20 Game Winners/.300 Hitters

I went to Yankee Stadium a few weeks ago. I'm not a Yankee fan, I'm a Mets fan, but the tickets were free and food was free, so what the heck? Above all, I love baseball. I love it's pace, it's finesse and the skill to play the game at an advanced level.  I got to see future Hall of Fame members Albert Pujols and Derek Jeter and young phenom Mike Trout, who did not disappoint.

Being at the Stadium, with all its ersatz grandeur and tributes to Yankee greats, I thought about why there are virtually no 20 game winners anymore and why so few players hit over .300.  The answers are emblematic of the changes the professional game has undergone over the years.  I remember watching a doubleheader between the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants.  Some will remember that most Sundays featured doubleheaders.  The starting pitchers in the first game were the aces of the bullpens, Don Newcombe of the Dodgers and Johnny Antonelli of the Giants.  In the second game, both Newcombe and Antonelli came back in relief.  Admittedly this was unusual for Antonelli, but it was not so uncommon for Newcombe, who also served as a pinch hitter from time to time because the man could hit.  Since the advent of free agency, this could never happen.  I don't pine for the days when players were basically indentured servants.  Can you imagine how much Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Jackie Robinson, Stan Musial or Ted Williams would make today?

In those days, there were multiple 20 game winners and .300 hitters every year.  As I said, I've been thinking about what has changed.  I think it's the advent of the pitch count.  A hundred pitches is the regular limit for virtually all pitchers today.  That means that they don't generally pitch deep enough into the game to get a win, or they are relieved by specialists for the 7th inning, the setup guy and the closer.  Managers don't feel any compulsion to keep the starter in the game since he has a gaggle of relievers upon whom he can call when there is even a hint of trouble.  Under these circumstances, winning 20 games is nearly impossible.

As for the demise of the .300 hitter, it's related.  When there weren't specialists to bail out a team, the starter stayed in the game and was more vulnerable with each pitch.  Today, a batter rarely sees a tired pitcher.  So a position player will be more likely to succumb to his fatigue after say, 5 innings or so and then ends up facing fresh rested arms as the game goes on.  Add to that the fact that there are a lot more teams, so the talent pool is diluted, and guys who would never have gotten out of the minors are suddenly on major league rosters both as pitchers and position players.

As the season reaches its end, I have lots of respect for those few hitters who are at or above .300, and pitchers who are approaching 20 wins.  

Collateral Damage

Every four years, we New Jersey residents have to renew our drivers' licenses during our birth month.  This is my time.  New Jersey was one of the first states to institute the digital licensing procedure which prevents virtually all forgeries.  In theory this helps protect us from terrorists too.  I don't know how, so don't ask me.

Historically I've gone to a small DMV office in Wyckoff, NJ, around mid-month in the early afternoon.  While the process is a pain in the neck, it only takes about a half hour to complete.  DMV employees are not Nobel laureates, or even smart enough to do much more than dress and feed themselves and get to work, but it's not a great place to work since none of the clientele are particularly happy to be there, so Nobel laureates are reluctant to work there.  I went online to get the address of the Wyckoff office, after all it had been four years, only to learn that the office has been closed to cut costs.

The nearest office is now in Oakland, NJ.  So I fed the address to my map bitch and she led me the 30 minutes or so it took to get to Oakland, about 10 or 15 minutes further than Wyckoff.  The office was buzzing with a lack of activity.  There were a few bored DMV workers moving at regular DMV worker speed and about a gazillion clients sitting around, fuming, and waiting to be called. 

A woman seated next to me complained that the Wyckoff office at its worst was better than Oakland.  Another woman was trying keep her young child from becoming so bored that the rest of us would turn on her and throw them both out of the office.  The obligatory State Trooper was protecting this secure government location by watching the maintenance staff change light bulbs outside in the hall of the DMV office.  As one seat next to me opened a lady sat down and declared that we couldn't expect better service from the government.  Then I lit the fuse.  I said, "This is what you get when you fire public employees." KABOOM she turned to me and said, "I'm for anything that makes government smaller."  My response? "Well then you don't get to complain about how long it takes."  I think we're not friends. 

Since 2009, 600,000 public sector employees have lost their jobs.  Guess what, those folks bought cars and electronics and housewares and dinners at restaurants, and they took vacations.  In short, all those politicos who say they want to revive the economies of their states have removed 600,000 job creators from the marketplace.  Do they really want to create jobs or are they simply posturing?  If you have to renew your driver's license in New Jersey or a bunch of other states, you'll have 2 or 3 hours to ponder these issues.  As for me, I'm good until July of 2016.

