NCAA Penn State University sanctions: Punish the innocent?

The Red Ranger: Let me begin by saying that what Joe Paterno did was reprehensible (a future Red Ranger topic will be when good people go bad) and Sandusky is beyond words. However, the punishment handed out to Penn State seems to impact those who were not involved in the incident more than those who were.

It seems like the honest hard-working kids in Pennsylvania (and other states) who worked to get a scholarship to PSU will now either have to play for another team or stay with PSU and play for a team that will probably not be competitive. Why should these kids be impacted by something they were not involved in? I know that life isn’t always fair, but this is an arbitrary ruling that could have easily been adjusted to minimize the impact on current innocent players and students.

A $60 million fine while making great headlines doesn’t really seem to resolve anything. I can’t wait to see how it is spent (I imagine the transparency will be as great as was provided for Obama’s stimulus package with similar murky results.) If all the money is going to the victims, then great. However don’t the victims usually say no amount of money can make things right… but of course, $5 million will always make things better.

Strip the wins from Paterno’s record, sure, although it doesn’t really impact anyone other than Joe Pa. All the players on those teams will still count those games as wins.

This was the NCAA trying to look tough coming down hard on one of the currently most despised group of people in America. To me this seems like more of a public relations event from the NCAA rather than truly bringing justice to the perpetrators. Why were there not sanctions against PSU administrators such as limiting salaries, benefits, etc.?

Nattering Naybob: I am in basic agreement with you, Red Ranger. A case could be made that there is an inherent unfairness about the quasi-death penalty that was issued to Penn State, as it pertains to the current players and scholarship recipients. I would not be surprised to see some lawsuits filed by the players whose college careers (and by extension, potential NFL careers) might be jeopardized because of this disruption.

But beyond how the individual players might be affected, I have no problem with the “retroactive” nature of the penalties to the University as a whole. My feeling is that their institutional coverup of this entire disgusting mess, will have been “rewarded” if the NCAA did not have the ability to render the punishment they did. The only other avenue that might have been considered, would have been to leave the scholarship situation alone (both for the current players and future recruitees) but prohibit the Nittany Lions from playing in Bowl games for however many years is deemed appropriate.

Additionally, garnish a substantial amount of their operating profits for a certain period of time. This way, the players can still showcase their talents on a team that would presumably still be competitive, even if there is no opportunity to play in Bowl games, but the University, by virtue of their institutional coverup, would not reap the same financial benefits as they ordinarily might. This restriction would penalize the player in a sense, but there are plenty of players drafted every year whose team does not make it to Bowl games, and in some cases, do not even have winning records.

Regarding the “public relations” angle that bothers you, again, I look at that more as a warning to other programs that this kind of thing (hopefully there are no other college programs that are currently covering up the same kind of criminal activity) will not be tolerated. And I also have no objections whatsoever to Paterno’s statue being removed, his victories being officially negated, or his reputation being tarnished. Too bad. He was the head of the entire program, and in a sense, the face of Penn State as a whole. To say he should have known better, is an understatement of the highest magnitude.

The Red Ranger: Any attempt to further diminish the achievements of Joe Pa are acceptable by me. I do not understand how he could have kept these incidents under wraps for so many years. While I am sure we have all seen some illegal activity occur and not reported it the scope of these activities was beyond a normal misdemeanor activity.

Another punishment would be to claw back some of the salary he earned over the years as football coach. Yes, this would impact his wife and family but I have to think they knew something about these incidents also.

Nattering Naybob: I think too many people have unfairly maligned Mike McQueary, who discovered, in progress, one of the child rape events in the shower. I have heard more than one opinion to the effect that McQueary “should have decked Sandusky on the spot”, or performed some other Rambo-like rescue operation for the child being raped. “That’s what I would have done!”, they boast. Really? For anyone who would actually have physically interceded on the spot, or done something else to stop the attack and drag Sandusky by the ear to the local police station, I heartily salute you.

