Brrr!

What with all the reports of global warming getting more aggressive, it was with some surprise that I read this report on Alberta's Premier restricting 'green energy' projects. The issue: "viewscapes". Whaaaa??

How can that be? Well, for one thing, Canada is far more 'federalist' than the good ole USofA; provincial administrations have far more authority vis-a-vis Ottawa than USofA states do to Washington. Alberta also, by coincidence, just happens to be a major petro state. One hand washing the other? You decide.

Moreover, that report and another today, tell us that Canada (well, the Western provinces) have been hit with near record cold this winter. What's a Canuck to do? Move to Abbott/DeMented land? Yikes!!

As all you other weather nerds know: for the USofA, esp. the Sovereign States of New England, short-term climate/weather is mostly determined by where the northern and southern jets go. For winter, if the northern jet stays in Canada, as it has been for most of this winter, we in the upper tier of the lower 48 can have southern air flow up to us. And so we get rain. Sometimes lots of it. Not the Weird Coast's atmospheric rivers, of course. And for them, winter rain is actually a problem. A significant amount of water is 'stored' in mountain snowpack. Exactly how many cubic meters of reservoir would be needed to store liquid water if there were little to no snowpack in the mountains, I haven't yet found. But it's clearly a lot. Consider that reservoirs need stable valleys, typically on rivers, which don't really exist where snowpack accumulates. Where to put such reservoirs? Only The Shadow knows. I'd vote for expelling the Orange County Rednecks and put them there; near enough to Tinsel Town.

It's a Small World, After All

Every free agent and draft season in each professional sport brings with it not only ludicrous payments to morons who happen to have some level of strength and coordination, but also bitching from fanatics in mid- and small-markets that they can't possibly compete with New York City, Boston, Chicago, LA, and possibly a few flyover country cities. It's nearly always elided that professional franchises get a substantial part of their revenue from league coffers and have their facilities paid for (in large part or in toto) by the taxpayers. Such a tough life.

But this kvetching begs the question: why should there be mid- and small-market teams in the first place? We know full well that shitkicker migration to cities hasn't abated, nor will it ever; progress is made in nice, dense, noisy places not where the only sound is grass growing and cows mooing. The "invasion" of illegals have no interest in settling in the burning Texas wasteland; they want the opportunity of Big Cities. Not because they're essentially Blue, but because they offer opportunity; same reason any Red Stater who isn't sub-GED bolts for a Big City. I mean, how dumb do you have to be to want to live under Abbott/DeMented/Sanders/et al? Prior to the end of WWII, all of these leagues expanded and contracted almost like clockwork. Teams came and went. Professional football for its first decades was a non-urban pastime (the Big Cities, unless you say Chicago, weren't represented).

On August 20, 1920, at a Hupmobile dealership in Canton, Ohio, the league was formalized, originally as the American Professional Football Conference, initially consisting only of the Ohio League teams, although some of the teams declined participation.
...
Only four of the founding teams finished the 1920 schedule and the undefeated Akron Pros claimed the first championship.
[the wiki]

The first teams:

Another meeting was held on September 17, 1920 with representatives from teams from four states: Akron, Canton, Cleveland, and Dayton from Ohio; the Hammond Pros and Muncie Flyers from Indiana; the Rochester Jeffersons from New York; and the Rock Island Independents, Decatur Staleys, and Racine (Chicago) Cardinals from Illinois.
[the wiki]

With baseball, rather different. Baseball, once a 'major' league was established in the late 19th century, was a Big City thing.

In fact, there were dozens of leagues, large and small, at this time. What made the National League "major" was its dominant position in the major cities, particularly New York City, the edgy, emotional nerve center of baseball. The large cities offered baseball teams national media distribution systems and fan bases that could generate revenues enabling teams to hire the best players in the country.
[the wiki, my emphasis]

So, we eventually get both relocation (thanks, in the beginning, to the 707) and expansion across professional sports, and with them the creation of the mid-market team; Big Cities already filled. As ever more franchises were created in these non-Big Cities, viability becomes an issue. Why, oh why, are their baseball teams in Florida? (Not to mention... Hockey!) And so on. The motivation, clearly, is the growing population. Viewed as a player per citizen calculation, more teams do make sense. More young men eager to make money without much brains, and more people to fill seats. The problem, of course, is that expansion teams ended up in cities with marginal population sizes to support 30 or 40 or 50 thousand seat stadiums. Yes, the USofA population has more than doubled since the end of WWII, but not in shitkicker land.

