Hightower Lowdown
"The less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag." -- Kin Hubbard
In This Issue
The time is ripe for real electoral reform
December's Lowdown
The many REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL after Election Day 2008
After casting her ballot for Barack Obama, Amanda Jones said simply, "I feel good about voting for him." Ms. Jones, of Cedar Creek, Texas (a town just south of Austin), is African-American, and what gives her vote some historic punch is that she's 109 years old. Her father was a slave. Her mother was born right after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. She's been through it all--Jim Crow segregation, women's suffrage, the Great Depression, the poll tax, FDR, the civil-rights movement, desegregation, 13 years of George W (five as guv, eight as prez), and now: Barack Obama. This last change fills her with joy, she says.
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Football on welfare
It's college football bowl-a-mania time! These annual events used to be about the old school spirit and excellence in sports. Now they're all about the money.
The great contests of the Cotton Bowl, Sugar Bowl and Orange Bowl—which symbolized regions of our country—have now devolved to such nowhere corporate pageants as the Outback Steakhouse Bowl and the Gallery Furniture.Com.
There are now 25 college bowl games, which means that 50 teams—possibly including those with losing records—are needed to take the field and fill the stadium seats.
Let's hear the cheers for the Humanitarian Bowl in Boise, Idaho, the Silicon Valley Classic, and the MicronPC Bowl!
Not only do these mediocre college bowl games fail to fill the stadiums and draw a television audience, but now a number of them are going on welfare. The Holiday, Gator, Aloha, Las Vegas, and Sun bowls are now only some of the games now getting up to $2 million apiece in public pay for their games.
Almost half of the 25 bowls already are receiving some level of taxpayer's subsidy, and more of these private, profit-making spectacles are seeking corporate welfare from cities and states.