Equity Seat Rights

The more I think about this concept, the better it sounds.

For the price of a three-bedroom home with a pool in a leafy suburb, you can now buy something really and truly invaluable. Your own stadium seat.

Earlier this month, the boards of regents at the University of Kansas and the University of California-Berkeley approved plans to fund stadium expansions and renovations by selling something called "equity seat rights." Fans who are approved for financing can buy their seats and pay for them—with interest, of course—over as long as 50 years. Once the seat is paid for, it's yours, just like a house.

If this "mortgage" model catches on, it will mark a radical departure from the past, when most new stadiums were financed with a combination of taxpayer dollars, private loans and corporate sponsorships.

Cal plans to sell about 3,000 seats under the plan and hopes to raise $270 million. The school's best seats cost $175,000 to $220,000 apiece over a 50-year term, while the cheapest sell for $40,000 per seat for a 40-year term. "Without this program, I don't see any way we could secure the funds," said Cal associate athletic director David Rosselli. "We needed a different approach."

Back in the mid-nineties when I lived in Pittsburgh, people were trying to get tax levies passed to fund two new stadiums. The strategies I remember being deployed to talk the voters into passing the levies were having hometown media heroes cry on television about how awful Three Rivers was and radio DJ's prophesying economic catastrophe if we didn't vote to start paying higher retail prices. It was amusing to hear residents living in the buckle of the Rust Belt being preached to about financial collapse seemingly two decades after the fact. The resounding NO from voters didn't keep the sports industrial complex down for long, and ketchup and bank people stepped up to the plate several years later. Plus a bunch of people bought rubble from the demolished hallows of the immaculate reception. I'd say they were trying to lend credence to the famous saying about suckers, but I clearly remember spending $10 or so on an undersized screen-printed hand towel at one point in my life.

This incident reminds me of another which took place in Pittsburgh at about the same time. I recall a small crowd at the software office where I worked gathered around a sales guy who was pulling up his pant leg, accompanied by hushed "oohs" and "aaahs". As I moved closer, a 4-inch diameter, full color Steelers logo was revealed to be tattooed on the outside of his semi-shaved calf. Proud of his permanent, coaster-sized branding he announced, "Now they'd better win, dammit!" Was he a season ticket-holder? Stupid question.

Looking back on this it's fairly obvious that this guy and his cronies should be paying for sports stadiums. And this "Sports Mortgage" idea seems to be just the thing to facilitate their love and devotion. I know that I benefit from the stadiums whenever I get around to watching a game. But since I've bought several nice overpriced Steelers shirts in my time, methinks I can say honestly say that I "gave at the office", at least enough to cover my small slice of entertainment taken.

This makes too much sense

David Freddoso points out a no-brainer, a win-win-win, a common sense approach—whatever you want to call it—to save $54 billion on health care as proposed by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. It's basically a tort reform approach, which means that Obama and most Democrats will automatically be against it since shutting off the money spigot to their big lawyer donors does not represent "change they can believe in". Excerpt:

The list of reforms that CBO considered includes:

• A reform of "joint and several liability." This means that instead of putting one "deep-pocketed" defendant on the hook for everything, each defendant would pay only his fair share according to his liability.


• A $250,000 cap on non-economic damages.


• A cap on punitive damages equal to $500,000 or twice economic damages, whichever is greater.


• A claw-back of money already recovered from insurers.


• A limit on the percentage of judgements and settlements that trial lawyers can pocket.

The CBO report cites studies that already show reduced Medicare costs in states where some or all of these liability reforms have already been implemented. The conclusion:

In the case of the federal budget, enactment of such a package of proposals would reduce mandatory spending for Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Federal Employees Health Benefits program by roughly $41 billion over the next 10 years.

CBO says that the reforms would also increase tax revenues by $13 billion, as premiums drop and a greater share of employees' income becomes taxable take-home pay. The bottom line for the federal government is $54 billion over ten years, including $11 billion this year.

It's been nice, eh

For me, this article first produces a feeling of deep irony. Then it sort of turns into validation; I've always argued that people with means and/or determination will never wait in line for health care. When there's a will there's a way and a means to finance it.

