Union Destruction

The unions are at it again. The UAW has nearly killed the big three auto companies but fails to connect their actions to the decline in union jobs, decline in profits, and slow deaths of the companies they are bleeding dry. Through their lobbying on congress the UAW managed to get some protective tariffs in place but rather than making the foreign manufacturers less competitive they simply began manufacturing their products in the US in non-UAW plants. The UAW maintains that without their pressure these plants would not be paying the high wages that they do. Certainly there is some truth to this allegation but the UAW tries to ignore the fact that these foreign manufacturers are not burdened with a seniority system or debilitating retirement programs, or onerous healthcare obligations. These are all “benefits” that the UAW has won over the years for their members. The result is an aging workforce, exorbitant healthcare costs, a generous pension program that cost more each year, excessive numbers of employees, and an uncompetitive salary structure.

The UAW is now trapped in their own rhetoric and any retreat from these “benefits” is almost impossible. Their membership continues to decline as the companies they have unionized continue to sink into irrelevancy with ever declining market share. Of course, the management of these auto manufacturers shares some of the blame as well. After all they surrendered to the union blackmail year after year and kept feeding that tiger until now the tiger threatens to consume them. At least some of this problem lies with the incestuous relationship within the auto industry. Auto executives simply move from company A to company B then to Company C and then back to company A. No company would even consider hiring a senior executive who wasn’t a “car guy”. This attitude has ensured that no fresh thinking would be introduced to challenge the status quo. Recently Ford has hired an executive outside of the auto industry and this is a first. However, it may be too late because Ford like all of the big three auto companies is bloated and virtually paralyzed by the UAW. The challenge for the non-car guy will be to find a way to escape the clutches of the UAW and undo years and years of management thinking that has pitted labor against management.

However, the auto industry isn’t the only industry that is dominated by unions that are gradually destroying their industry and the teacher’s union is a prime example. This is a group who are heavily unionized, have no quality metric, and protected by tenure. This is not a problem in and of itself, but when high schools are graduating students who can’t read or spell and who have limited mathematical skills, then that is a problem. At the same time these teachers are complaining that they are under paid and over worked. The underpaid argument rings very hollow when you examine their pay on an hourly or per diem basis. When teachers are measured on their actual scheduled work days, their pay is equivalent to that of computer programmers and engineers. The reality is that these teachers only work nine months of the year and of those 270 days they actually work less than 180 days. Of course the teachers like to point out that they are required to constantly educate themselves and frequently work long hours. Naturally they seem to not realize that ALL professionals require constant education and the 40 hour work week is only a baseline and most professionals work well over the 40 hour baseline.

Another factor that the teachers fail to recognize is that unlike virtually all other professionals they have no metric. They produce educated students but they resist all attempts to measure the quality of the education of these students. Even when standardized tests are forced upon them, there is no punishment for those teachers whose students fail the tests. They mumble and grumble and blame everyone but themselves. The incompetent and the competent are treated alike unlike normal business where the incompetent are weeded out. In the education community they are given tenure and protected by their union. The result is the continued erosion of the public school system and the continued decline of their reputation as professionals.

What about universities and their professors? This is a very good question and it appears that as the quality of education has declined the tuition for a substandard education has increased. This is especially true for the highly prestigious universities where the tuition commonly runs in the tens of thousands. These highly vaunted bastions of education are rated on reputation which is based on the number of PhD’s they have and the professional stature of those PhD’s. Of course the undergraduate student may never actually see his professor and the greater the prestige of the university the more probable that is true. The student enrolls for a class taught by Professor Doe only to discover that the actual class is conducted by a teaching assistant. In any other business this would be called fraud but at the university level this is called standard practice.

As bad as this is, the worst is that these bastions of learning have become so politically correct and so concerned about creating an egalitarian society that they no longer fail students and the letter grades have become so eroded that any student who has less than a 3.0 average must be brain dead. In fact the grade erosion at Harvard has gotten so bad that almost half of the graduates are Cum Laude. Some examples of university level work are:

Europe was disrupted by the fast paste of change
Thomas Jefferson was president, founder of the University of Virginia, and author of the Decoration of Independence.
Germany’s William II had a chimp on his shoulder.

