We may not have John Edwards to kick around anymore – though that hasn’t stopped us from putting the occasional boot into his backside, has it? – but he did leave us with a paradigm that remains useful in surveying the political landscape circa November 2009. Forget, for the moment, Edwards’ rhetoric about the rich and the poor, and focus instead on the two wildly disparate narratives about the nation’s politics that have emerged over the past 12 months. On one side are those are still living in Bamalot, who see slow but steady progress toward fixing enormous problems in the economy, health care and foreign policy; on the other are those who see nothing but dollar bills flying out the windows of the Capitol. On one side are those who remain quietly, but fiercely proud of what America accomplished last autumn; on the other are those who loudly trumpet their conviction (or who put up with people who remain convinced) that the president himself is not an American.

On Tuesday, in a couple of states, one side sat contentedly on their asses and did nothing; the other harnessed themselves into an angry, energized mini-electorate that drove to the polls and turned their governors’ mansions from blue to red.

There was something deeply ironic about HBO’s decision to debut its new documentary, By the People: The Election of Barack Obama, on Tuesday evening. At the same hour on every news channel, a debate was raging as to whether Obama’s “movement for change” had hit a roadblock with the Republican victories in New Jersey and Virginia. But over on pay cable, it was Decision ’08 all over again as the Edward Norton-produced doc replayed the goings-on behind the scenes of Obama’s primary and general-election victories – and portrayed his opponents as little more than flies to be swatted along the path to the inevitable.

So, yes, the dichotomy was ironic – but it was also a nice metaphor for Tuesday’s outcome. Obama’s voters, feeling like they did their job last year and remaining pretty happy with the way things have gone since then, stayed home and watched TV, while the unhappy folks dragged their butts to the polls and changed the status quo. Such is democracy in America – particularly in these off-off-year elections, when the voters of New Jersey and (particularly) Virginia love to send Bronx cheers to the party in power.

Whether or not Tuesday’s results were a referendum on Obama’s first year depends on who’s punditizing. Maybe Republicans are rebounding strongly from their annus horribilis … and maybe they just benefited from minuscule turnout, weak opponents and/or Democratic complacency. Take your pick. The truth, though, is that none of this year’s “big” elections meant much of anything to the direction of the country at large – except in Maine, where Americans proved once again that they’re not morally or intellectually worthy of being trusted with mob-rule decisions on minority rights. (It’s long past time that the Supreme Court took such decisions out of their hands for good; the whole enterprise of public voting to deny civil rights is patently unconstitutional.)

Even if Tuesday’s results were largely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, I couldn’t help but notice the juxtaposition of mentalities on display during Chris Christie’s victory rally and Obama’s equivalent celebrations last year. Remember all the respectful diversity and joyful weeping that attended Obama’s Grant Park speech last November? In contrast, Christie’s audience was the usual crowd of jackals – the kind we’ve seen regularly since the 1992 GOP convention, but especially since last year’s frightening election season. Note to Republican activists: When your own candidate shushes you because you’re embarrassing him on national television, as Christie did this week (and McCain did repeatedly last Nov. 4), you might want to modify your behavior.

Of course, conservative rally-goers have maintained that feral posture throughout this year, through tea parties and town halls that persistently echoed the worst expressions of racism, paranoia and xenophobia at last year’s Sarah Palin rallies. (HBO really ought to be airing its new Obama doc back-to-back with Alexandra Pelosi’s far more riveting film about those McCain/Palin crowds, Right America Feeling Wronged, which retains its raw-nerve immediacy the same way that footage of, say, Bull Connor still terrifies 50 years later.) Indeed, the positivity of the Obama campaign already seems like ancient history compared with the open, seeping wound of White Man’s Victimization that’s still being picked at on a weekly basis by right-wing pundits and teabaggers.

But then, that’s precisely the point of those efforts – to use lies and scare tactics to cover the fact that conservatives have no ideas of their own for fixing the nation’s problems. While Obama and the Democrats have turned from the generalities of campaigning to the specifics of governing, conservative activists have been left with little legislative influence and no standing whatsoever as purveyors of wise policy, considering the last eight years. So they’ve filled the vacuum by doubling down on the rabid, irrational arguments of fall ’08, hoping to whittle away at public support for Obama’s agenda via amped-up name-calling (Foreign-born! Socialist! Fascist! Socialist-Fascist!) and thinly disguised threats of violence.

Does anybody really think the results in Virginia and New Jersey this week were a validation of that strategy? In fact, both Christie and Bob McDonnell won by sublimating their conservative impulses – or flat-out denying them, in the case of McDonnell’s wingnut thesis – and embracing Obama’s themes, if not his policies, in an effort to win Independent votes. And they succeeded, even as exit polls showed that majorities of the substantially reduced electorates in both states still support Obama, and even favor the public option. Not that these lessons will be learned by the teabaggers, who are far more excited about what they accomplished in upstate New York – using an “independent” conservative carpetbagger to force aside a moderate Republican – than they are about winning the governor’s mansions in Richmond and Trenton. In the process they lost a congressional seat that had been in GOP hands since the Civil War, but never mind that … ideological purity was enforced!

If Republicans are smart, they’ll encourage their faithful to start emulating McDonnell and stop cheerleading for Michelle Bachmann and Orly Taitz. Perhaps a guy like McDonnell, despite his repugnant “past” beliefs, can grab the reins of the GOP and keep it from galloping over the cliff toward which Palin and Limbaugh and Bachmann and Beck have been steering it. Don’t bet on it, though; the teabaggers, empowered by their overthrow of Dede Scozzafava up in Watertown, are now sniffing under rocks nationwide to find primary challengers for districts represented by other insufficiently crazy Republicans. They’ll probably force McDonnell himself to rediscover his old-time religion soon enough.