America's Christian Jihad

The Christian right wing from Tea Party to Member of Congress, would have us believe that the United States was founded and designed to be a Christian nation.  They maintain that the revered founding fathers were true Christians and that they meant for the country they founded to be a truly Christian country.  Hogwash.  

Anyone who knows anything of the reasons for the early emigration of Europeans to the New World knows that most fled religious persecution from nations that considered themselves Christian and demanded allegiance to their versions of religion.  The very concept of a government run according to Christian doctrine was an anathema to them.

Thomas Jefferson wrote: Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.  

George Washington said: The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.  

These days, we are being driven to a fundamentalist Christian theocracy that accepts the Bible as literal truth and refutes science as violating the "truth" of God's world.  You don't have to be an atheist to see this as a recipe for disaster for the great American experiment.  Should we really require that the mythology of "creationism" be treated as having equal merit to evolution?  

These theocrats have been successful in spinning the anti-establishment clause of the first amendment to be 180º from the actual meaning intended by the authors of the Constitution.  They are claiming that freedom of religion should supersede civil rights.  Catholic institutions are claiming that they can deny their civil employees rights granted by the civil government such as contraception in the name of protecting religious freedom.  In fact, the Constitution intends to protect civil society from the abuses of an intrusive clergy.

Jefferson wrote: In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.

John Adams said: This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.

This general skepticism about religion isn't surprising when you remember that the U.S. Constitution  is a product of the Enlightenment of the 18th century and that, unlike the vast majority of Americans at the time, the wealthy elite who were the delegates to the Constitutional Convention were well read and very aware of the writings of Enlightenment philosophers in Europe.

If the United States of America is to retain its prominence in the future, we must work to protect ourselves from religious zealots and their Christian Jihad.

The Supremes and Us

You could have knocked me over with a feather when the Supremes upheld the Affordable Care Act this morning.  When I learned that Chief Justice John Roberts was the deciding vote, I was just plain stunned by disbelief.  What happened here?  How did Roberts end up on this end of a law he clearly dislikes?

The Supreme Court demonstrated its outside the fray quirkiness yet again.  In 1803, cast your minds back, Chief Justice John Marshall first used judicial review in a Federal court.  The Constitution doesn't grant that power to the courts, Marshall just took it.  Judicial review had been used in a very limited way in state courts prior to that, but Marshall's application of the principle to Federal law was new.  There was no legal objection from the United States, so judicial review became part of the law of the land.  Over the 200 plus years since Marbury v Madison, judicial review has become the most significant responsibility of the court.  Left and right have railed against judicial activism when the courts haven't seen things their way, but the principle has stood firm.

So how does this factor into today's decision beyond the usual prerogatives of the Supreme Court?  When the Justice Department mounted its defense against suits aimed at overturning the law, there was a debate about how to defend the individual mandate.  One side wanted to use the constitutional  power of the U.S. to regulate interstate commerce to justify the individual mandate.  The other side wanted to use the constitutional power of the U.S. to levy and collect taxes to justify the mandate.  Personally, based on my extensive experience in constitutional law (OK, so I don't have actual experience in constitutional law but I was a history major in college and have read a bunch of stuff), I favored using the taxing power because I believe there are adequate precedents already.  We are all compelled to pay into Social Security and Medicare as well as unemployment insurance and withholding.  The Administration opted to use the commerce clause because opponents would find the concept of a tax a ripe, juicy target for political attack in these days of the reign of King Grover of Norquist, the most powerful person in the country.

Turns out that the Chief Justice agreed with me (so there!).  The Court's majority ruled that using the commerce clause was unconstitutional.  While Roberts agreed with that, he said that it was constitutional under the taxing power and, therefore, joined the minority, who still felt that the commerce clause was OK, to uphold the law.  Pretty neat, huh?  I'll bet Scalia and Alito wet themselves when Roberts told them.  As usual Thomas displayed his desire to get out of all this and get back to the copy of "Long Dong Silver" he keeps in his office, and the one at his home.

Before the Tea Party types get their panties all in a knot, here are a few things that the law does.

