What these 3 franchises have in common, besides their geographic proximity, is that they play in stadiums that sit next to  abandoned stadiums that have been deemed obsolete or, in the Jets case, next to the stadium they’ll occupy next season, as their current home is due to be mothballed following the current campaign.

So in this era of gargantuan government deficits, whether national or local, government largesse has been extended to the fat cats who own professional teams, while government belt tightening causes increasingly crowded classrooms, decreasing social services, and higher property taxes.

It’s not like the pro teams couldn’t live without their new digs; they just felt they needed more luxury boxes and softer seats to satisfy their elite season ticket holders.  And yes, I’m aware that building the new stadiums required a labor force that had two years of steady work.  Ask them now how they feel about the ultimately toxic combination of their current unemployment and their kids receiving a sub-par education that takes the “D” out of American Dream.

It’s a poor reflection on our system and society when we subsidize the class that doesn’t need subsidizing, while imposing harsher burdens on the class that does.

And it’s an indication of our shortsightedness as we slowly destroy the middle class workers/consumers that have kept this country humming.

We”ll keep humming, but it’s no longer a happy tune.

                          

No bumper music today. No time for gussied up production. Some things are too important to wait on and this is one of them.

I’d be shirking my duties if I didn’t get into the ugly and nationally embarrassing unintended consequences of the Obama presidency. Unintended consequences, by the way, is just a fancy name for outcomes that weren’t expected or desired as a result of a particular action. In this case, that particular action, which is producing some putrid side effects that reflect poorly on more Americans than I’m comfortable thinking about, was the election of the first black president of the United States.

This past Sunday, Maureen Dowd, who I don’t particularly enjoy reading (I find her kind of snarky), opened the mainstream media floodgates with her piece on the racism fueling the anti-Obama movement, including the anti-health care reform protests, and the anti-government intervention tea parties, among others. A lot of anti’s.

Jimmy Carter, another character I have my differences with, but who also happens to be an 85 year old white southerner with no fear of speaking his mind, confirmed that from his vantage point, only a fool couldn’t see the racism that runs through the roots of the anti-Obama groundswell.

And then CNN picked up the ball, and they’re running with it big time, featuring a Klansman type who forgot his hood named Mark Williams. Monday they had him on a panel with Gergen and Carville; last night he went one on one with Roland Martin. The unmitigated hatred for Obama flows out of this guy’s pores, and he’s a wily, clever bastard. On TV at least, he stays millimeters and milliseconds away from dropping his euphemisms and going straight to raw hate speech. On his web site he doesn’t bother holding back. Ugly stuff.

And he’s got plenty of followers. Under the guise of representing the working stiff, and that’s his description, “the working stiff who pays the bills”, he’s tapped into a whole bunch of folks who, especially now that their personal economic outlooks aren’t all that bright, are ripe for the picking.

Which raises some difficult but necessary questions.

Who among the Obama supporters, over half of the Americans who came out to vote last November, foresaw what, in retrospect, was the very easy to predict emergence of the racism that still lies just beneath the surface of tens of millions in this country?

Did any of his supporters, of which I was one, whether they were in Obama’s inner circle, people who worked on the campaign, college students, union workers, black or white, take into account the highly combustible combination of a black president and a severe economic crisis?

And, in 20/20 hindsight, would this awareness of the almost inevitable re-surfacing of racial tensions have changed anyone’s vote, either out of fear (because Mark Williams and his crew are pretty damn scary) or out of the sad but quite possibly true understanding that the country wasn’t ready for a black president?

Clearly, racism and sexism are still running neck and neck, judging from a recent quote about Hillary attributed to President Bush by one of his former speechwriters, in which Bush was heard to say something to the effect of “Wait till her fat ass is sitting at this desk”. But there’s a precedent for Hillary; her name was Margaret Thatcher. There’s no such precedent for Barack Obama.

It’s time for all good men and women, black or white, rich or poor, Republican or Democrat, to forcefully declare that the issues before us will be debated and decided based on the merits. It’s time for all good men and women to reject catering to or cowering in the face of Mark Williams and his ilk, who are nothing but white supremacists masquerading as populists.