These gaffes can be attributed to misspellings due to haste rather than a poor understanding of the subject or an inability to spell. But these are not the only things they come from college graduates. All too often when questioned college students and college graduates show an appalling lack of knowledge of such things as geography; for example:

The first example of modification was in small cities such as Connecticut.
Northern Africa is the region which lies just north of Africa and is therefore not part of Africa.
The five European grade powers were France, Germany, England, Russia, and Australia-Mongolia.

These are products of our current university system, young people who have paid a considerable sum of money for their “education”. You can rest assured that the professors who have produced this shoddy product are either unionized or protected by tenure or both. The time has long past when teachers and professors should be called to account. Also students should not be given a passing grade when they clearly don’t deserve it. Unions are killing industry but it seems to me that the greater threat is to our students.

The Decline and Fall of Reason

The State of Michigan is declining in virtually every way and certainly a great many more people are moving out than moving in. The auto industry – as represented by Ford, GM, and Chrysler – is sinking as well. The quality of the schools in appalling and the scores on standardized tests are poor and got even worse after the difficulty of the test was reduced. The state is strongly Democratic, highly taxed, and heavily unionized, but no one seems to connect the dots between these facts and the state of decline. The Reign of Reason seems to be in jeopardy – at least in Michigan, but I suspect it is throughout the US – if Howard (Mad Dog) Dean and Senator John Kerry are any example of what passes for rational thought.

The UAW has virtually built a socialist society with the auto industry so the workers absolutely believe that they are entitled to free healthcare, high salaries, full employment, low skill requirements, and of course as little work as possible. This socialist attitude has been brought into the population as a whole and is propagated by the teachers who are fully unionized. These unionized teachers are highly paid – among some of the highest paid in the country but are demanding more money. Of course they like to compare their salaries on a per annum basis rather than the per diem basis which permits a more realistic comparison. On a per diem basis teachers in Michigan are being paid wages equivalent to Computer Programmers and Engineers. But salary is only part of the problem because these unionized teachers are also strongly oriented to socialism and regularly indoctrinate their students about the virtues of socialism and the evils of capitalism. Not only that they resist any effort to measure their productivity or quality of output. Within the European socialist governments the objective is employment not productivity and this attitude seems to have infected the UAW and the other Unions in the US.

The reality is that Socialism – like Marxism – does not work. It drains the economy, stifles creativity, and certainly curtails capital investment. Europe, especially France, is dominated by Socialist governments, which are staggering under the weight of their welfare programs. In most of these countries there is a large and growing population of the unemployed, some of whom would like to work but a great many more find that they can live well on the government dole. This is a class of parasites that --like all parasites -- is slowly killing the host. These welfare programs have forced the EU to continuously reduce its defense spending to the point that their military capability is seriously impaired. Although they are strongly Anti-American they are totally dependent on the US for their defense. The fact that they can’t connect the dots between their anti-American actions and their own security is simply another illustration of the decline of reason.

But the evidence that not only is critical thinking disappearing but even the decline in rational thought is all about us. Consider science, which from where I sit is not only in decline it is virtually disappearing. The culprit is “Epidemiology” which is literally the study of epidemics, how they spread and their impact on large groups of people. Of course Epidemiology itself is merely the application of statistical analysis of a data sample, which is then projected to the larger group. However, for anyone who has actually used statistics or analyzed data for any purpose the accuracy of any analysis is suspect. When the analysis is based on an a priori assumption any reliability the analysis might have had is now dramatically reduced because only the data that supports the a priori position is considered. This is the basis for the conclusion that everything from Alar to charcoal to tobacco causes cancer. There is absolutely no science behind any of these conclusions, yet the media reports them as fact and the great majority of people accepts the conclusions as true and acts accordingly. Where is the critical thinking or rational thought?

