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Note: This article originally ran on June 3, 2010.

Do athletes make too much money?  The quick reaction to this question is “yes”.

Let’s take a deeper look.  As usual, I’ll use baseball as an example.

The news media reports the big signing bonuses of the first round draft picks – but fail to report that the size of the bonuses drop precipitously throughout the draft.  In the later stages of the draft, a player might received a bonus of a couple thousand dollars – or no bonus at all.  But then they jump into the minors at a hefty salary, right?  Well, if you consider $1100 per month to be a lot of money.  That’s the MAXIMUM a player can earn in his first season, if he signs a minor league contract.  (A very small number of elite prospects sign Major League contracts with different rules).  The salaries increase as you move up through the system, but it’s very difficult to get rich playing baseball in the minor leagues.  Many players have another job in the off-season.

In this year’s draft (which begins on Monday night), 1500 players will be drafted by baseball teams each year. Hundreds more are signed as foreign free agents. The active roster for a Major League team is 25 players (expanded to 40 in September). That means that there are 750 active major leaguers for most of the season. In theory, this could expand to as many as 1200 in September if everyone expanded thie rosters to 40 players (which is not the case).  Obviously, the vast majority of minor league players are never going to make it to the Major Leagues.  Most of the players who do make it to the highest level won’t stick around very long.

What we’re really looking at when we see the “rich” athletes are the elite performers.  But elite performers in nearly every industry are very well compensated.  Find me one of the top 750 bankers in the country, and I’ll bet she makes a few bucks.

Athletes are entertainers.  When we look around the world of entertainment, we see a lot of highly compensatated stars – people who make as much money working on one movie as A-Rod makes for a season of work.  Yet, people seem much more willing to point at A-Rod as overpaid, but not so much at Tom Cruise or Taylor Swift (no, we’re not Taylor haters – we like her).

Why is this?  I’m really not sure.  It may be the perception that actors and singers work at their craft, whereas athletes are just using their “God-given” talents to play a child’s game.  If you subscribe to this theory, watch some of the “human interest” stories during the Olympics.  You’ll hear about kids putting in long hours of practice from the time they were knee high to a grasshopper in order to hone those raw God-given gifts into polished skills – beginning the “apprenticeship” aspect of their career at a very young age.

A typical baseball team has a payroll of about $100 million.  For the same cost, you could produce a Hollywood movie with a couple of big name stars.  I personally see more value in 162 baseball games than in one movie.  People complain about the cost of tickets to sporting events, but in a lot of baseball stadiums, you can actually buy a ticket for the same price as a movie ticket.  The difference is that the baseball team has a detailed price structure based on seat location and the desirability of the game.  When you buy a ticket to a movie, you pay the same for bad seats to a horrible movie as you do for good seats at the best movie of the year.  How’s that for logic?

Are athletes overpaid?  Nah.  Are elite performers in various industries overpaid?  Perhaps – but people pay for elite talent, whether it’s in baseball, acting, or investing.

Did you find this article interesting?  Then you might also like my article regarding whether or not college athletes should be paid.

Note: this article originally ran on September 29, 2011

Yesterday, Amazon announced a new family of Kindle devices, including the Kindle Fire with an advanced web browser and full color screen, the Kindle Touch (obviously, with a touch screen), and a low cost $79 model. It’s mere coincidence that I happened to write about the Kindle for another article that appears on the site today. That article (What I like About My Kindle) was written prior to the Amazon announcements. Let’s take a moment to review the new models.

I listed the prices for the “With Special Offers” and without special offers. For example, the Kindle shows a price of $79 / $109. It’s $79 With Special Offers or $109 without. What are “special offers”? These are offers that appear on the screen saver and home screens of the devices (but not within the text of a book). The “with Special Offers” versions of the devices are $30-$50 less than the standard version. The general consensus seems to be that the deals that appears are good deals (I heard of one person getting a “20% off the purchase of a laptop” deal), so my thought is that most people will want this version. A friend of mine who owns a previous version complained that he couldn’t get Special Offers on his Kindle …

This week the United States Open Golf Championship will be held at the Olympic Club at San Francisco.  There is a lot of anticipation for the event this year as well as a number of stories.

