THE DALY SHOW

Pitch Tipping Not Just An A-Rod Thing

This is a posting on JohnDalySports about the latest allegations against A-Rod.  I also have heard the story of pitch-tipping from a couple of major leaguers that you can read about here.

Baseball, Cuckoo’s Nest, Casablanca: Explain It All

T.S. Eliot wrote about writing: ”Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden…”  Trying to explain what is really happening in this economy and changing world is a tough but invigorating battle.  So in this column on JohnDalyLive, I use our national pastime, a classic film from the 1940s and another classic from the 1970s to help you understand what the freak is going on now.  Please fill in any lost thoughts or words.

Obama Plan Only Hurts Stupid-Rich

This is a posting about the proposed budget that includes a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans. If the spirit of this budget fails, then we truly have lost the “exceptional” tag de Tocqueville gave us in the 1800s. I also need someone to find me the author of a theory about empires that endure.

LAS VEGAS, NV (February 27, 2009) – I miss Mike Green, one of my best friends. He died suddenly in 1991 at the age of 46 as Police Chief for Cromwell, Connecticut.

Mike was a big, tough guy with a big smile and always a quick, funny, and bawdy quip. Besides being the town’s top cop, Mike would ump baseball and ref basketball games for the community. He was a cop’s cop who also understood the community side of being a good cop.

Mike was also one of those Americans that de Tocqueville described in the 1800s as “exceptional.” He didn’t tolerate the stupidity or greed of politicians. Heading to the bathroom he would shout, “I’m giving birth to a politician.” (I wonder how de Tocqueville would have written that.)

He didn’t suffer complainers either. If another guy was whining Mike would respond in a most politically incorrect way, “Take off the panties and bra.”

That’s why I wish today’s Republicans and conservatives would have known Mike Green. They need to (with apologies to the feminists) take off the panties and bras or else they’ll be flushed down the political toilet.

Take the whining over the expiration of the Bush tax cuts.

First, they won’t take affect until 2011.

Second, they only affect families making more than $250,000 a year.

Third, the tax cuts go back to Clinton era rates. For those who don’t remember, that’s when we had a budget surplus.

Fourth, this is a redistribution of wealth. So were the Bush tax cuts; they took away from the poor and middle class.

Remember when Republicans were fairly smart. For instance, they demanded welfare reform from President Clinton – and they got it. And those work-fare reforms worked.

Their reasoning was: don’t coddle people and they will be forced to find work and sustain themselves. In other words, push yourself to be a better person; that’s the American way. As a result, many people pulled out of poverty. The 1990s became a decade of prosperity.

That theory works for the wealthy too.

Let’s look at it economically. Take Warren Buffet. The wealthiest man in the world says the tax structure is unfair. While he makes $7 billion, he pays fewer taxes than his secretary who makes $70,000.

I’m no Warren Buffet, but I know how to legally cut my tax bill. I have the greatest accountant here in Las Vegas. His name is Matt Swan. And he was brilliant in setting up my corporations – especially when I began my national TV career earning money all over the country.

I have to think there are other people out there with CPAs like Matt Swan or competent tax attorneys.

This is one theory I’ve always had:

No matter what the economic situation, the smartest people will make money and thrive.

I still believe it even in today’s environment.

The whining you’re hearing from the GOP and the conservatives are from what I call the Stupid-Rich. These are people who are just like the loafers who want to stay on welfare and not work.

Sure, these wealthy people made money and admirably risked their own money on ventures. However, chances are they were either lucky to have had the market conditions, the Bush hand-outs, or someone left them with a bundle of inheritance.

Wow. That sounds a little callous.

Not really. If they were smart and they knew what they were doing, they’d simply succeed again.  If they can’t, then they were lucky even while while being stupid.

How come after I was a ratings success in TV I was always told, “So what are you going to do for me next?” or “Kid, you’re only as good as your next gig.”  It’s the same for the wealthy. You need to go out and earn it again.

What the whiners won’t admit is this. The world economy is changing. And they’re too lazy to adapt. Big business in America continues to complain that taxes are too high, but they don’t want to mention corporate welfare that comes from taxpayers.

Come on, you wealthy and business folks. This is a challenge. This is something to look forward to.  These tax increases on the wealthy and the business community will spur innovation – just as the drying up of welfare checks spurred people to go out and find a job.

