Probably my best quality as a coach is that I ask a lot of challenging questions and let the person come up with the answer.
Phil Dixon
Congratulations, US Open Champ Novak Djokovic!
I have never been a gifted athlete, so I'm zealously guarded the few meager, more unusual accomplishments I've had in organized sports or junior high/high school gym class or even just shooting baskets at the base gym. In early high school on a weekend, I once hit about 6 half-court jump shots in a row (shooting baskets, not playing competitively); I was ready to stop after the first one but the others there kept egging me on. More impressive (from my standpoint), is the fact I took out the remainder of the other side in a gauntlet style judo competition (in our class), about 6 to 8 opponents in a row, the last guy at least a foot taller and heavier than me.
I had a couple of touch football moments in high school gym; one was when I was chasing down the kickoff returner and he decided to lateral, more of a shovel pass, to the other returner--I intercepted the lateral and scored an easy touchdown, which was a pretty cool moment. Then there was the game where our high school football coach and gym teacher was on the sidelines. Technically I don't think we were supposed to rush the punter, but the other side was abusing the privilege and waiting until our returners were covered down field to kick the ball; so I decided to rush the kicker and blocked the punt. The other side immediately protested to the coach--whom loved the blocked punt and let it stand.
I only had a few achievements in baseball. My high school didn't have a baseball team; I think for ages 13-16 it was called the pony league or Babe Ruth league on base.I'm a southpaw (whom are usually limited to the output positions, first base, and pitcher); I once played 4 different positions in one game (the outfield and first base). I once made a backhanded over-the-shoulder stabbing catch of a sharp line drive down the right field foul line that earned my only standing ovation at a baseball game. [What makes it particularly funny was for a second I thought the ball got past me but couldn't see where it went; I then happened to look at my glove and saw it there.] I once threw out a runner trying to score from second on a base hit to right field. I once made a Willie Mays-style basket catch of a high popup to short center field on a dead run. The first game I ever played first base and the first time the pitcher ever threw me a pickoff throw, we got the base runner.
One of the funniest moments was when a coach sent his son to the plate on a hit-and-run with a runner on first. I faded off the bag, the base runner took off, the coach's son hit a soft line drive in the gap, I caught the line drive, and it was one of the easiest unassisted double plays ever. In the meanwhile, the opposing coach was screaming: "That was not a double-play ball! That was not a double-play ball!"
There weren't too many tennis moments, and I only played casually, usually with my best friend, a Latino education major at OLL. We weren't very good, although on occasion I could drill an impressive cross-the-body volley into the corner. I just remember my funniest moment ever; I think my sneakers finally gave out and I went to buy a new inexpensive pair. There was/is a shopping mall a few blocks from campus with a Wal-Mart style department store. I found a really good price on a pair my size. (Yeah, I know: you get what you pay for. I soon found that lesson for myself.) Shortly after I bought my new sneakers, Ramon and I headed for the campus tennis courts. I'm not kidding: it was probably within 5 minutes of wearing the sneakers on the court when I ran across the court to return a volley and pivoted on my left foot. My sneaker gripped down, but my foot didn't, as the top and sides of the sneaker literally fell apart at the seams. I'm the only person I know who ever had to have a tennis match stopped early on account of shoes.
Djokovic and Nadal battled in some of the most amazing rallies I've ever seen on a tennis court. And the constant momentum changes seemed like the back and forth in pro wrestling matches. Djokovic appeared to dominate early, breaking Nadal more often than I think I've ever seen Nadal broken but suddenly Nadal seemed to suddenly turn his game around in the middle of the third set and dominated the tie-breaker. Djokovic seemed to be experiencing some serious back issues, including a medical timeout, and television announcers were openly speculating on a Djokovic withdrawal. Somehow the medical timeout seemed to be all that was needed to Djokovic to reestablish his earlier match dominance. Congratulations on your first US Open championship, Novak! One of the most compelling dramas I've seen on a tennis court since Federer's 5-set victory over Nadal at Wimbleton!
