And it still says something

It seems that the the book Crunchy Con's written by Rod Dreher (whom I already noted here has had to deal with some friendly fire for being a conservative that tries loving mother earth) is getting him the Trotsky treatment from the Right.

The book sounds like it might be an interesting read!

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In praise of unprofessional conduct - basketball wise.

Matt Yglesias (whom I normally find is saying it better than I could have) is unfortunately flailing at the value of college basketball again. (Equally talented Jason Zengerle disagrees.) I'm not sure why the Prospect would let Yglesias damage his credibility by putting the meme in a full article, but oh hell, I can't resist. First, I believeYglesias is a New Yorker who went to Harvard. From that perspective, he is performing a feat of incredible physical dexterity to suggest that the current Knicks and Celtics play a better game than do college players. (If in fact a Knicks fan, Matt may not even remember what a pass looks like, but I'm sure Larry Brown will resurrect that as soon as Isaiah ditches Stephon Marbury. Though again, Yglesias would seem to disagree.)

Yglesias claims that the College game suffers from early departures, stating that the most promising talent has bypassed college for the pros or leaves after too short a stay. This is a point that is overblown - while some great talent heads to the pros early, we are talking about 10 or 15 at the most out of 180 or so players spread through division one. But it's not just overblown, it's not backed up by one thing, NBA performance. If the college game were really suffering because of NBA-talent drain, then the best young NBA players would either have never played college ball or played so briefly (I'd say only one year) as to have not been great impacted or had a great impact themselves.

So among this year's rookie class, whose the top scorer with one year or no college experience? Marvin Williams formerly of Carolina. As a Tarheel fan, Marvin, I miss you, but I don't feel like my enjoyment was hurt by your early departure (I've got the Championship DVD to prove it). Marvin's gonna be a star, but right now he's only averaging 7.9 ppg on a very bad team. Sure, it'd be nice to have him in college still (George Mason would have lost to the Heels, in DC for a trip to the Final Four.), but somehow I think the college game has forged ahead (and even I have come to love George Mason).

Who's next among NBA rookies? Monta Ellis and Martell Webster. What, you haven't heard of them. Funny thing about these great talents the college game is missing - THEY often go missing when they get into the NBA (quick quiz, whose Jonathan Bender? Hint, he's retired at 25). Maybe one day they'll be great, but all these guys are clearly behind Chris Paul, Charlie Villanueva, Channing Frye, Raymond Felton, Deron Williams, Salim Stoudamire, Andrew Bogut, Nate Robinson and Luther Head. I guess I got on a roll there, but for Yglesias's sake I didn't want to miss naming a player who played at least two years in college and excelled in the NCAA tournament, as that was what apparently has Yglesias climibing the walls. Maybe the fact that all these rookies excelling this year led their teams in the tournament while in College will awaken Matt to the value of the college game. Perhaps his assertion that the best young players are in the NBA needs a little re-evaluation.

Of course, a rookie season does not make an NBA player. And there some great no-college NBA players. Kobe Bryant, Lebron James and Kevin Garnett are obvious examples. There's also Carmelo Anthony who left after winning a National title at Syracuse after his freshman season. But guess what, they're freaks! Among the Top 40 scorers in the league this season, Zack Randolph and Al Harrington are the only others with similar lack of need for the college game. This has been going on for a while, the anti-college NBA route- did you really think that only 6 of the Top 40 scorers spent little or no time in college?

It's true that the college game would be better if at least the kids who weren't ready to go pro stayed in school, but a consequence of drafting players who aren't ready to play NBA ball is that the quality of the professional game has suffered. The average NBA team from the early 90s team would most likely shred the NBA's best today. Except for the aging Shaq, the Eastern Conference alone probably doesn't have a single player who would crack say the 1991 All-Star team's lineup. Guys can't shoot well, they don't even have a clue what a down screen looks like, they think (and apparently Yglesias does as well) that a 2 or 3rd pass is a sign of weakness. It's no wonder that a relatively unathletic team like the Pistons (featuring an all-college player starting lineup) has played in the last two NBA finals and dominated the league for much of this year.

Most of Yglesias's column seems driven by the same unrealistic yearning that a New Yorker faced with bagels in North Carolina might have. For him, "the college game bears only a faint resemblance to the real thing." He's so convinced he's had the best, that he doesn't even want to consider anything less. Of course the college game is played by athletes "younger, inexperienced, and physically under-developed" compared to the pros. That's why you have a professional league, but it doesn't mean that the step below is suddenly barely better than Church League.

Indeed, I wonder if even most NBA players might think Yglesias's laudits of their relative prowess as a little spooky.

