AL JAZEERA AND THE U.S. MARKET!

AL JAZEERA AND THE U.S. MARKET!

(Sui-Lee Wee, Ben Blanchard)

(Aljazeera, CNN Money, USA TODAY)

(Huffington Post, Randy Abbott, Kate Marek)

(Kay Mathiesen, Robert C. Smith, Frazer Chronicle)

 

Censorship has always been considered an evil and problematic act, especially in countries that count themselves as open, free thinking societies. Without exception the United States considers itself as a world leader in an open and thought exchanging society, an innovative people that can deal with the good as well as the bad in its people.

 

I personally feel the same way…..and maybe take my opinion a bit too far when I get to talking about the bad as well as the good in our form of governance. The way I look at things, regarding American’s rights as free people differs dramatically from the far right, and really even the middle positioned of thinkers. I favor some social programs, while opposing others.

 

I favor term limits, redesigning spending on every level of political position in the country, from the president of the United States to the county or city dog catcher. Lobbyists would be an extinct job title as would every special interest group.

 

Transparency would be the order of the day, there would be no need for whistle-blowers, or the murky rules that govern them…..there wouldn’t be any state secrets, county secrets, or city secrets, no need…..everything would be above board, and available to everybody.

 

IT STARTS OUT REAL SLOW AND INNOCENT

I get perturbed when instead of the 7^th inning stretch at a baseball game; U.S. military personal are introduced, lauding their military service, and their bravery in the face of great odds, helping to protect American citizens. There is then the singing of God Bless America.

 

Of course baseball teams, and fans in attendance are able to voice their opinions…..it’s the American way, but I really wish the powers that be, (baseball clubs) would get their act together, with little exception American military personal are soldiering to protect America’s interests, not to protect human rights!

 

There is a censorship in operation here, at professional sports venues across the land; it’s the glorification of war, mayhem, death, human suffering invasion, and occupation. With little exception the U.S. media, printed, television and radio has taken a vacation on this issue.

 

Homeland Security is the biggest political bureaucratic move in possibly the history of the United States, and surely over the past 80 or so years. Whenever anybody wants to talk about the endlessly deepening hole that is being created by the act the patriotic, big burly men with hairy knuckles magically appear to intimidate…..you can’t miss these guys, they’ve got those lapel flags prominently displayed.

 

Censorship in America, in the 21^st century comes in all sizes, and in the form of almost every official that exists in today’s society. Sadly most of the country’s media has embarrassingly accepted the concept, media’s job is to ask why…..and very seldom is that simple question asked.

 

Former President George G. Bush and his administration panhandled their way to all sorts of acts, laws and regulations that liberals said weren’t needed, but Bush and Congress non-the-less got a lion’s share of what they wanted passed.

 

When Barack Obama was voted into office, many on the left, and the middle as well talked about rescinding much of what was conceived to be an overreach of presidential power. Well President Obama is into his second term in office and much remains of the power grab that was the Bush administration.

 

The White House needs the powers of the presidency, as much as possible, and politicians who seek additional powers…..never relinquish the power, many echoed as much, but very few listened. So here we are, through two terms of George W. Bush and the Republicans, and Obama, a Democrat, and his second term, and things are run pretty much the same!

 

AND NOW THERE’S ALJAZEERA

This past January Aljazeera bought a struggling Current T.V. and Time Warner immediately dropped access to its U.S., customers. I was, at the time, peeved by the act, and was pissed when I didn’t get any sort of financial remuneration on my bill…..after all, there was a station I no longer could get, yet my monthly bill remained the same.

 

There was a Michael Moore movie a few years ago that was banned in certain parts of the country, it was political, and a lightening rod his agenda, but to not allow customers access to the movie, and Moore’s opinion is…..well, censorship.

 

You got to give Aljazeera it’s due, they don’t seem to back down, and seem to be in the media news reporting business for the long haul. For any agency or department within the United States government to stand in the way of Aljazeera and its efforts to establish a news source would be an egregious act, and our news outlets should be all over the issue.

 

Aljazeera was silenced in Egypt in the January of 2011, and nary was a word of protest heard from the west, or the Democratized countries of the world. Of course we’re better then Egypt, if you don’t believe me, just ask your favorite state or national politician, they’ll clue you in.

 

Isn’t it time for us to wake up and start protecting what the real hero’s of our nation gave us…..a pretty darned good form of government, one that can be respectful of other opinions, thoughts, no matter how loud or obnoxious they might be.

