The disparity between the haves and have-nots in baseball is getting ridiculous. When the Brewers are spending $30 million to field a team and the Yankees are spending $270 million ($200mm payroll + $70mm in luxury tax) to field theirs, they are no longer playing the same game.

Something needs to be done to reset the economics of baseball. What Milwaukee, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Oakland, etc. need to do is simply refuse to play for a season. Announce they are forfeiting every one of their 162 games. Until drastic steps are taken, the Yankees and Red Sox are going to be able to buy their way into the playoffs every year and other teams will never get a chance to compete. Sure, sometimes a particularly astute exec or some great young talent can keep a team in contention for a year or two despite a lower payroll. But those teams cannot sustain the level of play and feel compelled to trade off their higher paid and soon-to-be free agent players. This revolving door further deminishes any fan base, decreasing attendance, cutting revenue and continuing the vicious cycle.

Other sports have demonstrated how salary caps and better revenue sharing let all markets field competative teams. The Green Bay Packers hold their own against the NY Giants and Chicago Bears annually. The Sacramento Kings and Minnesota Timberwoves are among the best teams in the NBA. And fan bases for sports only grow when everybody truely believe that their team can win it all, if not this year then maybe next. But when they see it’ll never happen then they lose interest in the sports and all teams will suffer in the end.

The Chicago Auto Show opened on Friday, so I checked it out with a friend Saturday afternoon.

After too many trips with people who couldn’t last through the entire show (even the tiny Atlanta one) I’ve gone alone the past couple years. I’d head down there after work on a less crowded weeknight and stay until they closed–a good 4 hours to enjoy the cars. However, my friend was as into the show as I was and we ended up spending 6 hours at the Auto Show on Saturday! We got there around 4 and again didn’t leave until kicked out.

I think I’ve now got a new front-runner for my next car–provided Alfa Romeo doesn’t return to the U.S. by the time my Jetta’s paid off.

The new Volvo S40 looks amazing, inside and out! The new model has a 218 HP engine available, which means it should be pretty fast, too! I plan to go take one for a test drive when they hit the dealers next month.

However, if for some reason uBid goes public or I win the lottery, I want the Maserati Quattroporte. I don’t know what it is about Italian designed cars…

Originally posted as a comment to this entry on WatchBlog

Given the low number of votes Dean has received in the primaries thus far, his popularity seems to have dropped precipitously given his front runner status in polls leading up to the the first primaries.

But has Dean’s support really waned as much as it seems? Are the primary numbers skewed vs. the actual sentiment of Democratic voters across the nation because of where the initial primaries were held?

Take a look at the Red (Bush) vs. Blue (Gore) states from the 2000 election. Of the 9 states which have held their primaries thus far, only Iowa and New Mexico were Gore states in 2000, and New Mexico by only about 300 votes. The assumption could be made that the Democratic voters in these nine states are more conservative than their counterparts in the blue states such as California, New York, etc.

Seeing as Dean claims to represent the “Democratic wing of the Democratic party,” wouldn’t it seem plausible that he would garner much greater support in those states that tend to be more liberal in general? I’d think so. But we may never know the answer because of the present primary system.

So much influence is given to a few relatively minor states that the nomination has practically be handed to John Kerry by the national media. Yet the total population of all the states that have voted thus far is only 26 million. That’s less than 10% of the nation’s population.

So maybe Dean would win California, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, etc. The states with big populations that voted for Gore in 2000. But by the time they hold their primaries, it’s too late. People have already been influenced by the constant coverage of Kerry’s surge to the top. People are jumping ship from other candidates to support the front runner because ultimately, they just want Bush out of office.

Maybe for exactly that reason, Kerry is the best candidate to face Bush in November. Maybe a couple of those red states can be persuaded to vote blue. West Virginia seems to be ready to flip after seeing tremendous job loss in their factories, mines and mills. Others are close, too. But could Dean scare voters in New Mexico, Iowa and elsewhere that are more conservative? Maybe, if these primaries are any indication.

