Tag Archives: NBA

Current Events

Boycott Economics 101

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Here I go again. Folks, we need to shut up and do something. It’s time the silent majority, that is if there still is one, start taking some action. Who do these public corporation CEOs think they are that they can make any political statement they so choose and think it doesn’t matter? YES, it does matter, but only if we do something about it. Drink Pepsi instead of Coke. Now there is a company that does so much for Veterans; do some research on Pepsi and see what they do, and they don’t even brag about it. Yet that fool running Coke thinks he can say anything and the dumb, ignorant American will still buy his product. These CEOs monitor their bottom line on a daily basis. If we do as Greg suggests and stop buying  a product, the CEO would know about it in a week — guaranteed. We have the power, but only if we act. Are you willing to walk the walk, or just talk the talk?

 

 

 

 

 

 

By: G. Maresca

When Major League Baseball joined the Cancel Culture by moving their All-Star game out of Georgia thanks to legislation that enhanced the state’s election integrity, talk of boycotting MLB and those that do business with them went vogue.

Politically driven boycotts have deep nationalistic roots. In the 1760s, American colonists exasperated with high British taxation boycotted English goods giving rise to that American revolutionary rally: “taxation without representation.” The civil-rights crusade was initiated by the 1955 boycott of the segregated bus system of Montgomery, Alabama led by Rosa Parks.

In the 1960s, the United Farm Workers boycotted California farmers who employed nonunion workers. After Nike was exposed exploiting foreign sweatshops, sales dropped. However, these two boycotts were about changing business practices.

The comparison to someone burning a $150 Nike football jersey is laughable. Since the jersey has already been paid for such shenanigans only impacts the jersey’s owner. Pseudo-boycotts are identity politics and ineffective.

They are not a solution, but an illusion.

When politics cannot find common ground, boycott. Boycotters must sacrifice. Those who took part in the Montgomery boycott knew their lives would be more difficult.

A sincere and authentic boycott must be logical, organized, and sustained. These qualities are too often lacking in contemporary America.

CEOs do not fear offending the silent majority, who are presumed not to boycott or protest. They see conservatives as submissive and wanting to get along. Political and personal insult are of no substance to them. The time has arrived for the silence to end, particularly when it comes to money. If you want change, spend accordingly.

Companies are not immune to the bottom line; they are its hostage.

If a quarter of the 74 million who voted for Trump started boycotting businesses a long overdue message would be heard and done peacefully unlike how the left operates. The strength of conservative buying power was realized when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for a boycott of Goya and when the Left called out Chick-Fil-A.

In both instances, sales increased.

Economic pain is possible, but it takes a conscious effort. If the corporate world feels the economic heat, change could follow, but keep in mind Rome did not fall in a month.

Neutrality in business is best, but that is lost on Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola who also adamantly opposed Georgia’s legislation. It is easier to vote in Georgia today than it is to check a bag, go through TSA security, and get on a Delta flight that has always required identification.

Coca-Cola promotes racism by telling employees to “be less white” associating whites as being domineering, condescending, and boorish. Imagine the media storm had Coca-Cola asked people to “be less black.” Recall that “New Coke” flopped a generation ago. Today’s Woka-Cola could be its 2.0.

Democrats want to eliminate CO2. Every Coke product and consumer emits CO2. Delta might consider their rising fuel costs in this green era of Biden. Being the Left’s useful idiot is not going to protect them from their extremism, but some must learn the hard way. Their fiduciary responsibility is to their shareholders and customers.

They are failing both.

The power of the bottom line exists, provided it is exercised. It is not complicated. Do not buy from companies who pay more attention to politics and social media than they do running their businesses.

There are no good reasons for any corporation to become involved in politics that don’t directly impact their profitability.  As Michael Jordan said, “Republicans buy sneakers, too.” America is already too politically polarized. Corporate leaders could help rather than hinder by not making their brands a political baseball.

Too many conservatives offer up nothing but excuses for not boycotting. The only thing they loathe more than injustice is inconvenience. W.B. Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming,” written in the aftermath of World War I speaks to us today: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

Stop waiting for politicians to collectively change the culture.

Change begins with the reflection you see in the mirror.

MLB Hall of Famer Yogi Berra summarized it like only he could: “If people don’t want to come to the ballpark you cannot stop them.”

Add Ben & Jerry’s to the list of cancel culture, left wing corporations who think they immunize to consumer influence. The ice may be good but it sure is expensive, so buy another brand. Shut their big mouths down!!

Originally posted 2021-04-15 11:14:04.

Current Events

All-Star Strikeout

4 Comments

Greg hits another Home Run!