 

HAVE A NICE DAY!

BODY ASSURANCE!

BODY ASSURANCE!

(J. Holahan L. Dubay, A. Cook, Kaiser Family Foundation)

(Congressional Budget Office, Chumbelievable, Max Fisher)

(Kimberly Amadeo, Leigh Ann Otte, John S. O’Shea, M.D., Thomas P. O’Hare)

(ProCon.org, Yale Journal of Medicine & Law, Breitbart, Fox News, Frazer Chronicle)

 

It’s true; everybody needs Body Insurance, or as people popularly refer to it today, health insurance, that was the bold printing in an ad for the American Assurance Co. in Philadelphia in June of 1912. The ad stated that the employer needs the insurance just as much as the employee. We issue a full line of personal health and accident policies, and can meet the requirements of men of all kinds to their entire satisfaction…..Write to us for an agency.

 

With medical costs approaching the outer limits of the atmosphere were people simply can’t afford the Body Coverage necessary to meet the minimum basic coverage, the Democratic Party, (mostly) floated the idea of what has come to be known as Obamacare.

 

Actually what happened was the act opened the floodgates of patrician bickering the like that haven’t been seen since the run-up to the Civil War, and the years directly after its end. All sorts of connotations have been used to explain, or debate, or cause dissatisfaction with the idea and the act.

 

The fact of the matter is that the U.S. House of Representatives have voted twice to repeal the law altogether, and 31 times to either eliminate portions, or tinker with certain parts of the 2,200 page law. The act may not be the best law that has found its way through the house, or the Supreme Court, but nobody can argue the fact that Obamacare has caused a firestorm of controversy.

 

The American life insurance system was established in the mid-1700s, while the earliest forms of health insurance did not emerge until the 1850’s when the Franklin Health Assurance Company of Massachusetts began providing accident insurance, to cover injuries related to railroad and steamboat travel. From this, sickness insurance covering all kinds of illnesses and injuries soon evolved. However it would be 80 years, 1930, before the first modern health insurance plans and policies were formed and offered.

 

EARLY HEALTH CARE

During the first few decades of the twentieth century, health care underwent major changes, from identifying infectious agents to the development of antitoxins, vaccines and new medical technology such as X-ray radiography and blood pressure meters. These developments among others completely transformed the public image of medicine, and people began to place more trust in medical institutions. Another reason that the medical profession was further legitimized was the creation of the American Medical Association and governmental rules and regulations designed to better monitor the health industry.

 

With the rise of regulations and the further elevation and quality of health care, demand for medical services increased while supply of physicians and hospitals was limited. The combination of these factors brought an increase in medical costs, which prompted the development of modern day health insurance.

 

Medical health insurance leapt into the twentieth century with one single bounding step when, in 1929, Doctor Justin Ford Kimball, an administrator at Baylor University Hospital in Dallas, Texas discovered that many schoolteachers were not paying their medical bills. In response to the problem the good doctor developed the Baylor Plan – teachers were to pay .50 cents per month in exchange for the guarantee that they could receive medical services for up to 21 days of any year. With the onset of the Great Depression many hospitals followed the model of the Baylor Plan.

 

Other landmark dates in the development of health care insurance for United States residents, hospitals during the latter part of the depression years began to band together developing health coverage plans. In 1939 the American Hospital Association, (AHA) first used Blue Cross to designate health care plans that met their standards.

 

In 1960 these plans merged under the AHA which were considered to be nonprofit organizations, and were exempted from paying taxes, enabling them to maintain low premiums. Pre-paid insurances covering physician and surgeon services, sponsored by physicians combined into Blue Shield in 1946, merged with Blue Cross in 1971 to form Blue Cross-Blue Shield.

 

In the 1940’s and 1950’s there was a proliferation of employee benefit plans that effectively blocked governmental intervention until the late 1950’s. In 1954, Social Security coverage included disability benefits for the first time, and in 1965, Medicare and Medicaid programs were introduced, in part because of the Democratic majority in Congress.

 

In the 1970’s and 1980’s more expensive medical technology and flaws in the health care system drove the cost for medical care and treatment to unprecedented costs for health care insurance. Along about this time, responding to the increasing costs, employee benefit plans changed into managed care plans, and Health Maintenance Organizations, (HMO’s) emerged. These plans are unique in that they involve a particular network of healthcare providers that abide by a set of price guidelines.

