Immediately after the New York Yankees won the World Series against the Philadelphia Phillies, some of the comments about it that I have seen is that a salary cap should be imposed in MLB and other sports so that they don’t turn business-only which would lead to the end of these sports. Imagine that – with the current system, we will see the same favorites for the particular championships and the same losers every season. What a mockery to most of the fans at the expense of the few!

Frankly, as a Mets fan, I was not happy to see the Yankees win the World Series, and I understand the frustration to a certain extent. After all, money gives you wings (Red Bull too, but not as often as money does) and more money gives you better wings. However, the idea of equal chances to all teams remains nothing more than a… utopia.

The Yankees can undoubtedly afford to buy – and pay the salaries of – more baseball players than most of the MLB teams, and therefore will get the best players on the market. Wasn’t this the same organization that didn’t make it to the postseason a year ago though? Wasn’t this the same organization (with completely different players for the most part, of course) that hasn’t won World Series in eight years? It appears that it takes the richest club in a championship just one title in order for some fans to request salary caps. Last year, probably the same fans were laughing at the Yankees because of their inability to win a postseason bid with all the money and stars that they had available.

Salary cap is not going to solve the problem

In fact, it will create a problem. Players and coaches will be less ambitious in their work which will bring the sport into a stagnation. In other words, ten years from now its dynamics will not have changed, tactics will most likely stay the same, as a result of which, according to the economic law of diminishing utility, you will see older fans getting sick of seeing the same old production from their favorite club but with different team-mates, thus creating a recipee for disaster.

From sociology, we know that most young fans get excited about a sport because it is a family trait to watch it and root for a certain club and because their peers do it, and the latter is requisite of conversations. Comparatively few are the people who are interested in following a sports championship just for themselves, no matter how sad this sounds.

Besides, from the perspective of the same economic law, if one and the same teams win the title (regardless of the kind of sport), fewer people will follow it. We watch something that we find interesting. If we watch a season the champion of which is known very much ahead of time, we usually lose interest in watching it.

Why no salary cap is good for the sport

Coaches and players will be more ambitious in their work. They have families to feed, and like us they want to sign contracts for higher salaries. From macroeconomic perspective, with the more money that they receive from their clubs, they are going to spend more money for each additional dollar that they receive in their new contract. Part of this spending might go to your pocket, no matter whether you are a businessman or an business agent.

Poor clubs will benefit from the transfers that they make with clubs like the Yankees. In this situation, their priority should be to develop players who are good enough to replace the ones already transferred. It sounds easier than it is to be done but life is not easy anyway. Thus these poor clubs can have the potential to be equally competitive stronger clubs. Of course, the strongest oppositions will look unattainable to beat because they will have developed the players that they bought earlier but something that looks unattainable doesn’t mean that it is impossible to attain.

The same poor clubs will potentially be stimulated to rewrite the economic and marketing books by creating new strategies of being competitive. Not everything in this world is unearthed – for a long time people haven’t been aware of what rights and liberties are because the Church had too much of an impact on their lives and personalities.

Also, as a Mets fan, I would be a lot more delighted to see the Mets win the World Series in these circumstances than see them win them because richer clubs couldn’t stimulate their teams to perform better. With a salary cap, there is a possibility of 30 Yankees imitations – some of them good enough, others as weak as before because of poor judgments – competing for the title.

For the last couple of months I have been doing a weekly roundup of what is happening with the political life in Connecticut at state level.

In case you are interested to check it out but haven’t seen the new links that I put on the right side of this blog, you can click here. I hope that you like it, and I hope that I have been of help to you in knowing more about the most interesting political news in the State of Connecticut.

I have been thinking of expanding my blog with a new category and here it is – The Law. The Law will be a category where I will write about laws of any kind.

They could be international, federal, state, foreign, even court decisions, court procedures, bills, and so on. If you have any requests for me to interpret laws, and do a certain research on them, you can let me know about it on my Facebook page, my Twitter page or through my email. I hope I will be of help to you.

