James Pyle – Author

August 20, 2013

The sports seasons are changing and I’m morose.

We’re about to leave golf with its lovely verdant playing fields and the talented, articulate, drug-free athletes who compete thereon. These are family oriented gentlemen who respect one another and get paid only if they win. Rarely will a golfer criticize another. They still represent civilized sports as it was intended by Tom Morris, the Scotsman who popularized the game back in the nineteenth century at St. Andrews.

We’re entering football season complete with ungainly corporate/ public sponsored stadiums with private booths filled with booze for well healed ‘fans’. The players are, with rare exception, uneducated (despite degrees from unknown colleges), inarticulate and quarrelsome even among teammates. Many are convicted felons, and have fathered uncounted illegitimate children. They commit spousal or partner abuse without fear of retribution. They earn outrageous salaries, win or lose, and serve themselves up as role models to our impressionable kids, aided by the insatiable sports media.

When discussing this dichotomy with my friend Chris, his defense was: “Football has evolved from old Greek games at the Olympiad dating to the eighth century – much older than golf.”

Perhaps, but in those days the contestants had at least one redeeming quality – they were naked.

August 19, 2013

The drumbeat continues to praise America’s form of democracy. GW Bush tried unsuccessfully to instill it in Iraq and Afghanistan in the face of thousands of years of tribal law and Islamic theory. The result thus far: 4,486 American soldiers killed in Iraq and an additional 2,130 in Afghanistan as of the date above.

We prize our voting privileges above all other rights. But do we really want just anyone who happens to pass by a polling place to vote?  If so: why?

Shouldn’t we insist that each voter, regardless of race, sexual preference, or country of origin be literate and informed – at least to a high school level?

Thomas Jefferson is credited with saying: An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.

Winston Churchill said it with irony: The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with a voter.

If Jefferson is correct: How can we ensure that each voter is qualified to cast his or her vote based on a sound mind.

I submit that each ballot contain, at the very top of the form, a series of seven questions; five of which must be correct in order for the vote to count.

Typical questions might include:

1) Is 200 greater than 15% of 1,000?

2) Which side won the Civil War?  The North or the West?

3) How many Senators serve in the House of Representatives?

a. 50, b) 200, c) None

4) Can Puerto Ricans vote in the U.S. national election?

5) Texas was one of the original thirteen states. True or False?

6) Who is the largest arms supplier to third world dictators?

a. Russia, b) France, c)USA

7) If the President dies in office, who succeeds him?

a. Vice President, b)Nancy Pelosi, c) Commissioner of IRS

Okay, it’s not perfect – but we gotta start someplace. Our survival as a free people depends on it.

August 6, 2013

Who has not, at one time or another, fantasized about living under a benign dictator?

Certainly the majority of people living in Dubai and United Arab Emirates have prospered in recent years.

It may not be apparent to New Yorkers who tend to live in narcissistic bubbles, but the Big Apple has also prospered under a benign dictator for the past twelve years. His name is Michael Bloomberg – and he doesn’t even own an oil field. (At least not to my knowledge.)

Under his tutelage, crime has been reduced to unprecedented levels, tourism has surged, infrastructure has been improved, the arts are thriving and terrorism threats have dramatically declined thanks to a terrorism task force the performance of which exceeds that of federal agencies.

So what if we have to drink smaller fountain drinks and stop smoking in bars? These are petty inconveniences to a few with uncontrolled addictions compared to the greater good he has brought to the city, many times using his own money – not the public trough.

Now the end is near. Bloomberg cannot stand for re-election in November and the cast of inept mayoral wannabees is lining up pandering to the intellectual underclass all in the ill-defined names of ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’. Look around, New Yorkers! How did that work in Detroit, Camden, Watts, East St. Louis, Oakland and others? The list is long.

Even before the next hurricane builds in the Mid-Atlantic, the folks who have kept New York afloat these past twelve years are heading for the life boats. There’s not a benign dictator in sight.

July 31, 2013

Uprisings in North Africa and the deterioration of major U.S. cities (Detroit, Camden NJ, Watts, etc.) have at least one common strain: Poor citizens are demanding more creature comforts from their government. TV and Internet have exposed these folks to the Kim Kardashian life style with its abundance of luxury. That life seems highly appealing to people at the bottom of the economic pile. They demand similar comforts and they want them now.

