A Note To Professional Athletes: A Plan To Create Positive Societal Change Vs. Your Empty Disrespectful Kneeling and Ranting

On a periodic basis we do some posts that fall under the theme of “by the numbers.” Rather than trust what the American political class tells us about reality, we like to examine the real numbers and the real reality in the world to understand what is actually going on. Relying on politicians, and their cohorts in the media, to tell us what is reality is always a sucker bet. They have their own agendas and goals, usually centering around their needs and self-enrichment. So we need to look at the reality of the numbers to determine what is really going on.

Previous analyses of “by the numbers” can be accessed by entering the phrase in the search box above. This is the second post this month where we look at the numbers to truly find out how good, not likely, or bad, most likely, the American political class is doing in managing our tax dollars, protecting our freedoms, and resolving major issues that affect all of us. 

Usually in these “by the numbers'' posts we examine real numbers that exist in different areas of life and show how things got so screwed up number wise because of the arrogance, ignorance, or stupidity of politicians. We are going to go at today’s numbers from a different angle in that we are going to generate our own hypothetical numbers in an attempt to make the world a better place.

As almost all of you probably know, athletes across all of the professional sports leagues have taken up the mantles of social justice, defund the police, all police are bad, all white people have privilege, etc. Rather than just play the sport and games that they are good at, they want to tell us how to live our lives, what horrible people we are, and in the process insult and attack our country’s heritage, flag, veterans, and police officers.

Most of them lecture us about how much smarter and insightful they are than us, they take a knee when the anthem is played, they walk off the court or field when the anthem is played, or they denigrate and insult other players who have a different opinion than them relative to the flag and anthem.

Frankly, myself and probably a lot of other people are getting tired of their act, not because they have an opinion that may differ from others but because their antics and disrespect do nothing to get solutions to current day problems. Taking a knee before a football game does not make a kid safer in violence prone south Chicago. Homeless Americans in Los Angeles are no better off because these athletes refuse to respect those that fought for freedom in this country. No abused woman, a victim of domestic violence, in a shelter somewhere is better off because of their egotistical rants.

Now let’s be clear, I am fully aware that a lot of professional athletes make meaningful contributions to their communities with foundations, financial contributions, etc. And that is great. But two things:

1. I don't need a second string safety on some NFL team lecturing me on social justice when they do nothing to fix what is wrong in their communities.
2. Second, if they want me and other fans to step up our game on fixing society’s wrongs, then I want to see them also step up their game or at least get in the game since they certainly can afford to do so, more than most fans.

Which is where our hypothetical numbers come into play. Let’s start in Minnesota, specifically Minneapolis, the city where the recent social unrest, protests and violence started due to the horrific and unnecessary murder of George Floyd at the hands of some very bad police officers. If professional athletes want to do something more valuable and more positive in their communities than just making empty and meaningless symbolic gestures during the national anthem, let’s put forth the following mathematical model, using Minneapolis as the test case: 

• From what I can gather from online sources, the player salaries for the NFL, MBL, NHL, and NBA franchises located in Minneapolis is about $415 million a year.
• Let’s assume that we impose a 5% “social justice” tax on those salaries that the players would have to pay every year.
• Let’s assume that the revenue from this social justice tax would be used in the community to solve some real problems that affect real people rather than taking a knee during the national anthem that solves nothing.
• 5% of $415 million comes out to about $20.75 million every year.

Great, we now have some revenue numbers to work with, what could be done with them:

• Checking online sources, it looks like a good, middle of the road Chromebook computer costs about $300 on average.
• Thus, simple math shows that the annual $20.75 million could buy about 69,000 chrome books in a single year.
• There are currently 36,350 kids attending Minneapolis public schools.
• Which means that one year’s worth of social justice tax could buy every kid almost two Chromebooks.
• But that would not make much sense so let’s buy each kid one Chromebook which would cost $10.9 million, leaving us just under $10 million to fix other human problems in the city.
• Maybe we could take a couple of hundred thousand dollars and give it to Minneapolis resident, Korboi Balla, a retired city firefighter who invested his life savings in a city bar, an investment that was destroyed by rioters, and give him another chance to build his dream that was destroyed before his eyes in a single night of violence.
• Maybe we could take a few million dollars from that social justice tax and give it to the owner of the 7-Sigma corporation, a city business that had been operating in the city for 33 years, a business that had 50 local city residents on the payroll, and a business that was burned to the ground by rioters so that the owner could rebuild his business and save those city jobs.
• After these two acts of support there would still be millions of dollars left to help others in need, be it the homeless, the sick, the addicted, etc.