1. Allows children to stay on their parent's plan until they turn 26. (currently 18 million families are using this benefit that is already in place).
2. Children cannot be denied coverage because of prior existing conditions. (in effect now)
3. Closes the Medicare Part C donut hole. (The donut hole is already 25% less thanks to the law.)
4. Provides Medicare recipients with free preventative screenings to reduce costs.
5. Removes lifetime caps on insurance benefits.
6. Prohibits insurance cancellation for people who get sick while covered.
7. Regulates what percentage of premium dollars insurers may use for non-medical costs such as CEO salaries, advertising and administration, and requires that consumers get rebates if those ceilings are exceeded. (this went in effect last November, and you may be getting a check from your insurance company in August if they were guilty)
8. Gives tax credits to small businesses (less than 50 employees) who agree to offer insurance to their employees.
9. Prevents insurers from charging more for women than men (2014).
10. Insurers are not allowed to decline coverage for adults with prior existing conditions (2014).
11. Requires insurers to allow free mammograms and other preventive services.

There are lots of additional things too but you get the idea.  Typically, pollsters have found that people who say they oppose the law approve the things it does.  Go figure. 

So while this SCOTUS has pissed me off plenty, I'm happy with today's ruling.  While the best performance by the Supremes I've ever seen was during the annual Motown Review from the balcony of the Apollo Theatre in New York at a midnight Saturday show back in 1964, this performance was pretty satisfying, although I do miss Diana Ross. 

Government Should Be Run Like A Business

Over the years, we have all heard folks from candidates, to pundits, to personal contacts put forth the idea that government would function better if it were run like a business.  This year that concept is a significant part of Mitt Romney's appeal to voters as he seeks the Presidency.  Having spent more time in business than Mitt Romney, I feel that I have some experience upon which I can draw to evaluate this oft repeated claim.

Any business has but one goal, to make money for its owner or owners, be it a privately held company or a public company.  There may be a formal mission statement or just an informal mission statement, as in the case of smaller enterprises.  These statements generally talk about the products and/or services the company sells and includes a commitment to serve customers at the highest level.  In fact, the reason to fulfill the mission statement is to make money.  This isn't a bad thing.  I would say that it's a good thing.  Setting a positive tone for customers and employees does have an effect upon the ability to earn the income necessary to keep the business going and workers gainfully employed. 

When a business decides to chart a course of action, management needs to formulate a plan, evaluate the positives and negatives of the plan, muster the resources and move forward.  The plan may involve hiring or firing employees at various levels.  Any plan includes some level of risk.  It is the responsibility of management to minimize and manage risk, but the company is in control of the actions it takes.  If plans fail and the enterprise can't survive, it ceases to exist.  While such an occurrence is devastating to employees and, in the case of smaller companies, the owner(s), the impact doesn't extend beyond the local realm, unless it's a large organization that is geographically diverse, in which case the suffering is more widespread, but more about that later.  

Government is fundamentally different.  It isn't narrowly focused on making money, in fact, historically it has demonstrated its greatest effectiveness when it runs short term deficits.  Stakeholders are not limited to those who have chosen to invest in it.  It does not have the option to settle on a course of action and then pursue it, making quick course corrections as required.  Those who oppose management do not have the option to withdraw from its operations.  Its reach is pervasive.  Not only that, but management includes divergent opinions as to what actions to pursue and how to pursue them.  Today, parts of management are diametrically opposed to each other.

They key to business success is being right more often than being wrong.  The key to government success is addressing the needs and desires of wildly different interest groups while special interest groups snipe at those governing from all sides.

To posit that it is either possible or beneficial to apply the principles of private enterprise to governing is either naïve or manipulative.  Government is frequently called to act when private enterprise won't or can't.  Government has to step in to stop secession in the 19th century. No one else would or could.  This is true of all wars.  Government is the only entity with the resources or ability to muster the resources necessary to further the nation's priorities.  Even mercenaries require the support of nation-states to pursue actions.

Closer to the point, government must make priority decisions involving levels of risk that no sane private enterprise would make.  When GM and Chrysler teetered on the brink of failure, there was no private financial resource willing or able to step in.  Mitt Romney publicly opted to let them fail, assuming that some relic would emerge from the collapse at some point.  President Obama made the tough call to put the resources of the public into the industry to protect millions of jobs.  Was it a gamble?  Yes.  But the government officials who oversaw the application of the funds managed them well and the companies have come back, protecting American workers.  Even the failure of Solyndra is an example of what government can and should do.  Solyndra was developing a new approach to harnessing solar power.  The results were promising but success was by no means a given.  The Administration stepped in to underwrite this start up in part because the risk was unacceptable to private sources of capital.  The bet was lost because the process didn't pan out and the people running Solyndra were unethical, to put it nicely.