A disturbing news for the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party to a certain extent, has appeared on Yahoo! Finance. Raj Rajaratnam, a Wall Street billionaire, originally from Sri Lanka and with dual citizenship, whose net worth is valued at $1.3 billion, was arrested, together with six hedge funds managers for allegedly conducting insider trading schemes which generated illegal profits of $25 billion.

The news concerns not just finance but politics as well. According to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Raj Rajaratnam contributed to political campaigns for federal office, and most of these contributions went to the Democratic Party and the Democratic candidates. Here’s what the political contributions data show regarding not just Raj Rajaratnam but also everybody else involved, thanks to Associated Press writers, and some analysis from my part:

• Raj Rajaratnam: $4,200 to Hillary Clinton’s Senatorial Democratic primary campaign and $26,700 to the Senatorial Campaign Committee of the party, $4,600 to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign during the Democratic primaries, $2,000 to Rohit Khanna for his Congressional Democratic primary campaign for the 12th District in New York (Mr. Khanna was appointed by President Obama to serve as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Domestic Operations), $2,000 to Maria Cantwell for the general election for Senator in Washington, $2,000 to Charles Schumer’s Senatorial campaign ($1,000 for the primary and other $1,000 for the general election), $5,000 to a Volunteer PAC. $2,300 were were disbursed from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign during the general election. $30,800 to the Obama Victory Fund known as Barack Obama’s Principal Campaign Committee, another $4,600 ($2,300+2,300 at the same day, one for the primaries and one for the general elections, as filed with the FEC) to Barack Obama, $12,100 ($2,100+$10,000) to New Jersey Democratic Victory which is a fundraising project for Senator Robert Menendez (D – New Jersey), other $2,100 given personally to Senator Menendez (that is, not through the fundraiser) on the same day when the $12,100 were donated to the project, additional $10,000 that went through the New Jersey Democratic State Committee (again on the same day), and $26,200 to the Democratic National Committee (this time from a different address in New York City, as you can see). Raj Rajaratnam is also alleged to have sponsored the Tamil Tigers, a terrorist group in Sri Lanka. These numbers plus the allegation and other related facts are a big red light for the Obama Administration and the Democratic Party. In times of a crisis in the right, the GOP will be sure to use them against the current majority at the federal level, and why not at the state level. The people in New Jersey are getting mad at the Democratic Party there, especially when it comes to their property taxes and the corruption scandals in the Garden State, and it won’t be surprising if the state experiences a reallignment after less than three weeks.
• Rajiv Goel had personally no campaign contributions whatsoever according to the FEC. His name doesn’t appear on their data at all.
• Anil Kumar: the media say that he is a director at McKinsey & Co. Inc. but FEC data show several people with the name Anil Kumar and none of them holds such a position. Click here to see it for yourself.
• Robert W. Moffat, Jr. has not personally made any contributions. There are several people named Robert Moffat but none of them appears to be the resident of Ridgefield, Connecticut, nor is it there a person with this name who works for IBM.
• Danielle Chiesi: $5,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee plus $200 twice beforehand to the same grantee. This may somewhat make some Republicans more unwilling to make a big deal out of the inside trading scandal but not as much as required. Twelve years are a long period of time, not to mention the comparatively insignificant amount of money given to the GOP. Of course, if we take inflation into consideration, the worth of $5,000 back then is more than it is today but this message particularly is too abstract to be given to the people. Don’t get me wrong, I think that people are smart enough for the most part but this exact issue is very much hidden into the background, that is, the whole picture.
• Mark Kurland: $500 to Bear Stearns PAC 12 years ago. Bear Stearns PAC has given money both to Republicans and Democrats for the last two years.