To watch the world's best basketball teams -- the Miami Heat, the Phoenix Suns, the San Antonio Spurs, the Detroit Pistons, the Dallas Mavericks -- is to distinctly put oneself in the presence of greatness. The feats on display are not quite super-human -- Shaquille O'Neal and Shawn Marion and Tim Duncan are still members of our species at the end of the day -- but they certainly appear to be.

I don't know about Marion and O'Neal. But it's hard to imagine the mild-mannered Duncan confusing himself with Aqua Man. Even O'Neal only does that as part of his schtick. Personally, I'm fear what things Yglesias has to be ingesting to think the average March NBA contest could deserve this description:

The sheer speed and ferocity of the games is astounding -- even mentally you'd be overwhelmed, lost, driven to tears or insanity amidst the flying bodies, flailing limbs, and zipping ball.

Does he take esctasy during TNT's pre-game analysis? I mean, after a while, you get used to the rythm of ohh, about 65 pick'n'rolls spiced with the scattered isolation play. I realize NBA players are doing something I could never accomplish, but so are figure skaters, professional bowlers and bass fisherman. My own athletic limitations do not shape the paradigm in which I choose the worthiness of a spectator sport. Indeed, seeing as I couldn't make the Student-faculty basketball team in High School, I'm not really sure of the level of basketball to which I'd have to stoop to find athletes not doing something I can't imagine doing.

What I do enjoy watching is effort. And that, to me, is where the college game has the NBA out-classed hands-down. I'm not saying there isn't ever effort in the NBA, I love the NBA playoffs (more on that below). But the NBA season is so long that it punishes the kind of all-out intensity that the College game thrives off of. Let's face it, the only other group detained longer than NBA players without a trial are living on Guantanamo Bay. 82 games, and (not for the Knicks) a post season that runs two months - guys will take a night off. As for the fans, most are too busy talking to their agent to really cheer. Though I hear some of them, with enough beer in them, can toss a good drink now and then.

College is about bringing it every game, every minute - for fans and players alike. Does Yglesias seriously not find enjoyment and the endeavor of sport from watching a college game in January or February, in some loud gym like Cameron Indoor, University Hall, or games at places like Butler, Wichita St., Davidson or Montana; watching players tear along the baseline, the offensive player seeking out screens and defensive player bouncing around to avoid them only to have both meet at the end of a pass to the 3-point line; watching big men fight to step out and meet the ball handler, then slip back in, make three pump fakes all the while navigating flying bodies coming at them? As Zengerle points out

Maybe Yglesias played for a kick-ass JV team; otherwise, I don't know what he's talking about. While the talent level in college is obviously below the talent level in the pros, I don't think fans are so delusional as to think that college ball bears any resemblance, even a superficial one, to any games they themselves played in.

Yglesias also takes issue with the NCAA holding a single-game elimination tournament. Perhaps he likes hearing an underdog say before an NBA series, "if we can just get out of town with a split, and get back home, I think we'll win." And, yes, best-of does provide for a more pure champion. But here's a thought: take away single-game elimination, and maybe you don't have Texas Western, NC State (twice), Villanova or George Mason. Like much of American life, the NCAA is a dance with fate's twists. That's what makes it great. And it helps to make NCAA basketball champions legendary (Yglesias's criticism is odd in many ways, but not the least because his article implies that College Football is more tolerable. And that's a sport where the college folks can't figure out a way to remove the word "mythical" from its championship.)

Basketball is the most democratic sport. It demands full and varied participation, not delimited by inherent physical traits (big men shoot threes, six-foot guards post up and rebound, and every body in between does it all) , it seeks a simple utilitarian goal, the means of achieving which is in constant debate, always in motion, with the relevant factors ever-changing. It does not require one to read sub-paragraphs of rule books to know the rules. And occasionally, some little school from a small town, or small university, without the right pedigree will take out the clearly better team on a glorious spring afternoon. Thus, the "Rule of the people" is best demonstrated by March Madness.

I'm sorry that such a state of affairs appears to discomfort Yglesias's moral compass. Of course, I have my own qualms about the NBA. It does have too many teams (namely the Clippers and the Grizzlies), as Yglesias says, and its got GMs who draft every European and high school player more out of fear than out of knowledge. And this season alone the Knicks have worn their road blue on the sacred Madison Square Garden floor, which is only slightly mitigated by the fact that at least the Knicks were wearing their actual uniforms. I occasionally turn on TNT or ESPN and think I'm watching Real Madrid take on the Washington Generals, only to realize that it's another example of how the NBA is so overly marketing conscious that they are just trotting out a team's "full-moon-in-a-February-leap-year" jerseys. And, really is Mighty Mouse finished trying to make his shot in the slam dunk contest? I mean, I know the NBA's all about the Best-of, but letting a guy take 14 tries to get a dunk? Heck that wouldn't play at United Methodist.