So what is the solution? Obviously, there needs to be some sort of changes in the primary election schedule. We need a system that gives more states a say in determining the party nominees. The current system results in candidates spending an inordinate amount of time and money in a few relatively small states that don’t reflect much of the population of country in terms of most demographics.

To me the best solution would be to group the states into a 3-4 “Super Tuesday” dates, with a balance of small and large states; rural and urban; north, south, east, west; that each have similar numbers of voters casitng their votes each election day. Would it really be so hard to take away some of the influence of Iowa and give it to Illinois? Take away some of the influence of New Hampshire and give it to New York?

I guess I would have thought it’d look more impressive than it does:

Looks like I need to do a bit of a road trip out west:

Create your own map at World66

The faucet in my shower had been dripping for months. I’d been meaning to fix it, but it just never seemed to get done. Well since I’d gotten back from Mexico, the drip has turned into virtually a constant small stream of water. I needed to get the damn thing fixed. No problem, I thought, just an hour or so –including the trip to Home Depot for parts. Wasn’t quite so easy.

Day 1: Pry the little “C” cap off the knob and unscrew the knob. Ony took about 2 minutes. This is easy! But then I hit the first hurdle. Neither my wrench nor pliers can open large enough to get around the packing nut.

So I head off to Home Depot for a wrench. To the North Ave. Home Depot. The busiest Home Depot in the country. On a Saturday afternoon, when the Lincoln Park and Gold Coast yuppies are all there buying things to spruce up their condos and townhouses. I didn’t want to make a second trip, so I swing by the plumbing dept. hoping that there’s some sort of standard to the replacement parts for faucets and if I can describe it a bit he’ll say that it’s this or that. No luck. Could be any of hundreds of parts, I’m told… Go Home and put faucet back together again.

Day 2: Having successfully removed the packing nut with my new wrench, I fight to get the stem out. I’m turning and turning waiting for the thing to unscrew. After 15 minutes, I begin to wonder whether it actually screws out. I hold the outer part of the stem with my pliers and try fully unscrewing the part that the knob moves when turning on and off. It doesn’t come out. So in frustration, I simply yank at the stem. It comes out! Silly me.

OK, now that I’ve got the part out I take it to Home Depot. The same full of yuppies North Ave. store as the day before. I take it to the plumbing dept. and show it to a couple of the salespeople. One doesn’t think anything’s wrong with it. I tell him it’s leaking so SOMETHING’S WRONG with it. He tells me to talk to another salesperson. That guy looks at it and says it’s too old. So I try the nearby Ace Hardware. I get a similar story. The faucet’s old and they can’t carry parts for every faucet made. He’s at least helpful and tells me to try a specialty plumbing store, and gives me the names of a couple. Unfortunately, none of these places are open on Sunday. Return home and put faucet back together again.

Day 3: I get up a few minutes early so I can swing by one of those specialty plumbing stores on the way to work. They’re both kind of on the way, so I figure I’ll try one and if no luck there I’ll go to the other. But finally a break! I walk into Community Home Supply and show the guy behind the counter the part, and he instantly recognizes it. And he’s got the part right there below the counter. And it was only $5.15 — 1/3 the price of faucet stems I’d seen at Home Depot and Ace. So I buy two of them –might as well replace the hot faucet as well. When I get home from work, I disassemble the faucet, pop in the new part and reassemble the faucet in about 1 minute (I’ve gotten enough practice!). No more leak!

So it took a little longer to complete the job then I’d assumed, but I successfully completed the job. When tackling these home repair jobs, I need to keep in mind that they are never as easy as they first appear. I’m starting to learn my lesson, especially living in an older building. It’s not that old — built in 1968 — but I guess that’s one of the problems with Home Depot being headquartered in Atlanta, where nothing’s over 10 years old.