Barbarians inside the gate

Next time Dick Cheney or barbarians like him claim that torture (or whatever euphemism they prefer) is 'necessary,' remind him of this...

Bent over fans finally stand up

The new baseball stadia in Queens and the Bronx were built thanks to nearly a combined $2 BILLION ($2,000,000,000) in tax-free bonds, which will end up costing the New York City alone about $500 million in forfeited tax revenues on top of the $150 million in state and city tax money that directly subsidized the projects.

Much like war profiteers and Wall St., the business of sports represents the socialization of risk and the privatization of profits. How much reverse Robin Hood plundering can we take?

What do the denizens of New York City get out of all the hundreds of millions in public money that's been poured into these entertainment venues?

A ticket in the front nine rows at the new Yankee Stadium can cost as much as $2625 a game. The highest priced Mets' ticket is a mere $495... though at least their lowest ticket price is $11.

By contrast, the highest price ticket to next year's soccer World Cup final is $2500. So attending the world's most prestigious single sports contest costs less than an May game between the Yankees and the mighty Kansas City Royals.

The good thing is that the fans voted with their feet. Not many of them seem willing to take out a second mortgage on their home to buy a ticket to a baseball game... to say nothing of exorbitant parking and concessions prices.

Major League Baseball's talking head Bud Selig is meeting with the Mets and the Yankees. Apparently Selig is among the many who's noticed the rash of empty premier seats in Gotham's newest coliseums.

Still, an ostrich speaking on behalf of the Yankees removed her head from the sand long enough to refuse to comment. "We’re still not talking about ticket prices," she quacked.

American sports are awash with socialistic ideas like salary caps, luxury taxes, college drafts (the worse you are, the greater your potential reward), massive public subsidies for private venues scam to say nothing of the anti-meritocratic concept of playoffs and the closed, cartel structure of the entire franchise system. Some of these restraints are designed, proponents claim, to keep expenses down. If they're so effective, how come ticket prices continue to skyrocket?

This is in stark contrast to soccer in Europe and most of the rest of the world which has none of this (except public financing of stadia in some places and playoffs in a few) and is much more meritocratic in its overall operations. Incidentally, soccer tickets in most parts of the world are still fairly reasonably priced. The notable exception is England, which has seen ridiculous ticket prices in recent years and, not coincidentally, decreased attendances for many clubs.

That said, it's nice to know that a tiny bit of capitalism still applies in American sports... even if the fans are the only ones applying it.

Do people know their votes are being tossed in the trash?

Dealing with challenged absentee ballots in the 20th Congressional District special election continues. Democrat Scott Murphy leads by 273 votes as of this morning with over 1550 ballots left to count (or not).

Initially, Republican Jim Tedisco's campaign targeted college students at Skidmore College in Saratoga, claiming that the students improperly claimed residency within the district. Given that full-time college students live at their college more than half the year, I'm not sure how 'improperly' is defined.

According to North Country Public Radio, Tedisco's new strategy centers around challenging the ballots of people with second homes in the district.

Apparently, his argument is that people who primarily live outside the district but have second homes in the district can not be legitimate voters, but they can be legitimate Congressmen.

In his report, NCPR's Brian Mann noted that judges traditionally give wide latitude to voters (though apparently not to petition signatories). In other words, the default position is that a vote should count unless there's a compelling reason otherwise.

And that's the way it should be. New York's electoral law, which I've frequently called for overhauling, is pretty vague on all this. My personal opinion is that even if a voter has two residences, his or her vote should count as long as they've consistently voted in this district. They should only be disqualified if they voted elsewhere last November and tried to vote here in March.

If the law says voters can "district shop" in much the same way Congressional candidates can, then we can't change the rules in the middle of the game.

But what interests me is this. When a ballot is challenged by either campaign, is the voter made aware of this? Does he have any recourse? I would loathe to have my ballot challenged by some lawyer hack and disqualified by a judge without me even being made aware of this? How can voters be completely disenfranchised without even being given a chance to defend the legitimacy of their vote?! If I'm wrong, please correct me, but I am almost certain this does not happen.

I wonder if the candidates in this and other close elections would be so eager to casually challenge absentee votes willy nilly if they knew they might have to meet that voter, that potential future constituent, look him in the eye and face his contempt.

Even criminals get a chance to defend themselves before being stripped of their civic rights.

Days of Pabst and roses

Public broadcasting famously likes to brag about his it's "non-commercial." It has underwriters and sponsors, but not "advertisers."

Public radio and TV affiliates regularly ask for money. They hold fund drives to tell you how great it is that you can watch this or that splendid concert "without commercial interruption"... and then spend 10 minutes asking for your money.

As a big fan of public radio and member of three stations, I accept this state of affairs as a necessary evil.

Public radio also likes to portray its audience as more educated and more affluent, essentially of a higher class.

Yet guess who's an advertiser... er... "sponsor" of NPR.org, National Public Radio's website?

The Beast!

I'm not sure of the ethics of a public broadcaster advertising beer "sponsorships," though I suppose it's less ethically questionable than accepting money for energy or pharmaceutical drug companies (which is also seen in public broadcasting).

But this is not Sam Adams, not Guinness, not just any beer. Pabst Blue Ribbon is one of the most popular beers of cheap college fraternity keg parties across the nation.

Maybe this is NPR's attempt to counter criticisms that it's elitist.

An evolution of attitudes on gay marriage?