But I suggest that nobody except the preternaturally boldest among us, can truly predict what he or she would do when confronted with the same situation McQueary found himself in. Mediocre as McQueary’s response may have been, at least he took some action to report the event (he told his own father, who then took steps to move it further along…although we all know how that ended up).

He also served as the “star” witness during the Grand Jury proceedings, the Freeh Committee Investigations, and the resulting trial. McQueary stuck his own neck out (albeit clumsily at times) to ensure that Sandusky got the punishment that he had evaded for far too long. Nobody else that I know of, except the poor victims themselves, did the same. McQueary is not a villain, he is one of the very few good guys in this whole sordid mess.

On to the next topic, Special Master Ranger…

Aurora Part 2: Making the most with the least — Concessions

The Red Ranger: The Republicans should use this incident as a way to soften some of their stances on gun control without giving up their strong support of the Second Amendment.  I think that they should be able to give some easy concessions that make them seem like they are willing compromise without giving in too much.

There should definitely be a limit on the amount of ammunition that any one person can buy either at one time or over a period of time.  Of course, there are ways around this by perhaps using multiple identities or buying from different sources.  Also, you should only be able to buy a certain number of firearms in a given period of time.  Given today’s technology and computer databases this should be easy to monitor.  If the Republicans were to make some of these concessions I think it would buy them some points or least diminish the Democrats’ ability to constantly call them the “Party of No”, or to say they never compromise.

Also, I wonder what made Holmes tell them that his apartment was booby-trapped after killing all those people.  I wonder why no one in his apartment building was able to tell what he was doing with his apartment.  Couldn’t they smell the gasoline?

Finally, what was a six-year old child doing at a midnight screening?

Nattering Naybob: Good for you, Red Ranger. Although I am struck by how your position is characterized by “retail politics” (i.e., calculating how Republicans can look better politically by at least fostering the perception of compromise), it is more reasonable than many of your Republican brothers and sisters, and for this I salute you.

It strains credulity to think that a single person could have accumulated this kind of arsenal (6,000 bullets? 200 pounds of ammunition?). To have done this illegally would have been troubling enough; it is even more frightening to realize that he accumulated  this inventory legally. The fact that Holmes’ neighbors did not have any inkling what was going on, does not surprise me. In our last post I mentioned that I believe unfettered access to firearms is only one component of the problem. Others? The increased alienation of people within their own community and indeed their own building. The impenetrable strength of the gun lobby. The ease with which Republicans (and some Democrats) can cast aspersions on the patriotism of someone who even suggests (as you correctly did above) that there should be more checks and balances on the accumulation of the type of weaponry and ammunition that would be overkill even for a prototypical big-game hunter in Africa.

To solve this problem (do any of our elected officials really want to do the heavy lifting required?) will take a holistic approach whose application will require a level of patience that escapes most of our Fellow Americans. They already find it arduous enough to make it through an entire episode of their favorite reality show.

Aurora: First thoughts…

The Red Ranger: Why does the MSM (main stream media) try to blame everything on the Tea Party? Brian Ross on ABC news blurts out that the “Dark Knight” shooter in Colorado may be a Tea Party member because there is a Tea Party member in Colorado with the same name. Of course, it turns out that the shooter is not the Tea Party member but the damage and insinuation is already done. Why not just wait until all the facts are in? Aren’t these guys supposed to be reporting the facts. A similar thing happened when Gabrielle Giffords was shot.

It is truly disgusting how slanted and biased the MSM is. If they are going to continue to act that way at least admit it and let everyone know how they operate.

Nattering Naybob: I agree with your main takeaway about jumping to conclusions. The compulsion to be “first” with “breaking news” (I thought that all “news”, was, by definition, “breaking”) has not served the news industry well. I am not a fan of what the Tea Party stands for and the rhetorical methods it sometimes employs but I do also acknowledge that I do not see it as an extremist group in the sense that it would ever consciously encourage or foment violence just as was seen Friday morning.

But there must be a reason (most likely several of them) why this kind of act is seen primarily (not exclusively, but primarily) in the Unites States. More unfettered access to guns is one factor, in my view, but not the primary reason either. Perhaps we can try to figure it out in subsequent posts.

