Society would be a better place to live... (We Have Enough Money)

... if we treated the sick and the poor with the same (monetary) respect we give to quitters.

Urban Meyer has quit his job... twice. Once, he said, was for health reasons. The second, he said, was to be a "better husband and father."

Having achieved, apparently, all of his off-the-field goals -- Urban Meyer is now incapable of dying and also the greatest husband/father in the multiverse, one must assume, making him a Demigod -- the two-time quitter has now been recognized for the Greatness that he is in the only way that really matters in our society: by being handed a buttload of money.

"The" Ohio State University is a public university that gets public money, even though it has an endowment, or permanent fund of money, valued at $2,000,000,000, an important figure to note because an endowment is money donated voluntarily to a university, and the proceeds of investing that money, which means that over time, people have voluntarily given $2,000,000,000 to "The" Ohio State University. I wonder many of those people feel taxes are too high?)*

*According to Wikipedia, and I'm sorry for using that as a source, in 1995, OSU began a 5-year fundraising campaign with the goal of raising $850,000,000. The campaign was wildly successful, raising $1,230,000,000 in voluntary donations. People gave 50% more than OSU asked for.

"The" Ohio State University, with its $2,000,000,000 trust fund just sloshing around, sits in fact in one of the states that used cries of phony "fiscal crises" to cut funding for vulnerable people in necessary programs: Ohio this year cut funding for public health, all levels of education, government workers, and aid to the elderly and disabled.

Ohio also -- and this is important to note, now that the Number One Husband/Father In The Multiverse, the Demigod Urban Meyer, is coaching at their premier university -- cut child care funding.

Maybe The Demigod Urban Meyer will babysit those Ohio kids whose public schools are now struggling for funding?

Anyway, leaving aside all the things Ohio-ans find unimportant, like childcare, health care, mental health care, the elderly, K-12 education, higher education, and local municipalities' ability to balance their budgets, the BIG EXCITING NEWS is that in the midst of this fiscal crisis, Ohio State University was able -- using money contributed by taxpayers voluntarily or involuntarily-- to dig deep and find a meager amount of money to pay the Demigod Urban Meyers with.

I hope he'll be able to make ends meet. According to CBS Sports, The Demigod Urban Meyers, Ultimate Father/Husband, will have to make do with such minimal compensation as $4,000,000 per year (he can earn more if he actually stays on the job, but as a Demigod, we cannot know when Urban Meyers might be called to other, higher pursuits.)

Only $700,000 of that is "base" compensation, money The Demigod Urban Meyers gets paid for existing. Beyond existing, The Demigod Urban Meyers will also be asked to make public appearances and promote Himself the football program, but he'll be paid $1,850,000 for that ("The" Ohio State University finding promotion of its football program 2.5 times more important than actually running the football program, it seems.)

If The Demigod gets 80% or more of his players to graduate, then he gets an additional $150,000 bonus, which is comparable to the $450,000 he'll get as a bonus just for not quitting before the end of January, 2014. "The" Ohio State University finds "keeping The Demigod on staff" to be three times as important as graduating its players. Student-athletes!

The Demigod Urban Meyers also gets $1,200 per month as a "stipend" towards his car payments. I'd think with $700,000 paid just for existing he could handle his car payments himself, but what do I know about matters on Mount Olympus, where The Demigod now exists?

Much has been made of how the Demigod gets a free golf membership, but did anyone note that The Demigod must pay his own personal expenses on that golf course? "The" Ohio State University does not handle tipping the caddy, people.

Also, consider this sacrifice, verbatim from the contract:

8. Ohio State shall fly Coach by private (not commercial) aircraft when Coach is making recruiting visits and other mutually-agreed upon University business. When such recruiting visits or University business are more than 200 miles from the City of Columbus, Ohio State shall fly Coach by private (not commercial) jet aircraft. Ohio State agrees to let coach use such jet aircraft for his personal use for thirty-five (35) hours [in-air and dead time inclusive] each year during the term of this agreement. Coach's use of such private aircraft for recruiting and other mutually-agreed upon University business shall not exceed fifty (50) hours [in-air and dead time inclusive] during each contract year.

I'm sure you caught it, too: Yes, The Demigod gets a private jet for his own private use... but only for 35 hours a year. That's barely three hours a month. Practically everybody gets about three hours a month on a private jet, right?

*sound of crickets chirping.*

Moving on. Did you know that Ohio reduced "College Opportunity" by about 20% last year? It's true. And their jerk-off "governor," John Kasich -- a poor man's Scott Walker, and that's saying something -- proposes to cut nearly half -- $35,000,000 -- in the next year. Meanwhile, 14 states saw higher full-time college enrollment increases than Ohio in the past year, and 20 states saw higher 5-year increases in full-time college enrollment.