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

This month has seen important victories for gay rights' advocates, notably the decisions by the Iowa Supreme Court and the Vermont legislature to legalize same-sex marriage. The provoked the National Organization for Marriage (heterosexual only, of course) to move up its planned ad campaign.

I generally try to go easy on people who seem earnest (though maybe I shouldn't... see MLK quote above). But the NOM ad (which can be viewed here) provoked only one reaction. Not anger or fury or disgust, but hysterical laughter. Menacing music. Apocalyptic imagery. Sky-is-falling rhetoric. I'm sure if they believed that global warming was real, they would've blamed gays for that too. In parts of it, I honestly don't know how The Onion or Stephen Colbert would've done it any differently.

Despite such unintentional humor, or perhaps because of it, the tide toward equal rights for gays seems to be turning. New York Gov. David Paterson re-introduced a bill that would legalize gay marriage in this state. No doubt, its timing was designed to prop up his personal unpopularity.

But the mere fact that being pro-gay marriage is now seen as an issue that can BOOST your popularity is an example of how much things have evolved... or should I say, been intelligently designed.

A recent poll revealed that only 19 percent of New Yorkers opposed any form of legal recognition for gay couples. New York is certainly one of the more liberal states. But a person or issue doesn't get 81 percent statewide numbers without significant support in the fairly conservative upstate.

Tellingly, this this piece from The Adirondack Daily Enterprise on how a fourth Assemblywomen from the conservative North Country, three of whom are Republican, have come out in favor of the governor's gay marriage bill. I'm not sure exactly how many Assembly members the North Country has, but I can't imagine it would much more than four.

This won't change the dynamic of voting in Albany. The gay marriage bill already has overwhelming support in the Assembly, which passed the bill two years ago. It's in the Senate where it might not pass because of a couple of conservative Democrats, unless the leadership can pick off a few Republican votes.

But if legislators from the conservative North Country feel they can take a stand in favor of equal rights without jeopardizing their jobs via a strong primary challenge, then maybe things really are moving in the right direction.

In 2007, my local Assemblywoman, Republican Teresa Sayward, stunned observers by making a moving and impassioned speech in favor of gay marriage. She explained how her views had evolved via her relationship with her gay son. The right was outraged. The Conservative Party refused to endorse her in the 2008 election, even though she votes their position over 90 percent of the time.

The right predicted, in some cases promised, that the vote would be her political demise in this conservative district. In the 2008 general election, 32,029 people cast a legal vote for a candidate in the election for her seat.

She won 99.998 percent of those votes.

She ran unopposed in the primary too.


Update: This 19 pct. opposition to all forms of official recognition for gay couples is even more surprising considering the fact that Catholics, white evangelicals and black Protestants combine to comprise nearly 60 pct. of New York state's population. So this makes you wonder if the rank-and-file of these religious groups might be more open-minded than their leadership.


Further update: The Daily News Daily Politics' blog reports that the Empire State Pride Agenda is enlisting members of the clergy in Massachusetts to push back against claims that passage of gay marriage in New York will force religious institutions to peform same-sex ceremonies against their will.

Bob Conner at Planet Albany blog offers a different take on gay marriage and other issues that a number of Catholics are concerned about.

Congrats to Post-Star editor for Pulitzer

Talk about stories that make you do a double take.

The Post-Star's editorial page editor Mark Mahoney was named this year's winner of the Pulitzer Prize for "excellence in editorial writing."

Bear in mind, this is not some state or regional award but rather The Big One.

It's no secret that I've never been a big fan of his editorial style in general, though his editorials on open government and freedom of information are usually quite good. It would be churlish of me to withhold congratulations to him.

Mahoney is the only person from a small town paper to win a Pulitzer this year.

I wonder...

... why elections and politics seem to bring out the worst in otherwise decent people?

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean people really aren't out to get you

One of the books I'm presently reading is Chief of Station, Congo: Fighting the Cold War in a Hot Zone by Larry Devlin. Devlin was the first CIA agent in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, arriving five days after the country's independence from Belgium and beginning of its descent into chaos, chaos that was not entirely of its own making.

I'm not inclined to be sympathetic to a CIA special operations agent but it's an interesting read about a fascinating time. His take on the events is exactly what you'd expect but his candor is impressive.

Not surprisingly for a CIA agent, Devlin didn't think much of then-Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba. He didn't see Lumumba as a communist but thought he was erratic and naive and thus made the country vulnerable to Soviet influence.

Devlin complained [Lumumba's] paranoia infected troops who saw spies everywhere.

But then later adds that he received several messages from Director [of the CIA Allen] Dulles advising us that policy-makers shared our view that that we should to remove Lumumba from power.

He quoted a memo from Dulles stating that CIA headquarters concluded that his removal must be an urgent and prime objective and that under existing conditions, this should be a high priority of covert action.

Devlin added that he and his colleagues were already monitoring parliament and encouraging and guiding the actions of various parliamentary opposition groups that we had penetrated. We were also using Jacques [an editor] to insert anti-Lumumba articles in the country's leading newspaper.

The author also pointed out that [a]round this time one of our agents told us that a group of anti-Lumumba leaders had prepared a plan to assassinate him but then went on to lament that Lumumba's rival, President Joseph Kasavubu, was reluctant to endorse it.

Bear in mind that all this was after the country's two richest provinces had already declared independence, at the behest of influential Belgian mining interests.

So if Lumumba, who was kidnapped, tortured and finally assassinated a few months later, was "paranoid," then perhaps it was with good reason.