When I was a kid wanting a new bike I had to pay for it by picking strawberries from our tiny garden and selling them door-to-door. It never occurred to me that my parents or the town would provide me a bike.

A full and complete education, coupled with hard work, is prerequisite to a life of comfort, unless you are lucky enough to be born to a billionaire. TV depictions never consider those factors.

Teachers are now denigrated by the media and entry level jobs are too demeaning to the young. (That job disrespects me, man.)

Too bad technology has not found a way to emphasize the importance of delayed gratification. The resulting unintended consequence is anarchy: In North Africa and coming soon to your neighborhood.

July 27, 2013

I could not be happier while watching the travesty of sailboat racing currently unfolding in San Francisco Bay. The unfortunate death of one sailor should have been enough to end this fantasy quest by a bored billionaire (Larry Ellison of Oracle Corp.) to prove that money is the only important ingredient in racing: Not sail handling or navigation skills, not teamwork or the ability to read wind and currents. The boats don’t even sit in the water; they fly above it on fiberglass fins.

Original and true sailors who competed in the days of 12-meter boats watch in disbelief from the shore, while the originators of the race are turning over in their graves.

Whoever has the best computer software will win. Let’s hear it for team Dubai!

July 26, 2013

Our society has devolved to a state where accidents “simply cannot happen”. There must be a culprit behind every ‘tragedy’. Legions of hungry lawyers and Walter Cronkite wannabes feel compelled to sniff out and prosecute anyone within shouting range of an industrial mis-deed.

To the extent we can learn from disasters and prevent future happenings – all well and good. Too often, however, these witch hunts are induced to enrich the plaintiff or bolster the ego of the hunter. The examples are extensive – from Exxon Valdez to Michael Jackson’s death, to Three-Mile Island to the BP Gulf blow-out to the Spanish train wreck near Santiago de Compostela. Accidents happen, seldom from malicious intent.

People make bad decisions or act inappropriately in times of stress. Pilots will err and planes will crash, equipment will fail and oil will spill, wacky people with guns will go meshuggah and people will die. It’s called life, imperfect life.

Nowadays, when an individual errs, the corporation (with deep pockets) gets sued, usually by a class-action lawyer preying on the unfortunate victims who will never see more than a few dollars if the case prevails. In every case, the media bloviates endlessly over ‘breaking news’.

It’s time to get real. S____ happens: Always has, always will! Let’s grow up and accept it.

July 21, 2013

Today’s New York Times front page story about Goldman Sachs manipulating the supply and price of aluminum took me back to 1980 when the Hunt Brothers (Lamar, Bunker & Herbert) cornered the silver market by accumulating 60 million ounces only to watch the price drop from $50/oz to $10/oz in a two month period. My former acquaintance, Barefoot Sanders (See my 7/14/13 post “What Texans Can Teach Us”) served as federal judge at their trial.

One can only hope that the same ignominious downfall awaits the gluttonous SOBs running Goldman and JPMorgan. Unfortunately, today all the smart people work for the banks leaving only morons and incompetents in charge of the US Government and its regulators.

Why is it so hard for Congress to see the benefit in re-instating a current-day Glass Steagall Act? Maybe Goldman Sachs owns them – you think? Let’s hear it for Senator Elizabeth Warren before we all end up sere and without hope.

July 20, 2013

In yet another reason to require an intelligence test for voter eligibility, two disgraced narcissists are seeking office in NYC .  Both are leading in the polls.

Anthony Weiner, former congressman who was forced to resign in disgrace after exposing his wiener on the Internet, is running for mayor.

Eliot Spitzer, ex-governor,  forced to resign after involvement in sex scandal where public funds paid for his hookers, is running for City Comptroller.  (No joke, folks.)

(WeinerSpitzer:  Sounds like the blue-plate (blue state?) special at a Reichstag restaurant)

The unthinkable reality is both may win.  You get the government you deserve.

July 17, 2013

Passed a construction site today where a swimming pool company was being razed to build a bank branch.

Got curious so performed a non-scientific survey:  In the town of Fairfield, CT, population 58,000, 10,500 of whom are school kids, we have 33 bank branch offices and one bookstore.

Not sure what that says about our society in general, but it clearly spotlights the management anemia in the banking industry.  Why would anyone be tempted to switch banks on a scale these date indicate?

Maybe they’re hedging against inflation by buying up real estate while rates and prices are cheap?

But what if we also want to read by the pool?