The Red Ranger: I do not believe that these acts are primarily in the United States. If you were to review a listing of the top 20 shootings probably about half have taken place in the US.

Where do I begin?

Nattering Naybob: Frankly, I expected that coming up with my inaugural topic for this little blog of ours would be simple. Not so. The list of foibles of the Modern Republican party is simply too long to choose just one. I am reminded of the proverbial donkey who had in front of him two equally appealing bales of hay, could not decide which one to eat, and so starved to death. Not wanting to be that donkey (although I have been called a jackass once or twice in my day) I will simply provide a bullet point list of some of the themes I will be exploring over the coming weeks and months, at least in the “Politics” component of our mission statement:

-Modern Republicans suffocate us with their talk of Christianity yet propose policies that are in fact anathema to true Christian values.
-Modern Republicans actively seek to suppress voter turnout in the name of preventing “voter fraud” which has never been documented or proven to be anything more than statistically miniscule, if that.
-Modern Republicans lie (that’s right, you heard me The Red Ranger) when they say President Obama is a reckless tax-and-spender. In truth, both taxes and spending have declined since 2009.
-Modern Republicans proudly pander, and anoint as Party “thought captains”, such figures as Ted Nugent, Donald Trump, Wayne LaPierre, Joe the Plumber, Rush Limbaugh, and Sarah Palin.
-Modern Republicans consistently dismiss and demonize non-partisan data that disprove their shop-worn economic theories.
-Modern Republicans vote to prevent women from receiving equal pay for equal work.

I could go on. And, Red Ranger, I will.

The Red Ranger: Well, I see that Nattering Naybob is living up to his name as he has rolled out the standard Democratic talking points regarding the Republican party. I was hoping for a more pointed analysis complete with supporting data rather than bland statements that have not stood up to review. In many of these points I could easily change “Republicans” to “Democrats” and could include that as one of my topics. Maybe my next topic will be the following:

– Modern Democrats consistently dismiss and demonize non-partisan data that disprove their shop-worn economic theories.

The last item in your blog is one that is particularly troublesome as it clearly displays your inability to grasp the nuances of complicated economic realities. The Democrats roll out a number that says something to the effect that women earn 75% of what men make. While this is true in the aggregate when looking at all jobs across the entire employment spectrum, it fails to mention that when looking at the same job with similar responsibilities women earn similar pay to men somewhere in the range of 95% with the variation in pay normally due to experience level.

Nattering Naybob, do you really believe that companies keep two pay scales one for men and one for women? If so, please provide examples of these companies and I will be sure to boycott them. I believe, although I could be wrong, that when this bill was voted down it was because of many other items in the legislation and it was not just about equal pay.

Nattering Naybob: I thought Republicans hated the nuance of complicated situations. The Republican Thought Captains are always carping and complaining about how long Democratic bills are (they have this weird obsession with citing the page length of bills introduced in Congress). Your Vice-Presidential candidate of 2008 regularly dismissed nuance, in fact that was one of her main calling cards. I think she was naturally suspicious of anyone who had an education past the 7th grade. She seemed to think they would have been better served quitting school to learn some “Real American” skills like skinning and dressing a moose in under ten minutes, or shooting foxes and wolves from helicopters. But I digress. Regarding the bill that contained the latest “equal pay for women” clause, I have tasked the legislative working group of my crack research team, to determine what else was embedded in the equal pay bill. They are probably running their text recognition software right now as we speak. I should have the results shortly. Although in regards to this topic I should just simply invoke what I call “The Bugliosi Rule”. In my reply I will explain what the Bugliosi Rule is.

The Red Ranger: I find it funny that you always portray the Republicans as being the uneducated ones when in actuality it is the Dems who as a whole have the lower IQ’s. Outside of the few educated elites who run it, the Democratic party tends to cater to high school dropouts or illegal immigrants as their largest support base. These are the groups that rely on the government for their very existence so the Dems are all too happy to lock them into a lifetime of governmental support rather than letting them become self-sufficient.

