Happy Festivus!!

I'm gradually making my way back home after another enjoyable Festivus holiday in Michigan with the family. I hope you too had a Happy Festivus.

I figured I would take a minute to comment on the requested topic of taxing CO2 emitters as posed by Fat Al in his Nobel Prize speech. His details of such a tax were little more than what you just read in the previous sentence. I'm sure he has more details on his website but I didn't bother to look because it is more enjoyable to throw around uneducated opinions! I mean, everyone else does so why can't I?

It sounds like a good idea to me but how is it applied. It seems that the concept is similar to other "sin" taxes on tobacco and alcohol. All of these things slowly kill people, the government ends up footing the bill on many of the resulting medical costs, so they tax the shit out of it to attempt to recover the funds paid for care and to dissuade people from the habit. It would seem to me that the pollution tax may be less arbitrary if it was based on pollutants like sulfur, mercury, lead, etc. instead of CO2 because they seem to have a more direct impact on the health of the general population. And perhaps these taxes should be more punitive than for cigarettes and alcohol since people have less control over the hazardous by-products from coal than from ciggies or liquor. I wouldn't be surprised if such taxes already exist but I'm sure they are weak and could use improvement. And if they don't exist, feel free to take my ideas and run with them.

As for the CO2 emissions, we could do that too. But I don't want to just target the obvious offenders such as coal burning power plants and steel mills or the car makers. We should go after the owners of the cars. Tiered tax rates based on fuel economy when purchasing vehicles. I know all the pro-business people will come back with "that will kill companies that drive trucks." I would say that it may kill a few poorly run companies but it will force good companies to innovate and adapt or they will perish too. All the technology is out there but the incentives to use them are not. And of course the new technology will cost more which will cause inflation as the cost is ultimitely passed down to the consumer but the country has never been in a better position to absorb such inflationary pressures as we have been the last few years with the cheap imports and increased productivity we've experienced. Also on the car issue, in the Chicago area all cars are required to go through emissions testing which, if failed, requires the car to be fixed and tested again. This seems to accomplish similar objectives to the tax. Maybe the emissions testing should gradually become stricter. What about a tax on airline tickets based on mileage? The point is that there are many ways to go about arbitrarily taxing pollution but everyone responsible for polluting should pay, not just the "big corporation" scapegoats so popular with many tree huggers.

Gotta Love the Juice (not OJ)

I received a recommendation for my next post but it was another environmental topic so it is on hold. Instead, I’m going to discuss something far more important, the performance enhancing drug scandal in major league baseball. Before you dismiss such a topic as irrelevant, keep in mind that there is a good chance that your kids do or will idolize these guys and attempt to replicate their actions. When I was a kid I knew and mimicked the batting stances of all my favorite players. Good thing I didn’t know they were on the juice or I would weigh 200 pounds now and have a useless liver.

First, I’m glad that Mitchell named players in his report because it makes the whole thing seem much more real. When you flip through page after page of cancelled checks written by players to admitted drug dealers it really drives the point home. Naming the players also shows how little integrity there is in people in the public realm. Half the guys in the report previously denied ever using the stuff. It supports what I’ve always said about celebrities of any kind, the public thinks they know the character of these people based on an attachment they built up through watching TV but the reality is that they can be (and usually are) completely different people offscreen. Look at Mel Gibson. Or any politician. Martha Stewart!! We don’t know anything about these people. They play nice on TV to get big money contracts. Simple as that. And, of course, greed is really the root of this whole scandal. It is just like the mortgage/housing market. When everything is going great there is nobody to step up and say “no.” Owners, players, agents, media, merchandisers, and numerous others had everything to gain with the comeback of baseball after the strike. And it seemed no one had anything to lose. Until, the dust settled and the good times came to an end with a 409 page report. Now there are at least 80 players and a couple drug dealers that have certainly lost a lot. Notice where they fall on the food chain of major league baseball. The owners still have all their profits from the past 10 years of record attendance to go with the record number of homeruns. At least in the mortgage implosion the banks and the consumers both have egg on their face. The real irony here is that when Canseco made these accusations 5 years ago, the players ripped him to shreds and said he was a bitter liar with no integrity. He may too have been motivated by money but he certainly wasn’t the liar in all this.

I find it hard to believe that the pitchers who were getting knocked around year after year still never spoke out against the drug use of the position players. What is even harder to believe is that it is apparent that hundreds of players used drugs and there are probably less than 10 to this day that admit it. I mean come on, have some sack. I heard a Detroit News columnist and Hall of Fame voter comment that since there was no positive drug tests that he is going to assume innocence for all players. How did this guy get a vote for the Hall of Fame? What about the eyewitness testimony, cancelled checks, and the completely unexplainable statistical anomaly for homeruns in the past decade? They mean nothing? Hello, MLB didn’t even test for steroids until 3 years ago so where does he think Mitchell was going to get positive tests. And HGH isn’t even detectable. Which leads to the big question, what happens now? They still can’t test for HGH, unless the players’ union agrees to blood tests. I guess we can only hope that they’ve been embarrassed enough to agree to it.

Sorry the post is so long but I love baseball and I hate gutless liars so I had to write something. Maybe this will scare away some of the "non-affiliated" commenters we've had lately.