NBA Gangsters

Remember when Michael Jordan, 38 years of age, came back a few years ago to play basketball for his beleaguered team, the Washington Wizards. The question I have is who cared. Well, the NBA for one. Ever since Mike left, it has been as exciting as a Shaq free throw and that’s about it. The stars of the game look, talk, and act like wannabe gangsta rappers (one of them, Allan Iverson, actually is). They run up and down the court fouling, traveling, palming the ball constantly, and scoring almost at will, and play a game that only loosely mirrors Nalsmith’s rules. It’s not basketball anymore; it’s arena football with talent.

The NBA needed Jordan to restore some degree of honor and professionalism to this New York hip-hop playground atmosphere gone crazy. Fans are losing interest. TV ratings are down. Nobody gives a damn if Shaq makes that free throw, or if Kobe raped that Denver woman. The players are for the most part uneducated, dramatically over-paid, pampered freaks and the arenas are their carnival tents.

I used to love pro basketball. I watched the Celtics, Knicks and Lakers all the time. Wilt, Russel, Walt, Willis, Magic, Larry, Earl the Pearl, these were the heroes of my youth. Classy guys on the court and off, who played a fabulous game without tattoos, steroids, or a punk’s attitude.

Who cared if Jordan came back? We all should, but we know it’s too late. It’s David Bowie at the Alamo, way too outnumbered. Jordan can’t rescue this mess, the NBA wrecked it when they allowed the hoodlums to rule, and left the rules to the hoodlums. Where have you gone Elgin Baylor, a clueless league turns it’s desperate eyes to you? John Wooden doesn’t deserve to watch this monster. Thank God he says he doesn’t.

Corporate Greed & Corruption

It’s now fairly clear that corporate corruption will continue in this country. Steven Scrushy, former CEO of HealthSouth, was found innocent by a moronic jury a few years ago, similar to the moronic jury that let Michael Jackson go free a while back. Five, that’s five, former CFO’s testified that Scrushy was well aware of phony numbers reporting and directed the CFO’s to report the phony numbers anyway.

The jury didn’t seem to care. They did not believe the former CFO’s. The defense claimed that there were no documents that demonstrated that Scrushy knew or gave such orders. As a former executive, let me clue in the moronic jury on how it works when hanky-panky is going on in a company.

The CEO is not stupid enough to put illegal activity in writing. Instead, they walk into the CFO’s office and orally tell them what to do. There will be no smoking gun. But, why would five former CFO’s all lie? Scrushy, of course, did not take the witness stand in his own defense.

Is it just me or are other people losing confidence in the jury system? The government believed that it had an extremely strong case. It certainly appeared so. But, the moronic jury probably did not understand most of the testimony and let the guy go free. In complicated business cases we should probably change the law and mandate that a jury trial is not available to a defendant. Or, in the alternative only have a jury pool that truly is a pool of the defendant’s peers, i.e., business executives who understand what the hell is going on. Some out of work truck driver is simply incapable of understanding complex business litigation. Justice is not being served here, it is being subverted, and the crimes will continue unabated to the detriment of shareholders throughout America and to our economy at large.

Stealing Magazines

What’s wrong with people who read magazines and newspapers at the airport or drug stores without buying them? First of all, they block the other impatient people who are in a hurry from grabbing the stuff that they want and paying for it. Secondly, it’s more than a little sneaky, it’s dishonest. People publish magazines and newspapers at great expense so we will buy them. Standing and reading them is not just cheap it is stealing from the publishers. Let’s get philosophical and employ Kant’s Categorical Imperative to this behavior. Kant said that one should only behave in a fashion that one would wish that everyone would behave the same way in a like circumstance. If everybody did this, nothing would get sold at vending counters and at the minimum one would not be able to buy this stuff at counters but only through subscription.

The publishers over the years have tried to thwart this behavior with plastic over wraps, but I have even seen people remove the wraps right there and start reading.

I’m always tempted to offer these people some money, not to be kind, but to humiliate them in front of others. We lack good humiliation these days. I’ll bet someone would stop doing this if he were so humiliated.

So, come on, knock this off. It’s disgusting and beneath you.