The USGA has released the pairings for the Thursday and Friday rounds, and there are some very attractive made for a Hollywood movie type of three-somes.

First and foremost will be the matinee headliner of Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods and Masters Champion, Bubba Watson.  Be glad you are at home watching these three because if you were at the tournament I can assure you the gallery size for this triumvirate would parallel the crowd at a Rose Bowl game.

Tiger is the early 5 ½ to 1 favorite with the Vegas odds makers.  This is likely due to his win two weeks ago at Jack’s place – The Memorial. 

Of course we have seen this before this year. Tiger wins at Bay Hill and the world announces “He is Back” then he falters badly and appears not to be able to handle the pressure of a major while playing in the Masters.  Then he looks like the Tiger of old on the weekend at the Memorial. The question remains, will he contend this week.

Buggy anyone?

In Scotland, they are called buggies, but here in the good ol’ USA we call them Golf carts, or even sometimes affectionately – chariots.

Next week during the U.S. Open a name of court cases of a bygone era – Casey Martin again will be riding a cart for the his rounds after, qualifying for tournament.  Martin, who is the Oregon Golf Coach, retired from competitive professional golf six years ago.      

Casey Martin is most known amongst the golf aficionados as the man  who successfully sued the U.S. PGA Tour in 2001 for the right to ride a cart.  Martin suffers from a  because of a degenerative circulatory disorder and has had difficulty walking due to this condition since his teenage years.

I am quite confident NBC will give this significant play again, although it has been more than a decade since this was major news on the golfing front.

Martin did take a cart during local and sectional qualifying and will be allowed the use of a cart during the tournament this week.  His playing companions will not be able to hitch a ride with him between holes. 

Who will win?

Normally a fluke does not with the U.S. Open. It is a tournament with the most severe conditions in terms of deep and thick rough, dry fairways, hard and fast greens, and demonic pin placements.

The person who wins typically is hitting a lot of fairways, is able to control their ball flight, and is playing outstanding around the greens.

This one is on the West Coast, and not many have won more on the left coast than the left hander, I am taking Phil Mickelson.  Plus with the nickname in  GCSSA circles, Flopsy McChokenstien due to a few of his near misses in majors, I am hoping Phil can get the 5 second place monkey off of his back and magically find it this week by the bay. 

Until Next Time, Stay Classy Thermopolis, Wyoming.

47% of Americans pay no income tax, according to many sources. Is this really true?  Let’s take a look.

First of all, I’m going to present IRS data, so I’m limited to the information from tax returns. According to the 2010 US census the population of the United States was around 308.75 million people. The number of exemptions claimed on 2009 tax returns (the most current data available from the IRS) was 283.8 million. In other words, 25 million people – about 8% of the population – don’t appear anywhere on tax returns.

Who are these 25 million people? [survata]They could be people dodging taxes. They could be people who have paid their share of taxes in their lifetime (retired) or will pay their fair share at a later stage in their life (students). These may even be people who paid some amount of income tax during the year but aren’t filing for a refund (yes, this does happen).

Let’s work with the numbers we have from the IRS. Of the 140 million tax returns filed for the 2009 tax year, just over 58% paid taxes. So this means 42% of the people in this group didn’t pay taxes, right?

Wrong.

It means that 42% of the returns didn’t have any tax liability. What’s the difference?

Let’s walk through this example:

• Sam makes $3000 from his summer job and has no tax liability.
• Danielle and Thomas have three children: Mark, Lindsey, and William. They have tax liability of $150,000.

Looking at this example, what percent of people aren’t paying taxes? Is it fair to say 50? 50% of the tax returns (1 out of 2) have tax liability. Is it 33% (1 of the 3 adults aren’t paying taxes?). Is it 17% (1 of the 6 Americans aren’t paying taxes?) The people who are simply looking at the number of tax returns with taxes paid are going to say 50%. Is that right or wrong? I’ll let you decide.

