When You Run Out of Things to Regulate …
By Martin Rice
If you had too much time on your hands (which I’m sure you don’t) what would you do? Here’s a suggestion. How about regulating college football playoffs? That’s just what a Congressional sub-committee would like to do–make it illegal to promote an NCAA bowl game as a championship game unless it results from a playoff. And why does Congress need to regulate football, you might ask? Oh, because right now the month of December is a month of confusion (why don’t they think like this about the tax code?) and, of course, we must have order–from a college football perspective, anyway.
Joe Barton, ranking Republican of the House Energy and commerce Committee floated this particular piece of power-grab lunacy. Which demonstrates that neither party has a monopoly on foolery. Of course, what Energy or Commerce have to do with college football is a mystery (or should be) to anyone with half a brain, which excludes, of course, members of Congress.
Fortunately, some of the criminals elected to Congress have a modicum of sense, but not too much. A D-rat, of all things, John Barrow of Georgia, was the one “no” vote on the committee who believed the House had more important things to do, like the turn the country into a socialist workers’ paradise.
The crime of Barrow’s objection is that it was done for the wrong reason. You see, if they weren’t so busy turning the country into an Obama-made third world, then apparently they would have the time to regulate the Bowl Championship Series and everything else down to your five-year-old’s T-ball game, and do so with a clear conscience. No one in Congress thought for a moment that maybe … just maybe … it’s none of their damn business how colleges want to run their championships. So, obviously, they think there’s no limit to what they can control, and, in this, the Party of Lincoln is no different from its D-rat counterpart. It makes you realize what a damn good idea states’ rights and secession were (are?).
The Senate is involved in its own football-mad power grab. Orrin Hatch, another Lincolnite who for the sake of freedom of choice wanted to put vitamins under the control of prescriptions, (And why not? Mr. Hatch is a Mormon and comes from Utah where caffeine is a controlled substance.) now wants the Justice Department to investigate the Bowl Championship Series for anti-trust violations. Perhaps Mr. Hatch has forgotten that a championship is supposed to be the only game in town. Maybe BCS is trying to buy up rival championships, like the World Series or the Super-Bowl.
In fact, speaking of the World Series, there’s something that really needs to be investigated for anti-trust violations. Imagine the arrogance of organized baseball, thinking they control the whole world! We can’t have that. After all, that’s the job of Congress.
About Martin Rice
Martin A. Rice, Jr. is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh’s Johnstown campus, where his Marxist colleagues are a constant source of amusement and entertainment. He received his doctoral degree
in Philosophy from The Ohio State University and his B.A. in Chemistry from what is now the over-rated College of New Jersey. Before going into Philosophy, he worked in the analytical chemistry of precious metals for the Bureau of the Mint. He’s the author of the periodically available Rice Report
http://www.pitt.edu/~rice/report.htm
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This day in history December 20
1860 South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the United States.
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