Then my feelings turn toward fear at the last sentence in this paragraph:

Let's hope that by then Canada has expanded its own private option, so Americans will one day be able to visit Alberta for faster, better care. Unless Congress bars that too.

I'm not too scared, however. I always remind myself that I'm part of an angry mob of unruly Americans who are willing to kill to get our way.

Good definition of a "Truther"

I liked this definition from UD of 9/11 truther:

A crazy person who believes the US government committed 9/11. Truthers get their inspiration from a moronic documentary called "Loose Change" which provides no facts whatsoever and has been thoroughly debunked. People who disagree with the truthers are repeatedly called government shills since truthers have no logical argument to counter the evidence.

Truther: 9/11 was an inside job!
Sane person: Prove it.
Truther: There was no plane at the Pentagon, only a missile!
Sane person: There's dozens of witnesses and plane debris was found all over the place.
Truther: ...Well the WTC was a controlled demolition!
Sane person: Why did both buildings collapse from the point of impact then? Pretty crazy the explosives were in the exact spot the plane hit and didn't explode upon impact.
Truther: ...You're just a government shill! Enjoy your FEMA camp when the NWO rolls around!

It's by a dude styling himself troofers be nuts. And guess what? Troofers do be nuts. I know a guy who is a religious Catholic, very active, and was only a little bit looney before about 2 years ago. Then he "saw the light" and now he sends me 9/11 Truther stuff from Alex Jones et al at least twice a week. I'm on his list; he sends this stuff to everyone with a BCC, so at least it's semi-professionally done. As a bonus, I also get the standard fear mongering about H1N1... don't ask. The few times I've responded I get an all caps response back about how I should be asking the Lord to open my eyes to the truth and other meaningless platitudes worthy of question beggars.

To make his emails even easier for me to discount, he uses 20 point Calibri font on all his emails as a baseline. Recently he has obviously desired to urgently increase the urgency of his urgent message, so he has cranked it up to 24 point URGENT CALIBRI BOLD. I remember thinking "Hey, here's a new phenomenon: bitmap inflation." I felt like replying to tell him that using these large fonts is sort of like the Federal Reserve devaluing our currency by the endless printing of fiat greenbacks, but as usual I chickened out. I tell myself it's out of politeness and respect. But I really think he is full-blown bonkers to be broadcasting all these inanities.

One time he included an exclamatory AMEN! inflated to 100 points of inch-high black caps. Believing my light-fingered toddlers had attacked my precious notebook again, I instinctively checked my stash of Sharpies. But momentarily I realized the pious graffito was emanating from my liquid crystal matrix, so it was only the electronic equivalent of Black Crayola on Post-it―or possibly a mixed media collage using cardboard, Elmer's glue and headline typeface incised from the Akron Beacon Journal.

I'm probably overreacting to this poor old chap—he's getting up there in years—but it's on my mind because he just sent me more links to Infowars and Prison Planet and ended with a strained segue to The Chastisement™ and a call to conversion. All of this with zero percent insincerity, I'm fairly sure. I've learned that it's no use telegraphing that I'm not interested in this stuff because I know he feels called by God to blast his message to the ends of the earth via SMTP. How would he answer the Lord on Judgement Day if he took the name of a "lost sheep" off his email list? Still the conspiracy stuff just makes my head itch and I can't help reacting to some degree.

SMDS re: Detroit

Here's a follow-up commentary on my Detroit news from the inimitable Sh*t My Dad Says:

I wanted to see Detroit win. I've been there. It's like God took a sh*t on a parking lot. They deserve some good news.

LOL

I still don't know what he's talking about

Rod Dreher replied to a comment I made to a recent post where he continues his perpetual theme of good conservatism (his) versus bad (mainstream) conservatism. But before I get to the comment, check out this line.

The thing that seems most cult-like to me about this degenerate form of conservatism is the irrepressible urge to denounce anyone who criticizes them, or even questions them, as being the Heretical Other, not just wrong, but despicable.

This seems to be projection par excellence on Rod's part. If you are not sure what I mean, please review Kathleen's excellent points here.

