latter is an unfair smear against the person who supposedly said it. We can always hope that someday billionaire asshole extraordinaire Mark Cuban will share the fate of the unfortunate French Queen.


Bonus: Turning Kirsten Dunst into Marie Antoinette (soundtrack by New Order)

Cliffs Club Luxury Golf Communities (Carolinas) Declares Bankruptcy

As I've said before, I'm not a golfer, but I recognize the importance the sport has in an area like the Carolinas which relies on the tourist dollars it brings in. So this story from Bloomberg cannot be a good sign:

Cliffs Club & Hospitality Group Inc., which owns several luxury golf communities in South Carolina and North Carolina, filed for bankruptcy protection.

The Travelers Rest, South Carolina-based company listed assets of less than $50,000 and debt from $100 million to $500 million in Chapter 11 documents filed today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

The eight communities are located between Asheville, North Carolina, and Greenville, South Carolina, according to the company website.

Holy crap! Assets of less than $50,000 and liabilities of over $100 million? Sounds like this move was LONG overdue.


Bonus: George's classic bit on what we should do with golf courses

Allen Iverson: Paid $154 Million to Play a Kid's Game--Is Broke at Age 36

image: "Damn...I'm broke, dawg!"

You'll recall that a few weeks ago I posted a story about former NFL Wide Receiver Terrell Owens, who managed to blow the cool $70 million he made as a football player and is destitute at the age of 38. Well, former NBA player Allen Iverson, who is no stranger to attention-whoring himself, has now stepped forward and more than doubled down on Owens's stupidity. Here is Yahoo Sports with the details:

Allen Iverson has reportedly gone from 11-time NBA all-star to financial deadbeat. The Philadelphia 76ers icon was recently ordered to pay over $860,000 to a jeweler, and he couldn't cut a check.

A Georgia judge has ordered the seizing of Iverson's bank account, so the relatively little money he has left will be garnished, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer.

This isn't just another formerly famous athlete blowing a ton of cash. Iverson was among the biggest superstars in the NBA, earning more than $154 million during a professional career that began back in 1996. (This doesn't include endorsement money and other business deals.)

How did Iverson lose so much?

Loyal to his friends from a youth spent in Virginia, Iverson traveled with one of the biggest posses in professional sports. Bill Lyon of the Philadelphia Inquirer says the group has as many as 50 people for some Sixers home games. "A.I." took a hair stylist on the road with him and also loved to buy jewelry for himself and his beloved mother, Ann Iverson.

I realize that professional athletes blowing their earnings and ending up destitute is not exactly a new or original story. What's appalling, however, is the sheer amount of money that Owens and Iverson managed to squander before they even reached the age of 40. Throw in the millions they no doubt earned on their endorsement deals and these two idiots managed to blow through more than a quarter of a billion dollars between them. I mean, you really have to TRY to go through that much loot so quickly and have nothing left to show for it.

Once again, it is well past time that we as a society stopped looking up to morons like Terrell Owens and Allen Iverson as heroes. They are not. Like supermodels, they are people who were born with immense genetic gifts who otherwise are no damn different than you or me. That the media continues to place their ilk on a pedestal and we throw tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars at them just to play a kid's game is all you need to know about what a decadent and depraved society we have become.


Bonus "The morons they are winning"...at least until they retire and go broke

Irwindale Speedway Closing Due to Declining Attendance

One unconventional place to keep an eye out for signs marking the continued deterioration of the economy is in the world of sports. Attending sports events represents the ultimate frivolous household expense that can be cut back or eliminated by families looking to economize. Here is the latest example of distress in the sports world, as reported by the Pasadena Star-News:

Irwindale Speedway, considered by many to host the finest short track racing in the nation, appears to be history.
On Saturday, workers appeared to be closing down the facility, which has had the biggest NASCAR short track races on the West Coast for more than a decade.

Workers were dismantling the pit grandstand, which is adjacent to the first turn. They also were taking apart storage areas. A large billboard bordering the San Gabriel Valley River Freeway was not lit up for the first time in its history, barring power outages, and the track's web site was taken off the Internet.

"They went out of business," said a prominent Irwindale racer who did not want to be identified.

Vice president and general manager Bob DeFazio and some staff members were in the locked administration building Saturday morning, with a moving truck backed up to the office's side entrance and a moving box stacked outside. DeFazio, through track operations director Bob Klein, refused to comment. Klein only would say an announcement would be made Monday.