How this will affect the American left is still too early to predict, and I am sure that there are a lot of details that we as outsiders are not aware of, which are very likely to change the analyses to a whole lot different direction. Other scenario can be that everybody will keep quiet on it which, to me, is unlikely but is hypothetically possible. What is for sure though is that the Democratic Party must pay attention to the entire situation and prepare a good and reasonable answer which exists for sure, at least because there are too many contributors to political parties and candidates for office in order to keep track on everybody’s reputation, not to mention that contributors would be more willing to give money to candidates for office that are more likely to win an election. Besides, this is allegedly an inside trading scheme which can have tons of interpretations. As one who considers himself a Democrat, I hope and believe that there is absolutely no place for fears here.

Breaking news today inform people all over the world about a concealed nuclear facility in Iran. This time the Iranian leadership was kind enough to be the first to let the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) know about the underground facility. Is that so, though?

Unfortunately not. The fact that it was first said by the Iranian government doesn’t mean that there were no circumstances from outside Iran other than international regulations that made it do so.  Arguably the most consistent circumstance is called collection of intelligence. If it wasn’t for the intelligence, I strongly doubt that the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – the person most tightly involved with the nuclear program, not to be confused with the powerfully weak President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – would instruct his puppet to tell the world about the underground nuclear facility for no reason other than being aware of the western intelligence agencies’ awareness of what is going on northeast of Qom.

Furthermore, the Iranian government’s communication with the IAEA has always caused lack of confidence toward Tehran. Its late and often lame responses to the agency’s questions posed as a result of its and intelligence agencies’ revelations about the Islamic republic’s nuclear program have created such a discredit on it by the international community that even presumably naive people as well as political doves – as President Obama is estimated to possess the latter characteristic – have used a harsher language in their reactions to Iran’s letter to the IAEA.

Besides, if it was absolutely true that the facility was being built for peaceful purposes, questions such as why the Iranian government lets the international community know about it today and not on the day it actually started the construction remain unanswered. After all, the construction of the facility was allegedly started in mid-2006.

The near future

Without insider’s information, it is next to impossible to predict what sanctions will be imposed, especially not until the Geneva talks between Iran, Germany and the five permanent members of the UN Secirity Council that will be held in less than two weeks. Fortunately, sanctions are more likely than ever as all the five leaders of the permanent members of the UN Secirity Council expressed concerns and criticized Iran for constructing the nuclear facility, and to end up without imposing any sanctions against the Iranian government will be the most surprising outcome of the whole story. They just have to make sure to impose sanctions that will not hurt the Iranian people because we already know what the reaction to such sanctions lead to – xenophobia.

If you want to get to know how polling institutes compose their surveys, I recommend that you read Jeffrey Stonecash’s book. He made it easy to read without too much of unnecessary and and repeating information other than discussing the time remaining until the election that a candidate can beat their opponent if they lag a certain percentage behind. As a result of this, you have a book that is merely 177 pages long (a sample survey and the author’s short biography included), a compartively high percentage of which are filled with boxes of sample questions in a survey.

You will change the way you see political and other kinds of surveys after reading this book. One would wonder how about 1,200 people who participated in a nationwide U.S. survey would be representative of the entire country as to how the American people feel about particular presidential candidates, and Mr. Stonecash explained it very well. He discussed the importance of:

• arranging the questions in a particular order (including the demographic ones)
• the language of the questions (what part of the questions comes first and what comes second, how much information do the questions give the surveyed)
• interpreting the results of the survey (according to him, political candidates are usually not satisfied with the results of the particular survey and blame… the way the survey is done)
• the impact of biases in surveys, especially the ones that are ordered by a political campaign staff
• who conducts the surveys
• a candidate’s stances on the issues during the campaign (whether he or she changes them according to what the constituents think or is brave enough to stick with unpopular stances and try to convince the constituents to trust him or her)

While reading the book last summer, I was trying to revize the Democratic primaries for President between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and was very pleasantly surprised. These primaries were very good examples of Jeffrey Stonecash’s explanations, especially where Hillary Clinton made a lot of mistakes throughout her presidential campaign back then which cost her the party nomination. I was glad to have discovered that I had not been wasting my time reading the book.

