Pastor Jeffress and the folly of Trump

Pastor Jeffress is Plucked from Crowd and Endorses Donald Trump in Fort Worth 

Excerpt:

Let me just say briefly I know three things about Donald Trump.

Number One: He Sincerely loves this country. He has 10 billion reasons he doesn’t have to do this. But he sincerely wants to make America great again!

Number Two: He is pro-Life. I have talked with him in Trump Towers. He wants to protect the unborn… I tell you what, some of you who say, “Well I don’t know.” His pro-Life conversion was real. Let me tell you something. Hillary Clinton doesn’t claim any pro-Life conversion. If you go for Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders there is no doubt you are going to have the most pro-abortion president in history.

Here is what I finally know about Donald Trump. Donald Trump cares about and loves evangelical Christians… I have met with Mr. Trump on several occasions and I can tell you from personal experience that if Donald Trump is elected president of the United States we who are evangelical Christians are going to have a TRUE FRIEND in the White House. God Bless, Donald Trump.

Comment: Frankly Mussolini's Lateran Treaty with the Roman Catholic Church must of seemed like a reasonable deal at the time. More on Jeffress.  My friend Greg Easton illustrated the dangers of mixing politics and religion (it basically dilutes the Gospel!).

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See Trump as a wannabe Mussolini

An interview that Trump gave to Playboy in 1990 has just come to my attention. If I’m the last to know about it, forgive me. Trump was asked about Gorbachev — who was nearing the end of his time in power. Trump said, “Russia is out of control and the leadership knows it. That’s my problem with Gorbachev. Not a firm enough hand.” His interviewer asked, “You mean firm hand as in China?” Trump answered, “When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak … as being spit on by the rest of the world –”

I will not vote for Donald Trump!

Donald Trump relishes wrecking the GOP

Excerpt:

The Republican process of picking Clinton's opponent already has, before the fourth delegate selection event, pruned the field from 17 to five, with only four — Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich, but not Ben Carson — with arguable paths to the nomination. Cruz is counting on volunteers wielding smartphones loaded with analytics — Boss Tweed meets Steve Jobs — to counter Trump's surfing on an endless wave of free media. Rubio needs Kasich, the only remaining governor, to wither while waiting for the process to reach states thought to be congenial.

Trump shatters the Republican Party

Excerpt:

Suddenly, there are three strands of Republicanism, each entrenched and vying for supremacy in 2016. Ted Cruz is the leader of the traditional conservative purists. Marco Rubio is emerging from the mud of a multicandidate brawl to lead the once-dominant, now diminished, mainstream lane of the GOP. But it is Trump’s new alliance of angry populists that is ascendant — and on the precipice of dominance.

Built on the backs of working-class men and women who feel abandoned, economically and culturally, Trump’s coalition has both brought in new voters and carved out support from the other two. Trump won over evangelicals from Cruz in South Carolina, and even more resoundingly again in Nevada. He then took moderates from the mainstream in New Hampshire and Nevada en route to landslide victories in three consecutive states.

“What Trump is consolidating is the people who are unhappy being in either camp — those who don’t see themselves as conservative insurgents or as mainstream Republicans,” said Yuval Levin, an influential Republican thinker and editor of the quarterly conservative journal National Affairs. “They’re insurgents but they’re not conservatives. And they’re not happy with the system that gave us that binary choice.” “It’s kind of Archie Bunker types,” said Glen Bolger, a veteran Republican pollster who is unaligned in 2016 but opposed to Trump

With God As My Witness, I Will Never Vote For Donald Trump.

 Excerpt:

I will never vote for Donald Trump, not even if he’s the Republican nominee.

I will never vote for Donald Trump, not even if Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley rise from the grave and beg me to support him.

I will never vote for Donald Trump, not even if it means he forms a third party and runs as the narcissist sociopath he truly is.

I will never vote for Donald Trump, no matter how many times the liberal media declares his inevitability and his immunity to scrutiny and attack or how many times the “conservative” media ignores his record and beliefs to fellate him on-air.

I will never vote for Donald Trump because he’s a pro-gun control, pro-single-payer health care, pro-eminent domain, pro-abortion, and pro-statism liberal who will immediately revert to form when he’s finished selling his fauxservatism to people he patently views as rubes.