The famous scientist Carl Sagan was accepted by PBS and thus by the public as a true scientist, when in actual fact he was a shameless self-promoter who hounded those with whom he disagreed, especially Immanuel Velikovsky who postulated several theories that were plausible but counter to the popular ideas of the time. Velikovsky has not been proven right or wrong but then neither have the theories supported by Sagan. The fact is that the popular science crowd has stated things as fact when in reality much of what they have said is open to speculation or even downright wrong. The dinosaurs were killed off by a huge meteor that changed the Earths climate was something that Sagan stated as fact when it was a theory -- certainly a plausible theory but a theory nonetheless and not the fact as reported. There is growing evidence that the Earth has indeed been struck by massive meteors but the connection between that event and the disappearance of the dinosaurs is speculative and does not address the issue that every geological epoch has ended with catastrophic mountain building, including the Cretaceous, which spelled the end of the dinosaurs .

Then we have the debacle over DDT, which has been banned from production on the basis of a book written by Rachel Carson titled “Silent Spring”. The fact that Carson was dying of cancer and was personally convinced that pesticides were responsible was never questioned at the time. Instead the usual gaggle of environmentalists – acting on nothing but emotion – succeeded in having DDT banned worldwide. Since that time all of Carson’s assumptions have been disproven but the damage has been done, malaria has once again become the scourge of Africa. . No critical thinking was employed and certainly no empirical evidence was ever offered to support her claims. The reality is that NO ONE knows precisely what causes cancer, but we DO know what causes malaria, which is carried by mosquitoes that are very effectively killed by DDT. The thinking among the environmentalists seems to be that a bird is more precious than a human life. But no one seems willing to question this, which seems to be another illustration that critical thinking and rational thought is in retreat.

Of course the most outrageous position taken by the popular science crowd and academia in general is Evolution. Evolution is a THEORY and with the advance of paleontology, not a very sturdy one. None of the tests stated by Darwin as necessary for proof have been met and current paleontologists think they will never be met. The reality is that the very foundation for Evolution is crumbling and the evidence is piling up that it is probably partially wrong if not totally wrong. In fact Darwin’s book “The Origin of Species” is still taught without any critical examination even though ironically the book doesn’t describe or address the origin of species. No transitional life forms have ever been found and several eminent paleontologists (e.g. Stephen Gould) have stated that none will ever be found. Even the vaunted example of the Eohippus has turned out to be false and the fossil record incorrect. Nevertheless, many scientists, the media, and certainly academia continue to state Evolution as fact, not as a theory, and worse – these people won’t even consider any alternative – more evidence of the death of science and the decline of reason.

Recently the United States has undergone a virtual epidemic of Diabetes. The media and the medical community are all in a dither over this and the usual Nannies are calling for all sorts of government intervention or action to correct this “threat to public health”. The Pharmaceutical companies are cranking out pills by the zillion in order to meet this threat. The reality is that the National Institute of Health lowered the threshold for Diabetes from 200 to 100, which overnight plunged the country into this “health crisis”. Of course the drug companies are cleaning up and no one in the media or in the medical community seems concerned enough to criticize or even investigate the situation. Even if you don't think science and critical thinking are in retreat at the very least you must admit that dot connection is certainly in decline.

Of course this brings us to the issue of Cholesterol and heart disease. The average untreated cholesterol for white males has historically been between 220 and 240 and it continues at that level today. Gradually the National Institute of Health has lowered the bar – first to 180 and now to some where around 100. The only correlation between heart disease and cholesterol has been statistical and no empirical connection has been established. If anything the body may self-regulate cholesterol, but that isn’t the point. The point is that once again as the desired level of Cholesterol drops the number of people taking the cholesterol lowering drugs increases as does the profits of the drug companies. That statistical correlation seems to go unreported and critical thinking doesn’t seem to apply to these health issues. Of course the proponents of these drugs point out that the life span of the average American continues to grow. I suppose the ultimate goal is to prevent cancer and heart disease, the two leading causes of death. Once that is accomplished I guess we will all have to resort to suicide or simply euthanize the old.