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Yes, but what about the hidden cost of BS?

John Hood has apparently figured it out, he's on to the fact that Government spending involves, not simply people spending solely their own money on individual needs but collective pooling of community assets to provide community goods. With this newfound discovery, he bemoans those curve who "believe that if a politician promises them a "free" good, it won't cost them anything." He must be talking about tax cuts, isn't he? Those are "painless" right John. He bemoans the "interest free loan to the tax collector that paycheck withholding represents, because we all know if once every year the state and the Federal goverments had to go seeking the entirety of people's tax obligations, that would just go over real smoothly, like for instance, we could only fight our wars during the months of May and June, people depending on social security would get paid once a year.

This of course all goes to John's fabulous point that the real cost of government is hidden from people. Yes, John, the fact that pesky retail sales tax, which everytime someone purchases something increases the cost of their actual purchase price above the price tag they read when they picked it off the shelf conceals the cost of government. Would combining sales tax with a good swift kick in the rear delivered by a black-booted thug be sufficient, or will certain, umm, probes be necessary?

John also has a beef with poorer communities foisting their silly little needs, like water supply, sewer systems, roads, education on the "state government" and therefore imposing their spending needs on the more-fortunate denizens of Charlotte and Asheville and Wilmington. Regarding leandro funding concerns, John asks, "I've always wondered what this was supposed to mean in practice. Is there a category of North Carolina suburban counties whose residents can obviously afford to pay for their own schools as well as the schools of city and countryside?" Well, John, funny you should ask, how about those suburban counties surrounding, gee, I don't know, Charlotte, Asheville, and Wilmington which you so helfpully pointed out didn't have the same budgetary problems that other counties do. And since you no doubt have written columns commenting on how over-privileged, liberal and out-of-touch the well-heeled residents of Wake, Durham and Orange counties (how those high-falutin commies don't understand the struggles of salt-of-the-earth types both to the east and west) then let's go ahead and add those guys as well.

What the heck is the Old North State, a loose confederation of entreprenuerial enterprises beholden to no one other than their own parochial interest? Is the old saying "From Murphy to Manteo" being amended to "What happens in Murphy stays in Murphy, and Manteo can go to hell as far as Murphy is concerned"? Does John think that places like Charlotte, Asheville and Raleigh, beneficiaries of the presence of state-taxpayer-supported schools like UNCC, UNCA and State should hoard the results of this largess and ignore that the kids applying to those school also come from Hoke, Pamlico and Surry counties?

John sincerely, you want your wonderful world, fine, it's in Baghdad, let's buy you a ticket - so can live in a place where one region doesn't give a damn about the other. But if anything North Carolina needs to look after all its own better, not think of it as "other people's money" and start thinkin of it as our state's opportunity. Of course, if he wants it that way, then the state can stop spending my money on incarcerating non-violent criminals, executions and building senseless road projects. but that's not how a government works is it?

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Don't be a Lotto fool

Today I bought a lottery ticket. No, not that lottery ticket. I bought a ticket in my own personal Walter Bussy Lottery, I took $2 and put it into my savings account. I don't want to lecture on the immorality of state-supported gambling, regressive public revenue schemes and of course, the whole ineffectuality of using a lottery to try to increase education spending. I'd rather just point out that as far as getting wealthy, your best bet is saving and using that miracle - compound interest.

Why don't I like the lottery, not policy-wise but for me personally. Here's the problem. I'm not a big fan of somebody else getting rich at my expense. And playing the lottery is nothing more than ignoring the near certainty that your money will end up in someone else's hands while deluding yourself regarding the near-impossibility that that someone will be you. Don't believe me, ask the NC lottery commission. The best you can hope for is a 1 in 3.75 chances at winning. Basically, your up against 2.75 other people. Maybe Kobe Bryant doesn't end up passing up that shot, but arcbender shares the ball when the odds are that bad.

And it gets worse. If you win the lottery, which is supposed to help us pay for education without increasing taxes, guess what happens - YOU PAY TAXES on your winnings! So say you spend $2 a day buying lotto tickets over six months. Your looking at far worse than break even odds, and what little you get back, that's getting taxed too. Really people, this is spending money, to get back less than you spend, and be taxed to boot.

I know, I know - what about the thrill!?? It's the sport of it all that's attractive, right. It's the fact that you just might hit the big one. Sure you'd pay a nice chunk in taxes, but you have that chance of making it big.

To this I say, "you like the idea of funding government while taxing people who make it big? Great, let me explain how a progressive income tax works. It's called you work, you succeed and make it rich, you end up paying taxes, and afterwords, you're still rich." Sure, the rich complain about higher marginal rates, but no person has ever been seen jumping for joy, or relaxing by their personal indoor pool while they paid a sales tax (frequently the only acceptable tax for increasing).

