“Andrew Kurtz, 24, of New Brighton, one of the 18 men who take turns posing as pierogies in a crowd-pleasing race after the fifth inning of every game at PNC Park, was dismissed by the team Thursday because he posted disparaging remarks about the Pirates on his Facebook page …
“(His message was) aimed at team president Frank Coonelly, general manager Neal Huntington and manager John Russell. It read: ‘Coonelly extended the contracts of Russell and Huntington through the 2011 season. That means a 19-straight losing streak. Way to go Pirates.'”
They really did do him a favor. The Pirates haven’t been good in forever.
As everyone knows by now, Rep. Joe Barton apologized to BP for the $20b fund Obama strong armed from the company. The reason Obama was able to do this was because of the non-free market style economy the U.S. has which allows for the threat of greater, government-enforced penalties. Of course, the free market would be entirely flaccid in trying to wrest any real funds from BP. Thank goodness the U.S. has never had such an awful, awful system.
But Republicans and their sister Teabagging party wish we had a free market system. It sounds like liberty – despite the inevitability of monopolies, limited (if any) rights for workers, and no real enforcement of safety standards, retirement plans, or anything else that makes modern life comfortable. But it sure does sound swell. And that’s why they like it. It isn’t that it actually makes a majority of people happy or that it results in a strong economy. In fact, one of the few free market economies – Hong Kong – has only been able to experience any success because of the supporting structure of communist China. On their own, free markets will fail. If they don’t, the well-being of the people subjected to the whims of the few who become powerful will come under greater and greater strain over time.
But forget all that. It still sounds nice. Liberty! Boy, oh, boy! That’s why Rep. Barton made his apology.
What Obama managed to accomplish with BP runs counter to the free market principles the Republicans and Teabaggers support (until they need/want roads, schools, a place to put the homeless, a war on drugs, etc, etc). Rep. Barton is perfectly in line with the Republican Party on this one. Obviously they ran away screaming because of the political fallout of the situation, but if everything they’ve ever said was in the least sincere, then they hate that BP is being forced to pay.
For the Sake of Science 