By: G. Maresca

As Major League Baseball (MLB) opened its season to sunny skies with every team playing on the same day since 1937, the game’s executives seem intent on beheading the golden goose with the woke ax of the Cancel Culture.

Given the issues with two recent Georgian elections, the state’s legislature passed a bill that would strengthen the integrity and fairness of their voting laws.  The MLB suits and their Democrat allies including President Biden disagreed labeling the legislation “an atrocity” and “Jim Crow.”  As a result, MLB’s midseason summer classic – its annual All-Star game and amateur draft that were to take place in Atlanta – will be relocated to Colorado that has similar voting laws.

The president’s distortion of the Georgia law is intentionally divisive since he promised to unite the nation at his inauguration.  Even the left leaning Washington Post awarded Biden four Pinocchio’s.

MLB’s certitude is business as usual.  During last year’s abbreviated season, MLB stenciled a Marxist organization’s initials on pitching mounds leaguewide.  Despite their All-Star boycott of Georgia, MLB announced an expanded television deal with China.  MLB must not realize that in China they eat their bats rather than swing them.

MLB should showcase their All-Star game in Wuhan.  Surely, the Uighurs in their Xinjiang province “re-education” camps would tune in. Even Secretary of State Antony Binken said China is committing genocide against the Uighurs.

The media needs to question Biden on how a law committed to voter integrity in a state that he won warrants a boycott, while communist China gets a pass.

The Georgia law will require absentee voters to provide identification when requesting and mailing in their ballot.  Likewise, ballot drop boxes that were temporary during the pandemic will continue but be reduced.  There were no drop boxes prior to COVID, ever.

What will MLB do when other states pass similar voter integrity laws? Stop playing games in those states?  Why are any of the 81 regular season games being played in Atlanta if this law is so egregious?

Politics injecting itself into professional sports is vogue.  In July 2016, the NBA pulled its All-Star Game from Charlotte, N.C. because a state law mandated that transgenders use bathrooms according to their birth gender. After the law was repealed, the NBA rewarded Charlotte their 2019 All-Star game.

Political division is nothing new, but the ridiculous and despotic reactions are.  Perhaps MLB is auditioning for their future masters – the Chinese Communist Party?  No need to concern yourself with voter suppression when there are no elections.

Georgia is in no way suppressing legitimate voters, but their law does make it harder for illegitimate voters – and that is the crux – for Democrats.  MLB has smeared Georgia’s elected majority as racist and anti-democratic.

State officials should sue for defamation.

Here is MLB lecturing on election integrity when nothing is more fraudulent than an MLB All-Star ballot, where voting early and often is creed.

Drive to the park, buy a beer at the game and you will need identification.  Producing identification is not voter suppression; it is voter certification.  And you better have your immunization card updated to enter because that is next.

Sports should be apolitical, but it is the weak and craven who fail to step up to the plate and make it so.  Georgia showed uncharacteristic courage for politicians something MLB and the crony and woke CEOs at Atlanta based Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola severely lack.

If other legislatures and organizations would exhibit such resolve perhaps, a real examination, without the name calling about why one group has lagged behind in most metrics despite decades of unconstitutional subsidies and preferences.  Then we could address some real causes: 70% children born out of wedlock, 52% of murders, 37% of abortions among a culture that is only 13% of the population where entitlement and victimization handcuff advancement while atrophying young minds.

Bureaucratic elites are in lockstep with the anti-liberty, totalitarian, Constitution-hating zealots who occupy Washington.  This decision by MLB is just the latest example.

Sports is entertainment, not a political movement.

Until conservatives can boycott as effectively as leftists, expect more of the same.

Conservatives need to take a final homerun trot around the MLB bases of going, going… gone.

Good luck with your new friends, MLB.

 

Originally posted 2021-04-09 11:02:17.

Current Events, Recent Posts

Coke CEO

4 Comments

Shut up and run your company

I find it remarkable that of all the corporations and organizations who have come out condemning Georgia’s latest legislation concerning voter requirements, nary a one has explained how the law disenfranchises minority voters. Amazing. I recently read where even CNN said it does nothing to harm minority voting. Have any of these woke companies/organizations even read the law? I seriously doubt it.  Someone, anyone, please explain to me how requiring an ID to vote in the United  States infringes upon a minority’s right to vote. Maybe I’m just out of touch with today’s world, but I don’t think so since the chart below shows an awful lot of “things” that require an ID. How does one exist in today’s world without an ID?? You all know from past posts I consider myself an Economist by education and hobby. I know for a fact that we, as consumers have more power than many of you think. Oftentimes, commenters have asked what we can do to help society get back on track. Well, let me tell you it’s plain and  simple. Spend your hard earned money wisely, that is, do not buy from producers who pay more attention to social media than running their business. Corporations like Coke rely on us for their existence. They should shut their woke mouths and concentrate on running Coke for the benefit of the owners, who are , of course, shareholders! Can you imagine if you forwarded this post to everyone in your address book, and they did likewise, we could really hurt Coke, and perhaps teach that idiot woke CEO, James Quincey, a lesson in Economics!