Meanwhile, as health care reform lurches toward its denouement and Republicans pick their next battle – how dare Obama launch a jobs program! – the gulf between the Two Americas will no doubt widen in the coming year. Democrats need to re-energize their base and remind Independents that their agenda is about more than just spending a mint-ful of money; no matter how successful they are, they face an uphill battle to ensure that next November’s turnout looks more like last year’s than this year’s. Republicans, on the other hand, need to figure out whether they’re the party of Christie and McDonnell or the party of Doug Hoffman.

What’s that? You’ve forgotten who Doug Hoffman is? That’s because he lost on Tuesday – the same way that most every candidate who forsakes the center in pursuit of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck’s endorsements will lose next autumn. If that happens, we’ll still have Two Americas – but one will be even smaller than it is now.

A bargain at twice the price?

The latest trend in the “something for nothing on the Internet” game is the pay-to-bid auction site. The auction operator lets such items as cash and gift cards go at prices far below face value because all the bidders, even the losers, have paid to place their bids. Some of these sites claim to be helping people beat the recession. One, PsychoAuction.com, even has a complicated back story involving a founder, Nick Dickreuter, who was let go when Lehman Brothers failed. According to the PR version of the story, Dickreuter lost all respect for money and now gives things away online.

Except, of course, that Dickreuter clearly respects money. Hs site stands to make a lot of it from those who don’t understand how giveaway auctions work.  It’s not like Dickreuter took a vow of poverty and went out to serve the poor.

PsychoAuction isn’t the only site following a pay-to-bid model. DFWbid.com is another that has been mentioned on different bargain-hunting Web sites. The pitch is that you can get a $25 gift card for $8; the reality is that a lot of people spend money to bid without winning.

These sites charge you for bids. Let’s say that a bid costs $1 each. Four people are bidding on a $25 gift card. The winning bid is $8, but six people placed a total of 20 bids until that price was reached.  The house profit is $3 – $20 in bid fees and $8 from the winner, less the $25 cost of the gift card. The house might make more if the winner has to pay a shipping and handling fee to get that card.

After all, shipping and handling is where the real money in auctions seems to be!

In a bidding situation, people will sometimes force the winning bid over the value of the object. This is known as the Winner’s Curse, and it’s surprisingly common.  It may even be rational, especially if you have to pay to participate in the auction. If you get caught in a bidding war over a $25 gift card and spent $25 to bid for it, winning the card with a $26 bid reduces your net loss from $25 to $1. The value of the card offsets your bid cost. The auction site can win if you get a bargain or if you overpay. Dickreuter is psycho like a fox.

We’re making the assumption that the products for auction on pay-to-bid sites are legitimate; some are, of course, but not all are. Surely everyone knows that if you pay $100 for a new Louis Vuitton purse on eBay, it is a fake. What about the $25 gift card – is it a free-and-clear win, or is it stolen? Who knows?

I expect a lot of interest in these sites in the next month or so as we get into the ridiculous holiday gift-giving frenzy in a down economy.  The idea of getting something for nothing is huge, and I’m always on the lookout for an angle.  However, I am staying clear of these sites. I’d rather give Toys R Us an extra $25 then spend my time and money strategizing on a gift-card deal.

No matter which of the many winter holidays you celebrate (Elvismas, on January 8, is a big holiday in my household), the best way to save money is to cut your gift list down. The fewer people you shop for, the less money you will spend.  I hate to tell you this, but it’s not like folks like what you get them. In 1993, Joel Waldfogel, an economist then at Yale University and now at the University of Pennsylvania, published an article in the American Economic Review entitled “The Deadweight Loss of Christmas.” He found that 10% to one-third of the value of gifts is lost because the giver gave the wrong item. We all have received items that weren’t quite what we wanted – a size, brand, color, or style that wasn’t quite right; something for the kitchen that is nice but not anything we need; some CDs that are pleasant but will never make it on our Desert Island lists.

That 10% to 33% loss makes paying $26 for a $25 gift card look like small potatoes, doesn’t it? Of course, you could take the lazy way out and just give everyone on your list gift cards.

Alleged Inside Trader

Even then, it does not seem to have helped him much. The Galleon Group of hedge funds, which Rajaratnam managed, has shut down in the wake of insider trading charges against Rajaratnam and several associates. However, it doesn’t look like the funds’ performance was all that great, so Rajaratnam and company may base their defense on the fact that they did not make excess profits. One of the charges is that Galleon made $500,000 trading in options in Google after receiving a tip from an employee of Google’s investor relations company that earnings would be lower than expected. To make that profit, an inside trader would have to identify informants, figure out how to reach them, compensate them, act on the information, and take the risk that it was good information. These steps involve time and expense that cut into the profits from insider trading. The profits have to be huge to overcome the costs, and they may not be big enough to compensate the inside traders for the risk. And then, of course, the information has to be good. A wise inside trader would probably sit on the first few tips just to see if the tipper has good information. But even a tipper with mostly good information will have a few duds.

All that, for a $500,000 profit (before expenses) in a group of funds with $3.7 billion in assets. That works out to a 0.01% return. A fund manager needs hundreds and thousands of these bets to beat the market. It would be easier to be legit.

This case has a few staples of insider trading cases. Two of people mentioned in the charges were junior staffers, one at Moody’s, another at Google’s investor relations firm. These are people for whom $10,000 or so is enough money (a sum mentioned in the SEC’s filing) to compromise their ethics; they may also not know how wrong it is. If an inside trader can find a weak person in these circumstances, there’s a nice profit to be made, at least on one or two trades.

Another staple is the person looking to impress someone else with their great information. A few of the tippers fit that bill, especially Roomy Kahn, a former Galleon employee who seems to have had financial trouble and wanted to be rehired.

Insider trading is also difficult to prove. Martha Stewart seems to have sold her Imclone stock after receiving a call from her broker, which he placed after receiving a call from the daughter of the Imclone CEO. But for all that, Stewart’s criminal charge was obstruction of justice because the Feds could not prove insider trading.

In the Galleon case, the allegations have been enough for the fund to close. The dishonest and honest alike have lost jobs. Many will have a hard time working again because of the taint of the case, even if they were not charged or are found not guilty. The people who have been implicated have to hire lawyers, and others may decide that it’s a good idea to have counsel now in case they need it later.