I don’t know why you think Sarah Palin would have advocated dropping out of school when she herself was a college graduate. Once again you are making statements that have no basis in fact.

I think this is the second time you have mentioned your crack research team. As of yet, I have not seen any evidence of any research in any of your postings. Did you mean to say your crack smoking research team? Now that would be more likely coming from a Democrat as your leader is an admitted drug user.

Nattering Naybob: Glad you think I am funny. Mitt Romney supporters need all the laughs they can muster lately. Regarding your insults comments, many Republicans are themselves college grads yet they ridicule the idea of attending college (see “Santorum, Rick”). This is just another symptom of the GOP’s collective paradox, their collective illness, as some (me) would call it. Now, as for the “Bugliosi Rule” I referenced earlier. This is my name for the theorem advanced by Vincent Bugliosi, who of course prosecuted the Manson Family, and was an outspoken critic of the OJ Simpson trial outcome (the first one). He claims that certain facts are so obvious that even a minimum effort need not be wasted to prove them true. Such is the case with the fact that Republicans in Congress do not want women to receive equal pay for equal work, and, by extension, are anti-mother and anti-wife. In fact, on second thought, I am not going to bother to prove this, I have given my crack research team the rest of the week off, so they can go out into the community and spread the message of Obama-Biden 2012. Closing thoughts, Red Ranger?

The Red Ranger: I think you are trying to use the “Bugliosi Rule” to allow yourself to make unsubstantiated claims without having to provide one shred of evidence to support them. Republicans are anti-wife and anti-mother are just ridiculous comments since women are Republicans too.

So wraps up another installment whereby Nattering Naybob provides off-topic fictionalizations while The Red Ranger provides astute analysis.

Nattering Naybob: Boulderdash. I will leave you now to wallow in your Red Ranger-osity.

Community Reinvestment Act: How government policies impact a stable market environment

The Red Ranger: While the United States is currently in the midst of the Great Recession, much of the blame for the core problems that ail us today can be placed squarely at the feet of past Democratic presidents. Three main legislative failures come to mind. They are 1) the passage of the Community Reinvestment Act by Jimmy Carter, 2) the signing of NAFTA, and 3) the repeal of Glass-Steagal by Bill Clinton.

The CRA, which was initially intended to eliminate redlining (a process which I do not support) by banks, was an early example of the government trying to expand home ownership to a larger percentage of the population because they felt everyone deserved to own a home. This was clearly an example of the government enacting a policy that upset the equilibrium of the free market. By forcing banks to lend to less credit-worthy individuals (those that would not have normally qualified for a loan) the government caused a larger than normally acceptable amount of capital to flow into the housing market.

Over time this artificially raised the prices for homes and the demand for home loans bringing less scrupulous lenders into the mortgage business who were not as highly regulated as the standard bank lenders. Every Tom, Dick and Harry was more than willing to refinance their home time and again to withdraw cash from the inflated equity balances to fund a new car or fancy vacation. However, once the prices of homes reached their breaking point (as always happens in a bubble) these folks were left with mortgage balances which were substantially more than their homes were worth and banks and mortgages lenders were left with loans that would never be repaid thus causing the financial meltdown that started the Great Recession.

Nattering Naybob: First, Red Ranger (hope you don’t mind that I drop the “The” when addressing you directly), it’s great to finally be putting our thoughts in blog form. It was chiefly your idea to take the plunge, so I salute your entrepreneurial spirit. I would expect nothing less from a die-hard Republican. Over the coming weeks and months, I am going to try and look under Red Ranger’s “hood”, if you don’t mind a metaphor there, to finally see what form your Republicanism takes– Eisenhower? Reagan? Bush? Cain? Bachmann? After all these years, I still can’t figure it out.