Collateral Damage In The Global Economy

There is no doubt but that we are competing in an increasingly competitive global market, but this is a market environment that has its dark side. The United States is the largest consumer market in the world with Europe a close second but these consumer markets rest on a foundation of wealth which in turn rests on wages. But wages are increasingly under competitive pressures from abroad where highly trained people plus thousands of unskilled workers are available for a fraction of the cost in either America or Europe.

At the turn of the 20th Century more than half of the population was engaged in agriculture with a relatively small percentage engaged in manufacturing. By 1950 the number of people engaged in agriculture had dropped to a small percentage and 50% of the working population was engaged in manufacturing. During the first half of the 20th Century the union movement was instrumental in creating high paying jobs and curtailing the exploitation of the worker. The union movement reached its apogee in the 1950’s and has been declining ever since – primarily because manufacturing jobs have declined to the point where less than 10% of the working population is engaged in manufacturing. Today most manufacturing is done overseas using cheaper labor but the actual unemployment level in the US is approximately 5% which is about where it runs historically. The unemployment rate in Europe is over 10% and rising primarily due to their attempts to maintain employment levels through government control and tariffs. The US has not followed this path but nevertheless this shift from unskilled manufacturing has resulted in some collateral damage to the working class.

As the US moves away from manufacturing and into the service economy it is creating some displacement. The government and various pundits are pushing education as a solution and pointing out that there are plenty of jobs for those who have an education and skills that are not readily available overseas. While this is a logical solution for many people there are those in society who do not fit in a scholastic environment and these are increasingly becoming collateral damage. The service economy certainly includes all of those trained and educated workers but it also includes skilled workers such as; carpenters, plumbers, painters, small business owners, various healthcare workers, and a variety of similar jobs. For the most part these people are employed and make a living wage but there are many workers who are being displaced by machines and by jobs moving overseas who do not have these skills or training. These workers have few options other than retraining and if they cannot succeed in an academic environment then their options are severely limited.

There is increasing pressure for the government to do something and this cry is usually accompanied by the idea that the government should “create jobs”. But the reality is that the government cannot create jobs unless those jobs are government jobs. The government does not produce anything and certainly nothing that even resembles profits so the salaries for all government workers must come from tax revenues. This means that for every job created the government must either increase taxes or reduce spending on existing programs but as everyone knows neither option is attractive to a politician so nothing gets done. Besides, creating government jobs has been the European and UAW solution for years and the result has been catastrophic for both. European countries are staggering under the weight of their welfare states and the UAW is not only hemorrhaging members it is eliminating jobs as well.

As much as the liberal establishment may dislike it, jobs are created by capitalists – that is entrepreneurs and those individuals willing to invest their capital in the profit making enterprise. The less money that is taken from the capitalists the more money is available for investment. The sad reality is that those who advocate big government and government created jobs seem to think that the capitalists are those wealthy individuals with high incomes. This common liberal viewpoint demonstrates an appalling ignorance not only of capitalism but how a capitalist economy works. The money that is invested comes from capitalists alright but these are those individuals who are prudent enough to have saved money, which they have put into the bank, into stocks, or into mutual funds. This is the money that fuels our economy and generates tax revenues for the government, profits (dividends) for the investor (saver), and jobs for others. It is this growth in employment that generates increased tax revenues so as taxes are lowered more money becomes available for investment and paradoxically everybody benefits and the economy grows. As taxes are increased the capital shrinks, jobs evaporate, and tax revenues decline so taxes must be increased in order to sustain the government benefit programs, which starts a cycle of decline. This is a lesson that the big government liberal establishment seems to be incapable of grasping. Therefore, to blame businesses for moving jobs offshore is simply an example of how the Unions and Liberal establishment either cannot or will not accept the realities of a capitalist economy. In socialism the objective is employment in capitalism the objective is profit.