I’m not naïve; I believe that people trade on inside information. Why wouldn’t they? People buy and sell securities every day, and a few of them may have an edge some of the time. But do they have enough of an edge to produce consistently superior returns? That, I’m not sure about, but it seems unlikely.

The bottom line is that most people should just buy index funds. They won’t beat the market with them, but they’ll do better than most fund managers, and they’ll do it fair and square.

Now is the autumn of our discontent … at least for us Los Angeles baseball fans. Last night the Dodgers were polished off by the ruthless Phillies, their forever-teetering staff of pitchers finally crumbling in the face of Ryan Howard and that goddamned Victorino. Tonight the Angels may suffer the same fate – and even if they survive long enough to fly back east for the weekend, the Yankees will have their $161 million man waiting.

Which $161 million man? Now, there’s a question that could only refer to the Yankees. The one I’m talking about is CC Sabathia, the team’s most recent nine-figure pitching purchase, who has already shut the Angels down twice in this ALCS. But I could also be talking about first baseman Mark Teixeira, whom the Yankees plucked off the Angels’ roster last offseason for $180 million and who has repeatedly robbed his former teammates in the field this week (though his offensive numbers are pathetic). Of course, I might otherwise be talking about Derek Jeter, who’s nearing the end of his own $189 million contract. And as for Alex Rodriguez … well, he’ll earn $161 million in about the time it takes me to finish this column.

At least A-Rod is earning his salary (for once) this postseason. Still, like most baseball fans who don’t root for the Yankees, I have a hard time watching the Bombers without becoming queasy from the tsunami of dollar signs. In fact, Sabathia, Teixeira and A-Rod have ceased to function for me as human beings; their uniform numbers may as well be replaced with contract numbers – 161, 180, and 275, respectively. (Jeter gets a pass, since he came up through the farm system back in the ’90s, but the mind reels at the thought of the Yankees’ other free-agent acquisitions this decade – including tonight’s starting pitcher, number 82, otherwise known as A.J. Burnett.) If you add up the number of dollars the Steinbrenners have committed to their Big Three free agents through the end of Sabathia’s contract in 2016 – a total of $616 million – you get a number larger than the expected cumulative payrolls of 18 of Major League Baseball’s 30 teams over that span, even accounting for inflation.

The reason I bring all this up – apart from my perennial disgust with the Yankees’ patently unfair revenue and payroll advantages, a hatred which frequently needs venting at this time of year – is because yesterday a phrase re-entered the public sphere that recently had been reserved for discussions of baseball and its competitive-balance issues. The phrase is “antitrust exemption,” and now it’s the latest cudgel being used by congressional Democrats to smite the Corporate Villain of the Day, the health insurance industry. Yesterday the House Judiciary Committee voted to repeal the McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945, which removed the industry from federal jurisdiction and instead allowed the states to impose their own regulations. Democrats are furious over a bogus “study” the industry released last week, which claimed that current reform efforts would cause a spike in the premiums that insurers would be forced to charge. Still seething over the timing of that report (a day before the Senate Finance Committee’s vote on the Baucus bill), and frustrated by the continued uncertainty of passing reform legislation this year, the Dems say – or, more specifically, Sen. Patrick Leahy says — that repealing the antitrust exemption will help end the insurance companies’ long history of “price-fixing, bid-rigging and market allocation.” Industry spokesmen, of course, insist that Congress is engaged in an act of vengeance, not policy, and that Democrats are hellbent on fixing a problem that doesn’t exist.

So, what does that have to do with the damn Yankees? Not much, really – except that the last time Congress so publicly bandied about the concept of repealing an industry’s antitrust exemption, the industry was baseball. In fact, such threats have become relatively commonplace in recent years, ever since the players strike that wiped out the 1994 World Series. The issues behind that strike were spiraling costs and a lack of fair competition, which will certainly sound familiar to anyone following the current free-for-all over health-care reform. At that time, Congress — powerless to stop the strike, but eager to lash out at the owners who were shouldering most of the blame for baseball’s problems – reached for the only bow in its quiver, the threat of repealing baseball’s long-cherished exemption. That threat resurfaced several years later, when MLB commissioner Bud Selig considered dismantling the financially strapped Minnesota Twins and Montreal Expos, and again when baseball was excruciatingly slow to respond to the steroids controversy. So far, those threats have remained idle ones – primarily because baseball’s owners arguably (and particularly in retrospect) occupied the moral high ground during the strike, and because it was the players, not the owners, who resisted implementing a strong steroids policy.

Of course, comparing Congress’ antitrust threats against these two industries is an imperfect, even contradictory exercise, at least as far as baseball’s labor problems concerned the Yankees. Congress is now lashing out at insurers’ supposed fixing of prices at inflated rates … while in ’94 the owners were attempting to fix salaries at reduced rates. George Steinbrenner didn’t even approve of his fellow owners’ battle with the union; indeed, he was never enthusiastic about a salary cap, since his was the spending the other owners were trying hardest to restrain. So he sided quietly with the players, while Selig and White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf steered a course for labor unrest and earned Congress’ ire. Afterward, Steinbrenner’s teams of outrageously paid all-stars became the greatest beneficiaries of the owners’ failure to secure a cap – it’s no coincidence that in the 15 years since then, the Yankees have reached the playoffs 14 times and won four championships (for the moment), all while consistently doubling the payroll of the next-richest team.

So, no, the comparison of these two targeted antitrust exemptions isn’t perfect. More important, Congress’ threats to repeal them have served as little more than spiteful red herrings. One can argue that baseball might be forced to operate more fairly on behalf of all its teams (and the fans) if it didn’t enjoy its exemption, but repealing it wasn’t going to end the ’94 strike, save the Twins or solve the steroids problem. Similarly, punishing the insurers in this way won’t provide anything like the fix that’s required for our health-care system – only a full complement of reforms, including a robust public option (eventually approaching a single-payer system) will accomplish that. Repealing McCarran-Ferguson may be convenient, and it might be temporarily satisfying, but hopefully Democrats will come to realize that revenge is a dish best served comprehensively, and during an elaborate White House signing ceremony.