I will never vote for Donald Trump, because absolutely nothing he can say or do will cover the fact he is obviously and blatantly lying every time his thin lips move and his freakishly tiny hands pound the podium.

I will never vote for Donald Trump because it’s utterly obvious that he lacks the temperament, judgment, and basic sanity to be placed as steward over 7,700 nuclear weapons and the rest of the awesome power of the United States military.

I will never vote for Donald Trump because he’s a draft-dodging blowhard who was chasing strange in Midtown when John McCain was having his arms broken by the Vietnamese.

I will never vote for Donald Trump to toe the “he’s my nominee” line because if he wins my party’s nomination it means the GOP has sold itself to a soulless, utterly unprincipled liberal narcissist bent on its destruction and that of conservatism.

I will never vote for Donald Trump, because it would require the complete abdication of every political value that informs my life; a reverence for the Constitution and the Republic and for limited-government conservative principles that shaped this nation and that continue to represent the only viable opposition to the galloping growth of the state.

I will never vote for Donald Trump because the solution to a Washington’s crony capitalism problems isn’t to elect an even more egregious and lavishly corrupt crony capitalist.

Cal Thomas: The 'itching ears' of Trump followers

Since religious language has again infected this unpredictable and turbulent political season, here is a verse that could describe the followers of Donald Trump. It is found in Paul’s second letter to his protege Timothy (or as Trump might call it, Two Timothy): "For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear."

All politicians tell voters what they want to hear. It is one reason for the anger many voters feel for members of both political parties. These voters believe Washington has let them down, promising things it has not, or cannot, deliver in exchange for their support.

Trump makes grandiose promises and claims he never backs up with facts. ... To followers of Trump it doesn't matter. Inaccuracies and the unlikelihood of making good on his promises are not as important as the thought behind them. This can be dangerous in a leader who aspires to power.

Writing in the Harvard Business Review in 2012, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, the CEO of Hogan Assessment Systems, a professor of Business Psychology at University College London and a faculty member at Columbia University, warns about "The Dark Side of Charisma." Noting "the short-term benefits of charisma are often neutralized by its long-term consequences,"

Chamorro-Premuzic lists four reasons for resisting charisma: "Charisma often dilutes judgment," it is "addictive," it "disguises psychopaths" and it "fosters collective narcissism." Despite the dangers, he says, "the dark side of charm is often overlooked."

Before the rise of Trump, one could point to President Obama as a recent example of the phenomenon. "In the era of multimedia politics," notes Chamorro-Premuzic, "leadership is commonly downgraded to just another form of entertainment and charisma is indispensable for keeping the audience engaged."

A characteristic of Trump's followers appears to be their determination to ignore any evidence that would challenge their faith. And so when I question the reality show-style of Trump, I get messages on social media calling me a "sack of (excrement)," a member of the "establishment" and "old," which is the unkindest cut of all.

Remember when age used to go with wisdom, unless proven otherwise? If you're a millennial reading this, perhaps you have no memory of such a time. Trump may well win the Republican nomination and even the presidency. If he does, it will confirm that the transformation of American politics -- from serious business, to another form of entertainment -- is complete and the White House will become the biggest reality show of them all.

The FANG stocks

What Are FANG Stocks and Why Does Jim Cramer Love Them?

Excerpt:

FANG, an acronym created by TheStreet's Jim Cramer a few years ago, is representative of four of the most popular and best-performing tech stocks in recent memory

Beware the FANG, and other quirky stock market indicators

Excerpt:

The FANG? It’s among the latest in a long line of quirky predictors, funky barometers and other theories that contribute to the noise surrounding why stocks go up and down. Some indicators are tied to the calendar, while others track presidential elections, the Super Bowl and horse racing’s Triple Crown. The FANG is an acronym for four high-flying stocks that are investor favorites: Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google. Never mind that Google is now called Alphabet.

Comment: Image source.  None are in our portfolio but I may do a future investment of about $ 2200:

Does Netflix's stumble show we've reached peak FANG? Maybe not. https://t.co/SgktjX06od

— Jim Cramer (@jimcramer) July 18, 2018

This is a faithful saying: Good Christians don't Boast about their "Goodness"

Link

Minnesota Supreme Court rules on "Snowbirds": 26 Factors!