Although the issue is focused by the Unions and Liberal Politicians to the movement of jobs offshore, in reality there are many sectors of the economy that are booming and show positive rates of employment -- but not all. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that production jobs have declined 6% since 1996 but manufacturing jobs have declined 17% and Production manufacturing has declined 42%. The sad reality is that these unskilled jobs are competing with cheap labor offshore and in order to remain competitive manufacturers must lower the cost of production. What seems to be ignored by the unions and the politicians is that even though the management costs, transportation costs, and tariffs are added to the total the overall cost is still lower than the cost of production is in the US. This should be a wake-up call that the status quo cannot be sustained.

But skilled labor seems to be doing well. The construction industry shows a growth of 31% since 1996 and as does Professional and Business Services. The High School Drop-out or those individuals who expect to join the union and get a “good paying job” are in for a disappointment because those are the jobs that are moving overseas. This doesn’t mean that everyone must have a college degree but it does mean that those “good paying jobs” will require some skill. However, for those willing and able to increase their skills through professional education, there are many opportunities and not all of these require an engineering degree, for example Home Healthcare Services shows a 537,100 forecasted growth in employment with a projected annual growth of 5.4%. Even the Entertainment Industry shows a modest growth in job opportunities and even though these jobs may not require a high level of education they do require a level of skill.

Clearly the impact of the Global Economy is reverberating throughout the industrialized world. The Socialist Economies of Europe are being hard hit because employment has always been one of their objectives. Ironically these countries have high unemployment rates and are struggling to retain the jobs they have. The situation in Europe is an example of what happens when the government attempts to “create jobs”. The government does not produce anything so there are few options available. They can hire people directly and increase taxes, which is never an attractive option to politicians – unless of course they are taxing the rich (meaning employed to most liberal politicians). They can increase corporate taxes, which is always a popular choice but even the densest politician knows that this not only slows the economy it usually increases unemployment. But then there is always the Socialist Solution – the one so frequently used by South Americans and Europeans – and that is to seize private businesses and nationalize them. This guarantees employment but it never provides efficiency or profits and in the extreme you have the Soviet Union and we all know how well that worked.

The Global Economy is having a huge impact worldwide as the labor force undergoes realignment and this will result in some collateral damage in the form of individuals who reject the idea of retraining or career changes. The reality is that there are many new jobs being created by industry but only for those flexible enough to change.

Morality, Ethics, and Business

It seems to me that we are a country in conflict – not just politically, which has always been the case, but conflicted in some very fundamental ways. Business and businessmen have always been under attack in this country and in many cases these attacks were warranted. I submit Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Gould, et al. and more recently we have the gaggle of CEO’s who have gotten caught with their moral, if not their legal, pants around their ankles. The result of these transgressions has been a concerted and continuing attack on business by those who either have an agenda of their own or people who are simply ignorant of business. But this malaise goes far beyond just business – it has infected people who are outside of business – people who seem unable to understand the role of business and the sources of revenue and jobs. These are the people who seem to think that the money the government spends on welfare, jobs creation, foreign aid, medicaid, social security, and the many other government programs comes from the government. Apparently, the belief is that since the government prints money they can print as much as they want without regard to business or economics. These are the people who are always shouting that the “rich” should pay more, that corporations should pay more, and the “unfortunate” should pay nothing at all. This is Robin Hood economics but it really is only the tip of the iceberg. The conflict is much deeper.

Labor Unions were crucial to breaking the stranglehold of management on labor because the fundamental raison d’etre of the unions is to control the supply of labor. However, these unions today are anachronisms and they no longer work because they can only control the supply of domestic labor and as they raise the cost of that labor the businessman is forced to move jobs overseas in order to remain competitive. The result is that the labor unions are destroying more jobs than they are creating but the attacks are on the businessman not on the labor leaders. The attitude is that the businessman has a moral obligation to retain workers even if they are over paid and the products they produce can only be sold at a loss. Naturally the solution to this problem has been discovered by our European Allies and that is government ownership and restrictive tariffs. What goes unsaid is that the unemployment rate in Europe is roughly twice what it is in the US and that the competitiveness of European products is sinking rapidly. But once again the conflict is deeper.