Still, as long we’re here venting … if, as Bill Veeck supposedly said, rooting for the Yankees once was “like rooting for U.S. Steel,” it’s now certainly true that rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for the health insurance industry. Here’s hoping those overpaid, soulless jerks take a huge tumble in the next few weeks. Oh – and here’s hoping the Yankees lose, too.

College students often take up causes, some of which they continue to pursue after graduation. A popular cause is the environment. Does student activism make a difference? The annual College Sustainability Report Card, released early this month, attempts to measure the influence of students and others in making campuses more sustainable. The report is prepared by the staff of the Responsible Endowments Institute, an organization that evaluated campus governance and endowment investing and is supported by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. This is the third year of the study, which now tracks the 300 colleges with the largest endowments as well as another 32 campuses that asked to participate.

The study evaluates campus facilities, student life, and endowment policies to grade different schools. Campuses can pick up points for green buildings, bringing organic produce into the dining halls, or committing part of the endowment to investments in sustainable technologies. The researchers focus on the money for two reasons. First, it gives some clues about the administration’s approach to transparency and engagement. Second, the more money a college has, the more it can spend on such things as LEED-certified buildings and alternative-fuel shuttle buses. It’s not necessarily a surprise that Harvard has an A- (the highest possible grade this year) and Youngstown State University is a D+.

Being green should not be a luxury for the elite, but it is. Although there are cost-effective ways to be green (shopping at thrift stores, growing your own vegetables), these are not as attractive as shopping at Whole Foods and installing bamboo flooring. Likewise, a campus can do a lot by promoting reusable coffee cups and water bottles and by installing compact fluorescent lighting, but those won’t generate the accolades that come with new LEED-platinum certified buildings and a commitment to only use cage-free eggs in the cafeteria.

My family eats cage-free eggs at home, and it kills me because they cost three times what regular eggs do. And I know that the chickens aren’t really all that free. We should just give up eggs all together, but then what would I make for dinner on those really crazy days? My guilt and laziness offset my cheapness and cynicism. Also, we can afford the vegetarian-fed, certified cage-free eggs. Can a campus that is looking at rising expenses, state budget cuts, and less money in the endowment for financial aid afford to be profligate with its egg expenses?

The survey organizers expected to see a decrease in spending on sustainability initiatives this year because of the financial decline, and they did not. It may be that campuses have not fully absorbed the budget cuts following from last year’s market decline. Also, some of these programs are cost-effective, especially once they are up and running. Maybe not the cage-free eggs, but certainly improvements in lighting, heating, and cooling will pay off in the future.

I expect to the grade point averages fall in next year’s report card. Okay, Harvard students won’t have to eat eggs from cruel farmers, but that’s because they are now being served cold breakfast only. Eventually, campuses will cut have to cut back on capital spending projects, so buildings won’t be upgraded to become more fuel-efficient or replaced with modern, sustainable facilities. There will be less funding for student groups, so fewer reusable coffee mugs will be given away. You would hope that someone who really believes in sustainability would still bring the reusable cup and refillable water bottle, but not everyone has the commitment.

Recessions are good for the environment because they force individuals to stay home, reduce, and reuse. But when it ends, most people will go back to their old ways. They’ll have a lot of pent-up demand to meet, and they’ll decide that they like Nordstrom better than the thrift store.

Organizations will pick up spending on the environment after the recession, if only because it’s popular with customers. They’ll also hope for the longer-term payoff in costs. But first, they’ll need to recover their capital bases, and that could take a lot of time. The environment remains a frill, a nice thing for Harvard but not something that a state commuter university should mess with.

Now here’s a fast-moving story: Just a week ago, word leaked that Rush Limbaugh was part of an ownership group hoping to bid on the woebegone St. Louis Rams. Within three business days, the head of the players union, a current owner and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell had all come forward with essentially the same message: “Like hell you will!” By yesterday, ESPN had confirmed that Rush was being dropped from the bidding group. And just like that…

Well, what, exactly? What has been accomplished with this brief minuet of misplaced ambition and swift smackdown? For one thing, Rush’s media profile clearly has bumped up an extra tick, as if he needed it – though he’s clearly sought it, considering his eagerness to sit down for an interview this week with the sworn enemy of all conservatives, the NBC/MSNBC juggernaut. (Maybe he felt the sticky, Nyquil-inebriated breath of Time cover boy Glenn Beck down his neck.) Meanwhile, the NFL suddenly – and, for the most part, unwittingly – has found itself politicized, with the usual crackpots insisting over the past week that they would never watch pro football again if Rush got the team (or if he didn’t, depending on whether the pot was cracked on the left or right side). “I will NEVER go to a game OF ANY TEAM, WATCH ON TV, OR LISTEN ON RADIO to one more NFL game EVER,” wrote one typical rantboy, apparently convinced he could bring down the monolith all on his own. Just in case you were wondering which side this all-caps screamer was on, his message twice dared the NFL to “exhibit bias” against Rush’s “equal right” to buy a team. (Thus we arrive at a third result, this one inevitable: Conservatives now have one more reason to feel aggrieved, and one more excuse for twisting the language of civil liberties to suit their agitation.)

All those outcomes are ephemeral – we’ll forget about them as soon as the next temporary outrage presents itself. But we’re also left with a lesson in resume building – more specifically, a primer in careers that don’t function particularly well as precursors for (and may even serve as disqualifiers for) other careers. Indeed, this episode may well serve as a What Color Is My Parachute? for hyperpartisans on both sides of the political divide. (Note to Rush: the colors of your parachute apparently aren’t blue and gold.)

