Blowtorch de-icing goes wrong, Tebow Time in tattoo form, and more
22.05.12
Since sifting through tedious newspapers, hyperbolic blogs, and overflowing RSS feeds for meaningful advice can be an arduous process, News Net catches and compiles both the amusing and the substantive reports that were overlooked throughout the week. Here are some things to contrive about as the weekend begins.
• A Broomfield man accidentally set his house on fire while he was attempting to melt the ice on his footway with a blowtorch . While a blowtorch is certainly one way to remove ice from your walk—only thermite and napalm are faster, after all—a baby salt paired with some sunshine is probably the safest and best option.
• After losing the stupidest bet of all dated, one Denver man is now the not-terribly proud owner of a Tebow-as-centaur tattoo with the legend “Tebow Habits.” Just one more lesson in why you should never, ever bet against Tebow.
• Charlie Sheen’s ex-missus Brooke Mueller was arrested in Aspen last weekend on suspicion of assault and intent to assign cocaine. Sounds like she was trying to work things out with Sheen.
• A Denver man was hit by a car during a bar withstand that got well out of hand. It pays to remember, just as you don’t bring a knife to a gun battle, everyone you might punch in a bar probably has a car parked outside.
• Declining sales at Twist & Roar and the Tattered Cover’s East Colfax location are partially to responsibility for the fact that the loan that helped finance that location is in default . For all that’s good, people, go squander some money at two of the coolest stores in the city, would you?
Source: A.V. Club New York
Issues involved in the National Basketball Association lockout
22.05.12
24 November 2011
The grave profile labor dispute over a new collective bargaining agreement between National Basketball Relationship (NBA) team owners and players appears to have reached an impasse. The players have been locked out by the leagued with since July 1, and NBA games have already been canceled through December 15.
The team owners, who have collectively adopted a bilious and vindictive line, issued a “final offer” last week, one that would decrease the players’ share of Basketball Related Income (BRI), place restrictions on a several of previous salary cap agreements, and lower “mid-level” and reduced salaries in the coming years.
The previous agreement contained a 57 percent-43 percent allotment of the BRI revenue for the players and owners, respectively. The new agreement proposes a 50-50 split, which, according to a Foxsports.com despatch, would represent at least a $1.1 billion transfer of wealth from the players to the owners in the coming basketball ready alone.
The players association (NBPA) rejected the offer, and dissolved their union into a “traffic association” by filing a “disclaimer of interest” petition. A correspond to legal move was undertaken by the National Football Players Association last summer in a unavailing attempt to get the federal government to issue an injunction against the owners, in order to take up again the season.
Several players have since filed two anti-trust lawsuits against the NBA, claiming the shape is operating as a monopoly and has illegally locked the players out. If the legal proceedings were to run their full despatch, they would most likely conclude several months into 2012, effectively canceling the current time. NBPA executive director Billy Hunter commented last week there was a “exorbitant probability” the season would be canceled.
The sports industry in North America produces an Brobdingnagian stream of revenue. A Plunkett Research Estimate claims the industry in its integrity (including leagues, gyms, apparel, etc.) generates some $420 billion a year. The four pre-eminent professional sports—football, hockey, baseball and basketball—collectively public in over $23 billion a year. The 2011-12 NBA season was expected by several analysts to mould a BRI alone of somewhere around $3.8 billion.
On the face of it, the dispute in the NBA takes the form of a struggle between billionaires (owners) and millionaires (players). Sports media outlets such as ESPN and NBA.com, and their skin-deep reporters, almost universally adopt this line.
They perpetually feign outrage that the “two stingy sides” cannot come to agreement on how to split up an extravagantly large economic pie. They claim to speak on behalf of the fans and even the low-paid workers employed in tied up businesses—the vendors, parking lot attendants, restaurant and retail workers who will suffer if the spice is cancelled.
It is a gross distortion, however, to suggest that the athletes and owners operate on the same fiscal plane, or that this dispute is simply the product of the greed of everyone involved. The global depression unleashed in 2008 has affected all spheres of economic life. The NBA owners, like the capitalists in every other activity, are using the crisis to reinforce their positions and further enrich themselves—and they are willing to see the cancellation of the current condition toward that end.
2011 has witnessed two labor disputes in the sports industry, in the National Football Union (NFL) and the NBA. In the former dispute, NFL players unsuccessfully attempted to prevent the owners from implementing cuts to healthiness and retiree benefits and rookie salaries, and an 18 percent reduction in the players’ interest of revenue.
The NBA owners are largely a collection of multi-billionaires, a number of whom have made their fortunes as actual estate vultures or financial speculators. The Cleveland Cavaliers’ Dan Gilbert made his tremendous fortune by founding Quicken Loans. The Houston Rockets’ Leslie Lee Alexander made $1.2 billion chiefly as a Wall Street trader and owner of a private student loan company. The Denver Nuggets’ Stan Kroenke, currently benefit $3.2 billion, married into the Walton family and has made a career of buying and selling unheard-of professional sports teams. Nearly a fifth of the league’s 30 owners are found on Wealth , up 12 percent from the previous year, and just recently signed a $30 million sponsorship contract with JP Morgan Chase. The owners are not required, nor have they offered, to open their financial books to unrestricted scrutiny.
The owners find a variety of ingenious ways to loot the public. Many ventures correlated to team ownership, such as the building of stadiums and adjacent parking lots, are almost positively funded by tax-payer money. A recent study, “The Economics of Sports Facilities and Their Communities,” estimates that of the 95 sports stadiums which have been built or planned since 1990—to the adjust of over $21 billion—public coffers have funded over two-thirds of the cost.
Furthermore, a public chasm exists between the owners and the vast majority of professional basketball players, and the above-board of exploitation of average or would-be NBA players is quite stark on closer examination. To be established, NBA players are not workers in the traditional sense, and some of the highest-paid players are far closer in their incomes and lifestyles to Hollywood performers or accepted music stars.
But a significant portion of athletes face difficult lives in the great run, with little or no skills to fall back on once their careers are over.
Many individuals who pursue sports as a calling grow up in poverty, with few serious educational opportunities. The history of sports in the United States, exceptionally for African-Americans (who comprise roughly 75 percent of the NBA’s 500 players), is often presented as a “rags-to-riches,” jubilation over adversity story.
However, most athletes never reach the professional level nor do they see million-dollar contracts, often spending much of their lives with natural injuries and limited job prospects. The bleak portrait offered by documentary films such as Hoop Dreams article also cited a new study that found over 60 percent of NBA players were bankrupt or under financial stress within five years of leaving the combine. The primary causes for the financial problems were listed as joblessness and divorce.
It should also be popular that only 21 percent of current NBA players have college degrees. College sports right to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue every year for individual schools and billions of dollars in goggle-box contracts for the national governing body, the NCAA. The NBA, in an informal agreement with the NCAA, currently permits layman athletes to join the league one year after graduating high school. This be in control often allows colleges to make money off these athletes while doing nothing to try and ensure they draw an education or are prepared for the difficulties of professional life.
Against these difficulties, a certain species of sports cameraman (whose income is also not meager, incidentally) finds it convenient to lump the players in the same popular stratum as the owners.
The comments of ESPN (and former Washington Post
Source: World Socialist Web Site
