Irony: NFL vs. The Little Guy – Roger Ingalls

By now most sports fans have heard about the NFL scab-referee debacle. In case you haven’t, the NFL locked out the top-tier professional referees once the employment contract between the two parties ended before the start of this season. Replacement refs have been used during the pre-season and for the first three weeks of the regular games. It’s been disastrous.

This past week was particularly bad. Illegal hits and tackles were rampant due to players testing the limits of the scab-refs and finding they could get away with unsportsmanlike play. An Oakland Raider receiver was hospitalized with a brain injury because of a hit to the head. Another player had part of his ear-lobe ripped off when he was illegally hit on the side of his head. American professional football with the big and fast participants can get extremely brutal when the referees controlling the game are not respected.  And that’s now happening. The players don’t respect the authority of the replacement refs because they make bad calls and are indecisive.

Now, the NFL team owners are finally coming to the table and talking with the professional referees they locked out. What brought is all to a head was the last game of the week on Monday night when millions of people witnessed a final second play that gave the win to the wrong team due to bad decisions by the scab-refs. It was awful. Even members of the winning team said they were given a gift because replacements didn’t interpret the play correctly.

Why is this issue important? The NFL by itself is an $11 billion industry and if you consider gaming, food and beverage, fantasy football and other fringe markets, we’re talking about a $20 billion market. It’s a big part of our economy and integrity of the game is paramount.

I find two things ironic about what’s happened in the past few weeks. First, what brought the two parties back to the discussion table was the bad call that put the Green Bay Packers on the losing end of that Monday night game. There are 32 teams in the NFL and 31 of them are owned by very rich men and only one team is from a small market and is owned by the community… that team is the Packers. The little market “people’s team” pays the ultimate price because of the greedy rich.

The second ironic aspect of recent events is how the NFL parallels Big Business. The rich team owners locked out the real refs because they didn’t want to increase pay, wanted to have the ability to replace refs at will and wanted to stop paying into pensions. Keep in mind, NFL refs make anywhere from $25K to $100K which is peanuts compared to owners and players. The owners are bullying the little guys. See the parallel? Big Business pensions have been replaced with 401Ks which are cheaper for business and riskier for employees. They are also trying to make union bargaining illegal which minimizes worker rights and limits collective wage-benefit negotiations.

I’ve always said, “football emulates life” so I guess it’s not a stretch to say that NFL greed parallels the new American economy. What a bummer.

UPDATE: Owners and Referees come to an agreement Wednesday evening.

Fast Track to Hell: Paul Ryan – Roger Ingalls

I’m from the great state of Wisconsin and proud of it. It’s the home of the Green Bay Packers; the football team that’s won almost twice as many world championships than any other team. It’s a team owned by the community while all other teams are private hobby organizations for fat-cat Wall Street insiders. There’s something sweet about a community team that’s more successful than the bankers’ dream teams.

Wisconsin is also known as the home of Harley Davidson, historic development center for electrical power tools and machining, an original leader in electron-beam microscopy, super computers and, of course, organized labor. It is even rumored that a thousand years ago the Knights Templar buried the Holy Grail somewhere in the Dairy State between the Virgin apex of Green Bay and the Kensington Stone in Minnesota. This is why Wisconsin is often referred to as God’s Country.

Wisconsin does have its embarrassments: Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gein and four out of the last twelve gun related mass murders (in the last twenty years) have been committed in the state. However, the biggest embarrassment was republican Senator Joe McCarthy who was responsible for massive civil rights violations during the 1950s. Current Governor Scott Walker is a rights violator too but is considered a pantywaist by comparison to McCarthy.

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has selected Paul Ryan (republican representative for WI 1^st congressional district) as his running mate for the 2012 election. Paul Ryan goes beyond embarrassment for the state; he is pure evil. He is an agent for Wall Street and is pushing an agenda that continues the transfer of middleclass wealth into the hands of the one-percenters. Here are a few of his ideas:

1)      Privatize Social Security – he wants to turn your social security money over to the same bankers and Wall Street companies that crashed the world-wide economy in 2008 and stole the common man’s wealth and gave it to the 1% fat-cats.

2)      Eliminate Medicare for those who earned it – he wants to give us a partial coupon and then make us buy healthcare plans from Wall Street backed insurance companies. For profit insurance companies don’t care about people’s health, they care about making money for their shareholders. The only competition Wall Street’s insurance companies have is Medicare. All insurance companies offer essentially the same coverage so there really isn’t a free market choice other than Medicare. Once Medicare is gone, the people will be powerless and under the thumb of for profit-only Wall Street. Under his plan, getting the medicine and treatment we need will be a bigger fight than we have now.

It’s my opinion that Paul Ryan is pure evil and is trying to fast track the American middleclass into a hellish existence for the benefit of his Wall Street backers. Why does he have to come from my state of Wisconsin? I guess in a Biblical sense, the Antichrist must originate from God’s Country.

Ketchup Turkey and More – Roger Ingalls

I’m a guest blogger on Left Coast Voices and Thursdays are my day to post. Thanksgiving falls on Thursday and I feel like it is necessary to write something that honors this day. But I have nothing. I have no profound or original thoughts.

The only thing that comes to mind is the usual “I’m thankful for this, that and whatever”. So, here we go…I’ll try to make it interesting.

I’m thankful for:

1)      Ketchup because no matter how you cook turkey, it just doesn’t have flavor worth the multiple hours of effort it takes to prepare it.

2)      The Super Bowl Champ Green Bay Packers because it makes me smile, from head to toe, knowing a small town professional sports franchise owned by the community can beat the snot out of teams owned by Big Business fat cats.

3)      Knowing some Americans are finally recognizing the middleclass genocide brought on by the financial copulation between Wall Street and politicians.

4)      The smart and articulate people that are successfully bringing attention to the evils of the Citizen’s United decision made by the Supreme Court. Corporations are not real people and should not have the same rights as real people.

5)      Americans becoming more politically aware and that some are motivated enough to protest. Say what you will about the #Occupy Movement but at least they understand something isn’t right and they are doing something about it.

6)      Thomas Jefferson because without him we would not have a Bill of Rights. I’m also thankful that many of the nation’s grade school students will not receive textbooks written by conservatives trying to write Jefferson out of our history because he didn’t have orthodox Christian views. Without Jefferson, the conservative Christians would not have the right to write these books they’re trying to change history with – how ironic.

7)      Will Allen for turning inner-city food deserts into thriving urban farms that feed thousands of people. Urban farming is the next big employment opportunity.

8)      Occasionally getting ill overseas and experiencing, first-hand, the marvels of universal healthcare. It opened my eyes to the extensive lies told by our politicians just to protect the interests of big business.

9)      Being a senior corporate officer in a publicly trading company. The experience of stock offerings and investor relations exposed me to the unethical behavior of Investment Banks and their supporting partners.

10)  Alon Shalev giving me the opportunity to post on his blog. It has allowed me to vent frustration and hopefully entertain and educate a few people along the way.

I know it sounds like a cliché but most of all, I am thankful for my wonderful, caring and gorgeous wife.

Puts some ketchup on your turkey and have a Happy Thanksgiving!

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Roger Ingalls is well traveled and has seen the good and bad of many foreign governments. He hopes his blogging will encourage readers to think more deeply about the American political system and its impact on US citizens and the international community.