The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran is a must read for those of you who want to get more insider’s information about the Islamic regime in Iran. I thank Dima Grozeva for giving it to me to read it for the summer. It was written not a long time ago (2007) which goes to show once again that in order to analyze current political, social, even economic, situations – it is very much recommended to know the past.

The authors are an Israeli (Yossi Melman) and an Iranian (Meir Javedanfar). Considering the bad relations between Israel and Iran, the combination of two persons of such nationalities being co-authors of a book that touches the topic to a great extent is a reason to believe that the book is comparatively unbiased.

These expectations are justified. It is true that the authors have shown tons of both direct and indirect evidence about Iran’s secret strategy for the development of nuclear weapons. Most of the evidence constitutes the Iranian leadership’s late and lame responses to the IAEA’s questions regarding the truth of another new intelligence that got them busted.

However, very possible reasons for the development of such weapons are not missed either such as the Iranian people’s national pride to have the capacity to develop nuclear energy, and their dignity which has been tainted in their war against Iraq, in the oil and plane embargos that were imposed to them in the West’s attempts to change the status quo  and the country’s nuclear ambitions for the first of which President Barack Obama publicly apologized days before the latest presidential elections there.

The book also discusses the different intelligence agencies’ strategies, goals, structures, and even essence. The Iranian ones (SAVAK whose existence comes to an end after the Islamic Revolution and VAVAK which is technically the new SAVAK but in times of new political structure and leadership) are the most discussed ones, of course, since the book is on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the State of Iran as it is written in the title. These strategies, goals and structures unsurprisingly turn out to have a lot in common on both sides except that their interests conflict. They collect intelligence – even if violence has to be applied for that – and think of scams (strategies) in order to smuggle a laptop or any document or other strong evidence for what they are looking for (goals), and there is strict hierarchy as to who does what (structures).

Other interesting part of the book is the political, economic and social climate in Iran. Unemployment is high as a result of which corruption becomes an issue not just among the Iranian politicians but also among the ordinary people as well. Politicians’ lies and populist approaches (mostly those of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) to solve poverty issues are not spared in the book either.

The two Middle East insiders have done an excellent job in objectively estimating everything related to Iran, its President and its nuclear ambitions. Read the book and you’ll see why.

Top news these days is the release of Laura Ling (32) and Euna Lee (36) from North Korea by former President Bill Clinton. The two U.S. journalists allegedly crossed into the Secret State from China in order to collect material for a report about trafficking of North Korean women into China. What impact did Bill Clinton have on their release?

First of all, we have to take a look at the very beginning of this issue. As much as North Korea isn’t famous for its hospitability and respect for human rights and liberties, it cannot be criticized for detaining both Mrs. Ling and Mrs. Lee, if they really crossed the line. They had no visas or any other documents that would permit them to enter the DPRK which technically makes them illegal immigrants, invaders, and even spies. Therefore, although they were doing their job trying to collect material for their report, it was against the law and was entirely their fault that they ended up being captured and later sentenced to 12 years in prison with stalinist conditions.

Former President Clinton’s role in bringing them back to the United States is vast – both primary and secondary. Analysts speculate that it is his charisma, comparatively good relations with the Dear Leader during his years of presidency and, last but not least, his outstanding diplomatic skills that led to attaining the final goal.

And there is a reason for them to speculate with Mr. Clinton’s qualities at least because of the signing of the Agreed Framework under his administration in 1994 whose purpose was to put an end of the North’s nuclear ambitions and open diplomatic relations between the two countries.  However, a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity told reporters that North Korea had agreed to free Laura Ling and Euna Lee and Mr. Clinton had already known about the outcome before his plane took off to Pyongyang:

Bill Clinton undertook the mission, a senior administration official said, only after the North assured the White House that the reporters would be freed and allowed to return home with the former president. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to detail the back-channel negotiations, also said the North rejected Gore as a suitable emissary. (AP, Yahoo, Steven R. Hurst 2009)

If that senior administration official said the truth, then it is most likely that the meeting between the U.S. delegation led by Bill Clinton and the North Korean officials led by Kim Jong Il was mainly about the nuclear issue in the Secret State, regardless of speculations in the media that the issue was never discussed then.