Hey Snowbirds, You’ll Want To Know About This New Residency Ruling

Excerpt:

Minnesota residents who live part-time in another state could still get slapped with a hefty income tax bill.

That’s after a 4-3 court ruling that further defines what’s meant by the residency law.

One Minnesota couple will have to cough up $390,000 in income taxes because their claim of non-residency was rejected.

Indeed, parts of the ruling are a chilling reminder to those shedding taxes for sunshine.

Tax attorney Barry Gersick advises anyone splitting time between states to seek counsel before deciding on residency status.

It’s more complicated than just spending over half a year, or 183 days, in your resident state.

“They really try to determine if somebody really did in fact change domiciles, change the center of their life away from Minnesota to somewhere else, or did they just do it in name only,” Gersick said.

Minnesota Department of Revenue uses 26 different factors for determining residency status. And they’re not all that obvious.

Revenue is looking for your focal point, where your most active bank accounts are located and where your kids go to school. They’ll check where you buy resident sporting licenses and title your vehicles.

They’ll also look at where you own the most property and get most mail.

“It helps to have an attorney or accountant in one of the two states advise you,” Gersick said.

The state can even factor in where you attend church and maintain the most business contacts when deciding on residency.

Comment: Link to the ruling in the article. My brother-in-law has domiciled to Florida while maintaining a home in the Twin Cities

Tax collectors chase rich New Yorkers moving to low-tax states. Auditors inspect cell records, even your dog's vet bills https://t.co/xi4QVGnW3m

— James Peet (@jrpeet) March 8, 2019

We are all Cretins!

Fools for Christ

Chuck Colson's tribute to Antonin Scalia (April 16, 1996):

Well, the thinking Christian can indeed find much to dismay him.

Take one recent week. On Wednesday the president vetoed the partial-birth abortion ban. Earlier the same week, a District of Columbia Superior Court judge struck from the November ballot an initiative that would have allowed voters to restore student-initiated voluntary prayer in D.C. schools.

Think of it. In this ruling the courts have gone so far as to deny citizens even the right to vote on an issue involving religious liberty. But then in the midst of all the disheartening news came a refreshing clarion call in defense of Christian truth.

And the best part is that it came from a most unlikely source—none other than a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Justice Antonin Scalia would no doubt be embarrassed if I called him a prophet. But in many ways that’s what he is. Scalia, considered by friend and foe alike to be one of America’s top legal minds, has never shied from pointing out the lunacy of the prevailing orthodoxy.

Some of Justice Scalia’s finest moments have been in his withering dissents. In Casey v. Planned Parenthood, he excoriated the majority’s position, which defined liberty as “choices central to personal dignity and autonomy.”

He warned that it wouldn’t stop at abortion. The next stops were “homosexual sodomy, polygamy, adult incest, and suicide.” Unfortunately, time has proven him right.

Last year, dissenting from the Court’s refusal to hear an appeal from abortion clinic protesters, he stated that prolifers were a “currently disfavored class” that cannot expect the Supreme Court to look favorably on their appeals.

A week ago the justice spoke out again. Speaking to a meeting of Evangelicals in Jackson, Mississippi, the Roman Catholic justice from Brooklyn told his audience that our culture has moved beyond skepticism to open hostility toward Christianity.

Taking his cue from St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, Scalia said that “the [worldly] wise do not believe in the resurrection of the dead. . . . So everything from Easter morning to the Ascension had to be made up by th

Scalia noted that cretin—a synonym for moron and imbecile—is derived from the French word for Christian. He continued, “That is the view of Christians taken by modern society. . . . Surely those who adhere to . . . Christian beliefs are to be regarded as simple-minded.”

He brought the crowd to its feet when he said, “We are fools for Christ’s sake.” Our response, Scalia said, should be to “pray for the courage to endure the scorn of the sophisticated world.”