Obama's Jobs Bill Financing:
Class Warfare Tax Hikes:
DEAD ON ARRIVAL!
THUMBS WAY DOWN!
How many ways do I hate this repackaged/renamed legislation of ineffectual, populist drivel masquerading as public policy, but in reality is literally nothing more that the opening shot of the incompetent President's reelection campaign with the President repackaging elements from his FAILED 2009 stimulus package which attracted almost no GOP support and you promise to pay for those ineffectual packages with class warfare tax hikes, which have gotten no GOP support, and you serve it up to a House which is majority GOP and a Senate nearly 50% GOP, and you know this has ZERO chance of passage.
So why is Obama doing this? PURELY POLITICAL. The only way this guy can win reelection is by going negative. He's trying to argue that his plan is "bipartisan", but this is putting lipstick on a pig--and deliberately misleading lipstick. Let me give a specific example to make my point: the Democrats radically expanded unemployment compensation eligibility to 2 years. There are all sorts of moral hazard issues here, not to mention the fact that on technical grounds we have been in recovery mode since June 2009. Obama is trying to continue this policy. Now, to illustrate the disingenuous rhetoric, he's trying to soft-sell the unemployment compensation policy by suggesting a program where employers get to "try them before you hire them", i.e., where people work for certain employers in return for their unemployment compensation checks.
Now on the surface it sounds like a good idea: instead of doing nothing (beyond program paperwork and any necessary documentation of job search activities) for your check, you actually work for it and gain some job experience for the effort that you can document for your resume. What could be wrong with this idea? Plenty. It's very bad public policy: it sets a bad precedent; it's a short-term gimmick, it subsidizes businesses via labor costs, it's pushing on a string: businesses hire to achieve performance benchmarks. They don't need a bribe to do so for intrinsic growth reasons. Moreover it only addresses symptoms, not the disease. For example, it seems to presuppose the issue with hiring deals with the amount paid to the worker. There are several other costs to hiring: expensive benefits, training, overhead, etc.--and regulatory burden (e.g., mandated fees and benefits, e.g., ObamaCare). Obama wants you to look at things like take-home pay--but in many cases, e.g., government employment, benefits can account for up to 40% of total compensation. And benefits are motivated by factors like government policies, e.g., tax-free basis of health care policies in employer-sponsored plans. From my standpoint, money is fungible. We could just as easily argue that cutting the government burden would provide just as much economic benefit.
Then there are the other pieces of Obama's predictable program: take the idea of SUBSIDIZING politically favored public sector jobs--e.g., teachers, police officers, and firemen. First of all, the idea that SOME public servants are more equal than others violates the principal of equality under the rule. Second, and HOW MANY TIMES DO WE HAVE TO EXPLAIN THIS TO CLUELESS PROGRESSIVES: MONEY IS FUNGIBLE, MONEY IS FUNGIBLE, MONEY IS FUNGIBLE! Got it? For example: you have librarians, clerical personnel, school administrators and counselors, janitors, bus drivers, prison guards, etc. Local and state governments already make decisions of allocating public funds: how many teachers, policemen, and firefighters. We don't really know, without studying the contexts, that the current number of teachers, policemen and/or firefighters is right-sized. It could be that we have counterproductive public policy, e.g., public sector bargaining agreements that force schools to hire more teachers to maintain relevant staffing, etc., which have nothing to do with improving education quality. This is an artifact of a corrupt union deal, and all we do by subsidizing those superfluous positions is postponing the day of reckoning. A second example: it may very well be that teachers are laid off for a variety of reasons, including seniority protections of more costly, higher-paid, ineffectual teachers. When President Obama says, hey, we're letting good young teachers go, which we shouldn't do, he's ignoring the fact that unions are most interested in protecting seniority--older teachers who have no intention of agreeing to a pay cut in order to cut the number of younger teachers having to be laid off. Why should we expect older faculty to share the sacrifice when President Obama decides that the higher-income taxpayers should sacrifice, not the overcompensated, ineffectual older teacher.