I have a bit of personal experience in this realm, having worked in media relations for the ACLU’s Arts Censorship Project during the early 1990s. My job required me to publicly defend (enthusiastically, I admit) a crucifix submerged in urine, a naked woman smearing her body with yams, rappers who fantasized about killing cops and George H.W. Bush, and a woman who inserted a speculum onstage and invited patrons to come have a look. Of course, none of the above descriptions fully describe the cultural artifacts whose right to exist the ACLU (and I) were defending at the time, but that hardly matters in the field of, say, opposition research. And so I quickly realized, the first time my name appeared in the Washington Post alongside “Piss Christ” or “Cop Killer” or Annie Sprinkle, that I ought never develop a taste for high elected office.

Similarly, Rush Limbaugh should have understood last autumn, as he cackled his way through “Barack, The Magic Negro” on the air, that future team ownership in a league that’s 60 percent African-American was not in the cards.

Now, it’s entirely possible that La Limbaugh was merely looking for a place to stash part of his prodigious fortune, and that he had no intention of being anything more than a silent partner in Dave Checkett’s ownership group. (Of course, Checkett’s own record as owner of Madison Square Garden and the New York Knicks and Rangers is more than a bit … well, checkered.) Even so, Rush’s previous involvement with the NFL should have clued him in that his brand of provocation is unwelcome there. I mean, come on! He didn’t last four weeks on ESPN’s pregame show back in 2003, before he pissed off the entire Players Association (and got himself fired) by calling Donovan McNabb an affirmative-action deadbeat.

This is a league so buttoned-down, so starched-collared that it penalizes players for excessive celebration and for showing their faces (i.e., removing their helmets) on the field. This is a league whose most valuable assets are not flashy players, but Napoleonic coaches; the league that invented the modern “hard” salary cap, and maintains it with brute force; a league that has spent three decades obsessing over how to keep its one renegade owner, Al Davis, in line. What genius thought a mouthy wild card like Limbaugh would be welcome in the No Fun League’s old-boy network?

Apparently the same type of genius who’s been accusing the NFL of hypocrisy this week, and using Michael Vick’s presence on the Eagles to do so. (Do conservatives really want to equate Limbaugh with Vick, in the category of degenerate embarrassments the league should be willing to tolerate?) But, of course, Vick’s role on the Eagles is far different from Limbaugh’s hoped-for role on the Rams – if not in terms of each man’s short-term impact on the NFL’s image, then in Limbaugh’s potential impact as an employer on the NFL’s competitive balance.

I certainly wouldn’t defend Vick’s actions – and neither would his fellow players – but team (and union) loyalty dictate that neither Vick’s teammates nor his rivals would ever attempt to drum him out of the league. On the other hand, no such loyalty binds the players to the owners, who may be considering a lockout after next season. And with 31 other teams to choose from – and with Limbaugh no more able to offer outrageous salaries than any other owner who’s bound by the salary cap – it’s easy to imagine many, if not all, of the best players and coaches simply refusing to work for him. Just think of the PR (and, potentially, legal) quandary the Rams and NFL would face the first time a high draft choice refused to accept being selected by Limbaugh’s team! How would such a scenario affect the quality — and attendance — of a team that’s already 0-for-its-last-15 and 5-32 since 2007?

Last weekend I heard an ESPN Radio jock dismiss this possibility, saying that players “become conservative as soon as they become rich” and that they would find Limbaugh’s money “as green as anyone else’s.” Not four hours after those comments, ESPN reported that the head of the NFL Players Association, DeMaurice Smith, had come out against Limbaugh’s bid. “Sport in America is at its best when it unifies, gives all of us reason to cheer, and when it transcends,” Smith said. “Our sport does exactly that when it overcomes division and rejects discrimination and hatred.”

In other words, a figure like Limbaugh who’s so antithetical to mainstream values (not to mention the NFL’s make-no-waves mantra) need not apply. The quick rejection of his ownership bid happened to come the same week that ABC has begun to panic about the precipitous ratings decline for the current season of Dancing with the Stars, whose biggest “star” has been Limbaugh’s fellow conservative icon, Tom DeLay. Out of sympathy for the Hammer’s currently aching feet, I wouldn’t dream of using the coincidence of their downfalls to make broader statements about the state of conservatism or the GOP. I would, however, suggest that both men’s failure to transcend their success in the world of right-wing hucksterism points to the minuscule size (and general distastefulness) of that world. A lot of us worry that a few million dittoheads (or even 70,000 teabaggers rallying in D.C.) are merely the serrated edge of a larger movement worth fearing in the coming years; the speed with which the extraordinarily popular NFL dismissed Limbaugh, and the mass channel-changing that greeted DeLay’s appearance on one of TV’s most-watched shows, seem to argue otherwise.

To which I can only answer: I don’t particularly want to watch Barney Frank do the cha-cha, either. As for Keith Olbermann’s success on Football Night in America … well, that’s a whole different kettle of fish, isn’t it? Heaven forbid the owners attempt to trim the players’ health care benefits! Keith might try to “call in Richard Wolffe” — and frankly, I’m not sure one more guy can fit on that overcrowded studio set.

The Author of this piece is pushing her own book, so no money changed hands.

Last week, the Federal Trade Commission announced it would fine bloggers as much as $11,000 for violating its guides to the use of testimonials in advertising. The rules are designed to ensure that customers have a fair basis for buying a product. The basic rules are that if someone is compensated, that should be made clear; if a celebrity endorses a product, he or she should actually use it. Most of us didn’t want to know about Bob Dole‘s Viagra prescription or Lita Ford’s favorite ball gag (NSFW), but at least we know they are telling the truth about their preferences. The full details are on the FTC Web site in all their bureaucratic glory.

This creates some sticky problems for people blogging about books, movies, and music. You know, folks like us here at Popdose and our readers, at least some of whom are artists looking to get attention for their work. I can’t speak for everyone involved with Popdose, as that is a job for Jeff Giles. But, yes, we receive books, MP3s, DVDs, and bottles of tequila to review. We also write reviews about things that we bought with our money. I write book reviews for Barron’s, and those books are usually sent to me through my editor. Sometimes, though, he has misplaced the book or can’t remember if the publicist sent him a copy, and he doesn’t want to ask the publicist to send out a new one, so I go to the bookstore and buy it.