I recently switched razors to Harry’s, and was about to order some more blades. It’s going in the trash today. We should be together on this Gang. If you read about some company/organization  condemning Georgia for their new ID law, make a comment about on here. Let’s start a list so we all know who to stop buying from or supporting.

 

 

 

 

 

I know switching from favorites can be tough e.g., Tide is but one product of Proctor & Gamble. However, we have to do something rather than sitting round bitching about things. Please join me!

What I Wouldn’t Give for a Shave That Isn’t Woke

From my closet to my bathroom, my house is full of leftist brands. It’s time to do something about it.

From the WSJ

By Dave Seminara

April 4, 2021 4:16 pm ET

Maybe I was wrong to think conservatives should refrain from adopting the bullying, boycotting tactics of the left. I made the case against emulating progressives in these pages last summer as I lamented the rise of the woke corporation, documenting how many of my favorite companies embrace values antithetical to my own. But it’s increasingly clear that the sharp increase in corporate virtue signaling after George Floyd’s death wasn’t a passing trend but a sea change. Perhaps it’s time for conservatives to boycott companies that hate us.

Coca-Cola and Delta, a pair of Atlanta-based companies I’ve patronized for many years, became progressive boycott targets this month for allegedly not doing enough to stop Republicans in the state from passing an election-security law that’s been recast absurdly as a civil-rights violation. The companies haven’t withstood it well.

In an interview Wednesday with CNBC, James Quincey, Coca-Cola’s CEO and virtue signaler in chief, called the law “unacceptable” and “a step backwards,” but didn’t explain why. CNBC host Sara Eisen never asked if he feared a conservative backlash. Instead she pressed him on why Coca-Cola didn’t “publicly oppose this before.”

Mr. Quincey’s comments didn’t placate the woke mob on Twitter, with some insisting that Coke hadn’t condemned the legislation soon enough or forcefully enough. Delta CEO Ed Bastian appeared to be reading from the Coca-Cola script later the same day. His company released a statement condemning the law, and Mr. Bastian said in a memo to employees that the reform was “unacceptable and does not match Delta’s values.”

Opinion: Morning Editorial Report

As the Journal’s editorial board has pointed out, the legislation is in no way a return to Jim Crow, but rather an honest effort to improve election integrity.

Coca-Cola, Delta, Microsoft and other companies my family supports all but called the legislation racist, implying that those, like me, who support it are bigots. As distasteful as this is, I can’t say I’m surprised. When I look around my house, I see many products from woke companies that want me to know how strongly they disagree with me on pretty much every issue of the day.

Start with Patagonia, one of my favorite clothing-and-gear outfitters. The top of its website exhorts visitors to “act now” to stop climate change, warning that “extinction looms for more than one million species of plants and animals.” Maybe so, but what about shoppers who are there just to pick up a $35 “live simply” T-shirt? The homepage tab next to “shop” is “activism.” Click if you dare, because you’re in for a world of lefty indoctrination. Patagonia even endorses political candidates. You won’t be surprised to learn that none of them in 2020 had an “R” after their names.

Moving to the bathroom, I encounter my progressive razors. No, not Gillette. I ditched those in 2019 after the company released a ludicrously woke ad decrying toxic masculinity. But last month I learned that the new brand I’d chosen, Harry’s, had pulled its advertising from the Daily Wire, a conservative website I like. The razor company fled after a Twitter user with 29 followers complained that one of the Daily Wire’s podcasts “is spreading homophobic and transphobic content.” You might think it’d be easier to find a politically neutral shave, given that a majority of men are Republicans and companies generally play to their customer base. But this reality is apparently lost on Harry’s—and Gillette, or rather its parent company, Procter & Gamble.

Another P&G brand my family uses—Pantene shampoo—recently released a commercial about the life of a young transgender girl and her lesbian moms. “She has always been super gender creative, and hair has been a big part of her transition,” says one of the moms. At the end of the commercial, a banner reads, “PANTENE Family is #BEAUTIFULGBTQ—Proud to Support Transgender Visibility.” The ad has about six times as many dislikes as likes on YouTube, but that hasn’t given the company pause. It tweeted that “transphobia has no place in our world or in our feed.”