True, the tax increases will not create new jobs. That’s fine. Most businesses wouldn’t be hiring anyway. As technology evolves, fewer jobs are being created. Technology allows businesses to hire less while being more productive.

The lack of jobs, on the other hand, will spur even more innovation among those who are out-of-work.

Now let’s look at it politically. I’ll need your help here for a reference.

There is a theory about the survival of empires. It goes like this. The empire or society that survives is one where the upper class has as much to lose as the lower class. For example if the poor only live in the lowlands and the flood area while the rich live safely up on hills, then with one massive flood the society is left with only the upper class to do the work.

I think it’s a sound theory. If you know who championed that theory, let me know.

But it makes sense. Look at the social misery Hurricane Katrina caused. Mr. Bush was labeled a racist. I doubt he is; but his policies were.

Let’s take a baseball analogy. If Major League Baseball allowed the teams free reign over how much they could pay players, then most likely only the wealthiest of teams would win or make money.

We saw this in the late 1990s when there was no luxury tax on free-spending baseball teams. The New York Yankees were building another dynasty. The Yankees’ income from the more affluent New York City market dwarfed all other teams, allowing them to sign the best free agents.

Major League Baseball, though not the many myopic Yankee fans (yes I’m part of Red Sox Nation), realized that if this laissez-faire business model continued the Yankees might only be playing a few teams since teams in smaller markets that might not be able to compete. Or if they did compete, the competition wouldn’t be worth anyone paying to see.

In short, to keep baseball thriving the Yankees and other big-spending teams are paying a luxury tax that keeps teams like the Rays and the Royals competitive.  My late friend Mike, a Yankee fan, I know would agree with this.

Unfortunately, the Bush years weren’t like that for all of America. We were becoming a nation of have’s and have-not: a few Yankees and too many Montreal Expos – a team which doesn’t exist.

The Obama Administration is boldly trying to change that.

As a result, there will be upheaval over the next ten years. Businesses are already changing the way they produce, market, and distribute products and services. For anyone not preparing for the future or hoping for a return to the Bush years, they will fail miserably.  For example, if you’re a bricks-and-mortar business refusing to use the internet, then you deserve to fail.

Will the Obama plan give us record deficits? Absolutely. I’m a fiscal conservative who doesn’t like over-spending. But economic theory tells us now is not the time to tighten government spending.

If in two years when the economy improves and we continue to over-spend, then I have a problem.

If we don’t take care of Medicare and health costs in two years, then I have a problem.

What if it doesn’t work? What if the economy is tanking after all this spending? It might happen.

But by doing nothing, we learn nothing. By doing something, we learn lessons.

I’d rather take the chance of doing something that might work in this new economic matrix rather than sitting and hoping the old failed ways might work. 

In short, I’d rather be bold and daring than be a Republican.

American Fascists: Kudlow, Rush, Hannity

This is a posting about the distortions and tactics of extremist right-wing entertainers and lawmakers who keep saying we’re moving toward Socialism. If they’re right, then Major League Baseball and the National Football League are really Communist fronts. Fortunately, the GOP will be punting on these bozos soon.

LAS VEGAS, NV (February 24, 2009) – Answer this. Would you prefer to live in Sweden today or Germany in the 1930s?

For most of us the answer would be Sweden today. Sweden has a high standard of living and it’s a peaceful country. Germany in the 1930, however, began the rise of Hitler’s Third Reich, a totalitarian regime that would terrorize many of its citizens and other European countries.

Why do I ask such a rhetorical question?

Listen to some of the Right-wingers. They could be blindly conservative friends who listen to the majority of GOP lawmakers and the TV news entertainers like CNBC’s Larry Kudlow, Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity. They keep telling us we’re becoming a communist state. We’re running toward Socialism, they say.

These folks are not necessarily wrong, but, as usual, they’re way off base.

It’s typical of their strategy: take a kernel of truth and then twist it for their purposes. They dramatically try to make us think we’re becoming the Havana of today or Moscow in the 1970s. When in reality, these uneducated demagogues are becoming the Fascists of the 1930s.

Furthermore, their behavior has destroyed the GOP and is giving rise to a new GOP that, thankfully, won’t resemble anything like we see today. Let me explain.

