Site update

After careful consideration over the past several weeks, I've decided to make some fairly significant changes to the format and content of The Crimson Cavalier. I do not not make these changes lightly (I know that many of you, like me, despise change in all its forms), but I do expect that they will make this site more enjoyable for me and my readers alike.

Probably the most noticeable and important of these changes is that I will no longer be providing long-form content or opinion in any way. Instead, I will become a mere aggregator of content--a "best of" blog that aims to provide my readers with links to the best pictures, bike-crash videos, and articles from around the world and allowing them to draw their own conclusions.

Recognizing that this will be a dramatic change for many of my more loyal readers, I do promise to provide the occasional traditional long-form diatribe over at the newly formed Red Cowboy blog. I think this will help to support the fledgling readership of my good friend's blog while retaining a fair amount of what made you read The Crimson Cavalier in the first place.

I know that these changes are sudden, but I have been considering them for some time and I am confident that they are the right choice for me. They will also make this site easier to digest, as you will no longer be forced to slog through my irritable rants against all those who annoy me in order to get to the great content you all desire.

Like any rational blogger and businessperson, I welcome and encourage your feedback in the coming days and weeks. It will be my pleasure to reconsider these site changes in the future, if and when it seems prudent.

For those of you who wonder what I will do with the rest of my spare time now that I am free from the tyranny of posting a daily rant, I have good news. In addition to the aforementioned occasional guest post over at The Red Cowboy, I have also signed on with Fox News to be an independent blogger on their site, as part of their new initiative to provide "fair and balanced" input from around the blogosphere--consider it like Huffington Post for conservatives and radical anarchists.
 
Of course, I do recognize the irony that a political agnostic like myself would choose to join forces with an organization that is so well-known for its political partisanship and blatant hypocrisy. But I am always willing to provide a second chance to those who show true contrition, and I choose to view Fox News' offer of partnership as an olive branch and admission of past transgressions.

On the surface, I do recognize that you might view me to be "selling out" my original intent on this blog with my current moves. In particular, my long-standing belief that the world is rife with irresponsible journalism might seem to be taking a back seat to my own ambitions as a political and financial commentator, seeing as Fox News has historically been among the worst offenders as far as violating journalistic integrity.

Like you, I have my own suspicions, and I will be quick to pull the plug if I see Fox being anything but authentic and genuine in our partnership. But so far, I see no reason to doubt their contrition, and I look forward to being part of the solution. It's not often you get the opportunity to be on the front line of solving the problems that you see as so important, and I relish the chance to help turn Fox News into a responsible corporate citizen. I have great hope for our future together.

So with that, I move on to new things (and hopefully greener pastures), happy to continue in the original mission of The Crimson Cavalier but also eager to expand my reach to a broader audience. I hope that you will continue to read my "best of" blog here, my occasional guest posts at The Red Cowboy, and my (hopefully) ever-expanding role within the Fox family of networks. Maybe you'll even see me on The O'Reilly Factor some day soon, engaging in an honest debate over the benefits and drawbacks of government-subsidized health care... but I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much. See you on the other side... and if you haven't caught on yet, do me a favor and go back and read the first letter of each paragraph in this post. Then look at your calendar. Thanks for playing.

Clip of the Week

Early in the week, I thought the Clip of the Week was a cinch--overlooking this video of some pretty impressive soccer ball juggling, I was all set to give Clip of the Week to this video of a youth soccer team on an island village in Thailand building its own (floating) soccer field and developing into a champion team against all odds. (For what it's worth, I still recommend that you watch the soccer videos, especially the floating field.)

But then on Tuesday night, at the UVA-George Washington baseball game, I witnessed one of the rarest accomplishments in the sporting world--a perfect game. Will Roberts, a junior pitcher from Richmond who had enjoyed only modest success in his first two seasons, pitched the game of his life, allowing just one ball to be hit out of the infield en route to only the 8th NCAA Division I perfect game since 1957.

The atmosphere in the park was incredible, and the end of the game was indescribably emotional--if you didn't get a little teary-eyed watching the team lift Roberts on their shoulders, then you just don't like sports. In all my years of watching and playing baseball, I'd never witnessed a perfect game, and I may never again. I'm glad I was there for this one. Congratulations, Will.

Root, root, root for the Tigers

Well it's finally Opening Day today (though not for my Red Sox, for that I'll have to wait a day), and we'll kick things off this afternoon in the Bronx, where the Yankees host the Tigers at the new Yankee Stadium. I'll of course be rooting for the Tigers, because I always root against the Yankees, but this time around I've got a pretty good reason why you should too:

On Thursday, the New York Yankees begin their regular season at Yankee Stadium, a gleaming $1.5 billion behemoth that opened in the Bronx in 2009 as the new home of one of the richest franchises in sports.

