Song of the Week(end)

Right on the heels of Clip of the Week, here's your Song of the Week(end), coming from a band I hadn't heard of until about 3 hours ago.

I got an e-mail in my inbox today promoting a Halloween night show here in Charlottesville featuring SOJA and Matisyahu. I've been a fan of Matisyahu's music for a while (particularly this song and this song), but I'd never heard of SOJA before (turns out they're a local act). If you're interested, here's their Wikipedia entry.

To summarize: SOJA is all about cool reggae, good beats, and awesome weekend listening. So let's enjoy summer while we still can, and cool out with some good BBQ-ing music—"I Don't Wanna Wait", by SOJA. Happy weekend, people.

Clip of the Week

One of the good things about going on vacation is that I now have two weeks worth of material for Clip of the Week, some of which I'm choosing to hold back until next week, because I can.

So while I could choose to make fun of NBC's coverage of the Olympics by posting this unfortunately timed promo for an NBC show, NBC's way too easy a target, and we've all moved on by now anyway (which means that this volleyball play, cool as it may have been, is also out of the running, as is this interactive graphic about the 100-meter dash).

I'm also going to pass on the baseball highlights (and lowlights) for now, because I'm sure we'll have plenty of them to choose from over the coming weeks as the pennant races heat up. So, sorry, Roger Bernadina... but keep up the good work.

I gave serious consideration to Jimmy Fallon's Jim Morrison impression, as he does a Doors version of the Reading Rainbow theme—I find Fallon to be extremely annoying, but he's at his absolute best when he's doing this kind of stuff—but I chose instead to give this week's clip to the world's fastest birds.

This clip is mesmerizing, and it involves animals, two things that I'm always a sucker for in Clip of the Week. So blow this up full screen and enjoy. It's pretty awesome.

On Bartolo Colon, cheating, and the human response

Yesterday, in the most unsurprising news of the sports decade, Oakland A's pitcher Bartolo Colon was suspended 50 games after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. This news followed on the heels of the similar suspension of San Francisco Giants' All-Star outfielder Melky Cabrera (wait... steroids... in the Bay Area?? Well, I never!), who went to some pretty extraordinary lengths to avoid punishment for his misdeeds.

For those of you not up to speed on the matter, Bartolo Colon was once a terrific pitcher, making multiple All-Star teams and even winning the AL Cy Young award in 2005 with the California/Anaheim/Los Angeles Angels. Then he got fat, injured, and generally useless, winning only 14 games (in 48 total starts) over the next four seasons with three different teams. He never threw more than 100 innings in any of those seasons, and he managed fewer than 60 in two of them.

After his ineffective 2009 season, the 36-year old Colon disappeared entirely for a year, presumed by many to be finished. But then, miraculously, amid reports of a mysterious and controversial stem cell procedure, Colon burst back onto the scene with the Yankees in 2011, making 26 effective starts (and tossing 164 innings, more than he had thrown since his Cy Young season in 2005) while helping the Yankees win their division. He continued that success this year in Oakland, where he made 24 starts (and may have made more than 30, without the suspension) while winning a team-best 10 games and posting a solid 3.43 ERA.

Great success! A modern medical miracle! All hail the mysterious and controversial stem cell procedure! Or... you know... plain old steroids. Whatever, what am I, a doctor?

Of course, by now, we shouldn't be surprised to hear about steroids in baseball, particularly among athletes from the Dominican Republic, where there's been a long line of violators at both the major league and minor league level, including stars like Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez. The only thing that's surprising is that we all continue to pay any attention (or feign outrage) when news like this breaks.

At the end of the day, in any world where there are great rewards to be had, there will always be those who are willing to cut corners to get to the top. It's a dynamic that I discussed at length in this post, in which I compared Roger Clemens (oh, and screw him, but that's a story for another day) to Bernie Madoff for their willingness to break the rules. It's even less far-fetched to assume that in a place like the Dominican Republic—where economic opportunities are few and far between—we might find even more people who are willing to fudge a few things in order to find success. On a similar note, think none of the Jamaican sprinters are into some similar stuff? Yeah, think again.

And of course, the teams that employed these players knew all of this as well, and assumed that the risks of signing a guy with steroid question marks were worth the financial rewards. Every GM in baseball is in possession of a chart that predicts rates of decline in production as players age—the charts are far from perfect, but they're in wide use, and especially smart teams like the Yankees and A's are well aware that a fat and fading guy like Colon is unlikely to make a dramatic comeback without a little "chemical assistance". So they knew, we knew, and yet we as spectators did nothing to prevent Colon from taking the field, demanding nothing of MLB until this inevitable day that he tested positive for PEDs. 