Here’s the kernel of truth. We are moving in the direction of Socialism. And what is Socialism? Answers.com gives this definition without bias.

It’s a political-economic doctrine that, unlike Capitalism which is based on competition, seeks a cooperative society in which the means of production and distribution are owned by the government or collectively by the people.

Are we moving toward that today? Yes, we are — but on a short-term basis. It’s the same thing America did in the 1930s. The New Deal was a move toward cooperation where the central government stepped in on a larger scale to help end the Depression. Today, we’re trying to get the credit markets moving again while keeping people in their homes.

We can argue at length if the New Deal worked or not. The truth is this. If the New Deal was implemented in 1929 right after the stock market crash, and not in 1933 four years after so much wealth was destroyed, the economy might have rebounded before World War II and the post-war economic infusion from the government.

The point is this. We leaned toward Socialism for good reason: to rebuild the economy. However, we never became Socialists. The closest we came to Socialism was in 1912 – 20 years before the Depression — when Eugene V. Debs got one million votes or 6% of the presidential vote. Imagine if a Socialist today garnered 6% of the popular vote? The TV news entertainers would be touting the wisdom of Joe McCarthy.

Another reason America failed at Socialism: a strong union movement. Like it or not, the American union movement of the early 1900s saved us from real Socialism. I’m not advocating unions, even though I am a member of AFTRA and SAG; I just don’t think unions will have much of a place in our future entrepreneur-internet society.

So, we’ve never become a true Socialistic state in America. To say we’re Socialists is like saying anyone who has had a glass of wine is an alcoholic.

But this myopic bunch of doomsayers make that case by also distorting what a Socialistic state is. Sweden today is considered Socialistic. Many Americans would be comfortable living in Sweden. The European brand of Socialism offers more worker and family protections we don’t have. Granted, their GDP is not ours and the chance for huge profits are not the same as in America.

Still, you can’t compare Sweden today to the Moscow we witnessed during the Cold War. But many of the TV news entertainers would make you think that Stalin’s Gulags, military May Day celebrations, and long bread lines are happening in Stockholm and other European nations.

What’s worse is that Sweden had a major banking collapse in the 1990s – that they survived by nationalizing their banks. I’m not saying that’s what President Obama should do. But because of the Right-wing loud mouths and their distortions, we can’t even consider bank nationalization as an option now.

I believe the majority of Americans are rejecting these fear-mongers. As much as we want to think the election was a love-fest for Obama, it was just as much a rejection of the previous eight years of the Bush-Cheney reign.

Although I wouldn’t call Bush and Cheney fascists, they leaned toward Fascism.

What is Fascism? Let’s go to the Answers.com dictionary.

A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

Was George W. Bush a dictator? For six years, he had no opposition since the GOP controlled both houses of Congress.

Did the Bush Administration suppress the opposition through terror and censorship? Well, they certainly weren’t locking up Democrats on trumped up charges or killing them. But go back to the dissent against the War in Iraq. People like Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins were shamed into not attending the Baseball Hall-of-Fame because they disagreed with the march to war. They were considered treasonous and President Bush did little to publicly negate that thinking.

And was there belligerent nationalism and racism? Yes. President Bush told the world, “You’re either with us or against us.” He used the term “crusade” about the war in our effort to bring American democracy to the Middle East.

I’ll give President Bush a break here. I think he had good intentions. I think naively he believed he could change the world for the better – if everyone became American. We discovered that most of the world likes the peaceful, innovative Americans – not the ones on the other end of a bayonet, rifle, or missile.

Mr. Bush was misguided by Vice President Dick Cheney who was frightened to death about another 9/11. Mr. Cheney himself said the biggest accomplishment of the Bush years was that another attack did not happen on our soil. That’s a staggering and stilting fear. Even worse, they failed to place any blame on American foreign policy that had been guided way too much by their political backers who demanded cheap oil prices for our economy. As a result, the Bush White House took on a bunker mentality.

What’s worse, this bunker mentality became intertwined with the oppressive thinking of the Religious Right, a group whose goal is the end of the world and biblical version of The Rapture.

Read the book American Fascists by Chris Hedges. It’s an interesting theory that shows how the Religious Right – and the Bush Administration – took on many of the themes of Nazi Germany: racism, nationalism, fear of the intruder, disagreement is treason, and a rejection of modernism.