The crux of the problem seems to be the belief that the businessman has a moral obligation to retain unproductive people, to take a loss, and to share the revenues even if the revenues don’t cover the costs. We see the idea that those who work hard, who educated themselves, and who continue to retrain for the future have a moral obligation to share their wealth with those who failed to get an education, who failed to improve their skills, or who simply those who would prefer to sleep in a cardboard box to working. There seems to be a pervasive attitude that the government has a moral obligation to care for the “unfortunate” by forcing the productive citizens to share their wealth. But the irony of this conflict is that those who espouse this belief also seem to be the same people who are leading the charge against the moral reforms urged by the Christian community. The term “Christian” is almost always said with a sneer and preceded by some denigrating term but it is these same Christians who are attempting to care for the poor and unfortunate. Their crime seems to be that they are trying to do this without benefit of any government program and to be effective the government must be involved – this is the socialist way.

The irony here goes even deeper because when the government attempted to sanction these self-help Christian driven programs the left went into paroxysms of Constitutional interpretation. It seems that while it is necessary that the government confiscate the wealth of some to give to others, this cannot be done voluntarily by Christians or involve Christians in any way. The fact is that 82% of the population consider themselves “Christian” which means the 18% are something else ranging from Atheists to Zen Masters but it is this small minority that is tyrannizing the rest. This leads me to the conclusion that religion and the “separation of church and state” actually have little to do with the situation. It seems to me that these attacks are motivated almost entirely by those who are anti-capitalist, anti-business, anti-religious, and anti-government – not government per se but government by the people. These are the people who want us to be more socially conscious but only in their terms.

Michigan like many states is suffering from budget issues – primarily self-inflicted by the unions – but regardless of the cause the result is a reduction in programs. The state legislature is considering taking adult children off of the roles of welfare recipients and taking those who have been on welfare for more than four years off of the roles altogether. This is creating a major partisan flap since the left consider this morally wrong. Of course the exceptions are always trotted out as the rationale for not changing anything. Naturally there are people with adult children who for one reason or another are unable to work and there are those who can work but who cannot make a living wage (mentally handicapped for example). Of course there are valid exceptions but these exceptions are used to justify robbing the rich to give to the undeserving. And this brings us to another fundamental point and that is “ethics”.

There is really no need to explore the ethical issues surrounding the recent abuses by various executives in too many companies. These are ethically bankrupt people who have used and abused their position and power for selfish reasons, but what about the ethics of the workers, the politicians, and the various extremist groups? What about their ethics? Is it ethical for a union boss to demand higher wages and greater benefits knowing that the end result will be fewer jobs for the workers whom he represents? Is it ethical for a politician to take money from a special interest and support legislation that is not in the common interest? Is it ethical for environmentalists to destroy private property because they don’t agree with how it is being used? Is it ethical for someone who purports to be a religious leader (e.g. Jesse Jackson, Jerry Falwell) to use their position for political purposes? Then what about the ethics of the entertainment industry?

Statistically movies that are rated G are more profitable than movies rated R but yet Hollywood continues to crank out trash. It is now accepted for anyone to use foul language in any social environment and this can only be attributed to Hollywood and the movies they crank out. Free speech has been stretched to the point that anyone can say anything – but is that really true? Is our speech really free? Can we actually say anything we choose? If you believe that try using the word “niggardly.” A young man (obviously educated) lost his position because he used this word which is a perfectly valid word but it sounds like one of those forbidden words. In fact while you can curse at will and in any environment you cannot say anything that might be construed as racial or insensitive to a minority. So we find ourselves in the situation where Hollywood and the movies are exercising their legal rights but fail to see that they have any ethical responsibility or that their actions have coarsened our society.

