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Opinions are fun. My friends tell me I am someone with lots of opinions and that's fine since I don't get mad at others when they disagree with me. In this same spirit I am interested in hearing yours views as long as you are able to share your views without boiling over. I look forward to hearing from you. I tend to write in the form of short essays most of the time, but contributions do not need to be in this same format or size. Some of the content here will date itself pretty quickly, other content may be virtually timeless, this is for the reader to judge.

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Sports and Politics                                                                                    

Posted at: May/16/2016 : Posted by: mel

Related Category: Society, Watching America,

In America, regardless of how poor a person is, they probably have at least one sport they follow with more than just a passing interest. The media industry has picked up on this phenomenon and offers lots of choices without having to purchase pay-per-view. There’s 6 months of baseball and basketball. There is nearly twenty week of helmet crunching football. Soccer is making major inroads in the American market. For the more sedate curling can be found with just a little channel surfing. Combine 300 pounds of muscle with theatrics and you have WWE wrestling. Of course, nothing sells beer, pizza and booze with a nail-biting outcome better than following American politics.

Leicester City just cinched the Barkley’s Premier League title with 2 weeks to go despite starting the season with 5000:1 odds to finish first. As the 2016 Presidential primary season also winds down, there are just as many pundits and bookies (interchangeable) who are trying to figure out what just happened. After his Indiana primary loss, Ted Cruz has dropped out of the race leaving Donald Trump the de facto Republican nominee. Clearly, everyone saw this coming except for the experts; maybe it’s time to hire some new experts. Leicester City’s team salary doesn’t even make the top 20 list, but teamwork and camaraderie made them a force no one was prepared for. In a similar manner, Donald Trump shunned outside donations and the advice of the supposed Republican leaders and experts, instead marketing himself with a populist message that strongly appealed to anyone who was tired of “politics as usual.”

Mr. Trump says he is worth $10 billion, Forbes magazine and all their researchers say his personal worth is closer to $4.5 billion. Regardless of which number is correct, his ability to separate his wealth from his image and sell himself as the champion of the everyday, hardworking American is amazing. For most Americans the difference between $4.5 and $10 billion is pretty abstract. For Mr. Trump, there is nothing abstract about how he measures himself, his accomplishments, or his personal wealth. Regardless of where truth ends and exaggeration begins, the bigger the value, the bigger the perception of self-styled success for Mr. Trump. Numerous biographers who have followed Trumps career say he has a long history of stretching the truth when it helps his self-image and the message he is selling; yet, like any good salesman, he believes in what he is selling so the story becomes the fact.

With all the fakes, jukes, trick plays, handoffs, fading superstars and out of nowhere hero’s it is easy to compare sports and sports metaphors to the wild and rowdy arena of American politics. Just like the best of the sports commentators, the modern political commentator no longer needs to be well informed, they just need a good catch phrase and 15 minutes of your television time between dinner and falling asleep. Despite all the well paid pundits out there, it appears we are enjoying another season where the average Joe, Monday morning quarterback knows more about the game than those with the 15 minute program on MSNBC, CNN or FOX.

As with any good political campaign from out of nowhere, it is more about revolution. Historically, the American political landscape goes through a revolution every 30-40 years, these events are often messy, yet the good news is we survive them without a column of tanks parading down Pennsylvania Avenue and encircling the capital or the white house. Revolutions are only possible when two critical things happen; the voting base becomes truly frustrated with politics as usual, and those in positions of power become truly out of touch with the base they naively believe they are representing. Sometimes those in power even assume an air of guardian presuming they know best for you despite what you ask for. Clearly, America is at one of those times in its history. This means that the average voter can either be frustrated with their election choices, or be an amateur student observer of political science. If you chose to be the second, this can be a very exciting political season to grab a beer, some hot wings and study the process as the revolution evolves.

There are a lot of things in hindsight that make this political revolution an obvious event. Some key items on list include the “Contract with America”, a growing national debt, failed economic policies, an overtly dysfunctional Congress, a growing class separation between Congress and the general public, excessive political donations and a misunderstood new age voting populous.

The Contract with America was a document released by the U.S. Republican Party during the 1994 Congressional election campaign. Largely written by Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey, the Contract with America promised new strength to its Congressional members if they signed the contract agreeing to follow the voting prescribed by their party caucus. At the outset, this brought new power to the Republican Party. Ultimately, it nationalized the agenda of each Republican Congressional member separating them from the needs and consideration of the voters who elected them from their home district and its unique needs.

There is no secret that the U.S. debt is continuing to grow at an alarming rate. Most people know that they are looking at a serious problem when their credit card debt exceeds their annual gross. The United States is now at that point and it is continuing to grow. The media will talk about the defense department budget, but that is merely the largest item in the “discretionary” portion of the budget. The largest portion of the annual Federal budget is the 73% that is committed to the “non-discretionary” slice of the annual budget. The vast majority of the non-discretionary is open ended commitments to social service, health care and safety net programs often called entitlement programs. While these programs are altruistic, it does not take a degree in economics to see that these programs are unsustainable at their current funding level. Further, it doesn’t take a Congressional budget analyst to see the looming hurdle.

Despite the whitewash, it would be hard not to say that the economic policies of the last 30 years have been a dismal failure. Tax burdens that encourage corporations to pursue inversion where the move their headquarters overseas is a growing trend. Participating in a global economy is important, but trade agreements that allow manufacturing to move to regions where they do not need to comply with the same regulations and labor laws is not a level playing field. An unregulated mortgage market with home loans that could be traded as commodities created the housing bubble. Labor reporting that brags about job growth, without also reporting that the majority of the new jobs are low end service sector jobs is merely statistical fiction. The widening gap between the economy of Wall Street and the economy of Main Street eludes no one. Foreign aid programs that subsidize repressive governments while our schools and infrastructure crumbles seem to have no overt value beyond nationalized extortion.