Hedges quotes Dr. James Luther Adams, PhD from the Harvard Divinity School who predicted that Fascism would happen in America.

Resentments and bigotry lurk below the surface of all democratic societies and can be roused under the right conditions, to promote a creed that calls for the destruction of democracy. What is evil about these systems of intolerance and persecution is not the foot soldiers who carry out the crimes, but the organization that mobilized and unleashes these dark passions.

Among the thinking was the gospel of Christianity became bastardized into American greed – where you were holy if you were rich. And America’s big business gladly embraced this.

This wave of American Fascism was also embedded in almost every GOP presidential candidate. Even the business-smart Mitt Romney fell for it. His speech on religion that was supposed to be a JFK-like moment turned into an “us versus them” speech: believer versus non-believers. That speech of exclusion sunk what could have been a good campaign.

So, it’s evident that while we have turned toward Socialism, we have also turned toward Fascism in America.

What strikes me is the lack of demagoguery on the political left to use this notion. Why haven’t we heard extremist bloggers calling Bush, Cheney, Boehner, and others Fascists? I think it’s because we associate Fascists with Hitler and anti-Semitism and most GOP are pro-Israel, so the argument would fall deafly.

And frankly, I’m glad no one has made those claims. The GOP is not a group of Fascists – despite leaning toward elements of Fascism.

Furthermore, I think the majority of the nation, though not articulating it, saw those Fascist tendencies in the GOP and rejected them in the previous two elections.

Still, a number of Republicans continue these Fascist tendencies. Alabama Senator Richard Shelby the other day mentioned again that Obama might not have a legitimate birth certificate so he is not eligible to be president. The message is clear: he’s really a Muslim.

However, I think we’ll see the emergence of a different Republican Party soon. Conservative columnist David Brooks wrote about this in May of last year. He says the Conservative Tories in Britain have adopted a new breed of conservative thought that is catching on in the UK, but not yet here.

The British conservative renovation begins with this insight: The central political debate of the 20th century was over the role of government. The right stood for individual freedom while the left stood for extending the role of the state. But the central debate of the 21st century is over quality of life. In this new debate, it is necessary but insufficient to talk about individual freedom. Political leaders have to also talk about, as one Tory politician put it, “the whole way we live our lives.”

That means, first, moving beyond the Thatcherite tendency to put economics first. As Oliver Letwin, one of the leading Tory strategists put it: “Politics, once econo-centric, must now become socio-centric.” David Cameron, the Conservative Party leader, makes it clear that his primary focus is sociological. Last year he declared: “The great challenge of the 1970s and 1980s was economic revival. The great challenge in this decade and the next is social revival.”

In another speech, he argued: “We used to stand for the individual. We still do. But individual freedoms count for little if society is disintegrating. Now we stand for the family, for the neighborhood — in a word, for society.”

This has led to a lot of talk about community, relationships, civic engagement and social responsibility.

That’s not what you hear from GOP leaders like House Minority Leader John Boehner and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal.

The future GOP leaders are people like Florida Governor Charlie Crist who worry more about the immediate needs of their people, not their own future positions in government or their party.

We will never be a Socialistic state. It’s not in our DNA. Look at our two most important sports – football and baseball.

Like capitalism, these sports thrive on competition. But if you look closely at the business of baseball and football, they have taken on the so-called Socialistic tendencies the GOP extremists have been railing about.

Baseball now has a luxury tax that takes money from big-market teams – like the Yankees, Red Sox, and Dodgers – and gives it to the small market teams like Kansas City Royals, Tampa Bay Rays, and Pittsburgh Pirates. That’s a form of Socialism, but I don’t think I’d baseball players secretly call each other “comrade”.

And the NFL does the same. Each team gets the same amount of salaries to spend on players. Talk about a collective.  But I don’t see Dallas Cowboys Owner Jerry Jones in brotherhood with Trotsky and Lenin.

But here’s what’s really happening with both sports. They’re thriving. Yes, there are some cutbacks due to the economy. But what both sports have done is create a level playing field.

Look at the recent results of leveling the playing field. We have had different Super Bowl and World Series winners over the past ten years. There has been very little hint of any dynasty: maybe the Patriots in football but their teams have turned over during the three championship years. Literally every team in the NFL has a chance to win the Super Bowl each year. The lowly Phoenix Cardinals were a few seconds away from their first championship in 60 years. And last year, the Tampa Bay Rays, a doormat since their inception, won the American League pennant.

