Bully Bully

We have a whole new look at bullying today with the bullying of Jonathan Martin by Richie Incognito of the Miami Dolphins. Some folk cannot wrap their heads around the idea that one 300 pound lineman can bully another 300 pound lineman. They say things, “Why didn’t he just punch him out?” Just how would that help?

 Football is a violent sport that encourages violence among its players. It has gone on a long time. “Gotta toughen them up.” And the great insult, “You play like a girl.” That is about as political incorrect as you can get. “Honey can you get me another beer while I sit here on my expanding ass watching other people exercise? Oh yeah, bring me some artery clogging food as long as you’re up.”

Now I fully realize that the vast majority of males and perhaps females gather in front of TVs on a regular basis and yell, scream and shout for their favorite football teams. It is most common for these couch potato quarterbacks to indicate that they are smarter than the coaches that coach these teams. And they can cite sport statistics forever. So, I know I’m not going to be in the majority here with my views. Okay. But here are some more statistics.

The average NFL player salary is $1.9 million. The median NFL player salary is $770,000. The average NFL player plays 3.2 years. Running backs average 2.57 years. These figures come from NFL communications. Now the NFL also makes some claims that players last much longer than that by inserting some criteria to make it look like they last longer, but few buy into that.

It seems to me that these guys are underpaid for what they are doing, even though we here all about stars being paid millions.

Men in our country expect to live about 75 years (egad I don’t have much time left.) Now an NFL player’s life expectancy is 55 years. And often their post playing years are filled with injuries that make the life less than full. According to the St. Petersburg Times, every season a player plays in the NFL decreases his life expectancy by 3 years.

This year 273 players have suffered season-ending injuries. That works out to about 9 players per team. And there are more called with “out of the season” because of injury: 14 with head injuries, 13 with neck injuries, and one spine injury.

We have also read recently about the effects of concussions on players such as Tony Dorset and Bret Favre who are experiencing significant memory loss and anger issues. The NFL has reached a tentative $765 million settlement over concussion-related brain injuries among it 18,000 retired players.

And now there is talk of lengthening the season by 2 more games. Ya think that might add up to more injuries? They would all make more money but think of the cost in more than dollars.

If you are looking for the biggest bully it seems to me it is the NFL itself. If you required people to play football it would likely be made illegal as cruel and unusual punishment.

Facts vs. Truth

As a good Irishman I believe that a good tale is much better than factual ramblings. In fact, I believe that there is often more truth found in a good tale than in a lot of factual recitations.

As a pastor I found that true in scripture as well. I know a lot of folk who can quote biblical “facts” until the cows come home, but miss the truth of the biblical narrative. For instance the biblical writers often borrowed stories from other traditions and then put the truth spin on that story. The most famous of these is likely the story of Noah and the Ark. This story, originally the Gilamesh Legend is one of the most ancient of stories that came originally from Mesopotamia about 2700 B.C. It is a story about the king or Uruk who was 2/3rds god and 1/3 man who turned out to be a very bad dude who eventually got his from the other gods who frowned upon is bad behavior. At anyrate, the Hebrews borrowed the story and adapted it to tell the moral the outcome of immoral behavior existing throughout humankind whom God wipes out with a flood with the exception of Noah and his kin and assorted animals. Then God makes a covenant with people, symbolized by the rainbow that God would never do that again no matter how badly people acted. That was the truth they saw and depicted in the story.

Another story of this ilk that rarely gets preached is the story of Gideon fighting the Midianites. Gideon with a little bity army conquers a great big army of Midianites with the Lord’s help. True. The scripture leaves out the part where the Midianites find out there is trouble on their home from and most leave to go fight that battle and Gideon and his 300 soldiers wipe them out. The story is true in the of the believers, even if the facts get played with a bit.

One of my favorite websites is Politifact.com which is always checking out the validity or the factuality of political claims made. Some others do the same, but in my opinion Politifact does it the most evenhanded.

So, are politicians or others, free to make claims that are untrue even if they aren’t if they fit their ideology? I think not. A lie is a lie and interpretation is interpretation and the two are not the same. For instance, today Politifact examined the claims of American for Prosperity say that Kay Hagan supports waivers for friends of Obama and special treatment for Congress and their staffs. They find that claim false. The facts are that 1,000 companies received Obamacare waivers but there is not evidence to indicate they are Obama’s friends.

Many folk use facts to tell lies as folk make tell stories to tell truths. Another illustration is my previous article on the subject of government being too big. It is factual in one sense but in essence a total lie that leads away from truth rather than reveal truth.

And then there are great stories that are just plain lies that take on validity because they get repeated frequently. When Ronald Reagan ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976 he told this story: “There’s a woman in Chicago. She has 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards. …She’s got Medicaid, getting food stamps an she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free income alone is over $150,000.” Wow what a story for those folk who love to blame the welfare recipients of mass corruption. The problem was the story was a total lie. She didn’t exist. Some reporters said there was a 47-year-old woman in Chicago who abused the system but in now way to the amount Reagan told. It was a good and effective story that matched many folks ideological frame of mind complete with heroes and villains. People also assumed the woman was black even though Reagan did not say that, but it fit their stereotype.