But my comment referenced Rod's discussion of the words elite, elitist, elitism. His first defense of a narrow use of the word is weak. I think every conservative would agree that the great literary works of dead white guys are far better than Maya Angelou's dreck, but this has nothing to do with the pejorative use of the word elitist when used by a conservative to describe, say, the leftist faculty of large universities or the 95% of mainstream network reporters and anchors who were in the tank for Barack Obama during the Presidential election.

To make his argument sound even more ridiculous, Rod then tries to equate being elite to being morally good, which is an extremely uncommon, if not practically non-existent, use of the word. He says:

We should all seek to be elitist in morality, in the sense that we should live up to high standards of truth, justice, charity and so forth.

To which I responded:

Rod, who in the world uses the term 'elitism' to mean moral seriousness and aspiring to perfection in the virtues? This is an example of why people like you and Joe (who?) Carter find yourself talking past mainstream conservatives frequently.

Rod, to his credit, sees my point, but then tilts once more toward the same strawmen.

I see your point, Pauli, but I think mine still stands. By rejecting arguments and criticism they disagree with as "elitist" on their face, without even trying to counter them rationally, these folks send the strong message that thinking is what snobs do, and to prove that you're One Of Us, you have to suspend your critical thinking and join the herd. This is the kind of thing that can both infuriate conservatives and break their hearts when they see black conservatives (for example) having to go through it, being called traitors to the group for questioning the consensus view. Note well that I'm talking about black conservatives whose arguments are not taken seriously enough to question by other blacks. They are prima facie traitors because they don't agree.

That's the kind of thing I'm talking about in intra-conservative disputes. It plays to some of the worst elements of human nature: the "my tribe, right or wrong" impulse, which covers a lot of wrongdoing and sheer stupidity.

I'm not even going to deal with the first paragraph. This continuation of his post is rambling and devoid of examples which actually back up his assertions.

In a sense I agree entirely with his second paragraph, but I see Rod Dreher—author of Crunchy Conservatives—as the primary example of one trying to stir things up vis-à-vis "intra-conservative disputes". As I've mused aloud often to my readers and friends, these disputes are all pretty much a waste of time at this point. Let's put away the fiddles; Rome is on fire.

To sum up my targeted point: words mean something. We can say that America's founders were liberals, but we mean that in a different sense then when we say Senator John Kerry is a liberal. If I want to talk about a brain surgeon or a F-15 pilot being a member of an elite class, I mean something different than when I call Katie Couric an elite, and not just because her salary is twice that of a brain surgeon plus a few fighter pilots.

To the mainstream conservatives I'd only offer the suggestion that they should work on their communication skills with a focus on their vocabulary. Don't overuse a word lest they give liberals and picky people like Mr. Dreher and Mr. Carter a stick with which to swat you. Get a Thesaurus out and look up the word elite. You'll find a lot of the kind of synonyms you want—patrician, aristocrat, privileged class... snob. And my favorite, of course: haut monde. But at the same time be comforted that your argument is obviously sound since pointing out your lack of verbal skills appears to comprise most of their attack plan.

Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition

Yes. That's what I'm talking about.

Pastor Lawrence Adams leads Westside Bible Church. The retired police lieutenant has taken to wearing a gun under his robe.

Recently, Adams responded to a break-in at his church and surprised a burglar carrying out a bag of money. The pastor shot the man in the stomach after the man swung the bag at him. The burglar survived -- and while Adams says he's thankful for that, he points out that he could have been hurt or killed if he had not been armed.

Adams is one of several area clergymen who are carrying weapons. Minister William Revely also carries a gun at church. He says when he's armed, he has peace in more ways than one.

"I feel more comfortable now going out, and I can move with a lot more security," Revely shares. "I don't always have it on me. I have a holster that I use, but I don't always wear that when I'm preaching."

The story ends with the understatement of the year.

Detroit has seen a rise in crime over the past few years.

I recently heard that the median home sale price in Detroit is around $7,500.00. Yes, you read that correctly. But then I checked and found out that that number was from December of 2008. The number from June 2009 is $6,000.00. Makes Cleveland look like an economic boom-town by comparison.

BTW, I just picked me up a Glock 27 and it rocketh mightily.

My Favorite Crunchy Conservative

"Cookie tastes so good."