Your thoughts.

This Week’s Shows

John Daly’s Sports-News Talk and Futrell & Daly are airing on the Sports By Line Network across the country on 100 different radio stations from 10 pm to 1 am Eastern time and 7 pm to 10 pm Pacific time. Check your local listings at this site. If it doesn’t air in your area, call the station and request it. Or you can also see the video version of the shows on TV4U in a week.

LAS VEGAS, NV (January 17, 2009) – Here’s what you will see and hear on the shows that were shot at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

On Futrell & Daly, Ron and I discuss the start of the racing phenomena in Las Vegas back when we were TV newscasters in town. Ron tells the great story of the first race in Las Vegas. We also go over our predictions for the NFL’s League Championship games. And we cover the NHL’s outdoor hockey game which may be coming back to Las Vegas.

In addition, Ron and I remember some of the great times we’ve had with our military guys. For me, it has been my years playing in a celebrity golf event at Camp Lejeune, NC with the U.S. Marines raising money for the Wounded Warriors. The next event is in June and I will fill you in.

Check out Ron’s website — www.localslovevegas.com – where you can get a chance to win six tickets to the 2009 NASCAR Week February 27 to March 1.

On John Daly’s Sports-News Talk, John Demarco of www.lasvegasgolf.com discussed what’s happening with golf courses around Sin City and what deals are available. In addition, John offers our listeners a special deal if they book tee times at this site or on this toll-free number: 1-866-699-1777.

Also on John Daly’s Sports-News Talk, we hear from Michael Geeser of American Automobile Association about planning that road trip to Spring Training or a Major League Baseball excursion of your choice.

Missing The Point of Atlas Shrugged

 This is a posting about a piece written by Stephen Moore in the Wall Street Journal about Ayn Rand’s classic novel Atlas Shrugged and its relevance to today’s economic crisis. Although I agree with most of what Moore says, I think he fails to mention the true meaning of Atlas. I would also encourage you to read another classic, The Great Gatsby, which has many more lessons we fail to learn.

LAS VEGAS, NV (January 12, 2009) – Stephen Moore is an economics writer for the Wall Street Journal. He’s also a frequent guest on news and business talk shows. I enjoy him and his work. This past weekend he wrote a piece January 9, 2009 called Atlas Shrugged: From Fiction To Fact in 52 Years. It was well-written. Here’s Moore’s nice description of Ayn Rand’s work that has become the Bible for libertarians.

For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises — that in most cases they themselves created — by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.

Moore also makes his pitch to gather new converts.

If only “Atlas” were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I’m confident that we’d get out of the current financial mess a lot faster.

Not so fast, Stephen.

Like most libertarians and followers of Ayn Rand, Moore has missed the true meaning of Rand and her effect on American life in 2009.

First, Rand has already bled into the fabric of American life and business. Look at the millions of small businesses in America. Look at the number of people who work full-time and have businesses on the side. Imagine how many more enterprises will sprout as the Internet becomes a ubiquitous form of distribution and we shake off the old ways of last century’s corporate culture. Even Democrats, once known as strictly the party of unions and welfare recipients, understand the need to spur business to create jobs.

Rand, for me, is imbedded into the thinking of most Americans who haven’t even read the book.

But secondly and more importantly, libertarians and Randites fail to see the Rand-created villains that still exist today in their own ranks – namely Wesley Mooch. Mooch is a mediocre bureaucrat who becomes the nation’s economic dictator through betrayal and well-placed connections.

Who is Wesley Mooch today? He is the lobbyist and campaign donor; he’s also the corporate executive who wines, dines and lavishly entertains our elected officials behind closed doors. These are the people who have helped kill innovation today: look no further than our car companies.

Trust me, I’ve seen it. I’ve met many of these elected officials and business leaders who are nice guys but cannot intelligently, let alone intellectually, converse on issues that affect our way of life and business. Yet, they set policy; policy that’s based on who pays them – not on what’s good for America.

(Look at TV news – especially cable news. People like Ann Coulter are always on air because she offers “good television,” not because she has intelligent insight and information.)