 

Originally HMO’s were established as non-profit organizations but soon realized that there was huge profits to be made, and quickly were replaced by commercial interests with that good old American bottom line mentality.

 

Since the middle to late 1980’s with a half hearted effort by the Clinton administration to stem the tide,  health care prices have been on a relentless drive to new and better profit for the insurer, the doctor, and the pharmaceutical companies. Left in the dust has been the American public and how to deal with ever increasing health care costs.

 

2013 AND BEYOND

I don’t have answers, I haven’t read the Obamacare package, I’m like most of the country, setting on the sidelines of probably the biggest game of our lives. How in hell to get next to affordable health care and I’m in better shape than a lot of people…..I’m retired, am on Medicare, and have a supplement. How much will Obamacare affect me…..not much, of that I’m pretty confident.

 

What can be done about the $75 band aid, or the $25 aspirin, your fricken guess is as good as mine, I do know one thing, until we completely eliminate the greed factor from health care services, we will be a troubled nation, blunted from reaching our potential by a bunch of suits sitting in their posh offices writing paychecks to their lobbyists.

 

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired about the pros and the cons of Obamacare, I’m sick and tired about hearing about 50,000,000 Americans not having any kind of health insurance, and I’m sick and tired about those people who use emergency rooms across the country as their personal doctor’s office…..it costs us all.

Opponents of the Obama health care act talk about the billions upon billions of dollars that the plan will cost…..well guess what, insurance, any kind of insurance plan costs billions and billions of dollars, exactly which planet do these people come from?

 

There are several ways that U.S. citizens can get health care coverage today, they can work for the federal government and reap the benefit of possibly the very best health care plan on the entire planet. People can purchase, (on their own) a health care program and pay thousands of dollars a year, depending on the size of the premium can pay a decreasing deductable, get some sort of employee health care benefit with varying deductibles, or use the local hospital emergency room as the health insurer.

 

That’s it, the only way to obtain health care today in the United States, it isn’t complicated, in fact it’s really quite simple, you either have access to health care…..or you don’t. If you break a leg, need emergency surgery, or need to birth a baby, it’ll be taken care of…..whether you have insurance or not.

 

The skinny on the problems that a nation with its citizens either without health care, are under-insured, or use the emergency room visits for medical problems run into…..long term is pretty simple to understand, there is no preventative medical assistance programs…..you know, the early detection method of keep a nations people reasonably healthy…..and productive.

 

THOSE JERKS WITH ABSOLUTELY NO FORESIGHT SEEM TO BE RUNNING THE COUNTRY

As with anything else, business or a sports club, or country needs to be operated by people with foresight, people who realize that a vested interest isn’t confined to a special few, the interest of a country the likes of the United States are intertwined one with another. In the end, there really aren’t any special sects of people that are more important than another.

 

A business owner posses special abilities, foresight, strength and an unflagging belief and confidence in his idea, his abilities, and knows how to get the most out of the key people that he assembles for his idea. Without a doubt this person is adventuresome, and is willing to get knocked down, but has the ability to jump right back up, and rejoin the game.

 

There are also the labor sectors of the United States, to coin a phrase, the hands that build America, these people are invaluable to the success of any business venture. These people are strong of back, and will, and usually won’t quit until the job is done and success is met.

 

There are several other types, you get the idea…..which is, each group or strata is no more important than the other. Each level of person needs the other levels for success, whether in individual life, or the strength of the country.

 

Why don’t we sit down, quit this partisan bickering and solve one of our nation’s biggest problems…..how to protect a really important commodity…..the American citizen.

 

HAVE A NICE DAY!

PAYDAY LOANS IN THE LAND OF THE PLENTY

PAYDAY LOANS IN THE LAND OF THE PLENTY

(Bob Drichsus, Jessica Silver-Greenberg)

(John Sandman, Credit.com, Gareth Marples)

(Michelle Hodson, Mother Jones, Frazer Chronicle)

 

Okay so you’re a bit short on Wednesday, and payday is still four days away, where oh where can I come up with $300 bucks to make the car payment on Friday? If you’re like hundreds of thousands of Americans, you simply get in that old rust bucket that’s costing you $300 dollars a month, get’s lousy gas mileage, and needs a quart of oil every other day, and drop by your friendly pay-day loan store and put your name on the dotted line!