And scorn is what he got. Washington was scandalized that a Supreme Court justice was speaking out in defense of religion. And Justice Scalia reminded Christians of something we’d rather forget: that a world that has rejected the Truth himself will naturally reject those who live by his word. Thank you, Justice Scalia, for courageously speaking out, and reminding us that acceptance by a hostile culture isn’t the goal for those who follow Christ. Bearing witness to the “truth which is in Jesus” is.

Comment: For anyone who expresses Christian views in the public square ...

• Abortion is sin!
• Marriage is to be between a man and a woman!
• God created the world!
• Evolutionism is wrong!
• One is to remain sexually chaste until marriage (or sex outside of marriage is sin)

We understand that these views are not popular and we are regarded as stupid and obtuse.  Word origin (see link above):  from French crétin, from Swiss French crestin, from Latin Chrīstiānus

Slacker of the Year - "el funcionario fantasma"

Spanish civil servant off work unnoticed for six years


Excerpt:

A Spanish civil servant who failed to turn up for work for "at least" six years has been caught after becoming eligible for a long service award. Joaquin Garcia, 69, was fined €27,000 (£21,000; $30,000) after the award brought his long absence to light.

Mr Garcia, whose job was to supervise the building of a waste water treatment plant, has since retired. He denies the allegations and his lawyer says he has gone into hiding after suffering a media "lynching". Mr Garcia said he had been a victim of political bullying in the job and moved to a post where there was no work to do.

He was paid €37,000 a year before tax by a water company run by local authorities in the south-western city of Cadiz. A court found in the authority's favour and ordered him to pay the fine ,which is equivalent to one year's salary after tax and was the most that the company could legally reclaim.

He has written to the mayor asking not to have to pay the fine, and will ask for a review of the judgement.

Spanish newspapers have dubbed him "el funcionario fantasma" - the phantom official.

The court heard that the boss of the water company had not seen Mr Garcia for years despite occupying an office opposite his. The water company thought he was supervised by the local authorities and vice versa.

The deputy mayor noticed his absence when Mr Garcia became eligible to receive a plaque for 20 years' service.

Mr Garcia says he was bullied due to his family's politics, and was sent to the water company to be out of the way. He found there was no work to do there.

People close to him told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo that he was reluctant to report it as he had a family to provide for, and worried that at his age he would not get another job. They said he did go to the office, although not for full business hours every day, and that he dedicated himself to reading philosophy.

Comment: Picture source

Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares by Yevgeny Vuchetich, 1959.

Swords to ploughshares 

Excerpt:

And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more (Micah 4:3)

Comment: Our reading tonight was Micah 3-7. We've been to the UN sculpture garden where this statue is displayed. In 1959, a bronze statue promoting the slogan "Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares" was donated by the Soviet Union to the United Nations. It was sculpted by Evgeniy Vuchetich to represent the human wish to end all wars by converting the weapons of death and destruction into peaceful and productive tools that are more beneficial to mankind. This hoped for peace will not occur until Christ comes.

Vinegar Valentines

Images Credit: Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove

More on Vinegar Valentines: Wiki, Daily Mail, Love letters and hate mail: Victorian vinegar valentines, Happy Valentine's Day, I Hate You

Sears' total collapse 'is a matter of when not if'

One of the Only Analysts Still Covering Sears Says It Isn't Viable

 Excerpt:

Sears Holdings Corp., the department-store chain run by hedge-fund magnate Eddie Lampert, plunged 8.8 percent after analysts warned that the company is no longer “viable as a retailer in its current form.”

A shrinking cash pile and narrower gross margins will require the money-losing company to take on more debt this year, Evercore ISI analyst Greg Melich said in a report, which he co-wrote with Matt McGinley. Even if it gets through 2016, Sears faces a “larger liquidity event” -- a cash crunch requiring some action -- the following year, Melich said. His firm is one of the few still tracking Sears, which it rates a sell.

Earlier on Tuesday, Sears said it lost $50 million to $100 million in the fourth quarter on an adjusted basis before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. That’s compared with $125 million by the same measure a year ago.

“Sears margins were worse than we thought as a tough retail climate accelerated margin decline,” the analysts said in the report. “A liquidity event is a matter of when not if.”

Comment: Never shop there, nor does the wife (we used to). "Liquidity event" is techno-talk for "running out of money"

Saving the Black family (and black babies)

An Alternative Black History Month - You won’t be hearing about the rising black middle class or intact two-parent families of the 1950s.