If you choose 33% or 17%, let’s dig a bit deeper. Take a look on my article regarding how many people make more than $250,000. You’ll notice an correlation between number of exemptions (essentially household size) and income. The lowest income levels have the lowest number of exemptions (1.01), with this increasing until it plateaus around 3 in the $500,000 – $1,000,000 range.

There’s also a correlation between income level and likelihood of owing income tax. Less than 3% of tax returns with under $5000 in adjusted gross income owed any taxes, building to 77%+ in the $40,000 – $50,000 range and near 99% by the time we reach the $100,000+ range.

What’s my point? Let’s look at an extreme example. A million tax returns in the sub-$5000 range represent 1,010,000 Americans (1.01 exemptions per return). A million tax returns in the $500,000 – $1,000,000 range represent 3,050,000 people (3.05 exemption per return). Let’s take a sample of a million returns from each of these groups. Let’s further say that all one million returns in the $500,000 – $1,000,000 group have taxes owed and 160,000 returns in the sub $5000 group have taxes owed. That means that 1,160,000 / 2,000,000 – or 58% – of the returns have tax liability. However, these returns represent 3,211,600 or the 4,150,000 people – in excess of 77%. The basic mathematical concept here is weighted average.

An extreme example, yes. However, it does illustrate a valid point. The 42% of tax returns with no liability is going to represent less than 42% of the 283.75 million people covered by these returns.

Just want the data? Here it is!

Source: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/09in11si.xls (compare column 6 to column 1)

[/survata]

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Note: This article originally ran on May 26, 2010

For several years, President Obama has been dodging the issue of his birth certificate.  His camp has repeatedly insisted that it is genuine and ridiculed those who dare to question the authenticity.  But is there more to the story?  Of course there is.  Here are the cold, hard facts that prove that the birth certificate is a fake.

• The first step was to determine whether or not a genuine birth certificate existed in some other part of the world.  Taking a cue from his last name, we traveled to O’Bama’s ancestral country of Ireland.  In a dark records room in the city of Cork, we discovered a birth certificate insisting that O’Bama was born at a Cork hospital.
• We performed a detailed scientific analysis on the certificate itself.  While the paper does indeed date back to 1961, the ink does not.  Noted forensic inkyologist Marsupial Jones suggests that the ink is no more than 5 years old.
• Information from confidential government sources indicate that Lee Harvey Oswald was being handled by the CIA and was only following orders.
• Why is the state of Hawaii joining in the cover-up?  Our sources within the state department indicate that key Democratic members of congress threatened harsh economic sanctions against Hawaii if they failed to comply.  Planes would have been forbidden to land in the state, cutting off the vital flow of tourists’ money.  The United States would also have ceased imports from Hawaii – notably sugar cane and Don Ho albums.
• While Hawaii became a state in 1959, its citizens did not immediately become full citizens of the US.  Residents of any new states  are under a probationary citizenship during the first five years of statehood.  Only residents born after this five year waiting period are considered to be natural-born U.S. citizens (and thus eligible for the presidency).  Obama was born in 1961 – three years before the end of this waiting period.
• Sites such as Fact Check have shown a photo of a birth announcement purportedly published in the Honolulu Advertiser on August 13, 1961.  However, this evidence does not stand up to close scrutiny.  Once again, Marsupial Jones indicates that the ink is relatively fresh.  Additionally, many of the news stories read more like the The Onion than a serious newspaper.  Look no further than the article about the Cubs-Cardinals baseball game on page 2B, which makes reference to the “reigning world champion Chicago Cubs”.
• Take a copy of Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope.  Beginning at page 12 and going through page 297, write down the first letter of the first noun on the fourth sentence of the page.  You’ll be stunned at the secret message.

On the eve of the Belmont Stakes, the trainer of I’ll Have Another has announced that the horse has been scratched and will not race.  The culprit is swollen tendon in a leg.

The horse racing industry has been in need of a shot in the arm, and I’ll Have Another’s attempt at history would have given it a huge boost.  The last time a horse won the Triple Crown was in 1978 with Affirmed.

Had Another been able to race in the Stakes and come away with a win, the financial reward for his owners would have been enormous.  Not just the substantial stud fees, but also merchandising rights.  There’s a movie about Secretariat – would a triple crown run by I’ll have another generated a multi-million dollar bounty?

