Rooting for Rio

It's perfectly curmudgeonly for me to wish Rio well in the race to be "awarded" the 2016 Olympic Games. I live in Chicagoland, and Mayor Daley wants the Olympics so badly he can undoubtedly taste it. I have been indifferent about it, but I've come to the conclusion that we'd be better off if the International Olympic Committee (IOC) selects Rio or Madrid or anywhere but Chicago. I just don't see the benefits to the metro area.

Much of the planned development for Chicago's Olympics appears to be temporary structures, so the long-term benefit to the City and region escape me. It's unclear how many low income Chicago residents will be displaced by The Games. What it seems to come down to is "bragging rights" and "civic pride." Neither of which mean much to a region that is already drowning in municipal red ink and regressive taxes. It would certainly be a better legacy for the current Mayor Daley than the 1968 Democratic Convention was for his father.

If the final decision by the IOC can be massively influenced by the involvement of President Obama and his wife, that also makes me wonder what on earth is going on. Initially, the President wasn't traveling to Denmark and was sending his wife to "represent" him. He was criticized by some for not being sufficiently supportive of Chicago's effort. He subsequently decided he would join his wife in Denmark for the IOC meeting, and he was criticized by others for focusing on the Olympics rather than our health care and financial systems mess. What can the Head of State and the First Lady possibly say in one on one conversations with the IOC members that would seal the deal for Chicago? Beyond "we have a Great Lake" (Lake Michigan), what does the President have to say about running an Olympic venue? I'm guessing not much beyond his obvious star power. If that's the case, the entire selection process seems to be just another sham of smoke and mirrors.

The biggest reason I'm rooting for Rio is that based on the media coverage of Chicago's efforts to this point, if Chicago is selected, it will be absolutely miserable place to be between now and 2016. This week we were subjected to hanging a ceremonial Olympic medal around the neck of the Picasso monkey in Daley Center. Several protestors were arrested for trying to disrupt the medal installation. The local "news" outlets (and I use the term "news" very lightly) positively gushed over the "cute" image of the statue with the medal. They're running "countdown" clocks to the IOC vote. Cripes.

There's no telling how obnoxious and ridiculous the media coverage can get over the course of the next seven years. If Chicago gets The Games, it can only get worse.

Edit 10/1/09: It's good to know that Tribune columnist John Kass agrees with at least some of my concerns: his 9/30/09 column.

Sportsmanship

This post is about a series of Daily Herald stories about the sportsmanship lesson that a couple of local high school football coaches delivered this week. The Elgin (IL) High School junior varsity team includes an autistic senior who doesn't get much time on the field.

Lake Park coach Nana Agyeman .... talked to Elgin's head coach, Dave Bierman, about it. He learned the player, Winfred Cooper, has severe autism.

"Well," Agyeman told Bierman, "if you want to throw him the ball, just let us know."

The result was truly amazing. With the game tied, Elgin called a specially concocted play (The Driver Driver, named for Green Bay Packer's wide receiver Donald Driver) and threw the ball to "Coop." He caught the ball and ran 67 yards for a touchdown and the memory of a lifetime. Both teams joined in cheering him on.

Coop caught the ball, and even though the plan had been to push Coop gently out of bounds, the Lake Park players called an audible: Instead, they flailed away in trying to tackle him, while Coop scampered 67 yards for the score. Both sides erupted in cheers.

Both coaches and teams should be very proud of themselves for the display of sportsmanship that, sadly, too often is absent from athletics. The lesson delivered by the coaches was not lost on the members of the two football teams. Kudos to all of them.

This is a link to the initial article in the Daily Herald. This link is a follow-up article involving contacts with the Packers. Finally, here's a link to the editor's explanation of how the story made it to the front page.

It's enough to bring a tear to your eye.

HGTV vs. The View

My wife is a huge fan of HGTV (Home and Garden TV). It's an addiction of some sort, I suspect. One of the few things we ever argue about is how often the TV is tuned to that cable network. In my opinion, it has a huge assortment of idiotic programs, many of which involve people doing ridiculous remodeling of their homes in the hope that they'll be able to sell them. There's another show in which an "expert" takes items that a pack rat (putting it charitably) homeowner has accumulated and then auctions the hidden "treasures." One of my biggest objections to some of the remodeling programs is that no matter how intricate the painting (they love to paint patterns on walls), floor installation, or whatever, the team's final product never looks like something an actual person could produce. I'm pretty handy with tools, but in the real world, walls are never plumb, corners are never right angles, and nothing turns out looking perfect (except on HGTV). The show is just unrealistic nonsense.