While we try to figure out whom to give bailout money to, we forget that most politicians in both parties have gotten sweetheart deals from big business on mortgages, land deals, and campaign donations. The secret wiretappings of Gov. Blago are the norm, not the exception. Does Duke Cunningham ring a bell? You can add others still in Congress like Rangel, Dodd, and Frank.

And this won’t stop. Why? It makes too much sense (and cents) for big business to curry favor with politicians who are making laws. Laws can and will be tweaked to benefit the donor. It’s a small investment that can return millions. But it also creates an unfair advantage to small businesses that don’t have the clout, money, or access.

And this is where Moore and the Randites look silly. Their ranks are loaded with Wesley Mooches and they don’t even know it. I love to hear corporate bigwigs scream about how high our taxes are in America. Yet, they fail to mention the give-backs the politicians bestow on them. With those give-backs included, the U.S. has one of the lowest net corporate tax rates, according to many analysts. And then we scream about other nations stopping free trade.

And what’s even more amazing is the number of people who are small business people who will take to the Rand pulpit and defend these give-backs that will never reach them.

If Ayn Rand were alive today, she’d be asking for the abolishment of all forms of campaign contribution. Politicians don’t need it. They have the internet and other forms of mass communication to inform and educate the masses. But it’s much easier to line their pockets with money from donors and large media companies who reap profits from those donors in the form of campaign advertising.

Wake up, Randites and libertarians. You’ve been invaded by Mooches. And you have yourselves to blame because you’ve gotten lazy and rested on the original interpretation of Atlas.

I’m sure libertarians have just placed their version of a fatwa on me. This is blasphemy to them. But libertarians, like staunch liberals and conservatives, fall in love with their philosophies; they stop thinking and evolving. Think back on the famous adage of “No new taxes.” It sounds good and it’s well-founded economic theory – only if you include spending cuts.

Ayn Rand was an anti-Communist who woke us up to the pitfalls of Socialism. It’s no different than what Marx did in the 1800s; he woke us up to the pitfalls of capitalism. Both thinkers – and many others like Darwin and Keynes – transformed society; how we live and how we do business.

America is an evolving, reactive society. We don’t follow one philosophy. We’re a melting pot of thought. What makes us exceptional is our ability to form new forward thinking through social and business experimentation.

Ayn Rand is a major part of that American progress. So is Marx — whether we like it or not. (If Marx were alive today, we’d be listening to him on TV and one of the things he’d be upset about is the portrayal of his theories by the totalitarians in Soviet Russia and Red China in the last century.) But Keynes and Darwin are also strongly embedded in our thinking. Many others, too.

Should you read Atlas? Absolutely. It’s a great work. It is one of my five most influential books in American history. (A literary note: read Alan Greenspan’s autobiography. He was a Rand disciple and spent a lot of time with her in the 1950s and 1960s and he offers some interesting insight into Rand.)

But Atlas is not the Bible as most libertarians think. It has its flaws.

My problem with Atlas is its homage to one man – John Galt – who has the answers while being persecuted and tortured by the enemies of society. In the end of the novel, he is exalted as the messiah to America who will deliver us to true capitalism. This is trite and one dimensional.

Galt is the creation of a Russian writer; surely an anti-Communist, but also a Russian. Russia loves their strong-armed, rugged, individual leaders – not intellectuals or sacrificing servants. The line of dictators and despots starts from Peter The Great, Catherine The Great, through the czars, Lenin, and ending today with Putin. Can you make a literary connection between Galt and Putin? Sure, they’re both bringing order back to society that have been ravaged by their enemies.

Sorry, folks, but parts of Rand smack of Fascism. Still, that doesn’t remove the lessons we Americans have derived from Atlas.

My suggestion is to also read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. (It’s shorter reading.) This is still the greatest American novel. It was written in 1925 and its lessons still ring true.

Like Gatsby’s 1920s parties, we just lived in “orgiastic” times. Now the party is over with plenty of hang-over headaches. Some of our high and mighty have had Gatsby like endings – dead and motionless in the bottom of a swimming pool.

Gatsby’s gangsters are no different than today’s. Meyer Wolfsheim is the 1920s version of Bernie Madoff. Gatsby says Wolfsheim “fixed the 1919 World Series.” The laudatory tone of Gatsby’s description of Wolfsheim is similar to the pre-crisis belief that someone with money must be a good person. No one dared question Madoff’s incomprehensible returns: he’s rich. I’ll let you decide if stealing $50 billion equates to fixing the 1919 World Series.