I’ll Have Another’s leg woes are also bad for NBC, which will televised the race, and the companies who purchased advertising.  What could have been an electric event with millions of extra viewers will now become just another ho-hum race.  Not only will the race lack Another’s star power, but will also be without Kentucky Derby favorite Bodemeister.

In the end, this is the case of an owner and trainer putting the horse’s health ahead of possible financial riches.  We’ve seen a horse break down on the track in a big race – Barbaro – and it’s not pretty.  Perhaps I’ll Have Another could have girded up his loins for one last race and run into the history books.  Perhaps he would have race poorly and tarnished his image.  Or, worst of all, perhaps this could have led to a broken leg and sent him down the path of euthanization.

As much as I would have enjoyed seeing I’ll Have Another make history, I agree with the call by the owner and trainer in this case.  Better safe than sorry.  As big and powerful as these horses can be, it’s important to also remember that they can be very fragile.

Editor’s note: Peter Shaw is joining The Soap Boxers and will be writing a conservative political column the first Thursday of every month.  He replaces Squeaky, who will still write occasional articles, but on a less regular basis.  Welcome aboard, Peter.

Every election year I hear this phrase; “This is the most important election in our lifetime.” Sometimes you hear it’s the most important election since the Civil War. The recall vote in Wisconsin for Governor Scott Walker has prompted some people to say it’s the most important election ever. I am a political aficionado but the one thing I hate about politics are the emotional arguments. I don’t like being played by any candidate or cause.

I honestly believe the election of President George HW Bush, our 43rd president, was more important than this election in 2012. I believe the election of President Ronald Reagan was more important than this election. I believe the election of President Abraham Lincoln was more important than this election. In 2004 President Bush and other Republicans gloated that more people voted Republican than ever before. This claim is pointless since everyone knows there were more registered voters in 2004 than ever before. The real landslide was the 1972 election where Nixon won 49 states.

When President Obama tried to apply the Gospel of the Cross and the Golden Rule to same sex marriages he isn’t making a logical or theological argument. President Obama is playing on people’s reverence, love, and obedience to God. In the process President Obama is pitting Holy Scripture against Holy Scripture. I find this contemptible.

Recently the Department of Justice employed selective enforcement by not enforcing federal law titled “Defense of Marriage Act”. President Obama said this was done because the law doesn’t provide equal protection under the law. This interpretation of law is logical however it isn’t up to law enforcement to interpret but the courts. I find this unconstitutional yet preferable to President Obama’s emotional plea.

What needs to be done by every voter is examining their values and why they hold such values. Every voter should gain a deeper understanding of the issues and the institutions of our government and society. For example, we need to know why the state is involved in an ecclesiastical institution. We need to know what is life and when does begin? We need to know what made America great and why she is floundering. We need to know the real reason why the 2012 election is important.

I believe I have a distinct perspective on the issues because I always ask why. I naturally distrust second person sources. I make very attempt to approach every issue with a stoic, logical, and objective perspective. I will cover these issues and more in the coming weeks. I can’t tell you what your values are and why you hold them. I can share my understanding of politics, government, and society. Despite what Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats say, rhetoric doesn’t divide a nation. A diverse culture divides a nation. I hope my stoic contribution to our web magazine somehow narrows the divide between liberals and conservatives.

My name is Peter Shaw and I write for TSB web magazine.

Appel Falls Far From The Tree

Will Mark Appel be leaving The Tree behind and putting down new roots in Pittsburgh?

On the eve of this year’s baseball draft, many observers felt that Stanford pitcher Mark Appel (pronounced A-pell) would be picked #1 overall by the Houston Astros.  Appel and Georgia high school hitter Byron Buxton were 1-2 on most people’s draft board.

Many people had the toolsy Buxton ahead of Appel, but there’s always a risk/reward with high school players.  The Major League teams gets the raw material earlier, before a player learns so many bad habits.  But on the flip side, there’s a lot more opportunity for a player to simply stall in development or be overrun by injuries.  A college player is generally closer to a finished product.