You get the idea. If you as a professional athlete want to lecture others on social justice and call others privileged and racist based on no facts or evidence, than I want to see you step up your game, step up your commitment, and finally do something more productive than take a knee, walk off the court or field, berate others that dare to have a different opinion and continue to insult those that have served and continue to serve this country, protecting your lives, your property, and your freedom.

The numbers above are just an example of what could be done in a single city based on a small sliver of the fabulous wealth professional athletes enjoy today. This would be especially true if the social justice tax money flowed directly to the schools, directly to those in need, etc. and not through any government agency or other bureaucratic organization that would find a way to mishandle, misspend or lose the money. Directly to those in need in the community. 

The numbers don't lie. A small social justice tax, properly administered, and paid out directly to those in need would create more good, more benefits, save more lives, than any number of times the national anthem and flag are abused and disrespected with players' disrespectful actions. 

So, to those that kneel, to those that walk off the field or court, to those that think you are wiser, better, and more moral than the rest of us, either pony up some money and create real, positive societal change or just shut up.

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Related thoughts: https://americanvision.org/24307/black-sports-stars-squandering-their-moral-capital/

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Note: we have done a lot reporting on the dire and ever worsening situation in Chicago. The crime, the violence, and the shootings have resulted in more wounded citizens, more fatalities and a more dangerous place to be. In those discussions we have always pointed out that the mayor and those in public office in Chicago have no idea how to fix this deteriorating situation. While the vast majority of people cannot help fix what the local political class has broken, may I suggest that a donation be made to the Boys and Girls Club of Chicago to at least give the kids of the city a chance, a safe place to go and just be kids. The address for donating to this fine organization is:

Boys & Girls Clubs of Chicago Club Support Center

2102 W. Monroe Street
Chicago, IL 60612

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August, 2015, Part 4, Political Class Insanity: Death Of The Export-Import Bank,CIA Spies On Congress and More

At the beginning of each month we take a week or so to review the latest insanity from the American political class. Insanity from them includes a wide range of very depressing actions which can include wasteful spending, idiotic quotes, an inefficient and ineffective government bureaucracy, failed economic policies, etc. Every month we continue to prove that we are being served by the worst set of politicians ever.

And as you will see, this month’s review and discussions do nothing to prove that this thesis is wrong in any way:

1) In past posts we have always supported the termination of the Export-Import Bank. This is a Federal government entity that takes American taxpayer money and gives it out as loans to foreigners to purchase American made products. There are a number of things wrong with this type of government operation:

• Why are we giving and risking taxpayer wealth with foreign companies, let them buy American goods with their own money or their governments’ own money.
• Contrary to what Export-Import fans say, most of the money and loans go to supporting very large American companies such a GE, Boeing, etc. We should let those companies’ stockholders finance purchases of their companies' products, not taxpayers since it is the stockholders that will see any advantage of doing so, not the taxpayer.
• Giving U.S. taxpayer-backed loans to foreign companies to purchase American products disadvantages American companies that compete with those foreign companies since domestic companies cannot get Export-Import loans.

Fortunately, the bank's charter recently expired and hopefully it will stay dead in future Congressional sessions. As an example of why it should stay dead, consider the highlights from the following Washington Examiner story by Timothy Carney from June 18, 2015:

• Apparently, the bank has given a $650 million, U.S. taxpayer backed loan to the richest woman in Australia.
• Gina Rinehart owns Roy HIll mining in Australia and is also the richest woman in that country. Despite that wealth status, the Export-Import bank loaned her company $650 million to purchase equipment made by GE and Caterpillar.
• But a U.S.mining company, Cliff’s Natural Resources, an American company that competes with Roy HIll, does not get any financial support and taxpayer backed plans from the Export-Import bank, putting it at a competitive disadvantage.
• The loan also disadvantages the U.S. domestic steel industry since Roy HIll sends a lot of its mined ore to China which turns it into steel which impacts worod wide steel prices. 

How perverted has Washington become where we send U.S. taxpayer money half way around the world to support foreign companies owned by very rich people but do not extend that opportunity to domestic companies? If selling equipment to Roy Hill is so important, than let the stockholders at Caterpillar and GE finance the purchases.

