Mike O'Connell

My hometown Washington Wizards keep rolling along (nice road win against the Bucks last night), though in my original hometown things don’t look so good. What else is new?

The 2017-2018 basketball season ended last night for the Binghamton Bearcats with a loss to instate rival Albany. The loss locked up a last-place finish in the America East Conference and closed the Bearcats out of the conference tournament. (There are nine teams and the top eight make it. Talk about insulting.)

For a further discussion… head here.

One of the world’s most well-known religious leaders died Wednesday at the age of 99. Calling Billy Graham a “preacher” hardly does his stature justice, the man who took his message to nearly 200 countries around the world and to more than 200 million people. He prayed with presidents and remained a constant force in spiritual matters from the days of old-time revivals to the days of radio, TV, and 21^st-century media. A long and storied career and a life well lived, I suppose.

The thing is, I never listened to Billy Graham. I was too young or too modern or simply too unchurched to be part of his flock. My minister growing up? He was on TV too, and in fact this week marked 50 years since Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood first aired on public television. (Earlier incarnations of the show even preceded that.)

I’m not going to add anything to the Mr. Rogers mystique that hasn’t been glowingly referenced elsewhere. (And by the way, Fred Rogers really was an ordained minister.) He was my spiritual leader when I was a kid, as he was for many. When he died in 2003 I felt as though a part of me died as well. My childhood died that day. I was 20, about to finish college, and here was the great symbol of my childhood vanishing. None of my own grandparents had yet died (but for a grandfather who had died 16 years before and of whom I didn’t remember much), and I really felt as though Mr. Rogers was my first grandparent to go. There was a certain loss of innocence that February day in 2003. Hard to believe that this Tuesday it will have been 15 years.

To Fred Rogers and Billy Graham… rest in peace.

If you watch sports long enough (I’m talking decades here) you’ll see that young’uns eventually become old-timers and heroes invariably become villains.

Both of those phenomena occurred for Shaun White this past week.

An “old man” in the snowboarding world at 31, Shaun White came through with an incredible gold medal-winning performance this past Tuesday to earn his third gold medal in a storied Olympic career going back to 2006 (when he was one of the young’uns).

I used to think White was sort of a punk. But, like A-Rod and LeBron before him, villains in old age have a way of becoming heroes. (See, it works the other way too.) So I got to savor that White victory last Tuesday…

For about 10 minutes.

Google Shaun White’s name and what comes up now?

Sexual harassment charges.

Ugh.

I think the #metoo movement should be relabeled the #youtoo? movement. As in, you too? Are there any men left out there not subject to such charges?

Obviously I fully support prosecution of harassment, sexual or otherwise. This case, though, seems far obvious. And furthermore it seems to have been settled in 2016. But with White back in the spotlight again the issue has become part of the news, marring an otherwise feel-good story.

You know, the one that makes us old guys feel like we can still compete with the young-uns.

A page-one story in Sunday’s edition of The Washington Post describes the dealings of several new-ish members of Virginia’s House of Delegates. (Trivia bonus: it’s the oldest continuous law-making body in the New World.) The piece highlights some of the assembly’s young participants, though the issues they face are far from new. Unfortunately their so-called solutions suffer from the same problem.

Delegate Will Morefield (“R”-Tazewell) and Delegate Lashrecse Aird (D-Petersburg) are millennial legislators “divided by party but united by need,” as the Post proclaims. United by something is the way I’d describe it, by a phrase that might not be as nice. Morefield and Aird are both from disaffected areas of the state. They’re poor and cut off from the gold mine where I live and everyone else is trying to move to. I used to live in a place like this too. It’s called Binghamton, and for years I watched politicians of both parties try one “economic development” gimmick after another to attract business and investment. Actually, no, attracting business and investment needs no gimmick. It’s a result more of stability than of gamesmanship. But nobody grandstands on stability.

Enter Will Morefield, someone about whom I knew nothing before Sunday, but seems like both a sorry excuse for a Republican and a sorry excuse as a representative of my generation. His grand idea? Offer tax breaks to companies that locate in “disadvantaged places”—breaks that would exempt each employee from paying state income tax for 10 years.

The thing about gimmicks is, they fail because they’re gimmicks. This is neither new nor useful, and ignores laws of mathematics and economics.

“The state’s not losing any money,” claims Morefield, who obviously majored in fuzzy math. (This is me reaching for my wallet.) “These companies aren’t here anyway.” (True, though what about companies who already are here and have been paying taxes? If you owned a restaurant and then one opened across the street that didn’t have to pay taxes, how’dja feel about that?) “Wealthy areas roll out the red carpet all the time to lure Facebook data centers or pro sports stadiums. It’s about time Tazewell County got some of that love.”

(My opponents are cheating by doing this unholy thing. I’m going to start doing this unholy thing too. But it’s cool. Don’t worry.)

Delegate Aird has gotten the Petersburg City Council to adopt a resolution endorsing the plan. She and Morefield, members of the “millennial caucus” (let the record show I’ve never liked people of my own generation), are now pushing the bill statewide.

My diagnosis?

Two wrongs don’t make a right.

“I feel like the old members are pretty stuck in their ways,” Aird said, as though age and seniority are somehow blocking this bold new idea. No, it’s a bad idea, and hardly a new one. Taking one taxpayer’s money and giving it to another is as old as government itself. That it now has hip sponsors or a trendy new oversight committee (the “Virginia Economic Development Partnership”—cue wallet reach again) doesn’t change a thing.

Vanguard eye for the news.

I still got it.

It’s that time again. Every so often I have the joy in being swept up in something I really have no business caring about. Can I name five people competing in this year’s Winter Olympics? Nope. Not today. Will I be an expert two weeks from now? Absolutely.

I know that many people who consider themselves “real” sports fans take offense to those who follow a particular sporting event only during its spotlight time. I suppose the classic example is the NCAA basketball tournament. I follow college basketball all year, not just in March, but I hold no grudge against people who become fans only when following their brackets. (Unless they’re beating me. In which case I despise them.)

If college basketball brings us March Madness, let’s call this February Madness. I’m one of the unchurched jumping in when it’s convenient. I’ll admit it. I’m a fair-weather fan of those foul-weather sports.

Me and a few billion other people.