When the Astros finally made their pick, it was Puerto Rican shortstop Carlos Correa.  Correa’s definitely a great player in his own right, and has a great narrative surrounding him (in a nutshell, hardworking parents sacrifice for kid’s dream, poor residents of his flood-prone neighborhood raise money for trips to tournaments).  However, he was generally considered to be a notch below Appel and Buxton – at best the third best player in the draft and probably a bit below that.

Mark Appel slid all the way to the Pittburgh Pirates at #8 – allowing the Bucs the chance to add him to a farm system that already includes stud pitching prospects Gerrit Cole and Jameson Taillon.

So why was the third best player picked with the top pick – and why did Mark Appel drop to eighth?

The Slotting System

For years, the commissioner’s office has advised teams on suggested bonuses for each spot in the draft.  However, this year there are penalties for exceeding the bonus recommendations.

How does it work?  Each spot in the first ten rounds of the draft is assigned a dollar value, with the number one picked being assigned a value of $7.2 million this year.  Players signed later than the 10th round must be signed for $100,000 or less.

Add up the amounts for a team’s picks, and that’s the amount they are allowed to spend on the players they draft in the first ten round rounds.  Each team will have a different amount – teams with high draft picks will have substantially higher amounts than those with worse picks.  If a player is picked at a slot valued at $1 million, a team could pay him $1.5 million … but they’d need to make up the difference on other players.  If a player does not sign, his amount is deducted from the amount the team is allocated.  In other words, if a team had a pool of $10 million and is unable to sign a player who had a $1 million value, they only have $9 million to sign their other draftees.

The penalties are steep.  Exceed the amount by just 5% and you pay a 75% luxury tax on the excess.  Exceed it by 10% and the tax jumps to 100% and you forfeit the next year’s first round pick.  Exceed the amount by 15% and you lose two future first round picks.

The Effect

Two basic strategies are likely to unfold.  The first strategy is like to make the first round pick based as much on signability as talent, and use the financial savings to sign later guys.  In the case of the Astros, pick a guy like Correa at #1 and offer him a bonus equivalent with the #2 or #3 slot.  They can save a million dollars or so and then picked some fairly tough to sign guys later in the draft (for example, Lance McCullers Jr. at #41) and pay them a bit more than the recommendation for that slot.

Conversely, if you think you are going to go over slot on your top pick, you can save money on the later picks.  For example, if you have picks 1, 25, and 42 you might pick the best player at #1, but opt for the 40th best guy at #25 and the 60th best guy at #42 and get those guys to sign for less than slot.

A possible third strategy would be to trade down in the draft … but draft picks can’t be traded.

The net effect is that the basic premise of the draft is broken.  A draft is supposed to be an efficient means for distributing a talent.  In a normal draft, the top player SHOULD be picked first and the 20th best talent should be picked (roughly) 20th.  With the new slotting rules, the “draft” really becomes more of a math logic puzzle than an actual draft.

A Loophole

In theory, the slotting is an attempt to keep teams with deep pockets (Yankees) from scooping up all the best talent by making it known that they’ll pay huge bonuses.  Studies have show that draft bonuses are actually a cost-effective means of acquiring talent (when compared to alterative methods such as free agency), but obviously most owners would prefer to keep bonuses as low as possible.

However, the system actually does create an unique opportunity for a team willing to pay the penalty.  As I understand it, the largest penalty is the two lost picks and 100% luxury tax if a team exceed the bonus pool amount by 15%.  That is to say, if you have a pool of $10 million, you lose two picks if you spend $10,150,000 or if you spend $20,000,000.  Other than the extra money paid in luxury tax, the penalty is the same.

If a team is pretty sure it’s going to go 15% over slot, they may make it know that they’ll pay way over slot in an attempt to get elite talent to drop to them – basically, shooting the moon and going WAY over budget. 

Let’s say that a team has picks 15, 41, and 48 in the current year’s draft.  The team has several emerging young stars and will likely pick very late in the draft for the next few years.  Let’s project them picking 23rd next year and 25th the year after.