So while it's getting easier for The Demigod Urban Meyer to get to college in Ohio -- he can take the jet -- it's getting a lot harder to find students able to attend those colleges.

Maybe we should launch terrorists into space? (We Have Enough Money)

I won't (unlike my usual) claim that this person reads my blog -- I know he reads some of them, some of the time, but I don't know that he read this particular blog, and I have 87,000,000,003 blogs (at last count.)

Anyway, author Rusty Webb just today put a post on his blog "The Blutonian Death Egg" that mostly talks about how he (and I second this) thinks we need more big projects. You should read his whole post -- it's a great plea for a return to the days when we thought big -- but what I was taken by, in this context, was two points Rusty made, which I will aggregate, with proper attribution, here:

Point one: Rusty bemoans our dropping the SuperCollider project, the Space Shuttle, and similar programs, and notes that our mentality may have shifted from World War II-era big thinking:

I want it back. I want us to do something big, so challenging that it might not work. The funny thing is, the main reason given is that it costs too much, that these projects are too much a financial burden, it would be foolish to waste our money on them.

To those who say that, I say you’re wrong. We spend more money on air conditioning in Iraq then we spend on NASA in a year*. I’m not making a political statement (as any discussion about congressional money quickly becomes), I’m just saying we spend money, lots of it, on things that don’t matter that much in the big picture.

Point Two: That footnote from point one leads to this observation;

*What is more profound to me, the total amount of dollars spent on NASA since it's inception in the late 50's totals around $500 billion. A lot, but we've spent about two and a half that amount on the U.S. war on terror.

He's got links to back his argument up, too.

Think about that: The "war on terror," which I think is overstated and overblown and is a massive boondoggle Republican giveaway to defense-contracting firms and has not made us a single whit safer, has cost us more, since 2001, than every penny we've ever spent on NASA ever.

Rusty's a smart guy for pointing that out, and I welcome his observations. Go read his blog.

This is a CLASH OF THE (really very cute and cuddly) TITANS!

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Puppies vs. Babies for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

There are some questions that will never be answered, like "What is the meaning of life?" or "How many roads must a man walk down before he is proven a man?" or "Where did I leave my keys?"

And then there are questions that will be answered almost immediately, like "Which is cuter, a baby or a puppy?"

That's the question that will be answered by YOU, voting in the Puppies vs. Babies online contest  that will finally settle that issue for once and for all.  Between now and November 23, you can vote in the contest that will determine, for once and for all, whether Puppies or Babies are cuter.

Which I think is kind of a ridiculous question, because EVERYONE KNOWS that babies are cuter.  What's so great about PUPPIES?  They drool way more than babies, and their breath smells like dog food, which is NOT a good thing at all no matter how you try to spin it, and, yeah, maybe they have those little legs but then consider this:  When you wash a puppy in the sink, can you make a hat out of suds and put it on that puppy's head and take a picture?  YOU CAN NOT.  I rest my case.

Or I don't, because babies also smile at you, and puppies cannot smile except in Disney movies, where they look creepy when they smile.  Babies can say stuff, like "Da-da," which is AWESOME even though moms then get mad and wonder why you didn't teach the baby to say "Ma-ma," but then they forget because the baby has a bow on its head from the Christmas presents and it's time to take 3,742 more pictures.

I think you know how I'm going to vote.  Whatever, puppies, talk to the hand.  (I think it's time we bring that expression back.)

In fact, let's show those puppies the what-for.  Go vote today and keep track of the voting and urge your friends to vote and, if you're rich, maybe slip a little illegal campaign money under the table to help the babies out in the voting (note: Do not actually commit voter fraud.  This is just for fun)(Note, two: If you are rich, slip ME a little illegal campaign money under the table.  I'll keep it a secret.  I'm good at that.  I didn't even tell people about that time you and I totally swiped those 200 apple pies from that McDonald's delivery truck and lived like kings for a week, did I? I took it to the grave.)

Anyway, that is your update on the Puppies vs. Babies question, and here is a that totally would have won if I'd entered in time, which I did not, but I am going to rectify that by voting BABIES! all the way.

 

 

So who are YOU going to vote for? Leave a comment and weigh in-- then go vote!

So They Made A Song About Recalling Scott Walker, 3

This week,Ohio voters roundly rejected anti-union bashing as a fake "cure" for manufactured/fictitious budget "crises", voters in Mississippi decided that enough was enough and they weren't going to let "conservatives" belie their claimed orientation and attempt to use spurious definitions of life to turn back legitimate family planning efforts and women's health initiatives.