The former President and his delegation had reportedly been talking with the North Korean side for three hours. It is unconceivable to me that they were talking about the release of the two journalists only for such a comparatively long time, especially if it had already been known that the sole presence of Bill Clinton would assure their freedom.

What’s next

Judging by the circumstances, it is unlikely that we are ever going to be told what they were talking about specifically, especially since the meeting had been kept a secret until the last minute. However, I think that the expression of Bill Clinton’s face is a good way to understand what course Washington has taken in its relations with Pyongyang. In diplomacy, such a somber expression means no suggestion of warmth between the one with that expression and the one(s) to whom he or she is addressed. Mr. Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright used exactly the same method when she met with Slobodan Milosevic and… Kim Jong Il. The photo of her with the Dear Leader was at the same place that you see in the photo above:

In her memoir “Madam Secretary Madelein Albright, her comment is the following:

We were in the process of testing North Korean intentions when the Clinton administration’s time ran out.”

The photo was taken in 2000 when President Clinton’s term really ran out but that’s another matter. What matters is the coincidences between the two former leaders’ facial expressions at the same place and probably for the same purpose but at a different time. It looks like Washington hasn’t changed its attitude toward Pyongyang even when it sends former leaders there which sends a very convincing message to the North Korean administration - that the United States will do everything they possibly can to prevent the North from attaining nuclear weapons .

How does the economy work and what do we do about it? Now that it is struggling, more people are getting interested in its mechanisms. It is a complex system to which different tools can be applied which can help, hurt or have no impact over it. Depending on the tools being applied to a specific economy (local, regional, state, even world), nowadays it is divided into two types – free market economy and planning economy. Both of them have their advantages and disadvantages but the former has already been proven to be better than the latter.

In a free market economy, it is mainly the people who make decisions both as consumers and suppliers. The government’s role is to create regulations which prevent businesses from misinforming – or failing to inform – them about their product. Its other pivotal roles are to prevent businesses from colluding (agreeing not to compete and/or charging the same price – it is illegal in the United States) and protect their intellectual property.

As a result of these regulations, consumers are aware of what they are buying. They know the ingredients of the food, cigarettes and so on that they buy at the local gocery store as well as its, and other products’, dangers and risks. For example, there are warning labels in bold on every pack of cigarettes informing us about their deadly risks – on some of them, there is even a phone number that we can call in search of a help to quit smoking. Judging by the smokers’ strong addiction to tobacco and their unawareness of its adverse impacts, these warning labels make sense but it also depends on the insight of applying the labeling policy, as we can see from the results in this study, but that’s another matter.

Everything else outside the government regulations in a free market economy  is based on the supply and demand theory. In other words, the higher the supply, the lower and price – and the higher the demand, the higher the price. The two are interdependent. To put it even better, it’s about how much money people are willing to pay for a product and whether there is a supplier of the product to offer it to them at that price. All that makes some markets very profitable and expand while others may end up recessing to a point where they even disappear. That’s why capitalism is so great – because as long as there is demand for a product, there is supply.

Caution!!! Caution!!! Caution!!! As much as capitalist economists have a better understanding about the economy than socialist economists, they speculate that in a capitalist economy everybody wins. Their point is that you buy what you want and you get satisfaction by having it and using it, whereas the supplier is satisfied by your giving him the money for the product. The point that they make is a very good one but consumers should think more abstractly about it.

For example, having a breakfast at Starbucks shows class and therefore raises our self-confidence, not to mention that we don’t even have to prepare ourselves our breakfast. However, the more often we do have a breakfast at Starbucks, the bigger the hole in our pocket becomes.

Regardless of whether we are willing to pay that price for breakfast over a certain period of time, we should ask ourselves whether we would be better off both financially and socially by spending less money on breakfast through preparing ourselves one – and spend the money that we are expected to save on going to a disco or buying something to our beloved ones or whatever else you can think of. It’s called trade-off – if you spend $10 dollars on something, you have $10 less to spend on other things.