The Welfare Queen story is still going with many variations by modern politicians and people are still buying it because they want to. Modern versions include calling President Obama the “food stamp president.” Others claiming welfare has gone from a safety net to a hammock. Others sneer at the “entitlement society,” believing they are hardworking versus the lazy poor.

Do you see all the ad stories on TV on how well workers at Wal-Mart are doing? Wow, you would think that working at Wal-Mart was the pathway to middle class economic standing. But the facts are that the median wage of Wal-Mart workers is $8.80 and need food stamps in order to take care of their families. All this while the Walton’s, the owners of Wal-Mart make millions and find every tax advantage possible. In other words, Wal-Mart has found a way to make the government pay for their workers while they pocket enormous profits. These are the stories that tell lies rather the reveal truth.

We love our stories. I believe in story telling. But I believe stories are to be told to reveal truth not to hide it. We need better storytellers today.

When More is Less – Government Jobs

In the summer of 1966 when Lyndon Johnson was president the Federal government had 2,721,000 employees. In September of this year, before the government shutdown, the government had 2,723,000 employees [Note during the G.W. Bush administration we had 2,724,000 federal employees]. Thus we have 2,000 more federal government employees right? Well, not really.

In order to gain a proper perspective of the relative number of federal employees you need to look at percentages. In 1966 4.3% of our citizens were federal employees. Today we have 2% of the population that are government employees. Or, in other words we are at a 47-year low in terms of government employees in relation to the population.

Certain folk love to complain about the corruption we find in government, industry, banking, and the lot. They expound upon the abuses of those on welfare. My question is what do we expect? If you have less folk to oversee these programs, even with deregulation, you get less oversight and more opportunities for corruption. As for welfare fraud, it may make for good rhetoric but the numbers are low, even though some agencies try to make them appear more than they are. Best guesses there are 2% of folk on welfare who commit fraud.

We also are a nation that loves to put people in jail, which is very expensive. This is way out of proportion to other countries. But how many of the big corporation CEO’s, Bankers and the lot have we seen put in jail? Charges are not even brought against them when they defraud those who trusted them. And then some are trying to get tax deduction for fines they agree to pay without admitting any fault.

The country’s infrastructure is falling apart and we have high rates of unemployment and too many low paying jobs. It seems to me we should high a lot more government workers, which would benefit the entire economy. Didn’t we learn anything from the New Deal?

The cartoon reflect popular scapegoating, so let the whiners go to work for the government, and if you think government workers get undue raises, talk to a teacher.

Decrease Government Spending at All Costs?

I just caught some commentator saying on NPR that there had not been a fiscally conservative congressional leader in congress in years, or something to that effect. After I switched to TV rather than the radio I thought about what he had said and it amazed me. His definition of a fiscal conservative was one that saw that the government spent less money than the year or years before.

That just doesn’t happen whether you have Democrats or Republicans in the White House or in the majority in Congress. In fact, the Republican conservatives generally up the spending more than those they accuse of spending the Democrats.

Or you can look at percentage increases during Presidential administrations.

Let’s see the country gets bigger each year, the population increases each year, the infrastructure needs to repaired each year, the economy increases each year etc. so isn’t it logical that government spending would increase each year as well. It seems clear to me that the government has lagged behind necessary increased governmental spending since Reagan began deregulation and lowered taxes for the rich thus the majority of wealth has been accumulated by a very few people in this country. That’s not good, and stands in the way of government doing its job of taking care of the common good.

Whoever was speaking seems to be a non-reflective ideolog who just wants less government spending regardless of its effects upon the country. Unfortunately too many folk seem to believe this nonsense.

The mandate “To whom much is given much is required,” is largely ignored by today’s public servants who lock up the government while the people suffer. They should do their job which is caring for our citizens.

Cats and Chandeliers

“I think our human servants, Mewreen and Meugh, should do undertake some remodeling of our Schacteau,” mused Patchtricia and she rolled on her back while lying on the orange blanket.”

“What type of remodeling?” asked Pawline as she got up, stretched and went to the food bowl for a snack.

“Well,” said Patch considering, “I’m thinking of a chandelier.”

“A chandelier,” replied Lamont opening one eye and gazing with limited interest at his sister. “Why a chandelier?”

Warming to her subject Patch said, “Well, we are pretty hep, swinging type cats and we need to swing. Now there is the fan with lights over the computer desk, but it is out of our leaping reach I think, and might be difficult to hold onto as it turns at various speeds, some of which might be too fast.”

With visions of she and her siblings hanging onto a spinning ceiling fan, Paw added, “It’s sounds like fun, but getting a grip on that think would be pretty tricky. If memory serves, you tried to do that didn’t you Lamont with rather disastrous results?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” said Lamont as he recalled the day he did jump up to grab a fan blade and was slung against the wall.

“A chandelier is stationary,” said Patch returning to the subject at hand. “It has all types of sparkly things that catch the sun and would give us light spots to chase. And if we leapt high and got a hold of it, we could swing on it to our hearts content. Oh, that sounds like fun.”

“Let’s have them put up two chandeliers,” added Paw. “Then we could swing from one to another slapping paws with each other as we passed midair. Oh, I say Patch, I think you are on to something really interesting here. Think about clouding their minds and inducing this idea Lamont. You should be able to do that.”

Lamont slowly closed his open eye recalling his crash into the wall while trying to hold onto the fan and began to snooze.