(Another literary note: Wolfsheim is the dramatic creation of Arnold Rothstein, the gambler who really set the Black Sox scandal into motion. Read the book Eight Men Out or see the film.)

Gatsby even foresees the environmental crises that will occur decades later. He takes the famous Hawthorne poem, Evangeline, in the 1800s that extols “a forest primeval” and turns it into “This is the valley of ashes” in Gatsby. Fitzgerald laments that all those trees the first Dutch sailors saw in America are gone.

What’s amazing about Gatsby is that it was written in the 1920s – before the Depression. Yet, Fitzgerald saw that coming, too. Rand, on the other hand, wrote about the effects of Communism decades after 1917.

Like Gatsby, we Americans “are borne back ceaselessly into the past” to our detriment. Gatsby thought he could go back into the past and find love with Daisy. We Americans constantly think we can find that fountain of youth or the financial model that will make us all wealthy. The truth is we age and the economy has cycles.

We also believe we can find that one philosophy – like the 1950s Biblical lessons of Atlas – to find utopia. But society changes along with our technology and our thinking. The lessons of the 1950s don’t entirely apply today.

We fail to learn the lessons of Gatsby — until it’s too late. We’re “like boats against the currents”. We struggle, survive, and then thrive through traumas like Steinbeck’s 1930s Grapes of Wrath and the upheavals of today.

MLB TV Spells Trouble In Two Ways

This is a posting after watching the first few days of the new television network dedicated entirely to baseball. I’m scared for myself now and for viewers later. Expect a nasty legal fight in a few years.

LAS VEGAS, NV (January 2, 2009) – I’ve just spent part of the morning watching Don Larsen throw his perfect game in the 1956 World Series.  It’s on the new MLB TV.

My fear: My business will start to fail and I’m going to get fat. (OK, fatter!)

I then caught myself during commercials – the ones for Gillette razors with Birdie Tebbets in the 1950s and the ones today – searching to see when other shows are airing. I have to know when the discussion of off-season trades and free agent signings – otherwise known as the Hot Stove League – will be airing. I’m so screwed.

I live baseball and diligently follow the Red Sox. I have been a baseball nut since I was five. I remember parts of the 1961 Series. I also remember the dramatic end to the 1962 Series: a line-out by the Giants Willie McCovey to the Yankees Bobby Richardson. The pitcher was Ralph Terry with whom I’ve played golf in the past few years and have been able to talk to him about it. Think about it. I talked to him about something that he participated in and I remember from 46 years ago. And now I can relive it all over again.

MLB will be like a sedative for many of us dealing with the economic downturn. Watching the fuzzy black and white of the Yankees and Dodgers in 1956 was very settling. It brought us back to a time that was simpler. As Jackie Robinson strides to the plate, we tell ourselves that even the seeds of removing our racist past were evident back then. For many too, it will help remind us of what our parents and grandparents loved.

Fortunately, MLB TV only comes in on one TV in my house. And apparently you can’t watch it online – only on cable or satellite.

That means there may be Information Age problems in a few years.

Major League Baseball owns the majority (67%) of the network while cable and satellite owners have a minority (33%) stake. This agreement allows the network to get on the air in many homes.

However, what happens in a few years when people start getting their television programming from the Internet? Will the minority ownership allow MLB TV reach more people at a lower cost at their expense? You could see a major fissure in this agreement or you might see cable and satellite companies restricting who can get MLB TV.

Already the seeds of this conflict are appearing. Ion Network (formerly Pax) is battling the cable companies. Ion wants to create an Urban TV Network, but they want to launch it with local TV stations that now have four or five channels to program once the digital age of TV begins next month.

The cable companies won’t air the Urban TV Network on the local television tier without getting paid for it directly even though cable companies are required to carry local TV stations’ programs. Expect a good battle here and to spill over to other media outlets who want more audience with less cost.

The fallout for cable could be this. The cost of cable has risen – despite the fact I can’t get whatever NFL game I want. So, if people can go to their local TV stations or the Internet for programming similar to cable and it’s free, then cable is in trouble.

This shouldn’t bother us baseball addicts too much over the next few years, though. So enjoy it.  Just warn your spouse.