Shocked by the refs? Where've you been the last 30 years?
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Shocked by the refs? Where've you been the last 30 years?
To every football fan out there who watched in shock and the opposite of awe Monday night as replacement refs stole a game from the Green Bay Packers even after the Seattle Seahawks' Golden Tate failed to steal the football in the end zone, who set Twitter on fire after the blown call and vowed to boycott both NFL Commission Roger Goodell and his local bookie, who groans as a never-ending pasta bowl of "booth reviews" drags afternoon games into prime time and who wants their state lawmaker or President Obama or some higher power to ban scab officials, for the sake of the Republic, I ask only one thing:
Um, where the hell have you been for the last 31 years or so?
Outsourcing an important skilled job to inexperienced workers willing to do it for lower pay? Check. Billionaire CEOs determined to break a union over about as many dollars as are buried in the couch of their 50-yard-line luxury suite? Check. Trying to take away employees' pension plan and require them to gamble their future on Wall Street? Check. Putting an inferior, schlocky product on the market and not going broke by underestimating the suckerhood of the American people to continue buying their $117 tickets, watching their cable TV network and buying their sponsors' lite beer?
Checkmate.
Let's do an official review. First they (by "they" I mean Ronald Reagan) came for the air traffic controllers, way back in 1981, and you didn't speak out because either you didn't fly or you just figured you'd knock back an extra martini at the airport bar. Then they came for the assembly line worker, and you didn't speak out because you were too busy watching the falling prices at Wal-Mart. Then they came for the public employees in Wisconsin, and you didn't speak out because (insert "cheesehead" joke here.) Then they came for the teachers in Chicago and you didn't speak out because you were waiting in vain to be clued in by some politician who wasn't in the back pocket of the hedge funds.
Then they came for the NFL refs -- and you went bat-guano crazy. You talked consumer boycott. You called your congressman and begged him to do something. You pleaded with Big Government to do the right thing, to force the greedy pro football owners to take the regular refs back, to do the right thing by these noble working men who just want a fair shake.
It's a little late, guys.
Let's be honest, when the NFL owners decided to lock out the refs rather than bargain in good faith back in June, you probably weren't paying close attention, were you? That's OK -- in 2012, a gaggle of rich guys trying to crush a small labor union is the ultimate dog-bites-man story, even in the high profile world of pro football. At this point in the history of American capitalism, it reminds me of a story that a prize-winning investigative reporter back on Long Island used to tell me about the mobsters he'd covered, that they were the kind of guys who drove around with massive rolls of hundred-dollar bills and threw wooden slugs into the tollbooths on the Triborough Bridge.
Why? Because they could.
And so why won't the NFL negotiate with the referees' union over its pay demand that amounts to roughly $100,000 a team per year, or roughly the price for a gimp-kneed backup linebacker? Why is it trying to make the refs quit their other jobs and work full-time, without paying a full-time salary, and trying to convert the union's pension plan into a 401K?
It's not because the $9-billion-a-year NFL needs the piddling amount of extra cash. It's because they can.
It reminds me of the time in the 1980s that an airline company was bought by investors including a high-flying (no pun intended) new venture capital firm. A couple of the pilots with concerns about airline safety sought to form a union -- an idea which management greeted, according to a court's finding, with a coercive effort that included telling the pilots it might freeze salaries, bonuses and benefits, and then two of the union organizers were flat-out fired. The company was called Key Airlines, the venture capital came from Bain Capital, whose founder Willard Mitt Romney was also a Key director. Now Romney wants to be president of all of us.
Is this a great country or what?
But now one terrible blown call on Monday Night Football, and everyone is suddenly Norma Rae or something? You say you want to boycott the NFL? That's great. That worked (briefly) for Caesar Chavez and the grape pickers of his United Farm Workers, but it took a lot of given Sundays. The team owners who pal around with Mitt Romney are counting on your apathy, just like they did down at the factory and at the airport.
If you want to fix football, you're probably going to have to fix America. And that, my friend, is a full-contact bloodsport.
"Then vote for him"
Or not vote for either, and act as a check on their power as intended. Voting for Obama is a tacit approval of these policies. He knows he can ignore any criticism of them.— RG- "Look at Athens today and think about that."