But, emboldened by the peculiarly-American way of thinking that lets people ignore most politics while simplifying what they do pay attention to down to mere slogans and instead rant about Kim Kardashian divorcing or protest in favor of a coach who put winning football games ahead of protecting children from being raped by Penn State alumni, Scott "Patsy" Walker, whose budget has resulted in almost across-the-board increases in class size and cuts to advanced placement and other higher-learning classes, doubled down, betting on lazyness, inattention, and the power of money to buy results, and forced cuts in Medicaid that will prevent the poor from getting health care while keeping Patsy and his cronies in iPads for as long as they're in office...

which may not be long. *fingers crossed*. Politicians whose main goal in life is lining their pockets and setting up jobs working for the Koch Brothers after they leave office, and who do so by deliberately making it harder to get education, health care, jobs, and clean water, deserve to be recalled...

... if not arrested and locked up. *fingers crossed, again.* We all do what we can, but some do more than others, and to the brave people who are gearing up to Recall Walker, I say: Thank God For You, and here's a song to help spur you on:




Previous songs:

2. Ida Jo and the Show, No (We Won't Take It)

1. Toss Out The Bum

Wherein I display my knowledge of the Founding Fathers.

You know what all the Founding Fathers had in common, besides "being completely misinterpreted by Justice Scalia?"

They all wore glasses. And that's not surprising, since glasses can make you look smart, unless they make you look dumb.

I am in the market for some glasses, potentially, because my eyes recently developed arthritis, or whatever it is happens to 42-year-old eyes, and I have found things to be blurry when they should not be, and have had more and more difficulty doing things like "reading what I'm typing."

So I may need some glasses, which is okay, because if you wear glasses, MOST people assume you're smart.

Not me, though: I actually assume that you're dumb, because I've owned glasses in the past and I know that glasses are super-expensive for most people, because most people go buy their glasses at the store and pay hundreds of dollars for them, overpaying like suckers.

What I want are cheap eyeglasses. Not "cheap" like "bad" but "cheap" like "I don't want to pay hundreds of dollars." And I'm going to get them from Zenni, which knows that you shouldn't pay a lot for eyeglasses because while you want to look GOOD in glasses, they're still a medical necessity and so you should be able to get nice glasses for low prices.

Which you can at Zenni; ordering online, you can get Zenni-made stylish frames for just SIX DOLLARS. That's super-low. And they do that not by skimping on the glasses, but by making the glasses themselves and marketing them online, so you don't pay all these marketing and middle-men costs. You just get great frames for about what you'd pay for lunch.

Which means that if I DO need glasses, I'm going to be able to afford them and I won't have to go sit at a store all day and end up buying some "designer" frames that cost more than my mortgage. Which makes ME as smart as the Founding Fathers. And more stylish, because while we both wear glasses, I don't wear a powdered wig.

Not often, anyway. What I do in my house is my OWN business. Back off, Scalia.

Are Americans Smarter, or Dumber, Than I Give Them Credit For?

Just over a week ago, a 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll asked Americans which of a list of previous presidents they would pick to manage the current economic crisis...

... about which, if it goes on for years is it still a crisis? Did Americans in 1938 refer to the Great Depression as a crisis? The way I see it, Pearl Harbor was a crisis. World War II was not...

...and I'll get to what the actual results say about actual Americans in a minute, but first, in all the stories I heard reporting about this poll, not one single journalist commented on how they chose the presidents to ask about.


SO, once again, it falls on me, a lowly lawyer/part-time blogger, to do the investigative journalisming, just as I had to do with this important story, and find out whether they artificially limited the choices people could pick, or whether some American somewhere actually picked William Henry Harrison on his/her own.

The poll, which was uniformly reported as "Americans would bring back Reagan before FDR" notes that "some low-percentage answer choices have been omitted" in the fine print at the bottom, which suggests that there were other options, too -- and that less than 1% of the people chose those other options, which still doesn't explain how Tippecanoe made it into the top four, what with his having died forty days into office.