 

Hey it’s just that easy, like in the boom period during the middle of the first decade of the 21^st century, when loan companies would send checks up $5000, and all you had to do was take the check to your bank, sign it, and magically your savings or checking account was five grand to the good. Oh yes, there was one little problem with cashing the check…..you had to pay the money back in equal installments usually for two, three or four years, depending on the size of the check.

 

Where those checks a scam, well actually yes and no, it really depended on what you were going to use the new found fortune on. Fixing a leaky roof, dropping and rebuilt transmission into that $300 dollar a month car were reasons to borrow money, but probably from a bank or credit union…..not however a pay-day loan store.

 

If you borrowed the money with little or no idea of where to spend the money, because you really didn’t have a specific need…..these types of people will spend years paying off a simple small loan at outlandish interest rates.   

 

You see the interest rates at that these reputable lending stores can run as high as 700%, and the interest rates change by the hour, or by the day. These places (pay-day loan stores) actually prey on the low income, unemployed or under-educated types, and soon discover that once you’re in, it’s usually for the long term.

 

THOSE WHO USE THE PAY-DAY STORES

According to a Pew Charitable Trust study, “Most Payday loan borrowers are white, female, and between 25 and 44 years of age. The study also found that there were other characteristics linking the most frequent users; those without a four-year college degree; home renters; African Americans; those earning below $40,000 annually; and those who are either separated or divorced.

 

Of course there are other studies, other opinions and other conclusions, but I found the Pew data to make the most sense. Anybody with half a brain has to know that borrowing money from one of these institutions actually can lead to more debt, therefore college educated individuals will take a wide path around these places when there is a need for cash.

 

Home renters can usually be bundled into a select group that is either starting out in life, or is unable to scrounge up the necessary funds to put a down-payment to buy a house, or can be divorced or separated therefore money is tight, and yes, sadly many who use the Payday loan system to put their hands on some ready cash are black.

 

 

 

The end result of a Payday loan in many cases is that the low-to-middle income people with few assets are least able to secure a normal loan through a bank, or a credit union in the lower interest rate forms of credit, borrow money at from these Payday stores at escalated rates of interest that can be as high as 3686%.

 

At the very best, borrowing money from a Payday store is only a stop-gap, short term solution to a bigger problem that many in the United States suffer today. That problem is the inability of the American worker to receive a living wage for his labor.

 

A person’s labor, or expertise is a commodity, it’s a service or an effort that the worker sells to an employer, the issue is really a two way street that both parties need to understand. I’ve been preaching this simple fact for a long time, and as yet, I am still a loan voice in the wilderness.

 

AS SIMPLE AS A.B.C.

The basic loan process involves a lender providing a short-term unsecured loan to be repaid at the borrower’s next payday. The only real background check, or credit check, is whether the borrower can show proof of employment, usually two or three pay stubs would be necessary.

 

Without exception individual Payday companies and franchises have their own underwriting criteria, and even that criteria can sometimes be altered to better serve an individual client. Payday loaners carry a substantial risk, as the net default rate is 6%, and according to one source, defaulted loans cost the lending companies around a quarter of their annual revenue.

 

Where the simplicity in this process ends and the aggressive collection practices take over can be a maze of double speak, threats, overwhelming badgering with phone calls, and a never-ending trail of letters. A common practice is for the Payday store to actually retain a collection agency, and will work in concert to collect on the debt…..all the while late fees and escalating interest rates continue to add to the debt. It also is not uncommon for one of these Payday stores to sell your account to a third party.

 

Another practice of the Payday loan industry is the encourage writing a post dated check, with the promise that the calls will stop, I don’t know how the law works on these types of transactions, but I do know that writing a check without the funds in your account is check kiting, and that is illegal. Check kiting is a fraudulent process that takes advantage of check float time, the space between writing a check and the final withdrawal of cash from the account.

 

REGULATED IN 37 STATES

The question of getting a loan against your paycheck smacks of irresponsibility, sure emergencies happen to a person at times, and if there was a problem, and a person needs an amount of cash to address the problem, there really should be a place where a person could get to get some financial relief.

 

However should the only alternative be a lending industry that acts as an aggressive and predatory institution with exorbitant lending practices with regards to interest rates? 37 states have regulatory rules that govern the Payday loan types, one state, Arkansas prohibits them altogether, and 13 states have little or no restrictions.

 

Are Payday loan stores a predatory type of inducement that catch people at their most venerable, faced without the funds (in many cases) to deal with a situation that requires immediate resolution?  At times, can these lending institutions speak in circles, or simply use double-speak to get their proscribed end-result.