Something happened recently that is worth noting. You know how people sometimes will preface a statement with "I never thought I'd say this, but...."? I heard myself saying something a couple days ago that really startled me. My wife was jumping back and forth between a couple of channels one morning and landed on one of those HGTV programs. The next thing I knew, I opened my mouth and said "I never thought I'd say this, but please put on The View."

"The View" is a daytime talk show with a group of women "hosts," including Whoopi Goldberg, Barbara Walters (she owns the show but doesn't appear all the time), Joy Behar, Sherri Shepherd, and the token conservative Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Long ago, I found I was unable to make heads or tails out of the program, in which all of the participants seem to voice their opinions simultaneously and vociferously. I had no patience for the show, regardless of how pithy or timely their topic of the day might be, because they seemed to all be hollering at each other at the same time and I couldn't follow anyone's position. I've never been in a position to observe a group of women discussing anything amongst themselves; does everyone talk over or through everyone else? "The View" has been on the air since 1997, so the format must work for women viewers. Maybe it's a "guy thing?"

At any rate, I nearly clapped my hand over my mouth with astonishment when I asked my wife to put "The View" on. It certainly isn't that I like the show (although I do enjoy Whoopi Goldberg beating up Hasselbeck periodically). I don't have as negative reaction to it as I used to, but it's not on my Top 100 TV programs I have to watch. What it does demonstrate is how much I dislike HGTV. Even the Food Network doesn't annoy me as much.

Hmm. Maybe I can somehow set up parental controls on our cable to block HGTV? No, I'm not that stupid; that's one of those battles best left unpicked...

Ibuprofen Is My Friend?

As I wandered through the kitchen this morning, I noticed something on the kitchen table that was mildly disturbing. It was a bottle of ibuprofen, the all purpose, non-prescription, pain killer and anti-inflammatory drug. It's not unusual to find all sorts of rubble on the kitchen table because it's kind of a magnet and collects the detritus of daily life with alarming regularity. However, it occurred to me that the reason the ibuprofen was sitting out there on the table, instead of in the drawer where it "belonged," was because it's used so frequently that we just don't bother putting it away.

You know you've reached a depressing stage in your life when your bottle of ibuprofen lives on the kitchen table... :-)

Is Growth Limitless?

One of the many things I don't understand about economics and our national economy, is the notion of "growth." It seems as though everything in our economy is based on this concept, whether it's how many retail outlets a business has, how much market share a bank has, the value of a specific stock, consumerism in general, or or just plain old sales figures. If you don't have growth, you're in trouble.

One symptom of this growth focus is our institutionalized expectation that a corporation's prime responsibility to shareholders is to grow the share value (i.e., the stock price must go up). The company is not expected to focus on making a profit to share with shareholders (dividend distribution) or even to produce something useful (products or services someone wants to buy). IMO, this has made the stock markets more akin to riverboat gambling than financial analysis.

The problem for me is that economic growth doesn't seem to have unlimited potential in the broadest sense. There are a lot of other societal factors that are also tied into growth, such as population growth. Continuous growth in our economy seems to require continuous growth in other areas, such as population. If you base your economic model on growth, it seems like you are also dependent on unlimited population growth, unlimited ability to grow food, unlimited ability to provide health care, etc. Back in the 18th, 19th, or even the first half of the 20th centuries, a continuous growth model might actually have made sense, but I question that it makes sense in the 21st century.

Back in the 1960s, there was a lot of talk about ZPG, or Zero Population Growth, and how our planet had finite resources and was not able to support an unlimited number of humans. There was even a movie made in 1972 called ZPG. Somewhere in the passage of time, the ZPG message was left along the wayside (remember them?) and seems to be no longer a major concern for most folks. But I think the way our economy has been structured for many, many years, it depends on unlimited population growth to provide new consumers and new people to use "stuff." I don't think this model is sustainable, and I'm wondering if there are mainstream economists out there who have discussed economic models that don't depend on permanent growth.