I googled around a bit trying to find out more about which options might have been allowed, but couldn't find anything about the methods used (the overall poll asked a bunch of other questions, like How long can you sit in Starbucks and use the Internet). So it appears that those were the only options which were given; you can take the poll online yourself to get an even less scientific view of how Americans view their past presidents and the current economic situation, and if you do, you'll see that Reagan is losing in online votes:


Which says something else entirely and is open to interpretation. Are Republicans less likely to vote online for something than Democrats? Do traditional Keynesians make more use of the Web than supply-siders? How does William Henry Harrison factor into this at all?*

*Harrison, you probably already know, ran for president twice, once in 1836, where he was part of a split ticket promoted by the Whigs, who hoped to throw the election to the House of Representatives, where they felt they could more easily gain control using cheaper local elections; the plan was to get Whigs elected to the House, take a majority there, and then, when the presidential election ended with no candidate getting a majority of electoral votes, use control of the House to put a Whig candidate into office. Which, in essence, is almost exactly like the GOP's current plans to use the less-expensive local elections to take control of government and then, via redistricting, union-busting, and such measures as giving the governor control over administrative-rule-making, set the stage for bigger wins down the line. Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it, indeed.

Anyway, the major point of this post is not the Republicans are the new Whigs; **

**The Whigs favored a strong public education system, which alone separates them from the current crop of billionaires-who-made-their-money-creating-toxic-waste-financed GOP wastrels who direct public money to the wives of GOP legislators.

it's that Americans may or may not be smarter than many people think. 65% of Americans would choose either Reagan or FDR to steer our national ship away from Scylla of economic downturn while avoiding the Charybdis of inflation, which actually says less about people's political preferences and more about how they actually think the problem should be solved:

Reagan initially cut taxes, primarily on energy-related matters, to help ease the energy crisis that was then holding back the American economy. But by 1982, Reagan had undone nearly 1/3 of his initial tax cuts, and shortly thereafter he increased payroll taxes on individuals to pay for Social Security and Medicare. Reagan also borrowed heavily, tripling the national debt from $997,000,000,000 to $2,850,000,000,000.***

***This author does not believe in shortening important numbers. Saying "$997 billion" and $2.85 trillion" makes those numbers seem relatively equal. Put the zeroes on them, and you can see the growth.

That was Reagan's answer to the economic "crisis" he faced: increase the flow of capital in the area of the economy that was logjammed (then: energy), temporarily increase the money in consumers'/corporations' pockets, and then gradually increase the government revenues again both through growth in the economy*4

*4 on a recent Planet Money podcast, a Worst President Ever-supporting economist pointed out that no credible economist has ever argued that "tax cuts pay for themselves." That man supported the WPE Tax Cuts, but agreed that they did not "pay for themselves."

and increasing taxes.

That suggests an extremely reasonable way to address the current mortgage problem that is bogging down the economy now: Make money available where it is needed. Don't just give banks money and have them hold it. Give borrowers money through the banks and guarantee those; and target tax cuts temporarily by, say, giving banks a one-time break from all income taxes for any mortgage loans refinanced in the next 2 years -- meaning this: If a Bank refinances a loan between now and November 5, 2013, then all income derived from that loan is forever tax free unless and until the bank forecloses on that loan, at which point all tax that should have been paid accumulates and is paid in the year of foreclosure.

See? I've solved the mortgage crisis twice.

FDR, in the meantime, first addressed the Great Depression (which he had no plans for attacking when he was inaugurated; somehow, America was able to vote for a president during an economic crisis without even asking him what he'd do about it) by cutting federal spending -- he reduced federal government workers' pay, then passed a bill that the Hoover administration had authored to stress-test banks and merge unsound banks into larger, better banks (sound familiar?). FDR argued strenuously against deficit spending (while allowing it for what he called "emergency budgets") and opposed a government program that is credited for avoiding bank panics: The FDIC, which insures bank deposits.

All of which is to say: Americans appear to favor only temporarily cutting taxes while increasing federal spending to address economic problems, and are against balancing the federal budget during economic downturns, especially at the expense of government workers.

Or, put more simply: Those who do not learn the lessons of history think choosing Reagan over FDR to address financial problems is somehow an endorsement of current Republicanism. It is not.

Hi-Yo, Silver!

All you've heard for years now, really, is how you have to buy gold gold gold gold, to the point where I believe that gold is now selling for



per ounce.

Or maybe not. I'm no expert. I just know what I make up on the spot.

You know what you don't hear a lot about? Silver. I bet you don't even know what the silver price is right now. I bet nobody does.

With everyone focused on gold right now, and the economy still in the tank because the Republicans are being told not to let it get better by their evil overlords, now might be the right time to start thinking about the next thing, and maybe the next thing is silver bullion and other silver investments.

I mean, what sense does it make to invest in something after everyone knows about it? Nobody wants to get in at the end of a bubble, and even if gold continues to go up (who knows if it will?) it's not clear how much more valuable it can get, and it costs a bundle to get into.

But lately, I've seen more of those "we buy gold" places talking about "other precious metals" and silver is another precious metal, isn't it?