With very few exceptions the Payday lending stores have little positive impact on the communities that they say that they service.  Payday lenders offer a service that would be otherwise unavailable to those people who get loans.

 

However whenever a borrower extends or rolls over an account it’s where a higher percentage of interest comes into play, and for some, paying off the principle is virtually impossible to pay. This is where the Paydayers really clean up.

 

I have no solution, I have no suggestions, and no nuggets or pearls of knowledge to impart, just the realization that man…..in his insatiable thirst for the bottom line will do anything to get there.

 

HAVE A NICE DAY!

A KIND OF A BRAIN INJURY!

(HealthWise, Daniel Trotta, Jo Ingles)

(Hackney Publications, Caitlin Schmidt)

(Fatima Harajli, Frazer Chronicle)

 

Did you ever feel like you were slowing down, can’t concentrate, have trouble remembering new information, experience nausea, vomit, have balance problems, are nervous or anxious, and can’t sleep, (no you don’t have a hang-over) you probably have a concussion and if you have all of the above listed problems you should have a friend take you immediately to the nearest emergency room for medical attention.

 

Almost without exception people (mostly boys or men) have experienced a concussion…..I can point to at least four times when I’ve had my bell rung, but remember only once being treated for a concussion. The biggest and baddest culprit of causing concussions in today’s society, or for that matter over the past fifty or sixty years is football…..football on every level.

 

Pop Warner, Little League, freshman, high school, and college football are by far the worst perpetrators of head injuries and trauma. I use both injury as well as trauma to describe what football can do to the human body, football ranks right up there with Mixed Martial Arts and boxing in causing brain injuries.

 

It’s really funny how the youth of America are sold a bill of goods with regards to the virtues of the game of football. Let’s set a few ground rules, plus get a few notions rectified with regards to football and what the game can mean to the youth of America.

 

1. Football does not make boys into men, what the game really does is pacify or strokes a coach’s ego, by and large a high school football coach doesn’t care about a players health, I know, I’ve been there.

2. Football does not teach boys the value of working as a team, what it does show is if those players with less ability do a specify task, those players with more ability will succeed.

3. Although football can be a source of individual pride, and a confidence builder, coaches continually exude teamwork, and not individual effort which in effect eliminates the feel-good sources of individual pride, and confidence.

4. Football does not breed a sense of fair play and honor on the battlefield there is, and always has been an attitude of win at all costs.

 

WHAT THE GAME DOES GIVE, AND MEAN

What the game of football does give to its participants can be summed up in two words, exuberance and pain. I think that explaining the values of football, the happiness, high spirits, the vitality, and the lavish and elaborate…..often to the point of excess, aptly depicts part of the end result of football.

 

The other part of football, the more important, and the more to the point part of the game of football is the initial, and lifetime of prolonged pain, suffering, and the actually shortcomings that football can mean to former players, both physical and emotionally.

 

Many, many football injuries don’t go away; they simply fester for years under the surface, and with the advancing years resurface and become a huge hindrance to the productive life that a man in the twilight of his productive years is robbed of.

 

 

I played a bit of football, I watch both the Packers and the Lions, and enjoy watching college as well as high school games…..I’m a football fan pure and simple. That said, I do however have the ability to see beyond the Friday night bright lights, the Saturday afternoon of College pageantry, and the Sunday afternoon National Football League marketing of their football product.

 

I understand, (to a degree) the business aspect of the game of football on every level, from the Pop Warner programs that cost hundreds of dollars, to high school and the hundreds of thousands, to the college game, and it’s millions, and to the professionals and their hundreds of millions, I get it! Sports teams cost money to run, and marketing becomes a big deal to everybody.

 

Football games have always caused injuries; from sprains to cuts, pulled muscles, to broken bones, playing the game can be hazardous to the participants. Sporting goods companies are constantly looking for better ways to protect the players; coaches have get-togethers to discuss ways to help reduce some of the violence of their sport.

 

BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY

Football today, almost on any level is a violent contact sport, even the tykes on occasion make contact and see the classic stars in their eyes. Football coaches, athletic directors and school officials on the high school level can meet, and enact all the safety rules that will, in the end make them collectively feel good, they will go back to their schools, and offices, and conduct their business, and the injuries will continue.