Maybe Pantene believes that’ll be the extent of the blowback. Many companies take Republican customers for granted. Perhaps they’re right. I still have subscriptions to Netflix, Hulu and Disney+, even though many of their offerings, particularly documentaries, advance left-wing agendas.

But there’s money to be made on standing up to cancel culture. Last summer, after I complained that my preferred coffee company had gone too far left, readers suggested I buy from Black Rifle Coffee Co. “They support Veterans and the coffee is very good,” one reader wrote me. He was right and word is spreading. The company’s revenue nearly doubled in 2020—a year when every other business seemed to be going woke.

Unlike many on the left, I’m fine with companies not taking sides, and I don’t expect every company I patronize to embrace my views. But if Pantene can stand firm on behalf of transgender visibility, perhaps it’s time for conservatives to stiffen their spines, too. It doesn’t seem like too much to ask that the businesses I patronize refrain from actively and loudly despising me.

Mr. Seminara is a former diplomat and author of “Footsteps of Federer: A Fan’s Pilgrimage Across 7 Swiss Cantons in 10 Acts.”

Originally posted 2021-04-05 14:55:57.

Recent Posts

An Intentional Balk

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LOL, I love it when these leaders of the sports world make decisions that they believe will save their beloved sport. Good luck! It’s Economics folks, pure and simple, which is a “social” science, so again good luck figuring out what your fan base will do when you enact something. Since I have never been an avid MLB fan, I could care less, but I will enjoy watching what happens. 

By Greg Maresca

In 1968, Simon and Garfunkel wanted to know where the Yankee Clipper Joe DiMaggio had gone. Over half a century later, the suits of Major League Baseball (MLB) have to be wondering the same for their younger fan base.

Economists say demographics are king, and if true, then MLB is in more trouble than the British Royal Family. A survey by Street and Smith’s Sports Business Journal reported the average MLB fan is 57 years old. By comparison, the average age of an NBA fan is 42.

 Baseball like the culture it entertains has its share of problems.

 The game is still popular but is rapidly aging. Declining attendance has also plagued MLB having lost 6.3 million in attendance over the last eight regular seasons.

Those who play the game are shrinking as well from Little League up through the minor leagues.

It is no secret that participation in Little League has declined greatly through the years. All one has to do is look around. The one youth baseball entity that is doing well is travel baseball. Travel ball provides a chance to play year-round with exposure to college coaches and professional scouts. The problem is the costs are out of reach for many families pitting the baseball haves against the have-nots.

Stickball and stoopball were both central components of the urban youth streetscape experience that have now joined Ringolevio, Hopscotch, and Double Dutch as just more relics of the past. What does any of this have to do with MLB?

Plenty.

All came of age like MLB during the first half of the 20th century. We are now in the first half of the 21st century and like anything else, change is in vogue and baseball is an agrarian game from another century.

MLB is trying to adjust, but at what cost?

The homerun is baseball’s signature and in 2019 BC (Before COVID), the regular season homerun record was broken. The strike-out record also fell that year turning baseball into a prolonged version of Gillette’s Home Run Derby. MLB’s response: the 2021 baseball will be slightly “deadened” meaning a 375-foot stroke will be a few feet shorter – enough to keep more balls in play.

 The changes that remain post-COVID include doubleheaders lasting seven-innings each. Positive coronavirus tests saw teams play 55 doubleheaders. These abridged seven-inning games took an average of just over two and a half hours. This change should help address today’s compromised attention spans that can be juxtaposed to a barn cat in June. And with the average baseball game lasting three hours and seven minutes – Houston we have a problem and it is much more than the Astros cheating.

One change suggested was that all television and radio broadcasts would only be able to air just one 30-second advertisement at the half-inning. Greed overruled and the idea was dropped as quick as conducting more Joe Biden press conferences.

After allowing the designated hitter (DH) during last year’s pandemic-shortened season, the National League (NL) will again have pitchers batting. However, this season could very well be the last time pitchers’ bat. The consensus is the DH is the future of the NL, as it has been in the American League since 1973.

 Moreover, all extra innings with start with a runner on second base. This has been successfully done throughout the minor leagues in recent years, but to the purists of the game it’s nothing short of baseball heresy.

The MLB playoffs will return to their previous format with three division winners and two wild cards per league. But when MLB’s collective bargaining agreement ends December 1 expect the playoff field to permanently expand.

There has never been a time where competition for the entertainment dollar is as fierce, so what does MLB do? Propose eliminating 42 of its 160 minor league teams.

The games abiding fabric can be found within the minors, where the prices are affordable and the players accessible. Kids can get on the field during promotions. The minors are not just for player development, but for fan development, too.