 Excerpt:

... black history in the first half of the 20th century is a history of tremendous progress despite overwhelming odds. During a period of legal discrimination and violent hostility to their advancement, blacks managed to make unprecedented gains that have never been repeated. Black poverty fell to 47% from 87% between 1940 and 1960—before the implementation of Great Society programs that receive so much credit for poverty reduction. The percentage of black white-collar workers quadrupled between 1940 and 1970—before the implementation of affirmative-action policies that supposedly produced today’s black middle class. In New York City, the earnings of black workers tripled between 1940 and 1950, and over the next decade the city saw a 55% increase in the number of black lawyers, a 56% increase in the number of black doctors and a 125% increase in the number of black teachers, according to political scientist Michael Javen Fortner’s new book, “Black Silent Majority.” The number of black nurses, accountants and engineers grew at an even faster clip over the same period. “There are signs that the Negro has begun to develop a large, strong middle class,” wrote Time magazine in 1953.

.... The black family was also more stable during this period. Every census from 1890 to 1940 shows the black marriage rate slightly higher than the white rate. In 1925 five out of six black children in New York City lived with both parents. Nationally, two out of three black children were being raised in two-parent homes as recently as the early 1960s. Today, more than 70% are not. Black nuclear families used to be the norm. Now they are the exception. Jim Crow did less damage to the black family than well-intentioned Great Society programs that discouraged work and marriage and promised more government checks for having more children. But that black history is also kept largely under wraps by those who have a vested interest in blaming the decimation of the black family on slavery and discrimination.

How Marriage Helps Kids

 Excerpt:

Marriage is especially important for children. Fifty years of social science has shown that kids do better on a wide range of outcomes when they grow up in homes with their married biological parents. Unfortunately for children being born in America today, marriage is becoming rarer. According to the Heritage Foundation’s 2015 Index of Culture and Opportunity, the marriage rate dropped continually between 2002 and 2012 to reach its lowest point in history. During almost the same ten years, the percentage of children born outside of marriage grew by 6 percentage points. In 2014, over 40 percent of children were born to unmarried mothers. This is a problem. Children raised by their married mother and father have, on average, better social outcomes, including higher academic achievement, better emotional health, and fewer behavioral problems, and are more likely to form healthy romantic relationships themselves as adults.

Comment: Image source - Summer in St. Louis [Howard Family Album, 1950’s]. Jim's anti-poverty program:

1. Stay in school
2. Don't have children out of wedlock
3. Don't abort what God calls His gift
4. Get a job
5. Get married
6. Stay married

Even our NFL "heroes" need to budget, conserve, invest wisely and diversify

The Sad Financial Future That Awaits Many NFL Players
Excerpt:

For our research published last year in the American Economic Review, we collected data on more than 2,000 players—all of those who were drafted by the NFL from 1996 to 2003—and followed them until 2013. We were interested in seeing how well football players do, financially, after they leave the game. Because it is very hard to find out how much they earned and spent after they retire, we looked at a simple measure of financial distress that is publicly available: bankruptcy filings. And we found that things did not go well at all. Football players, even those with short careers, usually earn more than what most college-educated workers earn during a lifetime. Because NFL careers are so short, the players’ post-NFL retirements can be long. Many get other jobs, but only a tiny percentage end up with coveted high-salary jobs such as sportscasting. After 12 years in post-NFL retirement, more than 15% of the players we followed had declared bankruptcy. We also found that bankruptcy does not depend on how much an NFL player earned in his career or how long he plays. Amazingly, higher income or longer careers seem to offer little protection against bankruptcy. These findings have been documented, with some variation, by other sources. There are numerous news stories and interviews describing instances where players have lost all the money they earned. Unfortunately, we continue to witness this phenomenon each year.