The article goes on to describe what did the racetrack in:

Opened in 1999 amid much fanfare, it featured a state-of-the-art track surface which cost several million dollars. Track CEO Williams, a former owner of Golden States Foods which supplies food to McDonald's and a friend and car builder for Roger Penske-driven IndyCars, said at the time he wanted to rival the draw of the Dodgers.

NASCAR Hall of Famer Darrell Waltrip, in a visit to the track, called the facility the finest short track in America.

It gained national attention when Stewart won the 2000 Turkey Night Grand Prix and then even more praise when NASCAR bestowed its tour racing Grand National series all-star event, the Toyota All-Star Showdown, to the track.

But it all came unraveling last season. Car counts were down significantly and nearly every division had the fewest racers since the track opened. More important, attendance was down. There were roughly 900 people in the stands for a Saturday, May 14 race.

Attendance over the past two seasons gradually has dwindled since the heydays of the early 2000s. The track does not release attendance numbers, but they averaged about 2,700 people at 28 races last year.

The track averaged more than 5,000 attendees in a 6,500-seat stadium for four consecutive seasons, starting in 2001.

This is just the beginning, of course. When the day finally comes that Major League Baseball, National Football League and National Basketball Association teams start to fall by the wayside, you'll know that a full blown economic collapse is drawing near.


Bonus: Instead of speed, we now have the sound of loneliness

"I Made $80 Million Playing a Kid's Game, and Now I'm Broke and Have No Friends"

In my January 17th post, "Extreme Makeover: Reality Edition," I highlighted a story about an Arizona family who was given a million dollar home by the reality teevee show and was unable to keep it. In the post, I asserted that there are a lot of people who just can't handle prosperity. At least some of the blame for that can be placed squarely upon the media, which relentlessly glorifies narcissistic celebrities who live extravagantly lavish and foolishly wasteful lifestyles.

Very few sports figures in recent years have come to personify this phenomenon as much as NFL wide receiver Terrell Owens. To put it bluntly, for well over a decade while he was in his prime Owens perfectly exemplified everything that is wrong with modern professional sports. He was a selfish, me-first attention whore of a ballplayer who hogged the spotlight and thumbed his nose at his coaches while always blaming his teammates for his own shortcomings. Along the way, Owens completely ignored the old mantra that you should be careful how you treat people as you're climbing the ladder lest they shit all over you when you're on the way back down.

So I have to admit to having experienced a considerable amount of schadenfreude when I read the story below from ABC News:

Terrell Owens, the former NFL star receiver who has signed to play for and co-own an indoor football team, is friendless and nearly broke, he told GQ magazine. “I’m in hell,” Owens, 38, said he tells people who ask about his well-being.

After the Cincinnati Bengals did not renew his one-year, $2 million contract last year, Owens has been suffering from his financial shortcomings, including ventures gone bad and child support for his four children, he said.

The $80 million or so he had made in his career is almost gone, he said, but not because he lived a lavish lifestyle.

In a profile story in GQ’s February issue, Owens said his financial advisers lured him into risky investments such as an Alabama entertainment complex that cost him $2 million. He later learned the venture was illegal in the state and violated the NFL’s policy of prohibiting players from investing in gambling, he said.

He also owns a slew of properties that he thought he would be able to rent before the housing market tanked, he said. He has a home in Los Angeles that cost him $499,000 and a multimillion-dollar home that is for sale in Atlanta. The home in New Jersey for which he paid $3.9 million was sold in late 2010 for $1.7 million, he said.

Owens also pays $44,600 a month in child support for his four children, ages 5 to 12. Three of the four mothers have sued him.

The football player laments about losing trust in people and friends. When people text and ask where he is, he answers, “I’m in hell.”

“I don’t have no friends,” he told GQ. ”I don’t want no friends. That’s how I feel.”

It's time we stop, children. What's that sound? It's the sound of me, playing the world's smallest violin for Terrell Owens. No one should feel ANY sympathy for a pathetic excuse for a human being who, because of the utterly skewed values of our society, is handed $80 million merely for playing a kid's game and manages to blow the whole roll by the time he's 38 years old. If I saw the fucker out panhandling I wouldn't waste a wooden nickle on him.

Back when Terrell Owens was still a star in the NFL, there were plenty of idiot sports fans who stupidly looked up to him as a role model. But I would argue that he is actually a much better role model now. Kids everywhere need to be shown his example and taught that he is exactly what they should aspire NOT to be, on the field or off.


Bonus: I'd like to dedicate this song to Terrell Owens. "I guess you ain't worth a damn, when you're broke"