 

But surprise, surprise…..it’s not their fault, the culprit is the game itself and how it’s played in the 21^st century. The biggest cause of head and neck injuries is the fact that players lead with their heads, it’s the most natural way to get from point A (where you’re at), to point B (where an opponent is at.)

 

Every other injury, be it knee, foot, ankle, hand, fingers, arms, ribs or back is acceptable, but a neck or head injury is unacceptable, and can lead to a lifetime of misery…..or death. So what do we do to stem the tide of the injuries that happen every fall?

 

The answer is really quite simple (you know me…..uncomplicated and simple), attach cloth flags on either side of a players hips attached to a belt and when a flag is pulled from the belt, the play is over. No more injuries, almost, of any kind!  Of course this new game…..Flag Football would also eliminate the big lumbering players or the short, small, yet slow players like myself, and those players with an attitude would have to find another outlet for the frustration with life.

 

Of course I’m kidding, there’s not a beer company in the world who would hitch its marketing star to a flag football team called the Chicago Cuties, or the Dubuque Dumbbells. But never fear, there is a way out of this dilemma. This solution really is simple, and does make loads of sense.

 

On every level of football below the college ranks start a five year program to re-teach kids how to play, how to avoid injuries, and how to focus on these new rules that can reduce injury to the head and neck. Have the makers of protective head-gear continue an exhaustive research program into producing better and more protective headgear.

 

Start a national organization that will govern every football team in the nation, big school, medium school, and small, in an effort to adopt national playing rules. Eliminate all summer football camps and touch football leagues…..let the kids be kids for at least a couple of months during the summer.

 

 

Establish a national date for the beginning of football practice, an end date, and a national playoff system that would crown a national champion at the end of the season. These are radical changes that probably will never happen, but its fun to write them down…..anyways it’s my blog.

 

WALTER CAMP AND THE BOYS

Walt Camp, John Heisman, Amos Alonzo Staff, Pop Warner, Fielding H. Yost and George Halas all helped to devise the game of football and to them every football player, coach and fan should be respectful, because without them, we’d be left with baseball, basketball, and hockey.

 

But I’m pretty sure that these men never in their wildest dreams thought that (their) game would cause the devastating injuries that it does today. To that end we need to probably make some changes so that some panty waist in Washington doesn’t jump on a band-wagon somewhere and try and outlaw the game.

 

Football means many things to many different people, depending on which part of the country that you are from. I grew up in a football town, Friday nights were golden, first it was all day on Friday, I can’t remember classes on that day, just the football game, and the dance after the game.

 

We’d walk into the dance, which was held in the cafeteria to an almost royal ceremony, whether a victory or a defeat, (which wasn’t very often) and the night was ours. That is what I remember most about the fall times at my high school.

 

Those experiences will be treasured my entire life, for good or for bad it’s one of the feelings that dominated me, and my school. But looking back, those experiences did not come close to my first born or the twinkle in my wife’s eye when I achieved a goal.

 

Football is a good game…..not as good as baseball…..but none the less a good game, a game worth saving actually from itself. Cooler heads need to make their presence felt when the debate begins again, cause you know it will.

 

HAVE A NICE DAY!

I AM DISAPPOINTED WITH THE PENALTY!

I AM DISAPPOINTED WITH THE PENALTY!

(Huffington Post, ESPN)

(New York Daily News)

(Frazer Chronicle)

 

Right up front I would like to say that I don’t care what these guys put into their bodies, or what they rub into the skin, what they do to achieve their success is their own business. Major League Baseball has established ground rules with regards to the use of what they consider illegal substances, so the players are forewarned, and if they’re caught…..bang, they suffer the consequences.

 

Everything is headlined Rodriguez and 12 others, so the hones is directly pointed at A-Rod, I suppose right where he wants it. Personally I’d shut my mouth, slink off in a corner somewhere and contemplate the book-deals that I could get.

 

But to sound like a victim, wow, A-Rod…..you must be an embarrassment to some, if not all of the merry band of 13 that will spend an extended vacation throughout August and September because they forgot that this is the 21^st century…., there is all sorts of technology that can snoop the snot right out of a person.

 

And I guess I need somebody to tell me exactly where these high priced agents were that all major sports figures hire to negotiate, book-keep, to watch their diet, work-out schedule, and to be an overall friend and nice guy to these sports figures. Should they also be banned?