Number of Major League teams, 1950 - 16
Roster size for said, 1950 - 25 (mostly)
Number of Major League ballplayers, 1950 - 400
USofA population, 1950 - 151,325,798
ratio - 378,314.495 (that's USofA humans per ballplayer)

Number of Major League teams, 2020 - 30
Roster size for said, 2020 - 30 (mostly)
Number of Major League ballplayers, 2020 - 900
USofA population, 2020 - 329,500,000
ratio - 366,111.111 (ditto)

Urban/rural split 1950 - 64% / 36%
Urban/rural split 2020 - 80% / 20%%

There was a day when NYC (counting all the boroughs) had 3 teams. That's how you keep up with population growth.

What does all that mean Mr. Natural? They ain't be no dilution of talent. Just the opposite, and even more so when you consider the number of Black and off-shore players competing for those jobs in those years; hint, the competition was even tougher in 2020.

Luckily (I've been searching for some time, and finally hit paydirt) there is some data on revenue sources over time, in baseball.

In 1962 the MLB average for local media income was $640,000 ranging from a low of $300,000 (Washington) to a high of $1.2 million (New York Yankees). In 2001, the average team garnered $19 million from local radio and television contracts, but the gap between the bottom and top had widened to an incredible $51.5 million. The Montreal Expos received $536,000 for their local broadcast rights while the New York Yankees received more than $52 million for theirs. Revenue sharing has resulted in a redistribution of some of these funds from the wealthiest to the poorest teams, but the impact of this on the competitive balance problem remains to be seen.

Socialism in atheletics!!! Sacre bleu!! Oh, wait... welfare for the billionaires is the way of the world. So, is it possible for a small-market team to make money without any seats in the seats? May be.

In Major League Baseball, 48% of local revenues are subject to revenue sharing and are distributed equally among all 30 teams, with each team receiving 3.3% of the total sum generated. As a result, in 2018, each team received $118 million from this pot. Teams also receive a share of national revenues, which were estimated to be $91 million per team, also in 2018.

So, it would seem so. $209 million for nothing, and your chicks are free. Also, new franchises pay a fee to the teams. Here's the last round.

After whittling down the field to four finalists (Northern Virginia, Orlando, Phoenix and Tampa), MLB announced Phoenix and Tampa as the two expansion franchises on March 9, 1995. Announced to begin play for the 1998 season, each ownership group paid a $130 million expansion fee to enter the league. The ownership groups paid $32 million in July 1995, $25 million in July 1996, $40 million in July 1997 and $33 million in November 1997. In addition, the two expansion teams gave away their rights to $5 million from baseball's central fund for each of the five years following expansion (1998 - 2002).

What's up? A long CBS piece, worth reading.

Almost anywhere baseball expands in the coming years will rank in the bottom half to bottom third of TV markets. Therein is part of the argument against expansion. Why should owners make room at the table, reducing their share of the profits and the talent, to add more small-market teams? The answer might be as simple as the instant gratification offered by an exorbitant expansion fee.
[my emphasis]

An insight not often found in general journalism, much less the sporting variety.

Economists refer to the "substitution effect" in these cases. It's similar to opportunity cost. If a family of four is spending money at the ballpark, it won't be spending money at the movies. Stadiums aren't value creators so much as they are value re-distributors, from other local businesses to themselves, often without the best-compensated employees pumping those dollars back into the economy. One study even found a local economy improved after a team left the area.
[my emphasis]

And, by the bye, Food Stamps is another case of substitution effect: every buck a Welfare Queen doesn't spend at the local Mega Mart is a buck she can spend on lottery tickets or cellphones or baseball tickets or whatever else. I suppose, even an iPhone. You're welcome, Tim.