The team makes it known that they will pay big bonuses for premium talent.  The top player in the draft falls to them at #15.  The sixth best guy falls at them at #41 and the 12th best guy falls to them at #48 – all because high demands from the players cause them to drop in the draft.  The team exceeds the bonus pool amount by a lot, and forfeits first round picks in the next two drafts.

Effectively, the team has traded picks 15, 23, 25, 41, and 48 for picks 1, 6, and 12.

Is this a fair trade?  Let’s consult a draft value chart (it’s a NFL-based chart, but the basic premise is similar).  Here are the values for each of the picks:

• 1 – 3000
• 6 – 1600
• 12 – 1200
• 15 – 1050
• 23 – 760
• 25 – 720
• 41 – 490
• 48 – 420

Picks 1, 6, and 12 are worth a combined 5800 points.  Picks 15, 23, 25, 41, and 48 are worth a combined 3440 points.  If you’re the Yankees, you pick those three top prospects, pay them, pay the luxury tax, and forfeit your first round picks in the next two years – because you’ll get more talent that way than by picking talent-appropriate players at each slot.

How to Fix the System

Clearly, I think the system is broken.  It’s fair, then, to ask me to propose a solution.  How would I fix the draft?

I think allowing teams to trade picks would make a lot of sense.  The current rule banning trades of picks (and draftees until they have been under contract for a year) seems to be in place merely to prevent General Managers from making huge mistakes.  Really?  These are supposed to be the best and brightest baseball minds.  Why do they need bumpers in their bowling alley?

If you allow trades, a team without a lot of money could still extract maximum value from a pick.  They might trade the #1 pick for the #15 pick and a couple of good prospects (or even a veteran who could contribute immediately).  The Yankees and Red Sox still might snap up a lot of the good young players, but they’d have to pay for them with talent (draft picks and players) as well as cash.  Currently, they can just throw money at players.

I’ve gone on the record many time as being opposed to any sort of caps on salaries, preferring to allow a free market to set amounts.  But if a cap must exist, I’d suggest an overall cap on player expenditures.  This means combining salaries for current major and minor league players, as well as bonuses paid to any draftees or foreign free agents.  Team A could decide to spend a big chunk of their allotment on draftee bonuses while Team B decides to spend most of their money on free agents – but both strategies would be equally valid.

Another thought would be to replace signing  bonuses with roster bonuses at the end of each season.  This would force a player to prove something before getting money.  However, the team would also be forced to make a commitment.  If they decided that a player wasn’t worth the roster bonus, the player would immediately become an unrestricted free agent.  We could call it the “fish or cut bait” clause.

The Bear and the Tiger

It was a “could be” storybook headline that ended up having a storybook ending.

Tiger Woods wins his 73rd career PGA sanctioned title at the tournament hosted by none other than the person that he has just tied– Jack Nicklaus.

Muirfield Village in Ohio is a very difficult golf course. Jack in his mind has tried to set up a tournament setting that emulates the Masters Tournament. They honor the giants of the game every year at the Memorial, paying homage to the all-time greats. The membership does not wear the Green Jackets, but they do were some pretty sporty (and I might add decent looking) metal grey jackets and blue dress shirts. The golf course is set up to standards that are very difficult including very fast greens, nasty rough, and demonic pin placements.

This also is the 5th time that Tiger has won this tournament. His high ball flight and ability to work magic around greens works for him very well at the Memorial. Truth be told – this is the best Tiger has looked in some time. He seemed in complete control of his swing, was hitting all of the shots he wanted, and was making a number of putts. By his own account on Sunday he “absolutely was striping it” and by now most of you have seen the incredible hole out late in the round.

This propelled him to an eventually 2 stroke victory, but unfortunately the chip-in is being over-hyped to the nth degree. The fact is that Tiger used to pull these shots with the regularity of vaudeville stage magicians pulling rabbits out of hats. Even Jack has piled on saying “under the circumstances, it is the best golf shot I have ever seen”. Easssssyyyyy Golden Bear. You have made a number of those shots over the years as well…so not sure I would say best ever.

NBA Playoffs

The two remaining series are well underway, and both have the feeling in their own respects of an Ali-Frazier heavyweight fight.