But I said I wouldn't do that. Okay, back to the lottery ticket. It's paying for the education of that cute little braces-wearing girl on the Lottery Commission's website isn't it? (What they couldn't give her a puppy to hold?) Where does that dollar go? Well, try this break down (from the NC Public Schools Forum) of your lottery dollar on for size. The half going to winners, has got all the pepperoni on it, and guess what, you'll be lucky to get the crust. For the link challenged, here's the numbers with my $ figure calculations added.

• $0.50 – someone else’s winnings ($607 M)
• $0.15 – paying for Administrating a system that advertises to you to take your money so it can make other people rich ($182M)
• $0.02 – making sure there’s enough money in a system that makes other people rich ($21.25M)
• $0.13 – School construction ($161.5 M about 65% to counties based on enrollment, 35% to high-property tax counties)
• $0.03 – To scholarships – (according to the Lottery commission’s numbers, this would be $40.3 M)
• $0.17 – Class-size and More at-four – about $191.7 M

So, of the money your spending, 2/3rds are going to something beside Education. All told, about $394 M a year to education. A lot of money? well, according to the NC Justice Center's Budget and Tax Center's numbers for FY 2005-2006 (p.3 here) the overall state appropriations for k-12 and higher ed was around $9.5 B. In otherwords, the lottery would only be about 5 percent of our total stat education budget. Of course, we were told that the lottery would supplement, not supplant general fund money, right? Well, funny thing. That language magically disappeared, and, as this article shows. The lottery is pretty quickly going to be supplanting away.

With that knowledge, I can't really bring myself to pop-in to a Citgo, grab myself a pack of Nabs and drop the money on the lottery. I'm not sure a pack of cigarrettes aren't a better deal. And I don't much relish the idea of anybody getting rich this way. Sure, the lottery winner makes for a nice photo - the beaming face of the average guy or gal that just hit the big one. But frankly, I don't care much what background somebody who wants to win the lottery has - as far as I'm concerned, they just better get themselves a job and stop expecting me to buy a lottery ticket so they can cease their morning commute. I'm willing to help my brothers and sisters out, I just doin't want my intelligence insulted along the way.

So here's my plan, put $2 a day into savings rather than spending that amount on lottery tickets. To simplify, you can, like me, use a program like Quicken to "hide" the $2 every day in a "savings goal" so the money looks like it's gone from your checking account in Quicken, and at the end of the month put the $60/62 into your Savings account. Saving $60/month would mean twice a year you would have accrued $300. Suppose you could put that amount into a 6-month CD, which right now earns around 4%. Six months later do the same thing.

At the end of 5 years, the $3600 you saved would have earned about $285 in interest for a total of $3885. May not sound like much, but remember, this is investing the money in an extremely conservative, rather liquid asset - you could earn more. Though likely you might need to pony up a bit more than just $360 to get started (most CDs require at least $500), using the additional $2 a day to beef up your current savings (really, you weren't thinking about reducing savings to buy lottery tickets were you?) makes sense. And over 10-20 years, with longer-term investmentments it really makes sense. And even if doesn't make a whole lot of cents, its a heck of a lot better than flushing the toilet with your money in the lottery.

And no, I'm not hoping to "burn the damn thing down" on the lottery. I fully expect it to make money, not money for North Carolina schools, but money for the North Carolina politicians who want to put off an honest discussion about North Carolina's finances. Still, if I make a few folks choose, by their own work and thrift to make a certain just $285 richer (and did I mention you might not have to pay taxes on it?) rather than making a certain other person rich, I'll sleep (not dying yet!!) a happy man.


Update PS - How bout this? You're more likely to die on your way to buy the ticket than to win big from it.

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Well, now doesn't that say something

Former National Review writer Rod Dreher has a book out, which is either about him alone, or perhaps a larger segment of "conservatives" which he calls "crunchy cons" who share a love of organic food and the earth which provides with liberals. The book may be interesting, though I also think I could easily end up vomiting reading about how people who care about food quality and the environment can support the GOP. But what gets me is this bit from a review of the book:

"Ewww, that's so lefty," Dreher's editor at his old National Review job sneered when Dreher said he was picking up some locally grown organic produce.

So, it's not just liberal, but apparently irredeemably liberal, to be supporting the labor of one's farmer neighbors? Does something about the food's purity not being sullied by lustful, amoral chemicals so denigrate the toil of these otherwise paragons of the "backbone of America" that helping them to loosen themselves from the surly bonds of excessive taxation is no longer a valid conservative act, and in fact calls for derision? Do farmers have to get the Archer Daniels Midland seal of approval before Republicans consider their produce Kosher?

Nice to know where the right-wing's priorities lay.

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