The same is true of casinos. And every entertainment venue; one can only be a net revenue generator if it brings in $$$ from outside its economic territory; specifically the tax authority (mostly a state) that subsidizes it. The first, and most blatant, example is Atlantic City (there's a good reason Batshit J. Moron couldn't make it there, or anywhere) and possibly worse, The Nutmeg State. Yet Damn Gummints keep betting on long shots. Spend money on better education? Well, only if there's no Woke Shit. (They don't in Nevada, of course!]

Ode to the Sub-GED Class - part the second

This is one of those days when I get the creepy feeling that Krugman reads here. Yeah, I wish. But the fact remains, his topic for today (dead trees division) reflects, almost entirely, the thesis that the rural, enraged, white men that make up MARF^™(party like it's 1829) are self-victims. What he doesn't come out and say, and it bears repeating, is that their predicament is, yes self-inflicted. What makes rural Red states so loathsome is that these sub-GED chuckleheads are in their uneducated, poor, unhealthy situation just because they keep electing politicians who protect the guy who owns the town. And the county. And the state, and just once, the country. Gummint for the 1%. It's that simple.

In the crudest sense, rural and small-town America is supposed to be filled with hard-working people who adhere to traditional values, not like those degenerate urbanites on welfare, but the economic and social reality doesn't match this self-image.

The Farm Bill alone pours billions of Bongo Bucks into fly-over country every year. Some goes to the sub-GED residents, I suppose. Not much of it, I'd wager.

Speaking of Traditional Values, aka Antebellum envy, there's more in the paper on Tradition (full-throated Tevye in the background) today.

A Right Wing judge takes on the Supreme's Right Wing folks.

Scores of decisions, including ones from every avowed originalist justice, have relied on post-ratification traditions, as Sherif Girgis, a law professor at Notre Dame, demonstrated in a comprehensive exploration of the topic published last year in The New York University Law Review.

"Though increasingly dominant in this originalist court's opinions," he wrote, "the method has no obvious justification in originalist terms."

If you don't, or can't (too many free looks or no subscription), read the piece, it's about the difference between what "originalist" means and what "traditionalist" means and why using the former to cover up doing the latter is naughty. We read and hear the former offered as justification for all sorts of nonsense, but, it turns out, the real thrust of an argument is that progressive/woke/Blue/Democratic policies destroy "traditional values". And what might they be? Almost entirely the desire of the rural, poor, unhealthy, uneducated sub-GED chuckleheads to force the other 80% (yes, those rural Yahoos are no more than 20% of the USofA) of us to live like they do. Among those were the quotes from a 13th century judge and 17th century 'law'. As if anyone at those times knew anything about medicinal chemistry (yes, there is such a thing).

And, for good measure, the report goes on to quote Justice Breyer from a forthcoming book:

"The public's methods for managing their affairs will need to change with the circumstances," Justice Breyer wrote. "The judge's job is not to read literally those constitutional provisions written 250 years ago without regard to such changes."

Well, let's party like it's 1829!!!

You vote for autocrats, well OK. But don't come bitching at those of us who know better, when you find you've not got a pot to piss in, nor a window to throw it out of thanks to the pols you keep voting for, keeping the 1% fat and happy.

Cui Bono - part the second

Well, the NYT (via The Athletic, which while 'together' in print doesn't show up on the NYT web site?), reports on the Tennessee/Virginia suit to unfetter the NIL scam; mostly benefiting Red State Schools foobah and hoops programs.

Which brings us to the title's question: who'll benefit from openly paid athletes (not, anymore, student-athletes)? The suit is brought on behalf of those two states' public universities, as one might expect from Red State administrations. On the one hand, some small portion of these foobah and hoops kids can get rich. On the other hand, if this case is upheld and national (which the reporting says it would be) in scope, then we'll see the destruction of most inter-collegiate college athletics. Why MAD? Simply because all those Billy Bob's with extra moolah from their carwashes and other endeavors will pile money into the Power Conference teams, and leave the rest with no way to compete for above average athletes. And the rich will get richer, just because these schools will, inevitably, be the beneficiaries of post-season tournament largesse as well since they will be winners in conference play.