Like most reviewers, I quickly end up with more free books than I can possibly read. I usually end up dropping these books off at random places through Bookcrossing or donating them to the thrift shop. Some reviewers sell their excess copies to used bookstores or online, turning them into cash that way, although I have heard tell of writers who use something close to their real name on Amazon being shunned by authors who feel cheated out of royalties.

Are these random books, CDs, and spirits enough to cloud our judgment? I don’t know. I’d like to say no, but I can’t promise you that.

The traditional media likes to promote a myth of objectivity that no one believes. There’s much blather about the separation of editorial from advertising, and much tsk-tsking over bloggers. And yet, you will never see a major parenting magazine do a story about how easy it is to make your own baby food. (Just mash bananas or overcooked vegetables with a fork, or throw cooked spaghetti in a blender.) A travel magazine’s staffers may wander the world anonymously and pick up their own checks, but the resulting stories are often laden with the brands of cars driven through the countryside, fancy carry-on luggage that fit into the overhead bin, or easy-to-pack designer clothes.  A beauty magazine may recommend a new face cream because the manufacturer is an advertiser and had a swanky launch luncheon with fancy goody bags for all the junior staffers. It’s probably safe to assume that the product didn’t cause an outbreak of contact dermatitis, but is it really the best? Finally, a reporter for the New York Times would never let her personal friendship with a source cause her to slant her case for sending American troops into harm’s way, unless her name was Judith Miller.

I’m also an author, and I want my books to be reviewed. Hence, my publisher and I send out copies to people we think might want to know about them.  The recipients don’t always write a review, and I understand (because, of course, I have a pile of books on the floor of my office that I won’t get around to reading.) Some bloggers have interviewed me but told me not to send a book because they already have too many. Not all the reviews are glowing, although there is the issue of what constitutes a bad review. One of the worst Amazon reviews of Day Trading for Dummies is headed “Not for Dummies.” I’m okay with that!

The FTC’s targets fall into a few categories. The first are personal bloggers who are in the business of getting free stuff. I subscribe to a few different lists for writers looking at sources, and there are often requests from bloggers looking for samples to review. Some more or less promise a good review in exchange for product. Finally, multi-level marketing and direct salespeople have been known to use blogs to promote their products, without disclosing either accurate information about the products or their own selling relationship.  And, there have been loopholes that held a company’s print advertising to a higher standard than its online marketing efforts, especially in the use of celebrity endorsements. A lot of the Facebook ads citing Oprah or Jennifer Aniston to sell vitamin preparations could not run in magazines.

The FTC has said that they will review the situation on a case-by-case basis. It doesn’t seem that they plan to run a red-light camera operation, sending out bills for $11,000 and asking questions later. I suspect that most bloggers have nothing to fear, nor do the authors and musicians looking for a bit of promotion. But a few folks do need to worry before they ruin it for everyone.

President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, a decision that instantly created controversy. For one thing, Tina Fey wasn’t even nominated. For another, Obama’s been president less than nine months, and had only been in office for 12 days when his nomination was submitted.

In case you’re wondering who nominated him, NobelPrize.org states, “The names of the nominees and other information about the nominations cannot be revealed until 50 years later.” So if you’re an anti-birther or anti-taxer or anti-tolerater, the answer is: the Forces of Evil. (And if you’re wondering how I know about Tina Fey, sorry, but I’m not sharing my peyote with you.)

The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which chooses the winner each year, explained that “Obama has as a president created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play.” According to the Associated Press, committee member and Norwegian politician Aagot Valle added that this year’s prize should be seen as “support and a commitment for Obama.”

The president, for his part, was humble about his victory. “I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many transformative figures that have been honored by this prize,” he said. “I will accept this award as a call to action.”

But just a few hours before Obama’s victory was announced, he stood idly by as NASA tried to blow up the moon! From what I can gather, the U.S. space agency’s $79 million rocket was supposed to poke a giant hole in the Alan Shepard Memorial Golf Course, at which point all the water inside the moon would rain down on Earth — because the moon is up above and we’re down below and that’s how gravity works — thereby solving our planet’s impending water crisis.

Unfortunately, the expected Michael Bay-style cloud of ice and dust never materialized, leaving terrestrial blow-’em-up enthusiasts with only a small white flash on the moon’s surface to ogle through their telescopes. Kaboom-o-philes immediately voiced their dissatisfaction on Twitter — where intelligent discourse occasionally rises above the level of which soup users are eating to ward off swine flu — while the Man in the Moon posted his own message seconds later: “something just hit me n the ass & it stings like hell. omg, i am so not n the mood, ya’ll! WTF???”

Though the president hasn’t officially declared war on the moon yet, the U.S. is still trying to finish off the previous administration’s leftovers in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention discouraging Johnny Depp and Disney from filming the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie anywhere near Somalia.

Giving Obama the Peace Prize for the peace he might help bring about in the next three years sounds suspiciously like when parents give a teenager a new car as a bribe for good grades. “Barry, do you promise to achieve peace in the Middle East if we give you this prize?” In lieu of results, the Nobel committee accepts IOUs. (In case anyone from the Pulitzer committee is reading this, I promise my writing will improve if you give me a prize.)

I don’t mean to rain on the president’s parade, but I have a feeling that the Nobel outsiders are still trying to get the attention of that sexy bad boy George W. Bush. Sure, he’s a bully and not that smart, but boy howdy, what a smirk!