Eliminating many grassroots minor league teams which, in and of themselves, carry a longstanding history is baseball’s version of euthanasia.

This is no 7th inning stretch.

 

UPDATE:

As though all these woes are not enough, the MLB Commissars  have decided the MLB should enter the political arena. Since GA has enacted, or are about to, election laws requiring an ID to cast your ballot, they have decided to move the All-Star game and the MLB drafts from Atlanta to who knows where. Reason? They say enacting a requirement for an ID to vote restricts people of color from voting. WHAT? That is asinine. How many actions today require an ID? So people of color can not do anything today that requires an ID because, what — they do not have one? Why? Someone of color please explain that to me.

MLB is dying, as is NFL and NBA. And as far as I am concerned they can all go the way of the Dinosaur. I’ll continue to watch certain  NCAA sports, but it appears there could be some drastic changes coming about from that group of misfits as well e.g.,  some literal college grants a transgender a scholarship to play women’s basketball.. Don’t believe me, watch and see, I guarantee there is a university out there thinking about it and many transgender basketball players filling out their applications as I write.

Originally posted 2021-04-03 09:52:54.

Current Events

Sports

Image

Disgusting, absolutely disgusting!!!  Americans Favorite sport? Really? I’d rather sit by my pool and watch the grass grow.

LOS ANGELES, CA – JULY 23: Los Angeles Dodgers kneel during the National Anthem prior to a MLB baseball game on Opening Day at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on Thursday, July 23, 2020. (Photo by Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images).
                          How about this one for a reality check?

As a sports fan, it pains me to say this: I watched not one inning of the 2020 World Series. This revelation is not some preening, pin-a-medal-on-me political puffery — “Those sports ball players are annoying, America-hating commies, so I’m not watching” — but rather the embarrassed confession of a discouraged, disillusioned former fanatic who has come to realize that my erstwhile sports obsessions are really not all that important.

Apparently, I’m far from alone. The Tampa Bay Rays’ instant classic walk-off Game 4 win drew 8.95 million viewers, the second-lowest viewership in World Series history — ahead of only Game 3’s 8.2 million. For contrast, remember that only four short years ago, Game 7 between the Cubs and Indians peaked at 49.9 million viewers. Game 7 of the classic 1986 Mets-Red Sox series had an estimated viewership as high as 60 million.

The ratings numbers have attached themselves to an anvil and tossed the anvil off a cliff into a black hole. It’s a shocking decline. MLB is not alone in seeing its appeal become more selective, Spinal Tap-style. The NFL’s once-vaunted viewership juggernaut is shedding passengers at an alarming pace; the league is left celebrating a 33 percent decline year-over-year for the most recent Sunday Night game, because it represented a slight uptick compared to the rest of this season’s dismal numbers.

And the NBA?  Woof.  Game 3 of the 2020 NBA Finals averaged 5.9 million viewers. For comparison, Michael Jordan’s last game as a Bull, the clinching Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals, averaged almost 36 million viewers. Overall, the Lakers-Heat series dropped 51 percent from the 2019 numbers and 67 percent from 2018.

To extend the Spinal Tap metaphor, the NBA is a few BLM woke bombs away from second billing behind Puppet Show. Let’s be fair: There are mitigating circumstances. Nothing about this year is normal. MLB shoehorned a 60-game season into a pandemic-ravaged sports calendar. The NBA played its Finals at a time of year when teams are normally in training camp. The NFL has clung to something resembling a normal schedule, but the mostly empty stadiums and piped-in crowd noise have lent a surreal, off-putting atmosphere to the proceedings.

Personally, I’ve found it hard to care about sports when the very future of the Republic seems to be at stake, and every day’s headlines bring some fresh hell to torment and terrorize my fragile psyche. Sport becomes far less relevant in times like these, even as simple escapism. There’s no escaping a pervading sense of doom. But after the election, will my apathy magically dissipate, much like I expect the pandemic panic to do? Will I re-engage my former passion for pro sports? It’s entirely possible. A return to normalcy in 2021 would likely include a reboot of a casual interest in the exploits of overgrown man-children and a willingness to set aside their silly political posturing. A post-election de-weaponization of the virus will allow us all to relax, breathe and reclaim life’s simple pleasures. I hope so, anyway.

One final piece of advice: Don’t wait for woke-ism to recede from pro sports before re-engaging. Believe it or not, it is possible to set all that aside and simply enjoy the games themselves. If I let politics control my entertainment choices, I’d be left with listening to the Beatles song “Taxman” on an endless loop, and not much else. Life’s too short, and Jon Voight’s not making many movies these days.

Originally posted 2020-10-30 10:52:09.