Corruption in a wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 universe. Just what we need.

But there is, may be, a positive to all this corruption. The have nots - smallish state schools and private schools, will in due time finally realize that pouring money into arenas and coach salaries and the other festoons of semi-pro athletics is a complete waste. They can then go back to treating inter-collegiate sports as the dessert of academia, and not the entree. And, in doing so, will turn out graduates who rightly value learning and brains over touchdowns and dunks.

Kind of win-win: the dummies waste four or five years deluded into thinking StateU sports will turn them into multi-million dollar draft picks, while the graduates of schools that shun the bait-and-switch scam turn out graduates who actually know something of value. Blue states crush Red states, just like the First Civil War. There's a reason Boeing can't get a working 787 out of South Carolina. he he he

And, of course, should this unfettering of NIL be upheld all the way to the Supremes, there'll be a knock-on effect in professional sports, foobah and hoops in particular. Professional sports organizations widely enforce revenue sharing and salary caps. Those will be held to be, as well, in violation of antitrust laws. And, once again, cui bono? As before, the rich will get richer, the poor die off. The so-called small market teams will wither and die, as they should since they never should have been created in the first place. Many, if not all, will, again in due time, be replaced by additional teams in large population centers just as was true before the 707.

By The Numbers - part the forty eighth

"Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me!" just finished up, and ran some of their usual non-commercials, of which BritBox was one. And said blurb listed "Death in Paradise" as a reason to pony up the moolah. Fortunately, one can watch the show, somewhat delayed, on PBS; at least so far. According to the wiki there are 8 regular episodes per season/year and for the last 3 years, a Christmas special; a Christmas murder does sound a bit macabre, of course.

That works out to be 9 murders per year. Now, the population of the fictional Saint Marie is said to be about 10,000. The audience doesn't know how many other murders happen in the remaining 43 weeks of the year, but what's the number of murders, and population, of the real island, Guadeloupe, where the show is produced? Enquiring minds needs to know.

Population - 378,561 (2024)
Murders - 45 (2015)

Saint Marie murder rate (not annualized) 9/10,000 = .09%
Saint Marie murder rate (annualized, assuming of course that the citizens are always bloodthirsty) 52/10,000 = .52%

Guadeloupe murder rate = .01%

Just don't set foot in Saint Marie!!

By The Numbers - part the forty seventh

Now that Orange Jesus has embarked on his latest Grift with gold plated (yeah, right) kicks at $399, let's run a few numbers, shall we?

Back in the old days, I knew some folks in small business, who imparted the rule-of-thumb of small business (and TTO is certainly no more than that):
⅓ to materiel
⅓ to labor
⅓ to owners

According to the latest tally, Orange Jesus is on the hook, in toto, for $600,000,000. So, at best, Orange Jesus pockets $133 per each pair. So, class, how many gold plated kicks does he need to shift in order to cover the vig?

Well, $600,000,000 / $133 comes out to - 4,511,278 pairs of kicks. Are there that many sub-GED rubes just itching for a pair of gold plated kicks? Only The Shadow knows.

By The Numbers - part the forty sixth

Well, I suppose I should 'fess up: there's only one show on HBO that I care about, that's John Oliver late Sunday night. And, due to the strike, there wasn't much of John for a while, thus when he returned it was only a few weeks, then went to hiatus. Last night was the Grand Return. And, of course, he ended the episode with a bang.

The late-night host John Oliver has offered to pay Clarence Thomas $1m annually — as well as give him a $2m tour bus — if the Republican judge resigns from the US supreme court.

Color me blown away. Takes that New Zealand bird mugging up a notch or two.

The very last minute or two of the show. He made it a point of telling us, including Uncle Clarence if he's watching, that the dough is Oliver's not HBO's. Now, naturally, there's a (just near?) 0% chance that Oliver will have to cough up the dough. Oliver's point, naturally, is that the hypocrisy of Uncle Clarence's public statements about just being a Regular Joe Sixpack who prefers to hang out with other Regular Joe Sixpacks rather than The Elites is tangible. As Oliver showed, Uncle Clarence early on declared that his goal was "to be rich". Naturally, Uncle Clarence's cabal of billionaires will now just front (well, more likely back-door) him the cool $1,000,000, lest his greed overtake his animus for the hoi-polloi, and stall their plan for MARF^™(party like it's 1829). No one needs no education to walk behind a horse-plow and make lots of babies!! We still gots lots of Indians out West to kill!

