Won't Someone Think Of The Ballplayers?

Because of the OC Register, I hate being alive. I hope they're happy.

In a column from last week that would have escaped me if Jesse from Pandagon hadn't seen it, Hank Adler decides that the best way to attack Barack Obama's spending plan is to remind everyone what professional athletes will lose out of the deal.

It was fortunate for Tiger that his most-recent U.S. Open win occurred in 2008. Under twin tax proposals from Obama to 1) remove the "cap" from Social Security taxes for individuals earning over $250,000, a plateau Tiger has long since surpassed in 2008, and 2) eliminate the "Bush" tax cuts, thereby raising the top marginal federal income tax rate to 39.6 percent, Tiger's taxes on his winner's check would have increased to approximately $776,000, a boost of almost $190,000. Instead of Tiger keeping 57 percent of his earnings and the government taking 43 percent, under the twin Obama tax proposals, Tiger's federal and California taxes would have amounted to 57 percent of his winnings, leaving Tiger with just 43 percent.

I know when California families are deciding between air conditioning or meat, when they muse about using a rickshaw to get to work because gas is as out of reach as gold, they are actually upset because they know Tiger Woods is being deprived of $190,000 out of the eleventy billion in his bank account. What, his new baby has to get silver-plated starter clubs now instead of the expected gold? Can you look yourself in the eye and say that doesn't eat you up inside?

Adler continues:

Prefer baseball to golf?

The New York Yankees have a 2008 payroll of approximately $208 million. Under the twin Obama tax proposals, the 24 Yankee players would be hit with an aggregate increase in federal income taxes of just over $22 million, with slugger Alex Rodriguez single-handedly getting dunned with $2.6 million in additional federal taxes.

The owner of the Yankees would owe an additional $7.5 million of federal taxes. Ticket prices would need to be increased by about $65 million so that the owner and players could have the same after-tax income as before. The increase in ticket prices would amount to an average $16 per ticket. Given that the least-expensive ticket in Yankee Stadium currently is $14, this would more than double the cost of a seat in the bleachers.

Adler hit upon the two most sympathetic characters in all of sports, maybe all of Christendom, to single out as martyrs: Alex Rodriguez and George Steinbrenner. Incidentally, with the Yanks 7 1/2 games out of first, I don't think anyone's going to feel too bad about them losing money. Then there's the part where Steinbrenner is entitled to his after-tax earnings and simply must fleece the hardworking fans, because the Yankees have no other revenue streams to speak of.

You can go on to dispute Adler by mentioning the top-level tax rate in 1960 (it was 90%), the tax rates under Clinton which Obama would restore and how that affected business (the largest peacetime expansion in history), etc., etc. But someone with the insight to use the plight of enormously wealthy ballplayers to rally the middle-class public to his cause isn't really worth the time. Only the mockery.

Rudy Gives Up

After a few days of being completely unable to defend his contradictory positions, Rudy Giuliani has said "To hell with it" and will run as a pro-choice Republican.

After months of conflicting signals on abortion, Rudolph W. Giuliani is planning to offer a forthright affirmation of his support for abortion rights in public forums, television appearances and interviews in the coming days, despite the potential for bad consequences among some conservative voters already wary of his views, aides said yesterday.

At the same time, Mr. Giuliani’s campaign — seeking to accomplish the unusual task of persuading Republicans to nominate an abortion rights supporter — is eyeing a path to the nomination that would try to de-emphasize the early states in which abortion opponents wield a great deal of influence. Instead they would focus on the so-called mega-primary of Feb. 5, in which voters in states like California, New York and New Jersey are likely to be more receptive to Mr. Giuliani’s social views than voters in Iowa and South Carolina.

Tactically, he probably has a better chance just being honest than trying to reconcile being "personally pro-life" and funding Planned Parenthood. Of course, this completely changes the nature of the Republican race. His STATED STRATEGY is to wait until New York and California on Feb. 5 to make his move. Nobody's going to be able to do that (plus, California's Republicans are as wingnutty as they come, so that's just a dumb strategy). And while Rudy will probably get plaudits from the punditocracy for this "bold, courageous move," he's not exactly Mr. Straight Talk.

Sports fans grew accustomed to seeing Giuliani, in Yankee jacket and cap, within camera view of the team's dugout at every one of the 40 postseason home games the Yankees played while he was mayor. His devotion reached such heights that at the 1995 Inner Circle press dinner, he played himself handing the city over to George Steinbrenner in a lampoon version of the Broadway musical Damn Yankees, succumbing to a scantily clad Lola who importuned him on behalf of the Boss to the tune of "Whatever Lola Wants (Lola Gets)." Mike Bloomberg understood years later that the song was no joke; he nixed Rudy's stadium deal in his first weeks in office.

It is only now, however, as Giuliani campaigns for president, that we are beginning to learn that this relationship went even deeper. Giuliani has been seen on the campaign trail wearing a World Series ring, a valuable prize we never knew he had. Indeed, the Yankees have told the Voice that he has four rings, one for every world championship the Yankees won while he was mayor. Voice calls to other cities whose teams won the Series in the past decade have determined that Giuliani is the only mayor with a ring, much less four. If it sounds innocent, wait for the price tag. These are certainly no Canal Street cubic zirconia knockoffs.

He has 4 $200,000 rings on his fingers, and he tried to fund new stadiums for the guys who gave them to him. This is a guy who's a reformer fighting corruption in government?

Not only that, the latest is that his campaign is so hell-bent on pushing estate tax elimination that they're scouring Iowa for nonexistent family farmers to be used as props, and then cutting them loose when they don't make enough money.

A lot of people think Giuliani's pretty much done; he's in the lead now, but his vulnerabilities will be too much to overcome. I'm still going with the GOP nominee being "none of the above." And he'd (because a "none of the above" Republican would be a white male) have a better chance in November '08 than anyone else in the field.