The Spurs and the Thunder have a nice back and forth series going. It is much more the case of the new kid on the block versus the grizzly veteran. It is poise versus athleticism. It is a total chess match of coaching, and it has been fun to watch.

While I have no NBA team allegiance, I must say that the more I watch Kevin Durant, the more impressed I am with how good he really is. I also still can’t believe Tim Duncan is still around. The guy seems like he must be 67 years old.

The Heat and the Celtics appear to be the more physical series based on what I have watched, a lot of fouls, a lot of smack talking both on and off the floor and a lot of crying to officials about getting calls or lack thereof. Wouldn’t it be nice to see the NBA actually officiate a game based on the rules of basketball, thereby forcing each team to play its last 5 bench reserves in an attempt to have anyone left to complete the game. With the hand checking, shoving, elbow throwing, wrestling, grabbing and any other description you can come up with, it is amazing that either team has any players left by halftime.

How I long for the more offensive minded days of Bird, Magic and Dr. J.

Of course the athletes are much stronger and more powerful than those golden days of yore in the NBA. Still the brand of thug-ball that seems to come out in the playoffs is something I could do without having to watch….but of course I am going to watch it anyway!

Until next time, stay classy Ogden, Utah!

One of my favorite political sites is Electoral-Vote.com.  The site is run by Andrew Tanenbaum.  Tanenbaum is perhaps best know for creating the MINIX operating system in the late 1980s.

In recent years, Tanenbaum has been hard at work projecting the winners of races for federal office.  Much of the focus, naturally, has been on the presidential elections.  The site does a lot of number crunching with survey numbers, and I generally enjoy the analysis and anecdotes.

A full five months before the election, Tanenbaum has a map of expected winners in each state.  He had Obama with 242 electoral votes locked up and Romney has 165.  The other 131 electoral votes, from twelve “purple” states, are expected to be in play.

You can quibble with the numbers a bit.  Tanenbaum admits to leaning left, so there may be some sort of liberal bias in his numbers.  However, at the high level, there’s no denying the truth.  There are 12-15 states that will be “in play” during the 2012 presidential elections.  The other 35-38 state lean so far one direction or the other that the state is a lost cause for one of the candidates.  Mitt Romney will not will Connecticut, nor will Barack Obama win Alaska.

The net effect is that the candidates will avoid those states entirely, or make only token visits.  Time that Mitt Romney spends in Connecticut is time that he could instead spend in Florida – a state that is in play and has 29 electoral votes up for grabs.

A lack of presidential visits likely won’t bring many Connecticut residents to tears.  However, beyond the lack of visits, there is likely to also be a lack of focus that are important to voters in Connecticut.  And it’s not just the conservative voters in Connecticut who won’t have a voice.  The liberal voters who will almost certainly propel Barack Obama to a victory in the state will also be ignored.

Quite honestly, the voters and issues in states such as Florida, Ohio, Nevada, Colorado, and my own state of Iowa will become much more important than the burning issues in California, New York, Texas – and, yes, Connecticut.  Even if a candidate feels strongly about an issue that it important in those states, there’s virtually no upside in championing the issues.  And there’s definitely downside.  You definitely don’t want to lose voters in Florida because you stuck your neck out for voters in Connecticut.

Those who champion the electoral college like to say that the process ensure that the large states aren’t given undue weight.  The thought is that if popular vote were used, a candidate could rack up huge vote totals in California, New York, Florida, and Ohio and make the voters in Iowa and Rhode Island irrelevant.

However, I’d argue that the electoral college process also picks winners and losers – it’s just a different set of winners and losers than the popular vote.  I’d also argue that the popular vote treats each equivalent bloc of voters the same.  A bloc of ten thousand voters in California would have the exact same influence as a bloc of ten thousand voters in Montana.  Sure, a politician can get more votes in California than Montana, but this is simply because there are more citizens in California.  Why shouldn’t a larger blocc of citizens have more influence?

The current process doesn’t pick winners and losers based on size, but based on degree of purple.  The more purple a state, the more important they become; the blue and red states become less relevant.