A recent interview (9/9/09) on Marketplace.org with Michael Mandel of Business Week, touches on some of this. In a recent blog and the interview, Mandel points out that the American notion of the "consumer economy" is badly distorted. A common "given" is that 70% of our economy is composed of consumer spending, and with the financial health of our nation dependent on so much consuming, how can we change anything? If consumers are convinced we shouldn't use up stuff so much, our economy will continue to deteriorate rather than recover, etc. If we continue to use up stuff as in the past, the world's resources will be depleted, with horrendous results.

Mandel studied the numbers and concluded that the US Commerce Department, Bureau of Economic Analysis, came up with the 70% Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figure based on some curious assumptions. A lot of expenditures most of us don't consider consumer spending are included, and a lot of expenditures you might think are consumer spending aren't. Medical spending is an interesting example: while you might think Medicare spending is government spending, the BEA counts it as consumer spending. Mandel's calculations conclude that maybe about 40% of our economy is consumer spending. And since that's a hugely smaller number than the 70% that's bandied about, it's very significant. It means, in Mandel's view, that we don't have to be a consumer driven economy.

And that means that we as citizens could actually have more control over our environment and lives in general, if we were not just one of millions of consumers. We could redirect our national resources away from unlimited consumption and toward a more sustainable economic model. Whatever that might be.

Mandel's interview skirts around the edges of the growth question when he stated that "we don't have to be a consumer-driven economy." What would be an alternative to a consumer-driven economy? Think about that for a bit.

A Good Argument for Tort Reform

I still have an old AOL email address and recently received this notice about a proposed settlement of a class action lawsuit. It seems that another group of California lawyers have found themselves a $250K gravy train.

This lawsuit is about the fact that AOL tacked advertisements at the bottom of emails (footers) that AOL subscribers sent out. Seems to have been a fairly common occurrence with free email accounts from a lot of providers for many years, so it's beyond me as to why this "class" of AOL subscribers has anything to complain about. If approved, the settlement will result in AOL telling users they can "opt out" of the promotional footers, about $100K in donations to some "charities," and $250K for the lawyers. What's wrong with this picture?

We seem to have too many lawyers that don't have enough productive work to keep them occupied.

Maria Bartiromo Going Down In Flames?

If you haven't watched CNBC's Maria Bartiromo displaying her ignorance about our health system on camera, you ought to check the Youtube video or here. It's just fascinating how some public people are so supremely self-confident they can make such utter fools of themselves and keep smiling. I wonder if any little tiny alarm bells were ringing in her head as she made fun of the 44 year old Congressman for not "using" Medicare. Probably not, just like they still aren't ringing for former Governor Blago, who's still blaming everyone else for his downfall.

Maybe Maria's angling for a job with Fox?

Consensus? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Consensus

There comes a time, after much effort to reach a consensus decision, when a group may conclude that consensus is not possible, because one of the parties to the "discussion" clearly is not interested in the objective and not willing to compromise or modify it's position in a meaningful way. This happens in all aspects of life. The conclusion in such a case is that consensus is not possible. The question becomes "what now?"

In the case of reform of the American health insurance system, the objective for many of us remains to provide all Americans with health insurance so they can obtain necessary health care. The Democratic Party has clear majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Republican Party has made it clear that it is more interested in protecting the monied interests in the insurance industry and is not interested in a consensus decision.

The answer for me to the "what now?" question, is move forward. No reform of our insurance system is possible without a real public option. This country is the only industrialized nation that even allows for-profit health insurance companies. (For more info about how other nations provide health care, listen to the "Fresh Air" interview of TR Reid or read it.) A public option is the only way to break the strangle-hold that private insurance has on our health care system. It's wrong for the President to back off a public option and we should all tell him that, loudly and clearly. You can do that by clicking here and signing a petition to the President.

The Democrats control the House and Senate and should stop wasting time and energy trying to reach a "consensus" plan with the GOP. The House and Senate should draft a true reform bill and vote on it before the end of September, 2009. As Froma Harrop says, what voters will remember in November 2010 is whether the Democrats passed reform, or did not:

Democrats: Don't worry about November 2010 at the moment. Voters gave you the White House and commanding majorities in Congress to fix America's long-festering problems. Let Republicans go to their corner and holler, afraid that Democrats might get credit.

Democrats have the power to reform health care now and to do it right. They should use it.

It's time for President Obama and the Democratic Party to tell the GOP to take their fear elsewhere and pass health insurance reform with a government option now, without the GOP.