10 Thoughts for May 21, 2014

1. The NFL awarded Minneapolis the 2018 Super Bowl.  Did the NFL learn their lesson about awarding northern cities, despite the snow threat?  I say no.  Even though the new -- completed in 2016 -- stadium will be covered much like the Metrodome was, it won't matter if there's a blizzard and 10 feet of snow outside.
2. Speaking of the NFL, they're facing a class action lawsuit that it allowed a permissive -- even possibly illegal -- environment allowing teams to drug up players for broken bones without telling them that they had broken bones.
3. The FDA recently issued an update on its investigation into complaints over tainted dog treats from China.  As a result, today Petco announced that it will stop selling treats made in China.  Suffice to say, I stopped buying all chicken jerky, including those sold at Costco, years ago.  Almost all of them are from China, and as we've seen in the past, China has issues of quality control.  
4. Portland's city council is set to vote on a road tax.  I don't see why everyone has to pay for a tax for a product (roads) that isn't treated equally by all.  Some of us who rarely drive (and those who don't drive at all) are subsidizing the actions of those who use studded tires or otherwise use heavy vehicles under single occupancy.  That's about as regressive as you can get, reeking of the conservative flat tax.
5. If people are upset at the VA, then maybe we should take conservative pundit Rich Lowry's prodding and privatize it.  We'll squarely pin the idea of VA privatization on conservatives and let them take the heat for it, including the even-longer wait times.
6. Or we could stop going to wars for the next 50 years, and dismantle the defense industry, so that the number of veterans requiring extensive care will not continue to increase faster than the population.
7. PAC-12 presidents sent a letter to the presidents of the other four major NCAA conferences (SEC, Big-12, Big-10, ACC) outlining a massive reorganization of the league.  Because it essentially splits the league into the haves and have-nots, I expect a push and rush to expansion of the five major leagues to reach 16 teams, each.  And expect minimum qualifications to include the size and capacity of each school to fund their expenses under the new regime.
8. EBay got hacked; all passwords were compromised.  Serendipity: EBay gave me the finger last year and deleted my account because I had left it inactive for several years.
9. Monica Wehby blew out Jason Conger in the GOP primary.  She's going to lose the general.  The unofficial results show that Democrats lead Republicans by 8 percentage points in registration.  Merkley received more votes in the Democratic primary than was cast for all candidates in the GOP primary.  I hope Republicans waste spend tens of millions of their money on this race.  More money in the local economy = more money in the local economy.  Same old, same old as the 2012 election when Republicans wasted spent their money in Oregon hoping to turn it red.
10. Call it justice?  No.  We know that there are 22,000 Americans who illegally evaded paying taxes.  Super rich Americans.  The 0.1%.  I would have shaken the tree until all the roaches fell out.  Then I would have seized all of their assets until a full investigation could be completed...say in about a year or so.  At that point, these roaches would have reached out to their other foreign assets, and the trail of tax evasion extended.