It’s time for all Americans to dig deep and wrench out the best in themselves, however difficult that may be while dealing with economic hardships that can easily cause them to blame others, instead of displaying the fabled American quality of picking one’s self up by one’s bootstraps and taking responsibility for getting back on the horse.

We either get civil real quickly, or get suited up for some very uncivil times ahead.

Better to face things now, or lie face down in them later.

                          

I pay my taxes every year with begrudging acceptance. I’m aware of the umbrella of security my tax dollars pay for. I’m grateful for the military, the libraries, the arts, the social services, the emergency services, and, if needs be, the basic necessities that are provided to me and my fellow citizens, in large part because of our tax dollars. I’m still not crazy about parting with the money. But until now, it seemed like a fair swap, $600 hammers notwithstanding.

This year my begrudging acceptance is morphing into raw fury. Paying taxes has turned from a civic duty to a nauseating leap of faith.

Now make no mistake, I’m a charitable sort. So much so that my accountant just informed me that the percentage of my income donated to charitable causes is high enough, for someone in my modest income bracket, to raise a red flag in the IRS dungeon deep within the bowels of the Treasury building.

Clearly I’m not adverse to lending a helping hand. I’m just not big on lending a trillion dollars.

I have no problem having my tax dollars pay for the victims of natural disasters. Following Katrina, and despite the horrific ineptitude of Brownie and Bushie, I’ve never for a moment regretted my money being used in the attempt to salvage what was left of the lives of folks I’ve never met and may well never meet. I’ll never fly in the space shuttle, but I’m happy to contribute to the well being of those who do. I’m happy to contribute to raw scientific research that may (or may not) lead to polished and societally useful applications.

Disease cures, time machines, environmental fixes, bring ‘em on; mi dinero es su dinero.

But paying taxes this year is different. It’s going to be impossible to figure out which distressed homeowners were duped, dumb, or avaricious, and treat each category accordingly. It’s going to be impossible to weed out the shady mortgage brokers, and the white-shoe firm hotshots who bundled together a bunch of toxic waste and sold them as bouquets of roses. And what exactly do you do with the greedy idiots who bought the stuff? Recapitalize them with your money, and with mine?

Yet our tax dollars are going to be used in ways even the best and the brightest can’t figure out, let along articulate. Geithner was one high IQ joke in his address to the nation.  Not Mensa’s finest hour.

I think the shoe’s on the other foot this year. There’s probably a statute or two on the federal, state, and local books that makes it illegal for me to call for a moratorium on tax payments until the government gets its act together, so I won’t do that.

That said, it would certainly be righteous for the citizens of this nation to demand that our government fully explain, in terms that are clear to PhD’s in economics and Wal-Mart cashiers alike (and given the rash of layoffs, there may be some individuals who are both), exactly how the government plans to use our money this year.

And they should tell us before April 15th.

This year, that should be their due date.

If they don’t, interest and penalties, withdrawn from their salaries, should accrue for each and every public official who lives off the public dime, until such time as they set themselves, and us, straight. And if they have trouble paying their bills, they can wake up in a nervous sweat just like the rest of us.

No taxation without justification. Tea party anyone?

                          

A divorce followed by a re-marriage may be preferable to the cacophonous, never ending, and unprecedented bickering this polarized union’s going through. What I’m hearing isn’t spirited debate, it’s poorly disguised hate speech.

I get daily news feeds from both Newsmax (an up and coming right wing rag whose only redeeming quality is that Ben Stein writes a monthly column for them) and Air America (the left wing policy wonk platform with fewer listeners than employees). The vitriol within their headlines and content point to a national marriage that would be dissolved in a New York minute due to irreconcilable differences.

Examples, first from Newsmax:

Obama Nomination Papers are Perjurious, Gingrich: Obama’s Attack on Medical Civil Liberties, Rove Calls Biden Liar, Obama Wrongly Called Our Nation Arrogant, Castros Want to Help Obama, Obama Lies To Gun Owners As Holder Reveals Gun Attack Plan, The fight to save our county from Obama starts in Here and Now, Rush Tells NY to Drop Dead, Obama Readies Plans for Social Chaos, and the topper: O.B.A.M.A. One Big — Mistake America

And from Air America:

Al Qaeda and Taliban Hosted by US Companies, Hundreds More $140 Million Obsolete Jets Ordered, Marc Maron to Glenn Beck: You Are a Fascist Clown, Here’s How To Call for Rove’s Arrest, and this slice of through the looking glass journalism: Fox News today announced that it will adopt a Malawi child to show the world how cool news organizations “do it,” the company said in a press release. “The idea,” Fox News Channel President Roger Ailes said, “is that we can be as cool and newsworthy as Madonna.”