1 in 6 NFL players go bankrupt
Excerpt:

Studies have shown that a high percentage of NFL players declare bankruptcy after their playing days, and many others suffer financial difficulties. A Sports Illustrated (SI) article from 2009 indicated that after two years of retirement, a whopping 78 percent of former NFL players went bankrupt or suffered financial stress due to joblessness or divorce -- although in fairness, that analysis falls into the heart of the Great Recession. A recently released study by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) focused on the bankruptcy aspect. The NBER working paper studied NFL players who had been drafted between 1996 and 2003. The authors found that bankruptcy filings began relatively soon after retirement and continued all the way through the first dozen post-retirement years. Taken in total, almost 16 percent of the players studied declared bankruptcy during the first twelve years of retirement. The bankruptcies did not correlate with the amount of money made over a career or the length of time in the league. Keep in mind that there are plenty of undrafted players who spend some time in the NFL (just over 31 percent in 2013 according to the Elias Sports Bureau) and most make nowhere near the money that drafted players do. Adding those players could skew the statistics either way -- the undrafted players made less money to save, yet the undrafted player may have a greater sense of how short the NFL experience can be and may be more likely to engage in financial planning. Financial planning, or more precisely the lack of it, is the main point. While the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) started a financial wellness program around the time of the SI article, too many players either do not take the advice or do not fully understand it. It is hard for an NFL athlete to fully grasp the fact that his career is short-lived and that he must plan for the future. The NBER paper points out that NFL players do not follow the "life-cycle model" of savings. In this model, people try to balance their consumption over their lifetime and save for the future, instead of simply consuming more in proportion with their current income. One could argue that most Americans do not follow that model either -- but most Americans do not get annual contracts averaging millions of dollars, especially knowing in advance that the income is short-term

Why NFL Players Are So Likely to Declare Bankruptcy
Excerpt:

In the opening anecdote of the Sports Illustrated story, Raghib (Rocket) Ismail, the Notre Dame superstar who played in the CFL and NFL and earned as much as $4.5 million per year, recalled how impervious he was to financial advice early on in his career. “I once had a meeting with J.P. Morgan,” he said, “and it was literally like listening to Charlie Brown’s teacher.” They get bad advice and make bad decisions. Ismail blew money on a wide range of sketchy investments, including a religious movie, a music label, and various high-risk restaurant and retail endeavors. Many players have sued their advisors after allegedly being scammed out of millions. In one suit filed in 2013, a group of 16 former and current NFL players claimed they were collectively bilked for more than $50 million based on the actions of an advisor who had allegedly invested the money in an illegal casino. “Regulated or not, shady advisors have made quite a mark on the NFL financial scene,” the authors of the 2014 book Is There Life After Football? Surviving the NFL wrote. “Before closer scrutiny was instituted, at least 78 players lost more than $42 million between 1999 and 2002 because they trusted money to agents and financial advisors with questionable backgrounds.” More recently, seven-time Pro Bowler Dwight Freeney sued Bank of America for $20 million, because a former adviser from the bank supposedly defrauded him by (illegally) wiring millions of dollars out of Freeney’s account. In another recent case, it is a former NFL player who is himself being accused of operating a sketchy investing scheme. In early April, the SEC filed a federal fraud complaint against former NFL player Will Allen and a business associate, who together allegedly ran a Ponzi scheme, using money from some investors to pay off others. The operation was supposed to be loaning money to athletes who were short of cash, but the suit claims roughly $7 million raised from investors was used instead for personal expenses of Allen and his associate. They get used to a certain lifestyle. Warren Sapp reportedly had 240 pairs of collectible sneakers, including 213 sets of Air Jordans, which wound up selling for more than $6,000 at auction. Former standout wide receiver Andre Rison famously blew $1 million on jewelry and routinely walked around clubs with tens of thousands of dollars in cash in his pockets, he recalled in the “Broke” documentary. Troubled cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones has said that he once dropped $1 million in a single weekend in Las Vegas. Extravagant spending is ingrained in NFL culture, insiders say. “Around the locker room, players’ cars, clothes, houses and ‘bling’ are constantly scrutinized. If they’re not up to par, they’re ridiculed,” former Green Bay Packers’ George E. Koonce, Jr. and his fellow authors explained in Is There Life After Football? “Players don’t see their bills or keep track of their payments. They’re in the dark about taxes. They lose touch with their own money.” Once they retire and the millions stop flowing into their bank accounts, many players find it impossible to dramatically shift gears and adapt to life on a limited fixed income. It’s all the more difficult because they’re still relatively young and aren’t anywhere near ready to embrace the sensible, low-key, downsized lifestyle of the typical 70-year-old retiree.