Two years ago they gave the Peace Prize to Al Gore, Bush’s Democratic opponent in the 2000 presidential election, and now Obama gets it. I mean, it ain’t like that mention of “the role that the United Nations … can play” was subtle by any means. Just let it go, Norway. I’m sure other democracy-hating democracy promoters (President Bush was nothing if not cleverly ironic) will come along eventually.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the entire Scandinavian subcontinent just felt bad for Obama because he couldn’t help his adopted hometown of Chicago win bragging rights to the 2016 Summer Olympics on October 2. I guess he didn’t trash his hotel room in Copenhagen last week or yell at any pastry chefs for getting his Danish order wrong, ensuring that Scandinavia would give him another prize a week later just so he’d make a return visit. Obama doesn’t court celebrity, but if those Scandinavians need a charismatic famous person to brighten their sunshine-free days, I don’t see any reason why we should stand in their way.

And speaking of celebrities, Obama needs to be careful that he doesn’t turn into the Jennifer Hudson or Affleck-and-Damon of Nobel Peace Prize recipients. Hudson won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her first film, 2006’s Dreamgirls, but her backstory — an American Idol reject who was expected to become a footnote to pop-culture history — was much more interesting than her performance.

Similarly, Good Will Hunting (1997) is an entertaining, feel-good drama, but Ben Affleck and Matt Damon most likely won the Best Original Screenplay award because of their off-screen trajectory: best friends since childhood (and tenth cousins, once removed, according to the New England Historic Genealogical Society), they wrote a movie for themselves to star in that quickly turned the duo into A-list leading men. Hooray for Hollywood! (Affleck’s first film after winning the Oscar in ‘98 was Michael Bay’s Armageddon, in which NASA sends oil riggers, i.e. real men like George W. Bush, into space to blow up an asteroid.)

And hooray for our president, but most importantly, hooray for the United States, because for the majority of this decade our international reputation hasn’t been so hot. Jennifer Hudson’s life as an actor may take a backseat to her singing career, and Affleck and Damon will probably never write another screenplay together, so all President Obama has to do is make good on at least some of his promises for peace and he’ll be ahead of the game — at least the kind of game played by real celebrities, who have nothing to do with the fate of the nation, no matter what E! News tells us.

Before I go, I do have one complaint: The Nobel committee said that it “attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.” Good for him, but 22 years ago Superman gave his all to rid the world of nuclear weapons, only to be completely shut out during awards season!

Instead the 1987 Peace Prize was given to Oscar Arias Sánchez, who as president of Costa Rica signed peace accords to promote democracy in Central America. That’s great and all, but Superman gathered all the world’s nuclear weapons into a big net and threw them into the sun. Why wasn’t that noteworthy enough for a Nobel prize?

Of course, the resulting shock waves from the explosion of thousands of nuclear weapons in the heart of the sun should’ve been large enough and violent enough to incinerate everything and everyone on Earth and beyond. Luckily for us, Superman was stuck with low-budget special effects in 1987, much like NASA in 2009.

In fact, most Americans are having to make do with low budgets these days. The international community may be expecting President Obama to address the problems of peace around the world, but first he’ll be expected to address the peace of mind of frustrated constituents here at home.

As a wired citizen of our not-terribly-United States, you’ve no doubt received your share of cranky, mass-distributed partisan e-mails. I get them all the time, and my favorites (a phrase I use here ironically) are the ones that purport to show the differences between two viewpoints by offering the best possible description of one side and the worst possible slander of the other. The preponderance of these seem to come from the right side of our political discourse – the side that’s much better at name-calling and manipulating good ideas to sound like terrible ones. (But there I go again…)

One might think I have better things to do than take personal offense when one of these anonymous hatefests appears in my inbox … but, no, I can never seem to let these things pass without a response. Sometimes I offer a reasoned debunking of whatever bilge is contained in the diatribe, but too often I crank up the flamethrower and launch a torrent of my own uncivil rantings. The latter was the case recently, and as soon as I hit “send” I regretted my contribution to the coarsening of the national dialogue … even if it was just between myself and a friend.

And then I thought it might be interesting to conduct a bit of a thought experiment. (Actually, it’s just a cut-and-paste experiment, but whatever.) What if we compared only the “best” views of both sides, and ignored the “worst” views? Might that reflect the true essence of the body politic? Or, alternatively, is a comparison of the “worsts” more representative of how blue sees red, and vice versa?

Here, then, is my cut-and-paste job. It’s not perfect – even I could make more profound arguments for conservatism or against liberalism than the anonymous creator of the e-mail blast I received this week – but you can decide for yourself how well any of the statements represent prevailing viewpoints on the issues and attitudes of the day. (In each of the following comparative statements, italics are used not for emphasis, but for differentiation.) First, a look on the bright side:

If a liberal sees a child killed by gun violence, he looks for ways to stop the next such incident through responsible restrictions.
If a conservative doesn’t like guns, he doesn`t buy one.

If a liberal is a vegetarian, he hopes that his meat-eating friends will consume food that’s grown with respect for animals and the environment, that’s handled cleanly during processing, and that’s eaten with consideration for the health of the consumer.
If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn’t eat meat.

If a conservative is homosexual, he quietly leads his life.
If a liberal is gay, he wants to enjoy the legal rights and choices everyone else has.

If a black man or Hispanic is conservative, he sees himself as independently successful.
If an African-American or Hispanic is liberal, he proudly places himself within a tradition of civil-rights activism and tolerance, and expects equal opportunity.

If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
An unemployed or working-class liberal strives — together with his wealthier counterparts when possible, in opposition to them when necessary — to find ways to make life better and more equal for himself and those who share his status.

If a conservative doesn’t like a talk show host, he switches channels.
If a liberal doesn’t like a talk-show host, he laughs or complains and then finds more intelligent sources for information (usually not involving talk-show hosts).

A liberal non-believer expects his non-belief to be respected as much as the beliefs of those around him, in a free-flowing marketplace of ideas.
If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn’t go to church.

If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it.
A liberal believes that affordable, high-quality healthcare is the right of every individual, and that if the private sector won’t do the right thing, then government must.

A conservative considers himself a child of God, endowed by Him with the freedom to make his own choices in life for himself and his family.
A liberal recognizes that America is a land of many faiths and creeds, and that favoring one over another is inappropriate in the public sphere.

