Arlen Spector To Blow Taxpayer Dollars On Football

richardovervold.blogspot.com
(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on 5/15/2008 by Keyhole]

Sure doesn't make sense to me, shouldn't Congress be focused on MORE IMPORTANT THINGS!

It's truly ridiculous what some of our elected officials think should be a priority!

Here's a little more from the article:


Why is the government butting into a civillian industry like football?

And this isn't the same as when they were dealing with the baseball industry, that had to do with illegal drugs, steriods.

What's wrong with our elected officials, can't they see there are more pressing matters to deal with and that they shouldn't be wasting their time and our tax dollars on this!

richardovervold.blogspot.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 5/15/2008 by Keyhole]

He's protecting his constituents, which is exactly what he should do. Don't forget that the NFL is a business and that the people of Pennsylvania pay tens of millions of dollars to see a FAIR product on the field. If there is a coverup in the NFL front office, his constituents are being defrauded of a large amount of money.

The only difference between this and any other corporate fraud scandal is that it is in the context of a professional sport.

Protecting his constituents?

Goodell Determines Pats Broke Rules by Taping Jets' Signals


Was handled properly by the NFL, it's THEIR rules, not the governments!

If the NFL had a rule that there was no chewing gum on the field and then people did, should the government also get involved with that RULE of the NFL?

There is NO US LAW that prohibits them from doing this, only NFL RULES!

It's not up to the US government to make sure NFL RULES are enforced or not! It was only called CHEATING because it broke an NFL RULE!



They get involved in those cases because a federal and/or state law had been broken!

There was no Federal or State laws broken here, only an NFL RULE!

The NFL can sort this out, NOT Congress! They should be dealing with FAR more important issues!

[edit on 5/15/2008 by Keyhole]

reply to post by vor78

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Actually, Specters constituents are really in PA, and as a resident of PA, I don't give a crap about the Pats, or football for that matter... and yes... there are MUCH more important things to do...

G-D-it!!

I'm embarrassed this guy has been elected to this position, year in and year out when the vote is up. This is the piece of crap I emailed about impeaching the Shrub... several times and receiving an auto reply.

Oddly, once I made comment to a friend via email, about another politician responding personally to me... lo and behold comes a lengthy response from Specters office, albeit a form type letter, but at least a response... however, that response was a very out of date form letter about Iraq... not a mention of impeachment. So I responded, paragraph by paragraph, with sources disputing his 'letter' and AGAIN asking about IMPEACHMENT for Bush and this Admin....

The response to that was a lengthy, 1/2 out of date, 1/2 lies, form letter concerning Iran I did not respond further.

BUT, NOW... here this dumb-@ss and the rest of the morons in Congress are going to actually spend time even discussing this garbage!?!? (palms up, shaking head from side to side) Again... as each day passes... I am more convinced we have slipped into that Dimension known as 'Bizarro World' No... no need to even look into impeachment, but let's harass these dumb jocks in front of the 'fans' for entertainment... your reality TV... and re-itterate the word "Patriots" over and over again... to appeal to the country and reaffirm "patriotism" -- much like scaring the public at the last RNC by repeating 911, Sept. 11, Sadaam hussein, WMD's, etc... to try to sway voters. Truly sickening.

These people have become scum of the Earth and they are supposed to represent us...? No thanks. When will everyone else have enough sense and quit voting for this idiots... Dem. - Rep.... doesn't matter. I have voted the "other" option or "another" option for the past ten+ years, when I started taking it seriously. Even not knowing what I know (or think I know) thru here now, I still voted for ANY other party or NOT for the incumbant, if you don't have other choices. It's the only way we *might* be able to get them out of there now and get this damn thing back. Problem is, the crooked electronic machines are in place, with little resistance, and we're off to more stolen elections, only on a wider scale, imo. Anyway... damn that Specter!! [/rant]

[edit on 5/15/2008 by RabbitChaser]

reply to post by Keyhole

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Far more important than protecting the taxpayers of his state and the millions of dollars they spend on the NFL every year?

I think that's a matter of opinion.

Again, it goes right back to what I said earlier. Its a business. Do not get caught up in the fact that its in the context of a sport. It is NO different than any other company that might be defrauding its shareholders or customers. The Patriots broke no laws, but the NFL, in its handling of the matter may very well have if it is covering up widespread cheating in the league.

I guess things like, trying to end the "conflict" in Iraq', fixing our economy, trying to lower gas prices, lowering our dependence on oil, finding/funding alternative energy resources, lowering our debt,..... , let's just push all these things aside and fix the corruption in football!????

It will take millions of taxpayers $$ to ALSO have a congressional hearing (it always does!) on a RULE that was broken by a civillian company! More WASTED tax $$ of a country in TRILLIONS of dollars in debt!!!

People spent "millions of dollars" on football for ENTERTAINMENT, and that is EXACTLY what they got!!!

ENTERTAINMENT!!!

[edit on 5/15/2008 by Keyhole]

reply to post by Keyhole

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You're right, they got entertainment, but they expect that entertainment to be on a fair and level playing field. How many of those fans would not have spend a thousand bucks on season tickets if they found that the games essentially had the integrity of professional wrestling and that the NFL management council was covering it up?

Not many, I would imagine.

Which puts us right back to the point. The cheating issue is one that can be cleared up by the NFL, but this assumes that the NFL itself is carrying out the investigation in good faith. If not, it subjects the NFL itself to the same oversight as any other monopolistic business. It may also subject them to Congressional oversight as part of their Antitrust exemption.

Its not that much different from dragging oil company execs up in front of Congress. The only real difference is that many people simply can't accept that the NFL is a multi-billion dollar business first and a sport second.

No idea what just happened here. I was attempting to edit the post above and got a double post instead.

[edit on 15-5-2008 by vor78]

I can see both sides here. On one side you have a real peckerwood in Arlen Spector. He's trying to hold the league's anti-trust exemption over their head like the sword of Damocles purely because he, personally, isn't sattisfied with their investigation of this. On the other side, you've got a corporation (the NFL) that benefits from that anti-trust exemption and in whos integrity the livelihood of millions depends upon (gambling, television contracts, merchandise, sponsors, sportswriters, etc) seemingly ho-humming their way around a gross rules violation.

I'm not even sure that non-football fans realize what's happened here. You have the Patriots filming their opposition's sideline, stealing defensive calls and developing their own opponent's playbook, then you've got them running a quick paced offense that forces the defense to call in their play and get lined up on the fly. New England's coaches read the signal from the opponent's sideline so they know exactly what defense they're facing, and since there's still 20-25 seconds left on the playclock, they radio in to their quarterback "The defense is lining up for a run blitz, or whatever) and that QB changes the playcall to exploit whatever defense he's facing. The reason this can be exploited (and I honestly don't believe New England is the only team that has done this, just possibly the most blatent at it) is that they allow the QB to be in wireless contact with the coach until the play clock runs under 15 seconds. The league's solution of giving one defensive player wireless contact with the coaches is probably about as good as the league can do as far as neutralizing this.

I also think it will probably iron itself out this season as the entire league is now spooked and will almost certainly change their entire playcall scheme because they all think Bill Belichick has a file on them and will exploit it. At this point SPecter needs to shut up, sit down, and see what happens next. But, then again, there isn't much publicity or name recognition in doing that so I doubt he's going away anytime soon.

Remember the NFL is a multi-billion dollar industry. Its not just a sport. Is the NFL or the MLB/NBA not part of the economy?

It would be the same as investigating malpractice within a company like VISA or CISCO there wouldn't be an outcry.