Ratings over rationality, popularity over productive discourse. Punditry over people and the quality of their lives. If this continues, let alone escalates, we’re up the proverbial creek.

But wait; checking my inbox this morning, I find, miracle of miracles, a glimmer of hope, as Newsmax, counter to its usual tendencies, declares:

Al Franken, New York Race Proves GOP Is in Danger

                          

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Despite its precarious condition, General Motors had the ways and means to use internal staff and external consultants to put together a coherent and viable proposal. It’s naive to think otherwise. Lobbyists, bankruptcy attorneys, and creative bean counters were at their beck and call, for fees which a fraction of the bailout monies they’ve received would have paid for. But GM didn’t want to be solely responsible for the cuts that would have had to be made in order to get the government nod.

Enter DC, stage left. The plan’s not viable, they say. Off with Wagoner’s head, they say. Decisive action, at least on the surface, that doesn’t yet alienate the GM employees, who a cynic would say are seen as voters, not workers and families with an uncertain future. What’s next for the company is not presented immediately, but as the week proceeds, with the President safely distanced in London for the G-20 economic conference, it’s clear that GM is headed, with the government at the wheel, for a carefully orchestrated declaration of bankruptcy. A bankruptcy that’s meant to occur without causing the kind of panic that one would expect to follow such a declaration from an American industrial icon.

So far the massage is working. No riots in Detroit (at least not yet), although the internal psychological state of its residents must be fragile at best. The blame has been spread around to the degree that there’s no one party to whom all can point with an accusing finger.

When many are perceived to share the blame, no one has to shoulder more than a fraction of it. So all parties get more of pass than any of them deserve.

Nicely choreographed, nicely executed. Appearance trumps reality.

But all will pay down the line for either betting that we’re more ostrich than human, or for being more ostrich than human. The longer the short term denial, the greater the eventual pain.

Act II should be a doozy.

                          

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There’s a kind of cognitive dissonance that results in a headache at best, and a heartache at worst, when one thinks of the hundreds of thousands of unemployed auto workers licking their wounds alongside the partying corporate and sports honchos.

Yes, there’s a positive side to this, as millions of dollars in commerce is coming to Detroit, an area starved for both commercial revenue and sales tax from that revenue. And the locals will embrace the temporary bump, while gritting their teeth knowing that it’s too fleeting to make a substantial and long lasting difference in their lives.

Michigan State earning it’s way to the Final Four also presents a study in contrasts with the likes of the auto executives who let the world, particularly the Japanese and Koreans, pass them by while they themselves crawled along in the slow lane, either devoid of innovative ideas or enacting them at a snail’s pace.

Had Michigan State lost, they’d be out, headed home, essentially fired. Their appearance at the big dance is a shining example of pure capitalism, survival of the fittest, at its best. The fact that it took 8 years and the government to get rid of Rick Wagoner as the head of GM is capitalism at its worst. Cronyism trumping creativity. Government intervention instead of free market forces running the show.

Michigan State is my sentimental favorite next weekend.  It’d be nice to bring Motown’s residents a tiny sliver of joy in the midst of their troubles.

                          

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As he spoke I pictured the discourse in this country morphing from a competitive but friendly game of tug of war, with a couple of kids at each end of a fairly short rope, into mobs of men pulling violently on a thick cable, with the gap between the sides and the number of rabid combatants continually increasing as time passed.  Brother against brother stuff.

President Obama’s just unveiled budget probably had more “change” than his most ardent supporters had expected, and likely left even them with dropped jaws. Couple this with Limbaugh’s increasingly divisive preaching, whether on his show or in today’s speech, and we’ve got developments that don’t bode well for a nation whose goal should be to constructively disagree while finding common ground on which to move forward.

In terms of destructive power, Reverend Wright is a lightweight.  Limbaugh’s the heavyweight champ.