What about the planning economy?

Planning economy is one where the government (and in some cases labor unions, too) has control over the economy beyond the regulations mentioned above. In a planning economy, the market is not free – the government is in control of it by possessing it or enacting legislation that imposes price ceilings which means making it illegal to sell a product for a higher price than the one mentioned in the specific legislation.

Such kind of an economy has already been proven to be a disaster to the countries that implement it. At first sight, everybody should be satisfied because a lot of the services are for free – among them education and health care, as was the case with the Eastern Bloc and its allies – the funds for the performance of which comes from taxes and other revenues to the government such as investments, tourism and exports.

However, oftentimes there is not enough money as revenue to cover all the costs, which compels the government to print more money which leads to inflation of the national (or regional) currency. Such a policy has been typical of the Central and Eastern Europe in times when left-wing governments were in the executive branch after 1989. As a result of that, people’s savings start to drain which leads them to exchange their money in local currency for a foreign more stable one, provided that they can do it.

In a planning economy, there is also lack of creativity and working mood because the salaries are fixed. If Doctor A has examined 500 patients for the past month, and Doctor B has examined twice as much over the same period of time, both of them are given the same monthly salary.

This situation discourages Doctor B from putting efforts to further develop his or her skills, as it gives him or her no satisfaction in the form of money, or rest, or anything else besides having helped more people. As noble as altruism seems to us, it quickly fades away when Doctor B realizes how Doctor A is not that occupied and receives the same salary: as if Doctor B works for a cheaper price even though his or her services are most likely worth more.

These are among the whole lot of reasons why capitalism beat communism.

James R. Schlesinger, a man with a lot of experience in U.S. and global politics, is trying to open our eyes about the reality of the nuclear weapons and their use.

Mr. Schlesinger points out the importance of having nuclear weapons. According to him, nuclear weapons are used “every day… to deter our potential foes and provide reassurance to the allies to whom we offer protection.” While, his argument for nuclear weapons is pretty plausible, opponents would still say that a nuclear-free world is nuclear-free not just for the United States but also for its presumably potential adversaries, such as Russia, China and other countries. However, their counterargument looks rather weak and here’s why.

Countries that have, and/or are still developing nuclear weapons, are ones whose national security is at risk, especially if it is caused by a neighboring country. Such is the case with India and Pakistan, for example, who don’t get along, and Iran and Iraq as well. The situation in the Middle East doesn’t make much of a difference where Israel is being threatened of being wiped off the map by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and its neighbors are not friendly toward it either.

Merely having a well prepared army is not enough for the national security of countries like these and the great powers that they are allies with. The sole possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) has most likely prevented tons of military battles – including wars, and has therefore saved and mainteined hundreds of lives and stability respectively. It gets potential enemies to reconsider before declaring war.

Other reason not to want a nuclear-free world – not taking into consideration the nuclear power’s positive importance in producing electricity – is the impossibility of knowing that every country will destroy every WMD that it has. The world is not as small as we think it is as a result of the advance of science and technology, and there is most likely still too much information that even the secret services can’t have access to.

No WMDs is similar to no army

As I mentioned above, WMDs have contributed in preventing both individual military battles and ones that are parts of wars, therefore saving lives of innocent citizens and soldiers. It appears that the possession of WMDs protects soldiers and the rest, and soldiers protect the citizens from potential enemies while the police maintain order within the country. Politicians like former President Jimmy Carter who call for a nuclear-free world either want the people to think that it is possible, or know nothing about military conflicts and geopolitics. Their statements look like the ones that call for no wars whatsoever – a nice wish but one that is far from being attainable – and no wars will make the existence of national armies useless.

We have been systematically disillusioned that all nuclear weapons must be completely destroyed, so that we live in a safer world where wars are fewer and everything looks great. It’s high time that we stopped living in such a utopia and started being reasonable.