I have no doubt that your analysis is credible regarding who-did-what, and when, but at the same time I am curious as to why you dredge up presidential acts from the era of Disco Demolition Night. What’s next, an attack on Harry Truman as a “jobs killer” for invoking the Taft-Hartley Act? But beyond that, Red Ranger, even if I stipulate that Jimmy Carter tore himself away from managing the White House tennis court schedule long enough to pass the CRA, what about the bankers and investment “specialists” that facilitated these loans? Do they not share any blame, and if so, how much?

Passing legislation that at the time was honestly thought to open home ownership to a wider segment of Americans is like the “apple” to the “orange” represented by the predatory bankers who should have known better.

The Red Ranger: Where were these bankers and investment specialist before the CRA was passed? Were they just sitting around collecting unemployment waiting for the government to pass the CRA? No, they did not exist because there was not a government-created artificial demand for mortgage products that needed to be funded via the redirection of capital. Their existence only came about due to the government’s passage of this legislation. Unless these bankers and investment specialists held guns to homeowners heads forcing them to take on these loans that they knew they could not afford I do not see how you can blame them.

Like any true liberal you are ignoring the need for any personal responsibility. It was the greedy homeowners who were forcing the bankers and investment specialist to devise new and increasingly complex mortgage products to allow the homeowners to borrow as much money as possible. Given the government requirements that they lend more money and the homeowners demanding more loans what else were they to do without bringing down the wrath of the government upon them. Over the years many people identified the eventuality of a housing bubble but they were disregarded by the MSM and probably called racists to rile up even greater hatred toward them.

Having worked for a large money center bank for many years I can clearly remember how anytime a merger or acquisition was announced, a certain organization (your beloved ACORN or some other similar organization, I believe) would almost immediately require the companies to commit a large dollar amount (Usually $500 million or more) to increased low-income lending or face a legal challenge to the merger based upon the CRA. This was nothing more than government sponsored extortion.

Nattering Naybob: You say that the “greedy homeowners” forced bankers to “devise new and increasingly complex mortgage products”? I can see it now: Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch, sitting nervously in the cubicle of a poor, innocent banker who is skeptical of lending so much money, and Mr. Front Porch saying, ‘Aw, c’mon Jim! We go way back. I just know that you’re capable of devising a new and complex mortgage product for me and the Missus to buy that old Williams place on the corner of Maple and 5th!”

Really, blaming the Carter administration for the mortgage crisis is like saying that Henry Ford is responsible for all vehicular homicides that have occurred since the dawn of the horseless carriage. And let me guess: This “government-sponsored extortion” only occurred during the Carter, Clinton and Obama administration, right? Not during Reagan, Bush I and Bush II ? Red Ranger, I have a feeling you have more to say on this topic, care to wait for your next time at bat or do you have any closing remarks?

The Red Ranger: I never said or implied that the issue only occurred during Democratic administrations just that the whole thing started from the enactment of legislation by a Democratic president. However, whenever a Republican raised concerns about the burgeoning crises they were roundly viewed as unintelligent and unable to accurately grasp the complexities of the situation or they were denying affordable housing to the masses. Typical liberal strategy– Just say whatever you want regardless of the issue.

Frankly, I was expecting a little more than fictional situations and references to non-existent events from the Nattering Naybob. I will chalk this to up to his inexperience and his diminished mental capacity due to years of watching one-sided discussions on MSNBC. Hopefully, he can rebound in the next round and this blog will be something that people can read for intelligent discussions of today’s issues.

Nattering Naybob: Well, had I known your first blog topic was going to involve so many acronyms, I would have called my research staff back from vacation to do some ghostwriting. Since Republicans usually hate intellectuals, I am surprised at the depth and breadth of your arguments (fundamentally specious though they be). I guess now I know why you chose to remain anonymous. Nattering Naybob signing off.

The Red Ranger: I anxiously await your first topic.

Welcome to our Second Grade Minds

Greetings and welcome to Second Grade Minds!
Here, two longtime friends will exchange ideas and opinions about politics (almost never agree), sports (usually agree), and culture (depends on the issue). Check back soon for our first official post.

Fasten your seat belts; it should be interesting.

The Red Ranger & Nattering Naybob