First, the federal government MUST NOT BE not in the business of bailing out the personnel decisions of state or local governments: it creates moral hazard. Let me give an example: state and local governments, knowing that the federal government will restore any cuts in politically favored occupations, will be motivated to concentrate their cost-cutting efforts to maximize their take from the federal government. Simple example: we could eliminate the vice principal or that second school counselor, but the feds aren't going to restore those positions. So instead of sacking one or more of our staff positions, we'll cut, say, our second Spanish teacher. The feds will pick up the costs of the Spanish teacher, and we get to keep our vice principal or school counselor.
Second, Obama is engaging in short-term, loss-leader style gimmicks. It's like the feds will pay the first year of your Spanish teacher, but you are going to have to keep paying his or her salary for all subsequent years locally. In essence, this is doing little more than delaying the inevitable.
Another point of difference involves the payroll tax cut. This flies in the face that most of us real conservatives have been discussing for the past decade--we have tens of trillions of unfunded entitlement liabilities. A payroll tax cut not only has the same defect--the gimmicky short-term, loss-leader benefit--but it aggravates the insolvency issue. There's no such thing as a "free lunch". For example, this year, social security is running a deficit. This means that the government has to liquidate part of the reserves to make the difference over the the pay-as-you-go scheme of social security for recipients to receive their full checks. Deducting even less from workers/employer matches makes it necessary to redeem even more special Treasury notes.
The class warfare crap HURTS ECONOMIC GROWTH. Let's me even more specific: MJ Perry in the excellent Carpe Diem blog cited a couple of interesting posts, the first of which shows that what has underperformed in the recovery is NOT consumer spending but investment.
Mark Perry argues:
Private investors, despite the full recovery of real consumer spending, remain apprehensive about the future of new investments, especially new long-term investments...An important reason for this apprehension and the consequent reluctance to make new capital commitments is regime uncertainty—in this case, a widespread, serious fear that the government’s major policies in areas such as taxation, Obamacare, financial reform, environmental regulation, and other areas will have the effect of depriving investors of control over their capital or diminishing their ability to appropriate the income that the capital generates. President Obama’s harping on the desirability of making “the rich” pay their “fair share” of the government’s ever-rising costs only exacerbates regime uncertainty.Perry also references a recent NY Times article by Professor Mankiw, a Harvard economics professor and Romney advisor:
The great economist John Maynard Keynes suggested that investment spending is in part determined by the “animal spirits” of investors, which he described as “a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction.What can policy makers do to stoke animal spirits and encourage businesses to invest? [cut] taxation of income from corporate capital...[promote] trade ... [rein in] regulation [and obtrusive regulators].What has Obama done to rein in the HIGHEST CORPORATE BUSINESS TAX BRACKET among developed nations? Why has he done ZERO about passing three trade agreements (with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama) that have been put on hold by Dems since the Bush Administration? These agreements would cut tariffs on American goods, resulting in greater sales (and relevant jobs behind those sales). Then you have the corrupt Obama Administration attempting to intimidate Boeing from opening a South Carolina plant. Boeing saw considerable business risk to strike actions, which have interrupted business. There are at least a couple of ways to contain that risk: unions could agree to contract modifications lengthening periods between contracts or the company could alternately expand in more business-friendly states like South Carolina or Texas (e.g., right to work states). Boeing never had to offer expansion in the union-dominated Seattle area from the get go. The union refused. But the union seems to think because it failed to negotiate in good faith, it has the right to block the company from doing something it always has had the legal right to do. "Real union busting" would have shut down operations in Seattle and moved to other states (or even out of the country) the first time union leaders and members abused their strike privilege. This is EXACTLY the kind of executive branch abuse of power that keeps investors away from investing in new plants and American jobs. Do you think I have any interest in investing in Boeing so long as you have a corrupt Labor Relations Board paying off Obama's political chits to organized labor?
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Air Supply, "The Power of Love"
With all due respect to Air Supply and Céline Dion, among my favorite artists, whom scored remake hits with the same song, here is my favorite version of the song:
