What with the tendency these days to assume that everyone’s judgments reflect his or her prejudices, today’s post must start with a personal note, if not a personal confession.

The information and analysis found below might lead the casual observer to suppose that the News Guy is hostile – or at least indifferent – to the game of baseball.

True, precisely as true as that Popeye dislikes spinach and Bugs Bunny abhors carrots.

In fact, the News Guy has now and then reflected that had he taken but one tenth of the time he has spent over the decades going to, watching, reading about, or talking about baseball games (and, even earlier, playing in them, not all that impressively), and used that time in productive effort, he might today be a very rich man indeed (or confined to a penitentiary, depending on which path of productive effort he had chosen).

Having established that, let’s turn to the subject of the Vermont Lake Monsters of the Class A New York-Penn League They want us to build them a ball park. If we don’t, they’ll go away.

OK, neither team owner Ray Pecor nor General manager C.J. Knudsen has made that threat in so many words. In fact, both have said they might be satisfied with substantial renovation of their present home grounds, Centennial Field, the 101-year-old stadium owned by the University of Vermont.

But Pecor told the Burlington Free Press that bringing the old ball park up to new standards might cost as much as $20 million, and “if you are going to spend that much, you might a well build a new park with all the amenities, without cement seats and (with) the ability to park near the park and not take a shuttle.”

Most Lake Monsters fans now have to park near UVM’s Gutterson Field House and be shuttled to Centennial Field.

Pecor’s cost estimate for Centennial Field renovation could be high. Both Tom Torti, the president of the Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce, and C.J. Knudsen, the team’s general manager, said the old ball park might be spruced up for more like $10 million to $12 million.

“Technically I think it could, and could be functional,” Knudsen said. “We need to undergo some renovations. When we first came here in 1994, Centennial was functional. Since then, other teams (in the league) have had major renovations or brand new ball parks funded by a city, county, state or sports commission. These facilities are beautiful ball parks, great for fans and great for players. They have plenty of parking, comfortable seats, facilities for the disabled. ”

It’s easy to see why the Lake Monsters want better facilities. Centennial Field is the oldest ball park in the minor leagues. A report by Major League Baseball found that the lighting was inadequate for professional baseball. Upgrading the lighting system probably wouldn’t be all that expensive, but Knudsen also said, “we do not have enough lockers in our locker room. We don’t have press facilities or anything like that.”

There’s where the multi-million dollar price tag comes in.

It’s also easy to understand why business leaders like Torti think a new ball park would be good for Burlington’s economy. If nothing else, it would make their jobs easier.

“Having a minor league baseball team gives Burlington one more of those little things that helps us look like we play big for a small player,” Torti said. “When people are thinking of relocating here we can show them that for seven dollars you can go see baseball.”

It may only be Class A (unlike the picture above, Wrigley Field, in the big time), but it’s professional baseball, and some of the players will make it to the major leagues. Ken Griffey, Jr. once played in Burlington. Besides, the games are fun, even on concrete bleacher seats (stadium cushions are inexpensive and easy to carry).

No wonder, then, that according to that Free Press story, almost everyone is for doing something to keep the Lake Monsters in Burlington – the business leaders, Sen. Patrick Leahy, Mayor Bob Kiss. Who would be against it?

How about the taxpayers. And maybe owners of businesses other than baseball clubs.

Go back and carefully parse what General Manager Knudsen said. All those other new and/or improved stadiums were “funded by a city, county state or sports commission.” That’s you, folks, if you pay taxes, and among economists who have studied the matter, using public money to build stadiums for privately owned sports teams is, at the very least, a debatable use of scarce public resources.

“If your objective is to create jobs there are better ways to spend money,” said Raymond Sauer, an economics professor at Clemson University in South Carolina,, and the founder of the “Sports Economics” web site. “Invest in infrastructure that brings in people who want to open up businesses that employ people year-round. A stadium sits empty most of the time, and when it’s filled, it mostly employs ushers and hamburger flippers.”

Nor is it at all certain, economists say, that having a sports team in town boosts the economy.

“Despite what many people believe, professional sports venues typically do not spur large-scale economic activity,” wrote Dennis Coates, an economics professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, in an article for the American Enterprise Institute magazine..

Instead, economists argue, public financing of sports arenas and stadiums redistributes economic activity, often to the detriment of the very people whose taxes go up to subsidize the stadium.

“It really is fundamental that people only have so much money to spend on entertainment,” Sauer said. So if a fancy new ball park brings more people to Burlington to watch the Lake Monsters, the ball club’s gain is likely to be another business’s loss.

That would be especially true if the state put up some of the money. It could only do that by raising taxes or cutting services statewide. But if a new Burlington ball park attracts fans from, say, Montpelier or Stowe, that’s money they won’t spend in restaurants or movie theatres in Montpelier or Stowe (or at the Montpelier games of the Vermont Mountaineers of the New England Collegiate Baseball League). Business owners in those cities are not likely to be happy about being taxed to subsidize their competitors.

It might be possible to finance a new or upgraded stadium from the Burlington area alone. But the same problem might arise. One idea, according to both Torti and Knudsen, is for a multi-purpose facility for sports, concerts, business meetings, perhaps conventions, right on the waterfront.

The usual financing scheme for such a facility would include raising the rooms taxes for local hotels that presumably benefit from the presence of the ball club.  But there’s already a conference center nearby – the Sheraton, right near the University and just across the city line in South Burlington. It won’t want to charge its customers an extra tax to pay off the bonds that built a new facility designed to compete with it.

More problems. UVM has dropped varsity baseball, meaning there is one less potential user of a new stadium. Centennial Field is right next to a residential area where homeowners probably don’t want to deal with regular crowds of concert-goers whose ticket purchases would help pay for renovations. Many, if not most people in Burlington probably don’t want a big new structure right along the lake, especially if it’s surrounded by a big parking lot.

This doesn’t mean that some way can’t be found to keep the Lake Monsters in Burlington without asking state or city taxpayers to foot the bill. Some variant of that local rooms and meals tax plan might prove politically sellable and economically defensible.

Dennis Coates has his doubts.

“Consider the common practice of funding stadium and arena subsidies with new taxes on hotel occupancy and rental cars,” he wrote. “One argument for such taxes at the local level is that they are paid by outside visitors, many of whom may be in town to see the sporting events. But the taxes would also be paid by traveling businessmen and conventioneers. When comparing cities to host an upcoming meeting, businesses and professional associations may select between otherwise comparable cities based on which one has the lower hotel and rental car taxes. In other words, the new taxes used to subsidize the stadium construction may ultimately reduce visits to the city by non-sports-related travelers.”

The Lake Monsters, six-and-six before last night’s game against the Hudson Valley Renegades, and tied with the Lowell Spinners for second place in their division, host the Renegades tomorrow on the Fourth of July (and a Grand and Glorious one to you all).

Go one out to the game. Let’s root-root-root for the Home Team, and if they should leave it’s a shame. That doesn’t mean it’s the taxpayer’s job to keep them here.

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So, should a racist, anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi tenured professor be allowed to teach at the University of Vermont?

And suppose he isn’t any of those things. Suppose he just studies, writes about, and (apparently) admires some racist, anti-Semitic, neo-Nazis while pursuing his own scholarly interest in “the status of European heritage, or white Americans, including the way they are educated.”  Should he be allowed on the UVM faculty?

Professor Griffin

The questions arise because of an excellent piece of reporting by Daniel Barlow in the Sunday, June 14, Barre-Montpelier Times Argus about Robert S. Griffin, who has been teaching education courses at the university since 1974, and who at the very least maintains close professional contacts with white supremacists, anti-Semites, and maybe even neo-Nazis.

The answer to the questions is: Yes.

Griffin is tenured faculty, meaning the university has confirmed his academic credentials and his competence as a teacher.  That means he can only be fired for cause-not showing up for class (or at least not showing up sober),  failing to grade papers, abusing students, inciting violence, or the like.

Not for whatever belief or opinion he expresses. That’s the whole purpose of tenure-to protect academics from being dismissed for their views, however unpopular, bizarre, offensive, outrageous, or even disgusting those views may be.

Come to think of it, that’s one of the purposes of a university or college to begin with – to serve as a forum for ideas and opinions, however….(see list above).

Since, as far as we know, there has never been a formal complaint by a student that Griffin has committed any of the above-named offenses, his job is and ought to be safe.

But wait a minute! Suppose he tries – whether openly or surreptitiously – to convert his impressionable young students to his (seemingly) revolting way of thinking? Shouldn’t that be grounds for dismissal?

Nope. Not unless he does so with threats, intimidation, or by giving low grades to students who voice their disagreement. Again, there seems to be no record of students officially suggesting he has behaved in this way. There is one unofficial suggestion. On the ‘ratemyprofessors.com‘ web site, one student complained, “If you don’t agree with his thoughts, you get a bad grade.”

But as almost any faculty member will attest, it’s the students who don’t like a professor who are more likely to contribute to these sites. This student apparently got a bad grade, and may have been seeking revenge. At any rate, that one complaint hardly qualifies as sufficient evidence even to start a disciplinary proceeding, much less to take any action.

Final objection. Suppose a non-white student had to take one of his classes but felt intimidated. Wouldn’t some disciplinary action, if not dismissal, be in order.

Not unless Griffin took some overt action to intimidate. In a free society, there is no guarantee against feeling intimidated, any more than there is a guarantee against being insulted.

So Griffin gets to keep his job, despite complaints from some letter-to-the-editor writers and at least one web site.  (UVM was lucky that the story came out during summer vacation; five will get you ten that had it appeared in October, there would have been at least one small “Griffin Must Go” rally on campus).

But job security is the simplest question this case provokes, and therefore the least interesting. Start, for instance, with the question of just what kind of guy Griffin really is. Here matters grow more complex.

The case against him – the case for him being a real bigot – is compelling if just short of conclusive. Barlow lays it out in detail. To state just one of the more obvious examples, among the links on Griffin’s web site, robertsgriffin.com, is one to the Vanguard News Network, whose slogan is “No Jews. Just Right.”

Nor does Griffin always help his own case. Writing two years ago in Vermont Commons (the journal of the Vermont secessionist movement, the racist associations of which were discussed in an earlier post, Secessionist Delusions, February 12), Griffin said, “I think it is fair to say that the victors in the competition to insert their perspective into school programs have been the egalitarians, collectivists, multiculturalists, feminists, gays, environmentalists, internationalists, secularists, and Holocaust promoters.”

Holocaust promoters? That’s pretty strong evidence that he is a Holocaust denier, the ultimate combination of bigotry and willful ignorance.

But then take a look at his web site, where he links, admiringly, to a quote by Philip Roth, the novelist whose Jewishness is central to his fiction.

In fact, the Robert Griffin of the web site seems to be less a raging bigot than an interesting guy.

“My writings have been vehicles for an investigation of the whole of American society and culture and the way we conduct our individual lives,” he writes. ”That has involved me in considerations related to history, philosophy, race, religion, the arts, the mass media, parenting, the process of growing up, gender, education, sports, and personal health and fulfillment.

As to his racial views, “while I have written often about race this last decade, I do not consider myself to be a racial writer… I write whatever is there to be written, and if it is about race, so be it, but I don’t consider myself linked to that subject.”

Though he responded neither to Barlow nor to the News Guy, Griffin did email the Inside Higher Ed web site, denying that he was a racist and insisting that “even the most cursory review of my writings would show that I deplore violence.”

Inside Higher Ed also reached UVM education professor David Shiman, the head of the faculty union at the university, who is Jewish. Shiman  said that in the 35 years he has known his colleague he has “never seen from him an anti-Semitic remark, never heard him make a racist remark.”

Shiman said he once assigned Griffin’s 2001 article “Rearing Honorable White Children” in some of his multicultural education classes, and invited Griffin to answer students’ questions.

“I think the students need to hear diverse perspectives, need to challenge themselves and be exposed to views that cause them to reflect on the views they think they hold — and maybe get stronger holding them, but at least challenge themselves,” Shiman said.

All this apparent civility though, can not completely offset the rest of Griffin’s profile. He is the author of what Barlow called “a fawning biography” of  William Pierce, the author of the white supremacist novel  ”The Turner Diaries,” which helped inspire Timothy McVeigh to blow up the federal office building in Oklahoma City.

“I found Pierce to be a person of remarkable capability, decency, integrity, courage, and dedication,” Griffin writes on his Web site.” And the Vanguard News Network is not the only white supremacist web site to which he links.

Perhaps the most interesting way to look at l’affaire Griffin is to take him at his word that he is not a bigot, but only someone who teaches and and advocates white culture. On the face of it, that should be no more objectionable than teaching and advocating black or Latino culture, which has attained a modicum of respect in academia.

But no less objectionable either. It isn’t that there aren’t racial and ethnic subcultures worthy of study. Black and Hispanic, obviously, but also Appalachian, Italian-American, French-Canadian, rural New England.

In the final analysis, though, culture is neither racial nor ethnic. If it were, then, for instance, Sarah Chang, whose biological ancestry is Korean, could not so brilliantly play Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, a work steeped in the German musical tradition (if, for that matter, Mendelssohn, who didn’t have a drop of Teutonic blood in his veins, could have composed a concerto). Culture is a product of  intellect and consciousness, internal qualities indifferent to the color of the outer layer.

No one has to be English to appreciate Shakespeare, Dutch to understand Rembrandt, or African-American to dig Charlie Parker. From a university’s perspective, the problem with Robert Griffin is not that his beliefs are abhorrent, but that they are ignorant.

Pete Seeger

Liberals and conservatives both held tax day demonstrations in Montpelier yesterday, leaving observers to wonder which of them was more ineffectual.

At first, glance, the liberals would seem to have “won” this negative distinction hands down. Their demonstration was smaller. Only about 35 or so members and supporters of Save Our State showed up at the State Street tax office at 10 am to display their “SOS-EZ” forms indicating they were willing to pay more taxes to stave off deep cuts to social programs.

The conservatives drew 200 to 250 to the front lawn of the Capitol at noon,  and  though it wasn’t clear how many were supporters and how many were just curious, that was still a surprisingly good turnout for a conservative cause in a liberal town.

Mere crowd comparison, though,  might be misleading. The SOSers were organized via a short, low-budget, email and telephone effort which aimed at attracting only enough demonstrators to fill a small space (and look crowded on television).

The conservative event was part of a nationwide anti-tax “tea party” demonstration organized with contributions from several large corporations, promotion by talk radio stations and the active support of Fox News Network, which dropped whatever pretense remained of its “we report, you decide” slogan to beat the drums for the event.

Small in numbers, the liberals knew enough to be concise and focused. They had one message – a small tax increase is better than big budget cuts. They sent the message and they were gone within half an hour.

The conservatives, on the other hand, went on for almost two hours, with speakers (some in Montpelier, some remote from other “Tea Party” sites) opining about  immigration, Social Security, foreign policy, and “the abusive monetary policy of the Federal Reserve,” not otherwise explained. They did keep coming back to the tax issue, but they seemed a bit confused about what was going on. One speaker after another associated President Barack Obama with higher taxes. He just got Congress to cut taxes

Confusion also seemed to reign when it came to political assessment, with one speaker after another insisting that their anti-government, anti-tax, anti-Obama outlook was the opinion of what several of them called “the silent majority.” All the polls, though, show that not only is Obama popular, but so are his economic policies. Even taxes don’t seem to be held in all that much distaste. The latest Gallup Poll indicated that “48% of Americans (said) the amount of federal income taxes they pay is ‘about right,’ with 46% saying ‘too high’ — one of the most positive assessments Gallup has measured since 1956,” in the words of Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire.

And when T. J. Michaels, the talk show host of  Barre radio station WSNO, shouted “shame on” Senators Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, it sounded as though Michaels was convinced all three office-holders were out of touch with Vermonters and ripe for defeat.

They are, of course, about as close to unbeatable as office-holders can be.

It wasn’t that no one made sense at the protest. One supporter held aloft a sign reading, “The trouble with socialism is eventually you run out of other peoples money.”

Quite possibly true, though perhaps no truer than that one trouble with capitalism is that you never run out of other people’s money, at least not if you’re a big bank.

Still, the lack of focus and of political reality raises again the possibility that conservatives are just no good at demonstrations. They’re good at political fund-raising, strategizing, marketing and (until lately) winning. Not that long ago, they were also tolerably good at governing. But they’ve never seemed comfortable demonstrating. Fringe leftists are comfortable demonstrating, even when they’re making fools of themselves. Fringe right-wingers are not, though this discomfort does not appear to be caused by any greater awareness that they are making fools of themselves.

As with protest demonstrations, so it is with protest songs — the left is good at them; the right is not. Pete Seeger has made his political blunders (naiveté about Joe Stalin was not a minor error) but, by gum, he can play the banjo, sing, and get folks to sing along with him. Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Arlo Guthrie have talent, or perhaps genius. So does Bruce Springsteen.

But you should have heard that music playing at the Montpelier event yesterday. No, scratch that; be grateful you missed it. At least as heard on You-Tube, the quasi-official nationwide “Tea Party” theme by Lloyd Marcus wasn’t much better.

Only Merle Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee,” and “Fightin’ Side of Me” rank as great conservative protest music. But they were a long time ago, and their conservatism was more cultural than political. If Haggard was a political conservative then, he isn’t any more. He endorse Hillary Clinton, and then Obama, last year.

The real problem with the Montpelier “Tea Party” though was not the music; it was the words, and their near-total lack of political coherence. Simply consider that speaker after speaker warned of “inflation.”

During the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression? The very day the government announced that inflation had declined by more than at any time in 54 years? Deflation is the threat. Right now, worrying about inflation is not real.

It isn’t that there’s no argument to be made against Obama’s policies. There are always arguments to be made against policy. But arguments not grounded in reality are not arguments; they are performances. Both of yesterday’s demonstrations were performances, of course; that’s what demonstrations are. But only one of them contained an argument. Anyone can disagree with that argument, but that’s because anyone can comprehend it. The performance in front of the Statehouse was incomprehensible.

In general, this is not a healthy situation. Without coherent opposition, a party and a political faction don’t have to think. Intellectual ossification then looms. No one should doubt that this can happen to the Democrats and to liberalism. It happened before, circa 1967. Recovery took awhile.

Vermonters are somewhat insulated from this danger because the only conservative here with any political influence, Gov. Douglas, is not of the “Tea Party” mentality. He says only nice things about the President, does not succumb to conspiracy theories, and understands that government is necessary.

He does, it is true, want to cut taxes, or at least not raise them.

So he says, anyway. Whether his policies would actually turn out that way requires more examination