Keep Your Levelers Off My Playing Field!

Matt Welch | December 7, 2005

Radley Balko has a good colum with the winning headline of Congress Has No Business in Professional Sports. After a rundown of the familiar outrages, he drops these turds on the head of Rep. Tom Davis, the Republican chair of the scarequote-worthy "House Committee on Government Reform":

Rep. Davis and fellow baseball antagonists say steroids and amphetamines give athletes an "unfair advantage" over the competition. Never mind that after the 2000 census, Davis led efforts to gerrymander his own congressional district to ensure he'd never need to worry about re-election. Due to gerrymandering, Davis ran unopposed in 2002, as did one in five of his congressional colleagues.

Davis also recently sneaked a provision into federal legislation that prevented an apartment complex from going up in his district because, according to the Washington Post, he feared it would bring too many Democrats into the area.

Whole thing here.

Comments

|12.7.05 @ 6:30PM|#

But...if ALL of the athletes are taking drugs, how can you say that one of them has an "unfair advantage?"

|12.7.05 @ 6:34PM|#

Perhaps some athletes have access to better drugs than others?
I would support congress ensuring that all drugs were good, but knowing them they would just ensure that all drugs were equally crappy.

|12.7.05 @ 6:40PM|#

Has anyone seen the new milk ad where baseball players are hounded for drinking the "performance enhancing" substance? Hilarious!

|12.7.05 @ 6:43PM|#

This is why I am not a republican or a democrat. If libertarians would get off there utopian high horse maybe I would join them.

|12.7.05 @ 6:50PM|#

Demodogger - then perhaps you are not really a libertarian. ;)

Seriously, though, I would like to know what compromises would entice you to join us? (He will join us or die, my master.) :)

Or maybe it would be easier to list the utopian things that rub you the wrong way.

(And nobody say anything naughty about how I'm rubbing the newbie!) :)

|12.7.05 @ 6:58PM|#

Mr. Welch: "After a rundown of the familiar outrages, he drops these turds on the head...."

Granting that this is an almost classic use of the Ad hominem tu quoque fallacy, how are these turds? Are they true or not? Since most politicians neither understand or use reasoned argument, calling them on pot-calling-the-kettle-black behavior perhaps the only way to get their attention.
---
demodogger: On behalf of the libertarian I represent - myself - please join us in your own way and be welcomed to the pool. Ignore Lowdog, his handle says it all.

|12.7.05 @ 7:51PM|#

Tom Davis looks like he should be playing a high school principal in an '80's John Hughes movie.

|12.7.05 @ 7:56PM|#

I'm all for the government getting out of sports. The problem is, whenever somebody uses the "government should get out of sports" argument, it's usually because the government might actually be against their interests.

In baseball the owners are fine with government buying them sports stadiums and giving owners millions of dollars and exemption for antitrust laws. But when the government decides to crack down on drugs, the owners are suddenly libertarians.

Another case is the BCS. A bunch of government bureaucracies decide it's the state's interest to create a monopoly on football and that's fine. But if the government looks into it all these bureaucrats act like libertarians.

|12.7.05 @ 7:56PM|#

I'm all for the government getting out of sports. The problem is, whenever somebody uses the "government should get out of sports" argument, it's usually because the government might actually be against their interests.

In baseball the owners are fine with government buying them sports stadiums and giving owners millions of dollars and exemption for antitrust laws. But when the government decides to crack down on drugs, the owners are suddenly libertarians.

Another case is the BCS. A bunch of government bureaucracies decide it's the state's interest to create a monopoly on football and that's fine. But if the government looks into it all these bureaucrats act like libertarians.

Matt Welch|12.7.05 @ 8:29PM|#

But when the government decides to crack down on drugs, the owners are suddenly libertarians.

That's just wrong. The owners have been successfully *lobbying* the government to crack down on steroids, so that there would be a little Leviathan pressure on the owners' side during labor negotiations. It has worked spectacularly well, as have their multi-billion dollar bobbing for subsidies. The day baseball owners are libertarians is the day I can hit a Mariano Rivera cutter.

Kevin Carson|12.7.05 @ 8:57PM|#

This is only a tu quoque if its used to dispute the validity of government regulation of sports. If it's simply used to demonstrate what hypocritical shitheads the most self-professedly moralistic interventionist politicians are, it's quite on the mark.

|12.7.05 @ 9:22PM|#

I'm waiting for the libertarians here who claim that Fox News is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Republican Party to experience simultaneous cranial explosions.

I'm only sayin' that I've not recently seen a libertarian commenter on CNN, although MSNBC.com does have Glenn Reynolds (although I do recognize than many on here consider him to be a Republican tool, rather than a libertarian).

|12.8.05 @ 2:17AM|#

Mebbe Sosa or Palmerio can take a baseball bat to Tom Davis' campaign posters, 'level' things up a bit for his opposition.

|12.8.05 @ 5:29AM|#

Remember, it's always for the children. Since kids like to play sports and idolize professional athletes, Congress has both the responsibility and the power to regulate professional sports in order to protect our children. It says so right there in the constitution, it just takes a careful and properly nuanced reading.

In this regard, after the government is done with sports, they should launch a full scale investigation into music studios, publishing houses and Hollywood to save those poor children who don't like sports (who are probably homosexuals to boot) paying special attention to independent and DIY outfits as they affect the most "at risk" children.

DoJ|12.8.05 @ 5:40AM|#

Yeah, but how is that antitrust exemption working out for you, Mr. Welch? God how I miss the Federal League!

|12.8.05 @ 9:13AM|#

The owners have been successfully *lobbying* the government to crack down on steroids, so that there would be a little Leviathan pressure on the owners' side during labor negotiations.

A lot of good that did, Esteban Freakin' Loaiza got $7M fer crissakes.

Larry A|12.8.05 @ 11:47AM|#

It would be an interesting research exercise to count the laws passed by our "representatives" in Congress which are not designed to exempt Members of Congress.

Given the number of laws, it might require the fingers of both hands.

|12.8.05 @ 12:15PM|#

I'm all for the government getting out of sports. The problem is, whenever somebody uses the "government should get out of sports" argument, it's usually because the government might actually be against their interests.

I was about to say that I don't have any interests in the matter, but then I realized that I'm a Penn State fan, and I really have no problem with #3 Penn State playing #22 Florida State in the Orange Bowl. Government intrusion might make them play a tougher team. So nevermind.

And Mr. Welch, never say never. I believe you could hit a Rivera cutter if you put your mind to it.

|12.8.05 @ 2:34PM|#

Lowdog,
if YOU really are a LIbertarian than you would already know that MOST members of the LP and big Ls are not interested in seriously "doing politics" and more interested in a pure mutual masturbation society.

Love,
A Card Carrying Libertarian interested in not jacking off.