This is hardly analogous. Those protesting in Athens are expressing anger at cutbacks, not gov't excess. They don;t seem to realize that by rejecting the bailout conditions, they won;t receive funding and will either go belly up or be forced to leave the Euro. Both options would also lead to drastic cuts.— RG - Brilliant, RG. America is saved! JK
As MSL said, we can't vote out the MIC. Both candidates support it, both will carry out the same military policies, although Romney might start another war to boot, but who's counting.
I don't know how we get the MIC's death grip off our nation, but I agree with you that something needs to be done.— Hamlet - There are other candidates, some actually within the parties, who support reigning in the MiC. — RG
- And I could run my dog, he's against the MIC too. I know there are some good candidates, RG, but they have zero chance of winning. — Hamlet
- But ask yourself why they stand no chance of winning. They'd be more useful breaking into a drone factory and destroying the hardware. In fact I've helped represent persons who stood trial for that very act of conscience vis a vis a missile factory - not to 'get them off' as they were already prepared to serve their time - but to advance their message by raising the necessity defense at trial.
- It's been said that over $300,000,000 exchanged hands on Monday night after the last play. That's what I call having (pig)skin in the game!!!— RufusG
- "Trying to compare the NFL ref thing to regular unions is absurd." . . . . It's your attempt to distinguish it that's absurd. Collective bargaining is a natural right, whether the parties are rich, poor, public or private, whether the product is luxury, necessity, service or goods. If you believe it threatens a vital public interest, then perhaps that interest should not be met by public employment within the private labor market. Perhaps we should instead draft teachers, policemen, firemen, air traffic controllers, as we would draft soldiers to raise an army.
- Funny part is, I jokimgly asked my daughter who would win and if it would be a cover or outright. She said Seattle outright.— RG
- "This is hardly analogous. Those protesting in Athens are expressing anger at cutbacks, not gov't excess." . . . . The distinction is merely your political point of view. You seem to have missed my point entirely. When the political process offers no real choices, you rebel against the process. Forget Athens, consider our history and the civil rights movement. It began with a woman refusing to give up her seat on a bus. Did you refuse to pay your sales tax recently RG?
- ==]] Great read on refusing to vote for Obama, [[==
Facile article is more like it.
It supports conclusions that lack even a cursory effort to ground them in important context - including the notion that voting for Johnson is somehow morally superior.
While Romney and Obama would likely not be much different on quite a few issues - issues I consider important and their likely positions to be wrong - they are different on other issues of substance. Those other issues are meaningful to me, and will differentially impact tens of millions of Americans.
Voting for Johnson will have no paradigm-changing impact. None whatsoever. And even beyond that unarguable reality, it is also highly doubtful that in reality he would be any different than Romney and Obama on the issues focused on in the article. You have to look beyond a candidate's rhetoric - as was the case with Obama and no doubt would be the case with Romney.
It is pathetically naive to think that there wouldn't be a similar gap between Johnson's rhetoric and his actions as president.
I respect the personal preference to not vote for a lesser of two evils. I have often taken such a stance myself in voting decisions. What is laughable is when people stake claim to some moral authority by doing so - even more when the self-congratulation is supported by facile argumentation.— Talking point sleuth - "So, voting against the incumbent or abstaining from voting does serve a purpose in changing the paradigm." . . . . Yet it costs you nothing, and nobody is watching you. I suppose you may have even contributed money to your candidate, up to the legal limit, again in private to assuage your conscience. But how do you convince others, in light of the polls? Anonymous commentary on a blog "nobody" reads, again costing you nothing? Isn't your life and liberty worth your convictions?
- "Those other issues are meaningful to me, and will differentially impact tens of millions of Americans."
You condemn making a moral argument, then make one yourself. Electing Obama will not change the paradigm for the working poor. He's been in office for 4 years, and poverty and inequality has risen.
— RG - "What is laughable is when people stake claim to some moral authority by doing so." . . . . That's alright to a point. My point is that it's not enough if you really want to convince me and bring change. Don't judge my choice unless you're putting something meaningful on the line. Otherwise, you're accepting the paradigm, settling merely for the "safety valve" the system offers. The system's already rigged for that.
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