A More Modest Proposal

High schoolers, current and former, are well aware of Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal", yes? Well, later time, different place, but time for another.

Now that the Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts have impeached Mayorkas for not following their policy demands (not exactly a high crime or misdemeanor), whatever they may be at the transitory whim of Orange Jesus, there has been room for Another Modest Proposal to solve the immigrant-at-the-border-problem all along. Herewith.

Send a regiment to the Rio Grande, and set up machine gun nests every hundred yards or so, mow done the miscreants as they cross the border (it's in the middle of the river, in case you didn't know). Their lifeless bodies will just float on down to the Gulf of Mexico (kinda, sorta sending them back to where they came from). Or, may be snipers, which would be cheaper, one migrant, one bullet. Problem solved. The ghost of Swift would be proud.

The Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts certainly hasn't come up with anything more effective, and, at the behest of the Orange Jesus, killed (he he) the carefully negotiated pact (which is very un-Democratic, i.e. the Sleepy Joe Party caved to the MARF^™* brigade) to address the issue.

* - Make America Redneck Forever

Bitch, Bitch, Bitch

These days, the sports pundits (kind of an oxymoron, if ya tink about it for a second) have been bitching about how high the scoring has been this year, and a few recent. Well, they're ignorant morons. If you're old enough to remember, or smart enough to look it up, you can see that during the middle of the Celtics Dynasty (to pick a time-point at random), 1960, the average was 118. It stayed at or above 110 until the 1971 season. And, lo and behold, fell like a rock when the 3-pointer was imported from the ABA. Thankfully, not that hideous ball. It hasn't come close since.

Welfare for the Rich: The American Way

There is an old saying, presented a few ways, in the econ bidnezz - "The tragedy of the commons"; that doc, by the bye, isn't from some aggro-Woke cabal, but Harvard Business School. So there! Point 5 in the doc is, surprise, all about groundwater. Didn't take long to find it. Being Taxachusetts born and raised, 'commons' always has resonated as 'Boston Common', and does have some history. In the bad olde days, the Common was used as a common pasture for livestock. You can guess what happened.

During the 1630s, the Common was used by many families as a cow pasture. This traditional use for a commons quickly ended when the large herds kept by affluent families led to overgrazing and the collapse of the Common as pastureland.

So, today we find out that another New England state's administration, decided to cave to Big Bidnezz, aka Poland Spring and siblings:

Mainers don't want Poland Spring to lock our communities into bad deals, and certainly not bad deals that last for decades.
--Margaret M. O'Neil (D, Saco)

This situation isn't new, by the way. It got a mention in these here parts way back in 2015. Once Nestle got a hold of Poland Spring, the aggression really ramped up. One suit.

The rich get richer and the poor have kids. And, who cares about the kids and grandkids and so on? Yeah, we're gonna leave them a burnt out cinder of a planet? Party like it's 1829!!

Pot Meet Kettle

You've heard it, right? "That's the pot calling the kettle black?" Some, the yunguns especially, may interpret that as some kind of racial slur. I suppose some might even try to use it that way, but that's not where the meme comes from. In days of olde, when knights were bold, cooking was down on a hearth, aka, a rig in the front of the household fireplace. Any vessel that was used turned black on the exterior, of course. So, both pots and kettles acquired that same patina of grime. It's now used as a meme for hypocrisy.

Well, good ole Rick Pitino says that college Hoop Players should live with a 'salary' cap. At least in the Big Conference schools. Is Coach Rick worried about having to field a team from year to year, certain that if he lands a diamond in the rough as a frosh, he'll skedaddle after March Madness has run its course? You betcha.

Pitino took to social media and suggested there should be a salary cap between $1.5 million and $2 million for the Big East and Power Five conferences when it comes to basketball.