                          

The Democrats are making a huge mistake entertaining ideas about going forward with their attempt to reinstate The Fairness Doctrine. The purpose of said doctrine is to try to even out the bias of the content currently heard on the political talk airwaves. Think of it as the Dems futile attempt, through legislation, to overwhelm the might of Rush, Sean, Laura, Levin, and The Salem Radio Network crew, among others. All right wing, all masters of the medium. The left’s got no one with that kind of national penetration, with maybe Randi Rhodes having the knowledge and radio chops to compete, and Maddow and Olbermann making a stand on the cable TV side.

The criteria for getting air time and national syndication is pretty simple: attract listeners, lots of listeners. Radio’s a business. There’s nothing inherent in their material that accounts for the overwhelming advantage of the right. They’re just better at presenting their slant in entertaining and captivating ways.

I know Rush Limbaugh’s twisting the truth like a baker making pretzels, and Sean Hannity sounds way too smart to believe the lowest common denominator “you’re a great American” pablum he’s dispersing, but they, along with their compatriots, have found a groove that’s working, so there’s no reason to stop their mouth music. Their stations and syndicators care about ratings, not well reasoned and rational thinking.

The Dem’s mistake is trying to legislate talent under the guise of legislating equal time to polarized points of view. What they should be doing is taking Air America (which no one can turn around given the pool of insipid policy wonks the left offers as radio hosts) and treat it as Microsoft should treat Vista: junk it and come up with something compelling that justifies its own existence.

It’s as if the left is admitting defeat in the talk radio space and blaming it on the content, rather than the presentation of the content. The election demonstrated that the Dems were clearly on the winning side of the policy debate. And since these days more Americans get their news from talk radio than from traditional print media (witness what seems like a death a day of big city newspapers), the moderate-left politicos need to see the airwaves as a meritocracy they’ve got to compete in more effectively. In this case, like it or not, the messenger is as important as the message conveyed.

I don’t usually have much in the way of fondness for Rush’s positions, but he’s a hoot to listen to. The left needs equally attractive on-air characters, not legislation that’s the air-wave equivalent of book burning.

                          

President Obama, 2/17/09, 1PM, MST:

My Fellow Americans,

I have before me the economic stimulus plan approved by Congress. However, despite the hard work of members of that esteemed body, it is not yet focused enough on creating jobs or immediately stimulating the economy to warrant my signature.

Make no mistake, while much of what’s in the package is not what has irresponsibly been described as pork, it is policy, not stimulus, and should be dealt with at a future point in time through appropriate legislative channels.

Also, as the purpose of true bipartisanship is gaining valuable input from brilliant but dissenting minds in times of crisis, my initial intent and promise of one America has not been kept by the process that created this crucial piece of legislation.

Therefore, like the shuttle commander and mission controller who, prior to liftoff, are not happy with what they’re seeing on the gauges in front of them , I’m stopping the launch clock.

We can do better.

And like the shuttle, but magnified by lives in the millions and dollars in the billions, there’s too much at stake to proceed without first making sure that we’ve done everything humanly possible to assure that we achieve our goals, with as close to laser-like precision as we imperfect souls can muster.

It is my hope and belief that a delay of a few weeks, a delay that leads to a more effective fulfillment of the stated goals of the package, will be seen not as a reluctance to take immediate action, but as a vital fine tuning that gets the American economy, followed by the world economy, back on track.

Thank you, and God bless the United States of America.

                          

Hi. Hope all is well.

Here’s my concept:

No more “one” America. Its just not going to work with the obstructionist GOP. Divide the country in two, like the proposed two-state solution in the Middle East.

Let the GOP have their swath in the midwest and south, based on the 2008 election results, and the Dems get the rest.

Let the GOP run their entity with no taxes and no central gov’t, and let’s see how far they get.

Let the Dems run their entity based on solid democratic principles, and, in the same tradition that made us the greatest country on the face of the earth, help those who need help while leveling the playing field.

Then let’s watch the number of people who apply for a change in their citizenship. Dollars to proverbial doughnuts the GOP population base would shrink rapidly.

His idea’s probably too elegant and contains too much common sense to come to pass, but it certainly does, in the spirit of this site, destroy the box.

Happy President’s Day, and try to grab hold of what’s left of the spirits of Washington and Lincoln, before we lose our way entirely.