So ultimately, we as spectators get the product we deserve, the product we demand. We vote with our wallets and tell MLB that everything is a-okay with us, that we don't care if half the players out there are doped up beyond all recognition. And honestly, that's fine. I see no problem with that process in principle—it's free-market economics at its best. But when we vote with our wallets, with full knowledge of what's going on out there, we lose our right to feign outrage when the curtain is pulled back.

The same is true for us as consumers, as voters, as employees/pensioners, or even as family members. When something sounds or seems too good to be true, it very often is. And if we fail to hold people accountable when they've taken advantage of us, then frankly, we deserve what we get.

The fact is, for all the ranting that I do here on my blog about the banks, and the NCAA, and our broken political system, I continue to hold multiple bank accounts at a large bank (Wells Fargo), I'm a season ticket holder for multiple collegiate sports (at UVA), and I have never in my life voted for a third-party candidate (though that is likely to change, soon). So until I am willing to put my money where my mouth is, I too am part of the problem. The first step is recognizing it and admitting it. The next step is taking action. If we want a different world, we have to start by demanding a different world. Otherwise, we should all probably stop whining, myself included.

So until that day comes, this is America, where if you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'. Nice, huh?

Quote of the Week

It's the dog days of summer (well, for most of us, anyway—I just saw the neighborhood kids waiting for the bus for their first day of school this morning, so that about does that), which means that there isn't much in the way of news to sink our teeth into. I picked a good time to take a break from the blog, I guess.

So when I went in search of a Quote of the Week with which to announce my return from vacation, I realized that nothing much I'd come across was fresh and new. Sure, this blog post about Obama's quasi-religious pleas for Americans to "believe" in America would've been good fodder for a rant on what America and her political system have become... but the Obama quote in question is four years old, and honestly nothing all that special.

There was also this long blog post on the dangers of cynicism and apathy, which I found to be pretty strongly inspirational but also something that sort of spoke for itself—nothing much for me to add to the conversation.

So since we're resigned to going with something old and somewhat stale, and since I'd prefer to come back from vacation on a lighter note (as opposed to my usual ranting diatribes), I decided to go with an excerpt from this excellent oral history of "White Men Can't Jump" over at Grantland.

"White Men Can't Jump" is an all-time favorite of mine, and I honestly can't believe it's now 20 years old. I always love to read about some of the behind-the-scenes stuff that happens on these movie sets, as well as the original casting ideas (Laurence Fishburne as Sidney Deane? Really??). This one happens to be particularly entertaining, and I laughed out loud reading some of these guys' takes on the whole experience.

So this week's Quote of the Week comes from actor Cylk Cozart (Who? Ohhhhh, THAT guy...), who was originally being considered for the lead role of Sidney Deane before being passed over in favor of Wesley Snipes. In discussing some of the early contenders for Woody Harrelson's Billy Hoyle character, Cozart passed along an interesting experience with a young Keanu Reeves.

This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Keanu almost broke my neck going up for a layup. He was so wild. He was throwing the ball hard and throwing elbows. He didn't know what he was doing. [Writer/Director] Ron [Shelton] stopped it, like, 'OK, I've seen enough.' I thought, 'Wow, what was he doing growing up? He didn't play ball?'"
                                - Actor Cylk Cozart

Maybe I shouldn't be, but I'm always surprised to find out how unathletic some of the best actors—especially those who come across as "jocks"—can be in real life (see: Vince Vaughn, Gary Sinise).

Maybe that speaks to the magic of the camera, or maybe the ballplayer in me just unrealistically expects everyone to be able to throw a ball without looking like a complete spaz, I don't really know. But it's funny to think that if Keanu was simply a little less of a complete space case on the court, "White Men Can't Jump" could've become an entirely different—and in my opinion, worse—movie. So here's to life's lucky little accidents, for giving us Woody Harrelson and a very memorable movie character. Happy 20th Birthday to one of the greatest sports movies of my lifetime.

[Grantland]

Back in the Saddle

I'm back home after a brief New England vacation, reconnecting with family and realizing that I definitely need to do that more often. I'll be catching up on things around here slowly but surely, and I'll be announcing my presence with authority with your Quote of the Week this afternoon. After that, all bets are off.

For now, I'm sharing with you this cartoon that somehow seems pretty apt in the wake of my recent vacation. Hope you all didn't miss me too much. And would it kill you to call your mother?

JCPenney's big gamble

There was some interesting news a couple of weeks ago in the (shrinking) world of retail, where department store JCPenney announced what amounts to a "bet the company" proposal.

Struggling retailer JCPenney is making some big changes that will affect customers and its clerks. The store is getting rid of its check-out counters. 

CEO Ron Johnson said it will remove check-out counters in stores and replace them with a system that won't require clerks. It's all part of an effort to return the department store chain to profitability. 

Shoppers will be able to use self check-out machines, similar to those found in grocery stores. 

JCPenney is also planning to replace traditional bar codes on price tags with high-tech radio frequency identification, or "RFID" chips to make purchases faster. 