Well, why not just slide all the way down the slippery slope:
- no limit on years of 'eligibility', thus sub-NBA stars can keep getting their dough from StateU after StateU until they're 35 or so
- no requirement to actually attend classes
- no limit on sources and amounts of NIL funds

NCAA has been the minor leagues for foobah and hoops, and more recently bazebah, for decades. Will college sports be any 'better' with the fig leaf torn off? Well, the bettors might like it.

Watery Grave

Recently I saw an oldish shoot 'em up, set in and around present day (1967) Los Angeles, with Lee Marvin as the anti-hero, "Point Blank". Rather good movie. One of the shootings happens in Los Angeles in what looks like a 300 foot (or so, at the top) wide empty concrete ditch. I found out that this concrete ditch is actually the Los Angeles River. I assumed that in times (way) past, this was a natural river and that the concrete ditch was merely poured into the existing course. Who knew?

Well, natives have always known, of course. However, what with the Noah-esque rain the past few days, photos of the half-full, or thereabouts, waterway have been popping up all over the place. Here's one example.

My sister, et al, are farther south near San Diego, where the onslaught has been kinder.

By The Numbers - part the forty fifth

If you're enamored of real car racing, aka Formula 1, not that 'drive straight, turn left' stupidity that is NASCAR, then you've also heard that The Hammer is going Italian. How will this likely turn out? My take: not well.

First, there is the problem of who's First driver? Leclerc ain't likely to say, 'have at it matey', now is he? Will Ferrrari always give The Hammer the bestest car? May be; after all, Leclerc ain't done all that well, either.

Second, is it reasonable for a 40 year (geezer time in F1, BTW) to win the Championship? Not so much. Here's the list of the oldest ones. Only 3 have been 40+, and that last was 1966. How many races in that season? Just 9, and the other 40+ driver seasons were either 7 or 8 races. Fangio won it 5 times (the table is odd, in that it lists 1954 twice, because Fangio changed teams in mid season), but only once in a 9 race season. Next year: 24, the longest season yet. Make no mistake, driving a F1 racer isn't something Ralph Kramden could do.

Third, Ferrari has been trailing Red Bull and Mercedes forever, so why assume that they'll leap frog both in this, the final 2 years of the formula? Seems unlikely. Then, 2026 brings a new formula (said to be very different from the current), and again, Ferrari is pitching from behind second base. Again. The Hammer will be 41 when the next formula is in force. It's always taken some seasons for teams to figure out the loopholes in the formula, so how old will The Hammer be by then? 43? 44? And for those in the know, a few years back (2019) FIA finally caught Ferrari driving a truck through the regs (they did well for a few seasons, but didn't get a championship).

It appears that The Hammer has been too clever by half.

By The Numbers - part the forty fourth

Rut Roh!! It's reported that the Arab-American, (read? Muslim community?) isn't happy with Sleepy Joe's tepid support for their cause in Gaza.

Number of Arab-Americans - 1,698,570

Number of Jewish-Americans - 7,150,000

Number of Muslim-Americans - 4,500,000

Number of Christian Arab-Americans - not a tidy figure, might be 1,000,000 or might be 2,300,000

Not that any group can reliably be defined as monolithic, but it don't look good for the Palestinian supporters. And that's just a few minutes of letting my Fingers do the Walking Through the Yellow Googles. Pretty much means the full reality is much murkier. Orange Jesus, as usual, will find a way to leverage his hypocrisy to capture the brain limited sub-groups.

By The Numbers - part the forty third

A report to make Gov. DeMented pleased as punch.

In Europe, reported measles cases rose more than 40-fold last year compared with 2022, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.

We don't need no jabs!!! If God said we did, we would do it. But he doesn't and we won't! Party like it's 1829!!!

As if this sort of scourge wasn't predicted by the folks who know about disease and vaccines. Idiots are running ever more of the planet.

"We actually knew this was going to happen, so it's not news for us," Dr. Crowcroft said of Europe's rise in measles cases.

"There are times when there's absolutely no pleasure in being right, and this is one of those."