A conservative believes in individual responsibility and free choice.
A liberal believes that society functions best when all Americans receive equal treatment and opportunity — and that government is often needed to counterbalance man’s baser instincts.

So much for live-and-let-live. Here comes the hammer:

If a liberal doesn’t like guns, he feels that no one should have one.
If a conservative sees a child killed by gun violence, he wishes the kid had had a gun, too, because more guns ALWAYS result in fewer dead people.

If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants to ban all meat products for everyone.
No matter what a conservative eats, he believes that considerations like conservation, safety and health should be secondary to the accumulation and retention of wealth by the businesses that grow, process, sell and serve food.

If a liberal is homosexual, he loudly demands legislated respect.
If a conservative recognizes and accepts that he is gay, he quickly becomes a liberal, because there’s no place for him amidst conservative intolerance.

A liberal who’s black or Hispanic sees himself as a victim in need of government protection.
If a black man or Hispanic is conservative, he automatically gets a place in the Republican leadership (because there are so few minority conservatives, yet the GOP loves to pretend it’s a “big tent”).

A down-and-out liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.
A working-class conservative allows his political and religious leaders to convince him that minorities/immigrants/gays/Jews/atheists/liberals are to blame for his plight, which gets him so worked up he ignores the way those leaders are perpetuating his own troubles.

If a liberal doesn’t like a talk show host he demands that those he doesn’t like be limited or shut down.
If a conservative doesn’t like a talk-show host it’s usually because that host points out the idiocy, intolerance, corruption and hypocrisy of the conservative’s leaders.

A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God or religion silenced or removed.
A conservative non-believer wonders why he doesn’t get invited to parties, and questions his affiliation with people who are so intolerant.

A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his healthcare.
A conservative believes, “I got mine — now you get yours. And if you can’t afford it, get out of the way. And keep your government hands off my Medicare!”

A liberal believes that he is qualified to make everyone’s choices about how to express their faith (whether they like it or not).
A conservative believes that the tenets of his own faith should be the law of the land, all others be damned (literally), and that every other American really ought to convert.

A liberal believes that he knows what is best for everyone and wants to use government force, in totalitarian fashion, to compel them to comply.
A conservative believes it’s every man for himself, and that he has a right to feel aggrieved and throw around words like “totalitarian” if minorities or the poor are granted “special rights” to the freedoms and privileges he himself already enjoys.

A quick observation: The positive characterizations sound entirely reasonable on both sides … but the negative depictions sure are funnier, aren’t they? I suppose that’s the point of such dumbed-down partisanship, as reflected in mass e-mails and extreme talk radio and TV – to legitimize your own argument by making the other side look ridiculous. But it’s nice to imagine that while screaming pundits and internet nasties continue to amp up the negativity – and I freely admit my too-frequent participation in all of that – there might still be a few actual statesmen in positions of power who are not only able, but willing, to see the merits (or at least the humanity) in both sides of these arguments.

Like I said, it’s nice to imagine.

Shrewd Investor and Nasty Man

Given the massive Federal deficit, it’s a sure bet that taxes are going up sooner rather than later. Before the Teabaggaz start posting, I think we can all agree that cutting taxes while starting a war is a bad idea. Stuff costs money, whether we’re talking about body armor for our warfighters in Afghanistan or Under Armour shirts. But the problem is what to do about it, because we have to fund our deficit somehow. However, we also have a really fragile economy. If the government raises taxes, will it crowd out the investment and spending needed to create jobs?

The idea behind cutting taxes in the Reagan era was that if less money went to taxes, more would be used for private sector investing, and that the private-sector investing would generate so much economic growth that the loss in revenue from the tax cut would be short-lived. Eventually the economy would expand so much that more taxes would come in at the lower rate because of the larger base. Private-sector investing did increase; the U.S. remains the strongest capital market in the world. It didn’t increase by enough to offset the tax cuts, and part of Reagan’s economic legacy was an increased Federal deficit.

Money can be spent on taxes, consumption, savings, and investment. (Paying down debt is a form of savings.) Money that goes to one purpose cannot be used for another.  Money that the government takes in from taxes can also be used for consumption, savings, or investment. War and Medicare are examples of government consumption spending (which may be on behalf of citizens). Paying down debt is a form of savings, and goodness knows that the government at all levels has plenty of debt to pay off. The government invests when it spends money on bridges, schools, airports, and the like. For accounting purposes, this is handled like consumption.

When taxes are cut, some of the money that would have been spent on taxes goes to consumption instead. Increased spending can help build the economy, but a lot depends on what people buy. Buying fuel-efficient American cars creates jobs for American workers. The decreased energy consumption would put less pressure on our infrastructure and could even lead to a decreased U.S. military presence in the Middle East. Yeah, this is the stuff of Green Party utopia, but it also illustrates how some types of consumption spending function like investment spending.

By the way, one of the biggest investments that most individuals make is in their education. However, that is handled as consumption in national accounting, as though the money were spent on shoes and beer instead of tuition and textbooks. Some economists feel that this understates the rate of investment in our economy.

Andrew Carnegie believed that he was justified in denying raises to his workers even as he raked in the cash because the workers would just drink their pay raises away. Carnegie used the money to buy libraries and museums, universities and symphonies. His legacy is amazing, but is it fair? Does the launch of Sesame Street offset the murders during the Homestead strike?

Likewise, I hesitate to say that buying cheap consumer goods is wrong, but I wonder if that’s the best thing that we could be doing. If we are not going to invest, then maybe the government needs to do so on our behalf in order to stabilize the economy.  I’m not enthusiastic about paying more taxes, but I don’t see how people buying cheap goods made with low-cost Chinese labor sold by minimum wage employees at Wal-Mart is going to create the sustainable investment that this country needs.

I’m not thrilled about the prospect of paying higher taxes, but for whatever reason, we have proven to ourselves that individuals cannot invest and spend our way to national prosperity. Sweden is one example of a nation that has both high taxes and a high standard of living, so it’s possible. Can we do it? That, I’m just not sure of.