I'm pretty sure it is.

I'm no investment expert. If I were an investment expert, I wouldn't have most of my money in investments like "comic books" and "McGriddles." But I know common sense, and common sense tells me that when investing, you want to be ahead of the curve, not behind the curve. So if you're looking for a sound, precious metal investment, you should consult with experts (not me!)(the links in this site will take you to "Regal Gold Coins," a good place to start getting info) and make sure you have all your information, and then you should look into silver and see if silver's right for you.

The silver rush came after the gold rush, after all, and if history repeats itself, you'll be in on the ground floor and stand to make a bundle -- the way I got in on the ground floor on this McGriddle investment. *takes bite*. Mmmmmm. Financialicious.

What is it, America? Are you dumb, or just mean?

Because of the subject matter, this is a triple-post and is appearing simultaneously onNonsportsmanlike Conduct!, Thinking The Lions, and Publicus Proventus.

I'm only 78 items into my once-daily series "1001 Ways To Tune Up The World," but my impact is becoming clearer and clearer, even if it takes a while for people to realize how right I am.

Back in August, 2009, Way Number 15 was "Just Allow Colleges To Pay Athletes Already," which, I'll note, everytime I mentioned it most people were aghast -- but they're college students! - -they'd say, and I'd point out that many college students get paid for interning in a job.

Now, in November 2011, colleges have decided I was right all along; the NCAA recently proposed to let conferences decide to pay athletes up to $2,000 a year to cover "expenses," and, as a Grantland writer pointed out in commenting on the story, once you decide to pay someone $2,000, you can pay them $5,000 or $10,000 or $100,000; the "moral" objection to paying "student-athletes" being removed, the only question is how much can they get paid.

If he'd seen this coming, Cam Newton might have stayed in college. And also: I'm not a hypocrite for saying Newton shouldn't have the Heisman because not only did he plead guilty to a felony while in college, but also, he broke the rules at the time. Future Cam Newtons should have the right to demand a $175,000 signing bonus to go to a college. This Cam Newtondidn't.

(But, then, it doesn't matter because the Heisman Trophy is the most overrated sports award ever.)

That alone was enough for me to mention Grantland, which is actually one of the better sports sites around (not surprising, since Bill Simmons gets much of his material from me.)

But even better, that writer went on to note why it seemed fair to cut "student-athletes" in on the mountain of money generated by college sports.

And it is a mountain:

But the ancillary income — television revenues, the sale of jerseys and other gear, the use of a player's "likeness" in video games, and on and on — completely overwhelms the equation and makes the relationship inequitable. The Southeastern Conference made over a billion dollars last year. The Big 10 made $905 million. These people may have a moral right to their ticket sales based on the scholarships they provide, but they don't have a moral right to every last nickel they can squeeze out of their labor force. That's absurd. It's un-American. And it cannot last.

I'm just going to highlight the important part of that block quote:

The Southeastern Conference made over a billion dollars last year. The Big 10 made $905 million.

Last year was one of the years that took place in what news organizations blandly refer to as "the current economic crisis," wasn't it? I'm pretty sure 2010 was part of "the current economic crisis." I'm pretty sure that in 2010 we were bogged down in Racist Tea Party arguments that we didn't have enough money to pay for Medicare or pretty much anything else that wasn't Dennis Hastert's million-dollar-a-year-office. I'm 100% certain that Candy Man Paul Ryan began 2010 by saying that we couldn't pay for health care for seniors.

But we -- you-- could spent two billion dollars on college football games.

TWO.

BILLION.

DOLLARS.

That's just on two conferences. And one of those conferences is pretty awful, when you think about it. (I'll let you figure out which one.)(Hint: It rhymes with Mig Men.)

I keep wondering when it's "Game Over" for people like the Racist Tea Party and every Republican currently running for office and Scott "Patsy" Walker, and I keep being amazed that people are so damn dumb. And before you get mad at me for thinking people are stupidfor voting for Republicans and letting them claim we've got no money when we can spend two billion dollars watching %(*%^%&$ Purdue play Iowa State, remember that the only otheralternative is to think people aren't dumb but are just mean.

So what is it, America? Dumb, or mean? We've decided that we can take two billion dollars of our money to pay college athletes to play games, because Lord knows we need more football on the air. Having voluntarily done that, do you think you can maybe quit supporting people that want to kill the poor and start making this a country that lives up to its promise?

I'd have gone with "Cousin Oliver." (Election 2012)

"He's such a second Darren!"

-- Mo Rocca, on Rick Perry -- the second coming of Worst President Ever.