Obviously that is a stretch. However, I went to the Kentucky Derby, and there is something awfully appealing about hanging out the rest of your life on the miranda drinking mint julips. However, I don't know if it is the culture, it might be the weather. I believe warmer weather produces lazier people. Being a native of California, I can attest to the fact that I am lazy as hell.

I think there is something to be said about first generation Americans. Immigrants are always movtivated and highly productive. They really keep the economic engine going. However, thier children are usually seduced by the American culture, start watching MTV and eating Cheetos. The problem for African Americans, is they did not get that first Generation bounce.

We need immigration to bring in the next captains of industry so the rest of us can keep can keep riding our lounge chairs.

Now you seem to be saying that it's FDR's fault that this drug testing scheme is being proposed by Congress instead of by a bunch of grandstanding state legislators in capitals from Montpelier to Olympia and Tallahassee to Carson City. And yet, how recockulous would it be for professional sports leagues to have to comply with different drug-testing laws in different states? Would the Red Sox have to comply with Illinois's regime when they played at Comisky? If they hadn't complied with Wisconsin's regime, would you have to cancel a Red Sox-Brewers World Series (note: hypothetical requires massive suspension of disbelief).

Any disparities in society for minorities have nothing to do wiht African-American or southern culture but rather Democratic party keep em on the plantation culture.

The anti-black racism of the Democrat party is well known and universal. The elitist left-wing media cabalist co-conspirators will never speak of it. The Democrats, notwithstanding one of their leading light's positions as a Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, still believe that they have a proprietary right to the votes of black citizens by virtue of the Civil Rights Act, and use that canard to intoxicate the minorities of the inner city with stories of the Republicans being racist. The MSM assists.

My most fervent hope is that the Democrat Party continues to be led by Klansmen like Robert Byrd and doesn't end its plantation politics and the Reverend Sharpton defects to run as a Republican or even as independent and destroys the Democrats racist stranglehold on the African-American populace.

Because there's that whole addiction thing. And because you're talking about an industry which prevented consumers from being properly informed about the health risks -- indeed, misled them for years.

Long experience in the years before the New Deal suggested that there was market failure. Perhaps the problem is that the employment package is a bundle of goods and services, leaving workers poorly situated to re-negotiate their compensation and terms of employment once they realize that the drill presses are prone to remove their left hands, e.g.

Yes - and I blame the gop

Actually, FDR didn't pull us out of the Depression, WWII did. FDR, being an economic conservative, always believed in balanced budgets. He tried very hard not to deficit spend. The economy made a couple attempts at recover, but these momentary lapses of health always collapsed. Keynes tried to explain to Roosevelt that he needed massive deficit spending to pull out of the Depression, but FDR just didn't buy it. After the Depression, it pretty much became convential wisdom, at least among the liberals, that you could spend and tax cut your way out of a recession. Of course, Hayek and Friedman thought this was BS. I have never quite figured out how Friedman thinks you should get out of a recession. It seemed to work for Kennedy in 1960. Bush, surprizingly enough, decided to adopt the liberal position, and tried to tax cut and spend his way out of the recession he found himself in. However, I don't think his plan worked as well as peopel expected.

So has the experience with the NFL not been long enough to show market failure? Steroids have been a problem in sports at least since Ben Johnson. They continue to be a problem, even in the NFL, where players have been caught buying steriods (despite not testing positive) and have admitted to taking them pre-draft. If the league doesn't have sufficiently tough policies, why is that not an area for Congress at least to investigate the possibility of a market failure? If the leagues are engaging in fraudulent behavior, by putting a "product" on the field that's a result of chemical enhancement, why isn't that reasonably within Congress' purview?

I liked the WWE (nee WWF) when I was a kid. At one point, I was jejeune enough to think it was real competition. Then I learned better. There was a market failure because I had been lied to and put more into the product than I otherwise would have.

Then again, I never like barry bonds.

Friedman's against structural deficits. Is he also against transitory ones? You don't tax your way out of recession. You spend your way out, and tax your way back in (or at least out of overly rapid expansion).

[DISBELIEF THAT I'M ASKING YOU THIS]Where's the market failure?[/DISBELIEF]

You and other sports fan have learned about the steroid use. I don't know anyone who wants their money back.

I don't think I said tax, I think I said you tax cut your way out of recessions.

You are Friedman? Who knew.

Wanna have lunch? It's free . . .

This has to be the BOTD.

I suppose the fact that it really would just be lunch, not "lunch," only cements that.

I'm glad you got the joke. How very Ivy of you.

Where's the ongoing market failure with cigarettes?

I agree that market failure should be a necessary condition for government intervention. Unfortunately, a supermajority of the House and Senate have not felt that way for at least 70 years.

[cynicism] I'm sure that has nothing to do with needing to look busy for the constituents. [/cynicism]