Take me out to the ball game or Gush forth my tears

The Bankers have been getting a lot of bad press lately especially Bernie Madoff who was not really a Banker but played one on TV. These fine feathered fellows are not really Bankers in the real sense of the word . What they were and still are is salesmen who have a financial background so what they sell is money in any convoluted form they can dream up. Even though they are the scourge of society right now they will be back in a couple of years wearing sheep's clothing with some new scam. You see our swindler's and con-man of the new century are college educated. I would guess this is one of the negative benefits of higher education.

The Boys I really feel sorry for are the so-called professional athletes. These fellas have been raised on nothing but pure adoration and toys since high school. The NFL, NBA, MLB the Big Three where players are paid fantastic sums of money to employ their mighty finely honed skills beating up a Ball. My but won't that be useful when it comes to trying make a real living.

The world of professional sports is in for a huge shock that actually started last season. I like football so I watch the NFL games, but what to my disbelieving eyes did I see last season? Half filled stadiums!!?? so many commercials so often that if one does not have DVR. Watching one game can burn up 4 hours[who has that kind of time]of mind numbing commercials interspersed with lame plays on the field because the players had to wait so long on the field between the commercials that even they lost the flow of the game.

Bear with me on this. What I believe we are going to see going forward in all three major league sports is a huge drop in live attendance and drop in viewers which are all counted by the minute by our cable and satellite boxes[hi Mr. Orwell] sponsors only pay for eyeballs. Ours not the crying eyes of spoiled rotten athletes who egos are so huge that they are like crack heads who can never go straight and live like the rest of us.

What about all the money they have made?? Well when you have 3 mansions and a fleet of cars and trucks to ferry your entourage of losers around money goes fast and pleasure even faster. So what is going to happen to these Boys when the party is over? Some will probaly try the Micheal Vick school of Dog fighting and they will rot in jail & hell with him. But I believe most of these professional athletes will just work for less money.!!!

I know it is hard to believe but consider this. There has been a growing shortage of skilled workers and professional athletes are highly skilled in a very narrow area. the younger players coming up want even more money than the players leaving. One solution is keep the players they have working Longer for Less money. One can see this trend with quarterbacks. The age of the average quarterback is 38. That was unheard of even a decade ago

Let us take this a step further. This shortage of skilled experienced people in all fields blue collar pink collar and white collar is just as real and getting worse. Since finance has been the glamour job of the past twenty years we have a huge shortage of Engineers and physicists and teachers and nurses ect. Since college has gotten so expensive for the middle class fewer middle class kids are going to college meaning even more shortages, and older more experienced people usually want more money and plan to retire and enjoy life.

What to do hmmm. How about cutting the value of the stock market by 50%. So the 401ks people were forced to take after the traditional pension plans were dropped because the cost the corporations to much money. Now are worth much less so those older experienced workers can not retire but have to keep working until who knows when [hello again Mr. Orwell]. The bonus is they will also work for less. Because they have to. That big house they bought is now worth a lot less but the payment has not gone down and the taxes keep going up.

Think about this. In 2008 the CEO of Frontier corp here in Rochester received a 74% increase in pay while the people who actually work for Frontier are working 12 days for free in 2009 or risk layoffs and there has been no cost of living raise. It is not hard to understand where the CEOs money came from.

Our Governer Blind David Patterson is singing the Blues about the public employees while fighting like a tiger to not raise taxes on the Rich. I got some news for the Guv the problem is not public employees or the Rich it is the consultants and contractors who milk the state like a it was a Guernsey cow. It is all the Bonds the state has floated over the years, the interest is coming due and is paid out of tax revenue. That is the other problem since NYS has done such a fine job driving business and people out of the state there is a permanent drop in tax revenue.

Everyone knows that the income of the top 3% of the people in this country has sky rocketed over the past 20 years. The talking heads on CNN and Fox agree on that. The conservatives and Liberals agree on it, and we all agree that it is not going to change.

I think we all feel that This trend is well established . So we can all expect to work longer and for less money while that dream of retiring and enjoying life drifts farther down the line. While the Government whips up more propaganda to make us all feel better about being exploited even more,and those fine feathered bankers wearing sheep's clothing will come up with another scheme so we can believe that some day we will be Rich Too. [there goes that Orwell fellow again].