Today the Republicans point to Solyndra as a failure but are happy to excuse Jamie Dimon, of JP Morgan Chase, whose eyes closed mismanagement caused the company to lose $2 billion and still counting.  Hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were poured into Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, PNC and the rest under the Bush Administration's TARP program and no one gave it a second thought when they failed to use the money to lend to small and medium sized businesses as they had been asked to do by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.  Instead, they used it to pay bonuses, buy competitors (PNC bought National City Bank while its middle market clients sucked wind).

Republicans accuse the Obama Administration of "picking winners and losers," but that is what every administration does.  The Bush 41 Administration picked the wealthy, financial sectors, defense industries, oil industry and the like to be the winners.  The incumbent administration has opted to focus attention on small and mid-sized businesses, middle and lower income earners, alternative energy producers and so forth.  These are decisions based upon the philosophical points of view of those in government.  Our job, as voters, is to decide what view of our society coincides most with our own, and vote accordingly.

We need to call the "run government like a business" thing what it is, misguided.  Government is not a business even though corporate interests are investing massive amounts of capital to gain sway over those who are in the government to push them to make it easier for those interests to make money.

God, Religion and All That

Which is more important, that you believe in God or that God believes in you?  Excluding atheists and most agnostics, I believe most people would say that the latter is more important.  I am neither an atheist nor an agnostic, but my concept of God, cultivated through years of, well, OK, I have no special credentials, is reasonably unconventional.  I'll lay it out for you, and you can tell me if it's unconventional or not.

I don't believe in the anthropomorphized God with the six-pack abs on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  I don't believe that God is a third party.  I do believe that God is the massive chaos that is our existence.  Note that I did't say that God created the massive chaos, but rather that God is the massive chaos.  Within that maelstrom of randomness lie possibilities.  Given the random chance that a vast array of possibilities interact at the right random moment, our universe might form.  Further, that haphazard occurrence might set in motion a series of seemingly disconnected stray events that lead to us.  That it took such an huge span of time and a complex evolutionary process speaks to the very randomness of it all.


As I see it, the magnificence of God is that within the swirling maelstrom of existence there are seemingly endless possibilities that, given the right combination of circumstances, could lead to virtually anything.  Of course my concept means that God can't and doesn't answer prayers or "care" about us or, really, anything else.  Thus we come to religion.


For as  long as higher functioning mammals have roamed the earth, they have been curious as to how they got here, why things happen and what can they do to control their destinies.  Early religions developed because they seemed to provide some answers.  Over time, tribal or family or clan leaders used religion as a tool to create civil societies and use the supposed power of deities for a wide variety of social purposes from creating health rules to establishing the dominance of some over others.  The more humans learned, the more complex and sophisticated their religious and societal structures became.


Modern religions are very regimented and organized indeed.  And yet a common refrain of religious leaders and adherents when something happens that seems to be inexplicable within their frameworks, is to say something to the effect of "We cannot know God's mind." Of course, they are right because God doesn't have a mind.  Why do bad things happen to good people?  Because they can.  It's not very soothing to the troubled hearts and minds of those afflicted, but it's true.  Heaven and hell?  Ridiculous.  God has nothing to do with religion.


So let's get to marriage.  Marriage is one of those societal institutions created to provide communal structure.  It have been pretty effective in doing that.  When religion was the pre-eminent vehicle of social organization, mating came under its purview and marriage was the result.  It was done in the context of religion because everything was done in the context of religion.  Civil governments merely recognized the supremacy of the religious order rather than create a parallel system.  It's worked pretty well for a long time, sort of.  The only problem was that in those early and, frankly, not so early societies, women were seen as chattel property of their families and could be bartered or sold into marriage.  Biblical marriage included polygamy and a whole bunch of other seemingly bizarre  arrangements.  Love was just not a factor.


In recent centuries, the concept of romantic love has entered the picture and screwed things up.  Some cultures, and you know who you are, still treat women as chattel.  I can't speak for other countries, but the United States has embraced the notion of romantic love.  In addition, the Constitutional prohibition of government establishment of religion has required the creation of a civil marriage system parallel to the religious system.  That civil alternative grants the right to religious authorities to act as agents of the state performing marriage rights in the religious system.