But it isn’t just Hollywood that has some culpability for the destruction of civility, ethics, and morality we can look to the universities for some of this. Professors are mostly left over from the Viet Nam era when they stayed in school to avoid their duties and responsibilities. Since that war went on longer than expected these incipient draft dodgers eventually became PhD’s with no employable skills so they just hung on as professors. It is these people who have disgraced academia and have turned it into an arena of indoctrination rather than education. Free speech is essentially dead at our universities. Students are expected to be opposed to Christianity, representative government, conservative causes, anti-drug legislation, or the government, except in those cases where the government is exercising its authority to suppress individual rights. We are in the midst of a serious destruction of our moral fiber, ethics, and the representative government we all expect. The time has long past to stop equivocating and to act in our own self interest.

Jock Itch

Am I the only person who is sick and tired of pampered spoiled athletes? You know-- the ones who treat us to the spectacles like the one that transpired in Detroit where the mighty pampered one left the court and sprawled on the timekeepers table. Some disgruntled fan apparently threw water on him and the fight was on. This turned into a brawl with the athletes fighting the fans and the fans pelting the pampered ones with chairs, bottles, cups, and anything they could lay their hands on. Apparently the solution being offered by the NBA is to protect the players from the fans by building some sort of a barricade – presumably like the hockey rinks have. However, to my jaundiced and uneducated eye, it seems the fans need to be protected from the players. But no one it seems is willing to suggest that maybe – just maybe – this overpaid and pampered ignoramus was actually personally responsible. In fact, the county prosecutor in Detroit is actively looking to prosecute the fans and not the athletes while the players union (these guys NEED a union?) is appealing the suspension of the athlete who instigated the whole thing. As bad as this is – it is really just symptomatic of a much greater malaise.

Almost on a daily basis we are treated to some ignorant, semi-literate barbarian mouthing off on the TV about how he is being treated, underpaid, not on drugs, or explaining his most recent arrest for drugs or drunkenness. Even when these overpaid dumbbells are conducting themselves in a more or less civilized manner, they still display appalling conduct. It isn’t just the brawling but it is those cute little dances in the end zone when they score. It isn’t enough to score—each touchdown must be accompanied by some sort of pubescent victory display --the sort of thing that used to mark one as a poor sport. Then we have the strutting, chest bumping, and weird hand wringing (apparently in lieu of a handshake) and gang gestures, all of which are viewed as normal behavior rather than what they are, which is setting a low standard of conduct. This is alleged to be all in good fun and well it might be, but it also is a vivid example of how acceptable conduct has declined in civility, courtesy, and standards.

However, it isn’t just basketball or football but virtually all sports have been contaminated with this sense of entitlement by the athletes that leads them to believe they are special and thus outside of the rules of society. Every year we are treated to the spectacle of some athlete being arrested for drug possession, drunkenness, assault, or rape. If these are student athletes they are slapped on the wrist and excused, which reinforces their sense of being outside of the law. If they are professionals then they don't even get a slap on the wrist. Instead they are paraded before us on television so they can explain -- in some dialect that resembles English -- how they are singled out and persecuted for their fame, wealth, or skin color. Once these jocks ascend into the ranks of the highly overpaid, they lose all control. They are then free to use steroids to enhance their performance, they are entitled to take drugs because it is the thing to do and they can afford it, rape and assault is OK because they are the victims of these groupies gone wild. Gone is any semblance of propriety or responsibility to those who actually pay to see them play. These athletes for the most part are low class over paid trash who are terrible role models.

This is a little cynical I admit, but the fact is that sportsmanship, self-respect, and courtesy seems to be completely lacking in the sports scene. Not just with the athletes who have appalling conduct but the fans as well. We see riots at soccer matches that result in major property damage plus fatalities. We see fans using language that turns the air blue without regard or consideration for those around them. The athletes no longer set an example unless you wish to cite them as bad examples. What is worse is that most of them cannot construct a simple English sentence and express themselves in understandable English. Are these really the people that we want to think of as role models? I for one am sick and tired of these people and their sense of being outside of the law. I think it is past time that they are held to account for their actions.