Dysfunctional is the adjective describing something that is performing abnormally or malfunctioning. To the utter dismay of all who watch American politics, malfunctioning is now the one word adjective most closely associated with the U.S. Congress during its last few sessions. Whether the challenge is getting a bill out of committee and onto the floor for a vote, approving a judicial or administrative nominee or voting on a budget; nothing seems to get done. The art of politics used to be about negotiation and finding the middle ground. Now politics is more about bullying and extortion. Ultimately, each non-functional day seems to be concluded by someone stepping up to the microphone and proudly proclaiming that since they couldn’t have it their way, they weren’t going to let anything happen. This singled minded approach to doing business seems more reasonable to associate with adolescent behavior than running a government. The other side of the isle isn’t any better with pen and phone approach followed by the “who me?” Sometimes it can be confusing whether we are watching government, or another chapter of “The God Father.” More amazing is the notion of being proud and bragging because nothing got done. The result is unfilled judgeships on the federal bench and continuing resolutions rather than a real budget. Outsiders visiting America often comment on the diversity of our peoples and cultures who all consider themselves Americans. Many of our Congressmen seem to feel that there is only one right way to be an American and they would sooner freeze government than recognize that not everyone thinks like they do. Grandiose efforts at legislating morals and behavior to someone’s self-serving baseline while aging schools, roads and other infrastructure deteriorate only reinforce the overt dysfunction.

When Congressmen are elected, the presumption is that they are “one of us,” yet there is a growing presumption of elitism. One of the benefits of the internet is an abundance of transparency even if it can be a challenge to separate opinion, fact and fodder. A Senators salary as of this writing is $174k annually plus benefits and a lifetime pension after a single term. When the average American household makes a third of that amount with no pension, the separation is apparent, creating a financial strata that all can see. Worse yet is the average net worth of a Senator just 2 years after retirement. Most are worth well over 2 million which does not align with an accumulation of their salary. With so much money clearly being distributed on Capitol Hill to influence legislative outcomes, trust in our elected representatives is waning. This money not only brings into question the integrity of our elected representatives, but clearly shows that lobbyist and other organizations have an undue level of influence on legislation despite who actually elected the representatives.

Large donations to political campaigns attract attention. In 2002 the conservative non-profit Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission was heard before the Supreme Court. The court ruled that organizations could make “unlimited donations” to independent Political Action Committees provided those committees or organizations were truly independent of the political candidate they supported. On paper this sounds reasonable, in execution candidates are logically informed of what individual or organization has made the largest donations to the PAC that is campaigning on their behalf. America has a long history of facing challenges associated with money disproportionately influencing public policy. This ruling opened the flood gates. Despite the public frustration associated with all the money being spent by a few individuals and organizations to drive the political process, every once in a while the wild card wins. Maybe the most appealing facet to Donald Trump’s campaign to be become the Republican Presidential nominee in 2016 is his lack of support by the political establishment and the associated PAC. Maybe money truly can’t buy everything, but it sure appears to work well most of the time.

One of the most underestimated aspects of the evolving political landscape in America is the voting populous. It is not so much what the new age voter cares about as to the degree that they are misunderstood and underestimated. For decades the expectation was that voters got all their election knowledge from the local newspapers, evening news and Meet the Press on Sunday mornings if they were willing to forego sleeping in. Candidates paid careful attention to the ratings of these programs to also gauge the level of voter interest or apathy. While not a bad strategy at one time, the aforementioned is proving to be very last century. The modern voter no longer needs to attend a local town hall meeting or watch their TV at just the right time; instead they have the internet. With tens of thousands of blogs, pseudo news sites, forums and pundit portals, one only needs open their laptop while still in their underwear. The growing number of voters who get their political insights from new age media is revolutionizing the understanding of what voters know and don’t know. More significant is that the wealth of online media has made is much easier to become an “informed voter.” Old school campaign managers and political commentators have clearly not come to accept this new message. Instead, the commentators seem to spend the majority of their time and energy talking to each other while they hope someone is listening.

In this exciting presidential campaign season Donald Trump has risen to the top of the Republican candidate field. Clearly, the current Republican leadership is struggling to accept or understand him. In truth, their confusion is because Mr. Trump is neither a Democrat nor a Republican, he is a “Populist” candidate. As a rough generalization, Populist candidates focus their appeal to the lower and middle classes with a message of “don’t trust the government,” and the “elites” are manipulating things for their own best interest. Populist candidates are not new in America, they arise every 30-40 years when business as usual is no longer acceptable. Effectively, the strength of a Populist candidate is the measure of a small scale revolution without the column of tanks driving down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. Maybe the most amazing aspect of this revolution is that Donald Trump with all his wealth, by most standards would be considered one of the “elites” that a populist base movement looks to as the source of their plight. With brilliant marketing and a “they’re out to get me message”, he has successfully separated his image from his billions.

However you wish to measure things, the 2016 presidential race will be remembered as one of the most exciting and entertaining in many decades. Much like the Barkley’s Premier League of English Soccer, there have been a lot of experts, but virtually no one seems to have gotten it right, or understood what was happening before it happened. In war this happens when generals go to battle ready to fight the last war. In sports, this happens when the rules change or a team peaks at the right time. In politics, this much misunderstanding can only mean two things, change is needed, and all conditions are ripe for a little revolution. Fortunately, in America a little revolution only means the pundits get fired. Whether following soccer or politics, 2016 will be remembered as the year in which the experts were idiots and politics on TV sold almost as much beer as soccer and football.

As Thomas Jefferson once said: “I hold it that a little rebellion now then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.” I wonder what Mr. Jefferson would think of soccer?

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