Hopefully, with the recent death of the program, this type of financial insanity will stop and that the Export-Import Bank will not rise from the dead. But zombie people do rise fom the dead as do zombie govenrment programs so who knows.

2) Recently released CIA reports from the CIA inspector general now show that the White House is possibly involved with the CIA’s spying on personnel in the U.S. Senate. The reports show that CIA Director John Brennan met with White House chief of staff Denis McDonough and discussed the intention to search the computers being used by Senate staffers working for Senator Dianne Feinstein to investigate the use of torture by the CIA on suspected terrorists.

The report said that Brennan had ordered CIA investigators to use “whatever means necessary” to ascertain how Senate investigators had obtained “certain sensitive internal documents.” At that time, Feinstein’s Senate committee was conducting its own investigation into the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques.

While the CIA spying on Congress is bad enough, the inspector general analysis shows that White House personnel knew that the spying was going on and did nothing to stop it. Obviously, if this is true, than Feinstein’s argument that the CIA had “likely violated the constitutional separation of powers,” is a very valid and very serious Constitutional violation, a violation that the White House might also be guilty of.

The inspector general concluded that the five CIA employees who conducted the search had “engaged in wrongdoing,” according to the Huffington Post, but, as always with government lawbreakers, that their actions were not punishable. At about the same time the inspector general report was made public, a CIA Accountability Review Board report asserted that Brennan, who denied telling CIA employees to use “whatever means necessary,” failed to “appreciate what forensic techniques were necessary to answer his questions.”

Violate the Constitution, very bad, but no punishment. Smoke a cigarette in your own home in NYC, and you could soon be a criminal. Down the rabbit hole of political class insanity we fall.

3) The Government Accountability Office is kind of like the Federal government’s auditor function, going around and identifying and fixing what is wrong with government functions. Someone in that entity was recently caught doing their job well when they identified thousands of Medicaid beneficiaries and hundreds of medical providers that were involved in ripping off the American taxpayer during 2012, the last year complete data is available:

• The ripoffs included receiving improper and fraudulent payments.
• The fraud amounted to $18.3 million in just four states, New Jersey, Michigan, Florida, and Arizona.
• About 8,600 Medicaid beneficiaries had improperly collected benefits from more than one state.
• 200 dead Medicaid beneficiaries had received upwards of $9.6 million AFTER they had died.

Makes you wonder who is watching the taxpayer money since in just a few paragraphs we saw that the Federal government is sending hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer wealth to the richest woman in Australia, millions of taxpayer dollars to dead people, and millions of dollars to live people who are double dipping. Pathetic fiscal management.

4) But it is not just the Federal government that gives taxpayer money to rich people. Wisconsin Governor and Republican candidate for President, Scott Walker, wants to give some Wisconsin state taxpayer money to rich, billionaire basketball team owners. Apparently, according to a recent Washington Examiner article, Walker and other state politicians want to give a quarter-billion dollars in taxpayer money to the billionaire owners of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks, who are threatening to leave Wisconsin unless they get a new, subsidized basketball arena.

According to the article, the owners do not even live in the state but state politicians have negotiated a financial deal where state and local taxpayers would pay for half the cost of a new $500 million arena for the NBA team. The state would borrow $55 million to fund the arena, costing the state taxpayers $80 million over 20 years when interest is included. City and county governments would cover the rest.

Walker is claiming that this is a good $250 million investment and good use of taxpayer money for the local and state economies. But the article points out that it is nearly unanimous among economists that stadium subsidies do not pay for themselves, and the research suggests that losing a sports team doesn't hurt a city's economy:

• Economists Dennis Coates and Brad Humphreys: "Our conclusion, and that of nearly all academic economists studying this issue, is that professional sports generally have little, if any, positive effect on a city's economy."
• Economist Ray Keating: "The lone beneficiaries of sports subsidies are team owners and players."
• Examiner article: “One reason is the substitution effect: Milwaukeeans who have a basketball team will spend less money on other types of leisure. The money spent in and around the fancy new arena wouldn't have just sat under mattresses.”

If it is one thing American politicians like to do is give away our money, in this case to billionaire out of state basketball team owners. That will do it for today’s insanity, but more insanity sure to follow in the next few days, can hardly wait to see who our politicians give our taxpayer money to tomorrow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

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