One of the effects of the civil marriage system has been the facilitation of marriage between partners of different religions.  There's been a lot of consternation over this among religious leaders and devout adherents.  We Jews, being a minority religion, have been slammed pretty hard.


In my salad days, I was dating a really terrific Catholic woman.  She had it all.  But I couldn't bring myself to marry  someone who wasn't Jewish.  She felt the same way, so we broke it off.  Fortunately, I met a terrific Jewish woman who had it all and then some, and we've been married for over thirty years.  My former girlfriend hasn't been so fortunate.  While I haven't actually spoken to her, a common friend has, and she never married.  When it comes to kids, I've found that the desire to have them date within the culture is trumped by getting to know the people they are dating and seeing how happy they make my progeny.  Still, given the fact that I am a secular Jew, entirely non-religious, I find it curious that this carries any weight in my consideration at all.  Turns out, it's not the religion, but the cultural roots, principles and ideals surrounding it that are important.


When it comes to same sex marriages, I have to say I don't care who marries who.  It's none of my business, and it's none of any government's business.  No one is telling any religious institution that it has to perform same sex marriage rituals.  In fact, one of the nice things about having a civil marriage path is that marriage can be religion free.  Those who oppose same sex marriage on religious grounds are intent on imposing their beliefs on others, and that is just un-American.  Of course there is Robin Williams' rationale for supporting same sex marriage.  He famously asked why gay people shouldn't be as miserable as the rest of us.


There is one question raised by a former student of mine on Facebook.  He asked if we should be free to marry whomever we want, what about polygamy?  I'm not talking about compelling twelve year olds to marry, but just in principle, why should we care?  If you are OK with same sex marriage, are you OK with polygamy?

The Failure of the American Experiment

Everyone is talking about the massive flow of anonymously donated money into the Presidential campaign, and with good cause.  Hundreds of millions of dollars will be used to try to sway the electorate to support principally Mitt Romney, that's where the money is, by attacking Barack Obama.  But this is just one part of the overall scenario being plotted by the right wing.  There's more, much more.

The right is hedging its bets.  Mitt Romney has proven to be a less than inspiring figure.  The religious right doesn't trust his Mormon faith.  The political right is wary of his willingness to change positions whenever it seems to suit him politically, and they properly see Obamacare as merely a national application of the Romneycare that Romney sponsored in Massachusetts.  So while they want a Republican in the White House, they aren't resting there.  Tens of millions of dollars have already been spent against Democratic incumbents and candidates for the Senate and House of Representatives, and they are prepared to spend tens of millions more to keep the House and take over the Senate.

Here's what's going on as I see it, and this is my blog, so, you know...  These folks have learned that divided government doesn't work.  This is a lesson that monopolists during the industrial revolution learned.  Being in complete control makes life really easy.  Teddy Roosevelt broke up those business monopolies, but only American voters can keep a check on government.  So the strategy is to control all three branches of government and then pass the laws they believe will make it very hard for the opposition to take it back.

State governments have been playing their parts already.  The voter fraud laws that Republican states have been passing are thinly veiled attempts to suppress turnout among the elderly, poor and young voting blocks that generally vote Democrat.  These laws are no more than modern versions of the poll tax of yore.  There is no voter fraud in the United States to speak of.  The old party machines that registered dead people have all been demolished.

The GOP members of Congress have focused on pushing right wing social issues, and those who tell us to shrug it off as mere campaign rhetoric are being disingenuous because if the Republicans get control of the Senate and White House and continue to control the House, they have promised to enact these laws.

Unlike too many liberals, the Republicans understand that the key issue in this and any other election is who will be appointing the judges, not just to the Supreme Court, but to the lower courts too.  They have failed to fill judgeships under the Obama Administration because their agenda demands that they hold off until they take the Presidency so those appointments will be of ultra right wing jurists and overturning decades of settled law can accelerate even more than it has under the Roberts Court.

What I'm saying here is that there is a right wing agenda that has been developing over the years since the ascendance of Ronald Reagan, who couldn't win a primary in today's GOP by the way.  Their patience is paying off.  The press has been cowed into timidity, except for Fox News the aggressive coordinating mouthpiece for the radical right.  The American public has been pushed to the right by the inability of a gutless, spineless Democratic leadership to press the cause of liberalism.

Only concerted efforts to inform and convince American voters that their interests are and have always been best advanced by liberals.  Not only will it take money to help neutralize the plutocrats that dominate the political process but it will also take organizing and hitting the streets.  We need to pitch in if we want to protect our rights.