Bathrooms and Basketball

#Point2Ponder:

North Carolina repealed their #BathroomBill primarily due to an ultimatum given by the NCAA. The NCAA threatened the State or North Carolina, either directly or indirectly to eliminate the University of North Carolina’s basketball team from NCAA Basketball Championship Final Four.

This made me start to wonder, why would the NCAA care? Are they being “social super heroes” or is there some other reason.

My first thought was that the NCAA must be subject to Title IX federal regulations. If that were the case, the NCAA’s corporate bullying of North Carolina would be to keep federal funding. However, on Feb 23, 1999 (NCAA v Smith 525 U.S. 459) the supreme Court opined that although the NCAA receives the a large portion of its funding from colleges that are funded by federal dollars, NCAA was not funded “either directly or indirectly by tax dollars.” (Yeah, that’s judicial logic for ya.) Therefore, SCOTUS said, the NCAA is not subjet to Title IX.

Time to dig further.

What I found out was that the NCAA is a non-profit 501c3 organization. Donations to the NCAA are tax deductible. And there is your reason for all the fuss. They are not socially concerned, they are financially enslaved.

If the NCAA “allowed” their sponsored events to happen in a State that was opposing the federal bathroom mandate, their tax exempt status could be in jeopardy. The NCAA already had one close call with the federal judiciary, I’m sure they learned their lesson well; don’t cross the feds.

Here is the real kick in the pants: The NCAA is a multi-billion dollar operation. They get over $10 billion (yes that is billion) from networks to broadcast just the NCAA tournament every year. That doesn’t count the fees they collect from colleges, broadcasting fees for regular season games, and the donations from private corporations and individuals. Consider now, that the NCAA also gets over $100 million in tax breaks every year, while boasting an $80.5 million dollar surplus (2014).

Read how insane the NCAA situation really is: https://sports.vice.com/en_us/article/how-the-ncaa-scams-taxpayers-for-welfare-money

I wonder if the NCAA enjoys being a federal slave? I guess being a true subject of government pays well these days. A quote from Samuel Adams comes to mind…

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”

This is a perfect example of the tangled web we weave when the feds use tax dollars to fund or subsidize organizations. This is why years of experience drove the designers of our Constitutional Republic to create a federal government with “few and defined” powers.

The moral of this whole story? This is what you get when the federal government is allowed to do not what is it not authorized to do, but eventually even what it is prohibited from doing.

“No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid…that men acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.” Alexander Hamilton Fed 78

It’s not about bathrooms or basketball. It’s about an unlimited overbearing federal government. Look at James Madison’s warnings:

If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their Own hands; they may appoint teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision for the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress; for every object I have mentioned would admit of the application of money, and might be called, if Congress pleased, provisions for the general welfare.”

In the desire for free stuff, America has been transmuted into Oligarchy and its people have been reduced to tributary slaves.