But next to the stadium is a lingering eyesore – a protracted construction project that was supposed to have been transformed into three public ball fields months ahead of opening day. Instead, some coaches and neighborhood residents say, it remains a joyless Mudville...

The city promised to build the fields, which are starting to take shape directly across 161st Street to the south of the stadium, to replace others that were bulldozed in 2006 to make way for the stadium.

The razed fields, in Macombs Dam Park, were the only regulation baseball diamonds nearby, and were home to neighborhood pickup games and youth leagues, and to teams from schools like All Hallows High School, a parochial institution several blocks away.

“We’ve gone five years now with no ball fields here,” said Sean Sullivan, 55, the principal of All Hallows and a coach of its baseball team, which has spent five years scouring the city for home fields. “They took the parks away from my kids, and now our team is a bunch of gypsies.”

The team, which played part of its 2009 season in Staten Island, is still searching for a site for its league opener on April 7.

The fields were originally to be completed late last year, as the centerpiece of Heritage Field, a 10-acre park where the former Yankee Stadium stood. But the groundbreaking was delayed until last June, and city officials now say the fields will not open until fall 2011.

“They built the new stadium in record time, but building replacement parkland for the community is literally dragging,” said Helen Foster, who represents the neighborhood on the City Council.

That's pretty weak. Admittedly, the majority of the anger is directed at the city and not the Yankees, and that's probably fair. Having lived in New York for several years (and worked in the shadow of Ground Zero), I recognize how ridiculous that city can be when it comes to political boondoggles getting in the way of projects (see Freedom Tower, Second Avenue Subway).

And in fairness to the Yankees, they don't seem to be completely blind to the blight they've caused:

A Yankees spokeswoman said the team donated $10 million to the parks replacement project in 2010, and gave $5.6 million worth of donations – including ballpark events, tickets and merchandise – to various Bronx organizations. The team also helped provide buses for local schools, including All Hallows, in 2009, she said.

But really, that donation might sound great to us common folk for whom $10 million is a lot of money, but it's a pittance for the Yankees, especially in comparison to the $1.5 billion price tag of the building that caused this problem in the first place.

The team's annual revenues (pre-revenue sharing) are pegged somewhere around $600 million, which means that the $10 million they donated to the parks project is roughly the equivalent of a couple of playoff games (which they would've gotten back had they not choked against the Rangers in last year's ALCS). In other words, it's a rounding error.

With the weight that the Yankees are clearly capable of throwing around in the Bronx (they got the ballpark project started and finished in a hurry, didn't they?), there's clearly more they can be doing to fast-track this process. But they've got their ballpark built, and they now seem not to really care about the neighborhood around them. So as a result, fields that were supposed to look like this (a year ago):

Instead look like this today:

Now, I'm not saying any of the other 29 teams in Major League Baseball wouldn't do just about the same thing in similar circumstances, so maybe my position here is unfair (it's certainly far from unbiased). But today, when you watch the Yankees playing in their $1.5 billion playground, just keep in mind what's going on across the street, and the Little League teams without a home for their Opening Days. Maybe for one day, you'll feel like booing the Yankees too.

[New York Times]

Sometimes, the consumer does win

Alright, I'm always harping on the need for innovation (and entrepreneurship) to get us out of our economic doldrums. So much so that I'm not even going to bother linking to my old rants--if you've read me before, you need no reminder of my views. I usually harp about the lack of innovation, and how consolidation of industries limits competition and drives down the overall level of innovation, thus essentially screwing the consumer.

This is not one of those times. This is awesome:

This is the second major announcement by Amazon this month, following on the heels of their "free streaming video for Amazon Prime customers" offer (admittedly it's limited to select titles, but I've watched Syriana, Man On Wire, and Exit Through the Gift Shop for free this month, while paying only a combined $5 to rent The Fighter and The Prestige... and I've gotten $300 dollars worth of products, including a propane grill, shipped to me for free. Yeah, I'm an Amazon Prime fanboy--so be it).

Amazon is one of the few companies that I truly admire right now. They've got brains, they've got guts, and they truly do try to innovate and provide value to their customers in creative new ways. Their products (and their site arrangement) might not be as pretty as their competitors, but they're every bit as functional, and in some ways better (most notably, they don't "protect" their audio files like iTunes does so that they can't be played on non-Apple media players, which is bulls**t). And their prices can't be beat.

Ultimately, I admire any company with the stones to take on both Netflix and Apple in the same month. Maybe it will work out for them, maybe it won't--but any company that stared down the dot-com bubble burst and survived isn't a company I'd bet against.

Revisiting old themes as always

Old issues never really go away, they just sort of hide for a while, then crop up at surprising (and sometimes inopportune) times. That's the case when it comes to corporate taxation, which I first attempted to tackle five months ago with respect to Google. At the time I said:

Bloomberg estimates that the total impact of Google's unpaid taxes has boosted its stock price by nearly $100 per share--about a 20% increase over what it would be absent preferential tax treatment. That increase is subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, and also disproportionately benefits the rich who own GOOG stock over the poor who don't. We need to crack down on this, and we need to do it now."