Johnson told "Fortune" magazine he hopes to phase out check-out counters by 2014.

This is a gutsy move, and one that only a desperate company could realistically get away with attempting. JCPenney is on the fast track to bankruptcy, so risky proposals are more acceptable to shareholders than they would be in other situations.

Will it work? Maybe, maybe not. But if necessity is the mother of invention, then desperation is at least a step-father or a surrogate. In fact, I see this dynamic as the great silver lining to our current economic malaise—in fact, I think it's the exact reason that we need a good recession every now and again, so that we can innovate our way out of it.

When things are going well, there's rarely any obvious reason to take big risks or try anything new, even though there should be (call it the curse of mediocrity). But when the sh*t is hitting the fan, people are willing to try just about anything, and this desperation very often breeds incredible technological and strategic breakthroughs. Does it also introduce extreme downside? Of course, but when you're going bankrupt anyway, who cares when it happens? Let's take a shot, right?

I generally welcome and embrace economic recessions, because they force people to be creative and thoughtful about their lives, careers, and relationships with other people in their communities. Creative destruction is at the root of capitalism and free markets, and without it there can be no lasting economic growth. I'm rooting for JCPenney here, if only because I like to see a gutsy move rewarded. Time will tell.

[ABC News]

Ponzi financing in California

I don't have a lot to add to Mish Shedlock's take on this situation—this post of mine basically covered the issues at hand—but suffice it to say that by now, just about every government in California is bankrupt and desperate. Given my previous post, though, I thought I had to pass this item along. From Mish (italics are quotes from this article, bolding is mine):

Poway California, population 47,811 as of 2010, has placed an enormous bet on rising home prices and tax revenues. Poway borrowed $105 million but will not start to pay that amount back until 2033 at which time they will owe $877 million in interest. 

Clearly this would be fiscal insanity anywhere, but it is especially true in California given Proposition 13 that caps property taxes... 

Last year the Poway Unified School District made a deal: It borrowed $105 million from investors to fund a final push in its decade-long effort to revamp aging schools. 

Without increasing taxes, the district couldn’t afford to borrow money in the conventional way. So, instead of borrowing from investors over 20 or 30 years and paying the debt down each year, like a mortgage, the district got creative. 

With advice from an Orange County financial consultant, the district borrowed the money over 40 years in a controversial loan called a capital appreciation bond. The key point for the district: It won’t make any payments on the debt for 20 years. 

And that means the district’s debt will keep getting bigger and bigger as interest on the loan piles up... 

As well as being expensive, capital appreciation bonds work by tapping future growth in property values to pay today’s debts, a concept considered by many in the school bond business to be both risky and inequitable. In 1994, the state of Michigan banned school districts from issuing bonds like this, deeming them too toxic to taxpayers. 

Nevertheless, California’s ever-strapped districts have increasingly looked to capital appreciation bonds to raise money for improvements without increasing taxes on current residents. Across the state, districts have borrowed billions this way, using exotic financing to shift the burden for paying for today’s school construction to future generations of Californians. 

"This is way worse than loan sharking," said Michael Turnipseed, executive director of the Kern County Taxpayers Association in central California, which has lobbied the state Legislature to tighten laws on school district borrowing. "And Poway is the poster child. What they have done is absolutely insane." 

Think growth will bail out Poway? Think again. 

From Poway City Data the population of Poway shrank by .5% between 2000 and 2010. 

The current upfront cost of this $1 billion proposal would be $2196 per every man, woman, and child. 

By the time Poway starts paying the bill, the cost will be $20,916 per every man, woman, and child. 

Given the average household size is 2.9, the cost per household when the debt is due will be $60,656... 

This scheme is not insane, it's well beyond insane. Unfortunately, I cannot come up with a stronger word to describe it. 

Bear in mind that 20 years from now it is highly likely the school district will need still more money for school maintenance.  What then? Will property taxes rise 10-fold to pay back this loan?

Mish's last point is right on. The problem with taking on massive amounts of debt—thus shifting the burden of current expenditures onto future generations, with interest—is that future generations will still have to find a way to finance the expenses that come up in their time, in addition to paying off the previous generations' bills.

For an analogy, imagine trying to pay down a mortgage on your own house while also still paying down your parents' mortgage on a house that you no longer live in but that has been accumulating interest for decades without a single principal payment—yeah, doesn't sound too feasible, does it?

Sooner or later, the debt writedowns (defaults) will come, because they must. If you can't find the money now, you can't just wave your hands and assume that your kids will have it in 20 years' time. They won't. They'll be too busy paying down their own student loans, not to mention fixing the crumbling infrastructure that you left for them.

But hey, that's not your problem, right? Hey, somebody give J.G. Wentworth a call... we've got some bridges that need some fixing.

[Mish Shedlock]