Gene Collier – 2/6/11

 


This page was last updated on February 7, 2011.


Gene Collier: Socialism serves fans and billionaires well; Gene Collier; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; February 6, 2011.

Below is a detailed critique of a portion of this column.


In case you thought sports reporting/punditry was a leftist media bias free zone, this piece serves as a reminder it is not.  In addition to socialism, “Darwinian capitalism,” and “disenfranchising capitalism,” Mr. Collier and/or the leftist pundits he cited even managed to drag Halliburton into a column presumably about the NFL.  I’m surprised Mr. Collier didn’t somehow work Sarah Palin into the column, though he did manage to work in a former future son-in-law of Mrs. Palin.

Mr. Collier wrote of the “disenfranchising capitalism that chokes the [Pittsburgh] Pirates” as if MLB doesn’t get into revenue sharing and other “socialist” concepts.  In fact, the MLB has revenue sharing (not the same formula as the NFL) and a Competitive Balance Tax (aka “luxury tax”).  In some cases, lower-revenue teams get a bigger chunk of the shared revenue than higher-revenue teams.  As in the NFL, player draft positions are determined by the team’s previous year record with the worst team picking first and the best last, just like the NFL.  A major difference between the NFL and MLB is MLB has no hard team salary cap.  Instead, MLB imposes a “luxury tax” (including higher rates for repeat offenders) on a team when it surpasses a pretty high salary ceiling.  Given all the similarities between the NFL and MLB systems, why does Mr. Collier assert the NFL uses a “socialist model” while MLB is “disenfranchising capitalism?”  Hint: If MLB’s “socialist model” were working better than the NFL’s “socialist model”, Mr. Collier would have called MLB’s model “socialist” and the NFL’s “disenfranchising capitalism.”  It’s like how the left handles Nazis.  Though “socialist” is actually in the Nazi Party name (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) and Nazi principles are clearly leftist, lefties claim Nazis are right-wing because they were enemies of the communist USSR and Hitler seems to embarrass them.  Don’t ask me why lefties are embarrassed by Hitler but not other murdering lefties like Stalin, Mao, Fidel Castro, et cetera.

The intent of the column is to convince us what’s appropriate for a business – in this case the NFL – is appropriate for government.  (A side goal was to convince us President Obama is not a leftist.)  The problem with this proposition is businesses are not the same as government.  If a team owner doesn’t like the business rules of the NFL, he can sell his team and get out.  Unless you consider moving to another country a viable option for most of the population, citizens don’t have the option to opt out of their government.

Finally, I get a kick out of lefties like Mr. Collier.  Lefties tell us how wonderful the socialist policies they support are, then get upset when you call them socialists, liberals, et cetera.


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