 

I’ll be frank, some of these guys I’ve never heard of, yet they were on Major League rosters, which in and of itself is an accomplishment. There are only 750 Major League jobs available, and the starting pay is a whopping $480,000 a year…..and that is just the beginning…..it doesn’t count those neat little benefits, like first class motels and per deim on the road.

 

These guys at the major league level are all high profile, either everyday players, or paramount back-ups, and what’s up with pitchers taking these performance enhancing drugs, until lately it was only the everyday fellas that indulged…..all things change.

 

LET’S PUT A-ROD TO BED

If Bud Selig and Major League Baseball get its way, Alex Rodriguez will be suspended for the rest of the 2013 season and all of the 2014 season, making him 39 years old at the start of the 2015 season, and just over four months before he’ll turn forty.

 

Can you say “P-O” it’s what Rodriguez did to the Major League Baseball Gods and Bud Selig, A-Rod got some very bad legal advice, and some sub-standard representation with regards to his attitude on the current juicing and pill popping escapade! If I was the A-Rod man, heads would roll, I mean, can’t you remember 2004, 2007, 2009, 2011, talk about a three time loser.

 

A-Rod, in his prime was one awesome baseball player, he was the classic, (hit, hit with power, run, field and throw, a five tool stud if there ever was one. He was a short-stop, who was a fan favorite, and really a good diplomat for the game of baseball on any level.

 

To the owners of the teams that he played for, Seattle, the Texas Rangers, and the Yankees, he was a marketers dream, to a sports agent; he was a gold mine that never ended. A-Rod was like invincible, undefeated, could do no wrong, and was the boy born with the silver spoon.

But like I said, a suspension until 2015, well you do the math, really,  out of competitive baseball for two years, 2013-2014, and 39 at the start of the 2015 season, and turning 40 in July…..and without performance enhancing drugs, at best a C or D-Rod.

 

AND SO, WHO ARE THE OTHERS

Nelson Cruz, Jhonny Peralta, and Everth Cabrera, are the only what could be called full time players. Nelson Cruz plays right field for the Texas Rangers, is a good fielding, strong armed power hitter, while Jhonny Peralta is having a career year as the All Star shortstop with the Tigers, and Everth Cabrera is San Diego’s speedy (37 stolen bases) short-stop.

 

Antonio Bastardo (Phillies), Jordany Valdespin (Mets), Francisco Cervelli (Yankees), Jesus Montero (Mariners), Cesar Puello (Mets), Sergio Escalona (Astros), Fernando Martinez (a Yankee farm-hand), Fautino De Los Santos (Padres), and Jordon Norberto, a free agent, round out the dirty thirteen!

 

The single reason that these guys took whatever drug it is that they took…..to enhance their paychecks pure and simple. There wasn’t a gambling scheme, there wasn’t a covert idea or move afoot, the motivator was the oldest reason in the history of mankind…..money.

 

Can we blame them…..absolutely, just about as quickly as we blame those people who cheat on their taxes, or cheat somebody out of money, or cheat on their wives or husbands. These players are a part of an underbelly of baseball that isn’t usually seen.

 

It’s a part of baseball that many of us struggle to accept, because any of us who have played the game have cheated in our own small way. Spit or shine ball, cork in a wooden bat, tennis balls in an aluminum bat, sliding at a player and not the base, or how about the old brush-back pitch.

 

Plain and simple these guys got caught, they however did not impugn the grand old game, that was left to the owners, the commissioner’s office, and some of the old time beat writers! Today baseball team owners pay a minimum salary of $480,000 to a rookie with limited, albeit untapped abilities…..and the team, and game survive.

 

Today’s cheaters are really the same as most all of the past cheaters, their just more sophisticated, use a little more intellect, and really are quite amusing to watch with regards to their reactions when they get caught.

 

They remind me of my kids, “I’m sorry, I promise it won’t happen again,” or the “from the bottom of my heart I apologize,” or my all-time favorite, “I’m so sorry that I’ve let down the fans, baseball, and my team-mates.”

 

I love the home run, I like the doubles and triples, I really like a stolen base, and can a 100 mile an hour heater be anything else but a joy to watch…..I don’t think so. I like 12-9 scores, 2-1 or 1-0 games bore me, yes-er-ee; give me lots of runs and hits.

 

I’ll bet with few exceptions, everybody knows what everybody else is doing, and really I’m not too sure that they give a rip; they just go about their business of being a professional baseball player in the 21^st century, which by the way is a full time job.

 

HAVE A NICE DAY!