Hooray Blues Traveler. A poignant statement related to today's topic. It seems that Arlen Specter is busy making a jack-ass out of himself again. I watched his appearance a few days ago on Wolf Blitzer in which he said OUT LOUD that the destruction of the illegal New England Patriot's tapes was COMPARABLE TO the destruction of CIA tapes or the destruction of White House emails. That's the kind of stuff you should think to yourself, share a laugh with your buddies, and then go home and put in the file under D for "dumb-ass things to say”.
Arlen just compared (and found more lacking) the ethics of pro-football than our own government. Are you serious? He won’t demand answers of the CIA or the White House, but he will spend thousands upon thousands of tax-payer dollars to have private meetings and possibly government hearings about the NFL. In fact, he's so concerned about the fairness of the NFL that he has suggested he may seek cancellation of the NFL's anti-trust exemption. Whether he does or not isn't really the point. The point is he's already put time and energy into this that would be better spent carrying out the business of the country. We elected him (I didn't - Pennsylvania did) to deal with issues of governance and leadership, not be the football police.
This is a prime example of what government uses for cover to make it look like they’re useful. They’re not really doing anything. They’re not addressing any of the actual problems they were elected to deal with. Those problems are hard and don’t have cheap, fast, easy solutions. The NFL is easy. It’s a single target and everyone can agree that cheating is wrong (whether or not they actually practice that agreement). Steroids in baseball, cheating in football, and the hockey strike are NOT what we expect our politicians to be spending their time on. We have far more pressing matters like a shitty health care system, a trillion dollar war, and millions of kids living in poverty.
This is yet another reason why Americans are apathetic and disgusted with their government. How can you have confidence in a government that spends its time looking into every sports “scandal” that comes along but can’t seem to take the time to agree on its own ethics or answer straight questions about its own behavior? These people cover up their actions, lie (sorry, “hedge the truth”) to the public, do not apologize when they’re wrong (Iraqi WMDs anyone?), and constantly blame the other side for the same shit they just did. Maybe I’ll be a little more inclined to believe that government intervention is helpful in non-governmental situations when they can show that their own behavior matches their rhetoric.
4 comments:
How did this even end up in the government? Isn't the NFL a privite institution?
Yes, the NFL is a private organization. But it's got special exemptions for its business model. Essentially, all of the professional football in America is overseen by the NFL. As such, they are technically a monopoly. They have an exemption from the U.S. to act as a monopoly with immunity from lawsuits. Because of this, the government can technically call for oversight. So it's not completely out of the government purview. It is, however, a waste of time when there are much more important matters to debate and questions to answer. The NFL has rules and regulations in place for this type of behavior. The commissioner made his decision based on those rules. And now the government (well, Arlen Specter) wants to step in and tell them what their rules should be. To me, that's bullcrap. I would agree that government should have some oversight of their BUSINESS MODEL (contracts they sign, fairness in allowing small cities access to teams, etc.) but NOT their rules to deal with infractions. And any way you look at it, this takes up valuable time that could be used to craft an exit strategy or balance the damn budget.
I should add something. The NFL is what is known as a natural monopoly. These are businesses that, by their nature, work more efficiently as monopolies rather than several small, independent companies. Other examples can include electricity companies, water companies, etc. Although you can't say anyone energy company has a monopoly, they monopolize their individual areas of operation.
Because a monopoly, by its very nature, has the potential for abuse by those in charge, natural monopolies are and should be overseen by other authorities and groups. This oversight is to prevent things like un-justified rate hikes.
The NFL falls under this category, and I agree that oversight is good. But the oversight should be on the monopolistic aspects of the business, not on any other aspects. Therefore, I would argue this is a waste of resources. Plus, the NFL leadership took action. Why does the government also feel the need to take action? They can't even get their own house in order. Why should they handle someone else's?
I think the real issue is not what government should/shouldn't police about natural monopolies, but WHEN they do such things.
If the country were not at war, if a recession were not looming, if we weren't engaging in serious discussions about health care and poverty and the future of our nation in an election year, and if a dismaying number of our own congress weren't being indicted and investigated on a variety of charges, THEN maybe a look at the NFL would be in order.
Interesting that some of the same people who consider congressional hearings on this administration's dodgy ethics a waste of precious time and resources in the light of the dire terrorist threat are the same pricks who want to spend a few months and tens of millions of dollars investigating Bill Belichik.
Post a Comment