Well, um... strike one.

The Daily Show - I Give Up - Pay Anything...
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

That's right, GE somehow paid no federal taxes whatsoever (in fact, they actually got a tax CREDIT) in 2010 despite reporting a $14 billion (yeah, that's right, $14 billion) profit to its shareholders. So, you know... yeah. I'm speechless. Anyone else wanna take a turn at ranting? I'm kinda tired of it.

[Rolling Stone]
(h/t reader Andrew)

Quote of the Week

Sometimes, when you're a big internet star like me, you can expect there to be a few imitators along the way. That's how I know I've officially arrived, with this week's launching of The Red Cowboy blog. An original Crimson Cavalier reader and an old friend (we've been to battle together a few times, and have the wounds to prove it), The Red Cowboy is everything I'm not--rich, attractive, single, hip, laid-back, and maybe just a little bit crazy. But don't take my word for it. Listen to the man himself:

This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"So consider The Red Cowboy the casual or more easy going version of The Crimson Cavalier. A place you come to educate yourself about the more enjoyable things in life, share your opinions, and politely argue amongst friends. Of course, always remember that a tie always goes to the Cowboy."
                                          - The Red Cowboy

Or, as my wife so eloquently put it, "so after people read your blog and get depressed about the state of the world, they can go over to his blog and forget about everything you wrote?" Perfect. Well said, honey. You're a dear. The Red Cowboy is what The Crimson Cavalier becomes when he's had a rough week and tipped back a few too many. Sounds great.

But all kidding aside, go read the man. Whether your iTunes library is out of date or you need to know which baseball movie to watch to get yourself psyched up for Opening Day, he's your go-to source. Just don't blame me when you can't get the new Lupe song out of your head--I feel your pain.

Liar loans and prosecution

This article was everywhere over the weekend (seriously, I'm pretty sure every financial, economic, and current events blogger I read linked to this article), and I'm nothing if not a bandwagoner, so here goes. If Joe Nocera's story doesn't make your blood boil, nothing will--or you're Angelo Mozilo.

A few weeks ago, when the Justice Department decided not to prosecute Angelo Mozilo, the former chief executive of Countrywide, I wrote a column lamenting the fact that none of the big fish were likely to go to prison for their roles in the financial crisis.  Soon after that column ran, I received an e-mail from a man named Richard Engle, who informed me that I was wrong. There was, in fact, someone behind bars for what he’d supposedly done during the subprime bubble. It was his 48-year-old son, Charlie.

On Valentine’s Day, the elder Mr. Engle said, his son had entered a minimum-security prison in Beaver, W.Va., to begin serving a 21-month sentence for mortgage fraud. He then proceeded to tell me the tale of how federal agents nabbed his son — a tale he backed up with reams of documents and records that suggest, if nothing else, that when the federal government is truly motivated, there is no mountain it won’t move to prosecute someone it wants to nail. And it was definitely motivated to nail Charlie Engle.

Mr. Engle’s is a tale worth telling for a number of reasons, not the least of which is its punch line. Was Mr. Engle convicted of running a crooked subprime company? Was he a mortgage broker who trafficked in predatory loans? A Wall Street huckster who sold toxic assets?

No. Charlie Engle wasn’t a seller of bad mortgages. He was a borrower. And the “mortgage fraud” for which he was prosecuted was something that literally millions of Americans did during the subprime bubble. Supposedly, he lied on two liar loans.

Nocera goes on to describe--in sordid details--the extraordinary lengths that government stooges went to in order to prosecute Engle, a reformed drug addict who had turned his life around to become one of the world's best ultra-marathoners.

I really can't do the story justice either in excerpts or in paraphrasing, so you'll really have to read the whole article (trust me, it's worth it). Even the staunchest supporter of government regulation would be disturbed by the Stasi-like tactics employed by the investigators on the case, and how far they went to prosecute an individual while letting the corporations on the other side of the coin get away scot-free.

The approach taken in this case--described by Barry Ritholtz as "Prosecute Guppie; Let the Sharks Roam Free" is exactly the same wrong-headed approach that has led our "War on Drugs" to be such an epic failure. Untold millions of dollars have been wasted trying to criminalize and discourage consumption and small-time criminals, with a comparatively small amount of effort spent tackling organized crime and the drug-pushers who enable and encourage the behavior we are trying to eradicate.

Unfortunately, government doesn't seem to have learned its lesson, either in the War on Drugs or in its application of strategies in other scenarios like the "liar loan" case written about here. Our government is supposed to be of the people, by the people, for the people, but increasingly it is becoming one of the corporation, by the corporation and for the corporation. There's simply no other reasonable explanation for this troubling double standard. Free Charlie Engle.

[New York Times]