How Dan Marino, Vince Young and Other Broke NFL Players Lost Their Fortunes
Excerpt:

Dan Marino, a former quarterback for the Miami Dolphins with a decorated NFL career, recently suffered a major financial setback after losing big in a major investment. The nine-time pro bowler and analyst with CBS’ “The NFL Today,” has accumulated millions over his career, but he lost a major portion of that money in one investment in a company called Digital Domain from which he purchased 1,575,525 shares. The company is popular for producing the famous hologram of dead rapper Tupac Shakur at the Coachella Music and Art Festival. However, the company soon after filed for bankruptcy, taking Marino’s stock with it. According to reports, the 51-year-old Marino’s investment might have resulted in a loss of $14 million.

There’s A Difference Between Broke And Bankrupt For Ex-NFL Players
Excerpt:

What the NFL did instead was eventually market its own study, published months after my SI article in 2009, with findings that were more pessimistic than the NBER working paper’s but more optimistic than the ones in my article. The league supplied University of Michigan researchers with an even more rarified sample of players: pension-eligible retirees, meaning those who had played a minimum of three years. The average career length among those interviewed was 7.3 seasons, far longer than the NFL average.4 “We had no way to include players with shorter careers,” one of the Michigan authors, David Weir, wrote to me in 2012, “and I would certainly agree that they would be an interesting group to know more about.” That same year, I received an email from an NFL PR person with the following results for me to chew on: “45% (age 50+) and 48% (age 30-49) of retired players said that they have at some point ‘experienced significant losses in business or financial investments.’” None of this was a direct comparison to the number cited in my article, not even close. But said PR person nevertheless included his own note, colored in bright red font: “a far cry from 78 percent.” The NFL has already convinced thousands of men to devote themselves to the pursuit of a lifestyle that is unsustainable at best and fictional at worst. Some of the enablers of this dream include, but are not limited to: the league’s financial literacy programs, which have historically failed to instill basic principles; the NFL Players Association’s certification program for financial advisers, which supposedly vetted a number of moneymen who reportedly allowed players to lose more than $300 million in recent years; and the players themselves, who are pressured to exaggerate the opulence of their existence.

16% of retired NFL players go bankrupt, a report says
Excerpt:

... the 15.7% figure should not lead anyone to conclude that the other 84% of NFL alums are all raking in the money and living high on the hog—many more than 15.7% struggle financially after leaving the sport, and many may go broke or get close to it. But this paper strictly measures bankruptcy filings.

Ex-NFL RB Clinton Portis files for bankruptcy amid $5M debt
Excerpt:

Former Denver Broncos and Washington Redskins running back Clinton Portis filed for bankruptcy last week, saying he has debts of more than $5 million that he can’t afford to pay. Portis, who earned more than $43 million over his nine-year career, listed his creditors on his bankruptcy filing. He owes the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas $287,178.56, and the IRS accused him of failing to pay $401,432.18 in federal income taxes in 2006, and $57,187.61 in federal income taxes in 2010. Portis also owes $500,000 to his mother, $500,000 to “Entertainment Tonight” correspondent and former NFL sideline reporter Nischelle Turner and $412,000 in “domestic support obligations” to four different women, according to reports. Portis is one of a dozen former pro athletes and stars who invested in a now-defunct Alabama casino. Others include world champion boxer Floyd Mayweather, actor Jamie Foxx and ex-NFL wide receiver Terrell Owens.

Comments: I'm a fan, but don't regard them as heroes. For heroes see Hebrews 11! Image is screen grab from final article.

Faithful Sayings

This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. (I Timothy 1:15)

This is a faithful saying: If a man desires the position of a bishop, he desires a good work. (I Timothy 3:1)

This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance. For to this end we both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe. (I Timothy 4:9-10)

This is a faithful saying: For if we died with Him, We shall also live with Him. If we endure, We shall also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us. (II Timothy 2:11-12)

This is a faithful saying, and these things I want you to affirm constantly, that those who have believed in God should be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable to men. (Titus 3:8)

Comment: Good memory verses