SPORTS BIZ | Fastest-Growing Game–Pickleball (Updated Apr 4, 2017)

Pickleball courts in Minnesota.

Sports are big business, What are the fastest-growing sports in America?

Depends on what measure of growth you use.

If you are interested in spectator sports, the most-watched sports on television are football (NFL games) and stock-car (NASCAR) races.

If you are asking about participatory sports, based on how many people play, then tennis was growing the fastest, 31 percent, during the period 2000 to 2012. It has the advantage of being a participatory as well as a spectator sport. It requires less investment and player fees than golf. Among young people, lacrosse and soccer are also showing growth.

But now there is a new participatory game in town, and it's Pickleball. The fastest-growing demographic is the retired elderly, and they love the game. It was founded by Rep. Joel Pritchard and Bill Bell on Bainbridge Island, Wash.

It apparently got its name not from the wiffle ball that is used, which looks a bit like a round pickle, nor from the name of the Pritchards' dog Pickles), but from the term that rowers use for the slowest boat in a competition, i.e., pickle boats. Thus the pickle boat in a race may be made up of the leftover members of the crews of the other boats. The H.M.S. Pickle, which was part of Admiral Lord Nelson's fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar, probably got its name from the fact that it was the smallest of the warships in Nelson's fleet at Trafalgar.

The belittling name for the H.M.S. Pickle has some historical irony because it was the first boat to bring back the news to Britain of the great defeat of the Spanish and French fleet fighting for Napoleon by the British fleet under Nelson (alas, the news was also delivered that Nelson lost his life in this battle). There is an annual dinner in New York City honoring Nelson and it is called the Pickle dinner.

The analogy is that pickle ball is a game made up of pieces of other games – tennis, badminton, table tennis, wiffle ball—and it is played on a smaller court (two pickle ball courts can be fit into one tennis court).  The rules are easily found on the Internet.

From an economic perspective, having surveyed the economic impact of sports while I was working for the NYC Comptroller, I predict its continued growth, for the following reasons:

• The courts are smaller than tennis courts, which makes them less expensive to install. They are 20 feet wide and 44 feet long, a little longer than a typical swimming pool. The net is 36 inches high at the end and 34 inches high in the middle.
• Pickle ball courts are approximately half as long and as wide as a tennis court, which is 36 feet wide and 78 feet long. So one can fit nearly four pickle ball courts in a space the size of a tennis court.
• Because the courts have a hard surface rather than a clay one, they require much less maintenance. An outdoor court costs about $20,000 to install, but there is then no need for someone to spray and brush the court.
• Although the hard court surface is harder on the feet (and more dangerous to fall on), there is more strategy and less running in pickle ball than in tennis. While tennis is famous for wearing out the knees over the long haul, pickle ball injuries tend to come sooner, from twisting the arms or legs or falling.
• As I said at a recent meeting where pickle ball players wanted to have proper court built, "the tennis players of today are the pickle ball players of tomorrow."

Here are some introductions to the sport:

Pickleball terms like The Smasher and The Slam:

http://pickleballstrategy.com/smash/

Video of the overhead — more wrist than in tennis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc60AAFga84

Where to play: https://the-pickle-ball-place.myshopify.com/pages/wheretoplay

IMMIGRATION | Centennial of Immigration Act

In practice, the literacy test kept out
fewer than 1,500 

Vero Beach, Fla., Feb. 5, 2017–This day 100 years ago, Congress mustered more than the two-thirds majority in both houses required to override President Woodrow Wilson’s veto of the previous week.

It passed the Immigration Act, one of the rare times that Congress has overridden a Presidential veto. Congress has prevailed over fewer than one-tenth of vetoes.

The law required a literacy test for immigrants and barred Asian laborers, except those from countries like the Philippines with special U.S. ties. The law went into effect May 1, 1917.

Immigration Largely Unrestricted before 1917

Through the first century of American independence, immigration into the United States was largely unrestricted. This open-door policy changed during the 1870s and 1880s. In 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act barred the immigration of Chinese workers and a general immigration act barred entry to persons judged likely to become "public charges.”

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States received a majority of the world’s immigrants. Most seeking entrance continued to be accepted. Between 1892 and 1924, some 16 million people entered and settled in the United States to seek a better life, increasing the nation's population by 25 percent.

In 1894, the Immigration Restriction League in Boston petitioned the U.S. government to legislate that immigrants be required to demonstrate literacy in some language. Congress passed such a literacy bill in 1897, but President Grover Cleveland vetoed it. The Immigration Act of 1917 was the first federal law to impose a general restriction on immigration in the form of a literacy test. It also broadened restrictions on the immigration of Asians and persons deemed "undesirable” and provided tough enforcement provisions.

The Immigration Acts of 1903, 1907, and 1910 added rules to exclude persons with mental and physical defects, persons with tuberculosis, and anarchists. However, literacy riders to the immigration laws were vetoed by Presidents Grover Cleveland (1896), William Howard Taft (1913) and Woodrow Wilson two years earlier (1915).

The Immigration Act of 1917 updated and codified much of previous immigration legislation, repealing the Immigration Acts of 1903, 1907, and 1910.  It contained 38 subsections and took up 25 pages in the Congressional Session Laws. Congress overrode Wilson's second veto of the proposed Act.

Literacy Test, Higher Head Tax, More "Undesirables"

Reflecting public hostility to southern and eastern European immigrants, the act required all adult immigrants to demonstrate an ability to read; any language would do. This provision was promoted by isolationist Rep. John Lawson Burnett of Alabama, who is also remembered as one of the few who voted against going to war against Germany. Literacy testing had also been promoted by some woman suffragists as a way of speeding up passage of a Federal Amendment recognizing the right of women to vote. (Fewer than 1,500 foreigners seeking to be admitted to the United States are said to have been excluded by the literacy test.)

Besides adding this literacy test, the law increased the head tax to $8 (equivalent to $150 today), which was a significant  barrier for impoverished refugees. The act expanded categories of "undesirable aliens” to include: "idiots, imbeciles, and feeble-minded persons;” persons of "constitutional psychopathic inferiority;” "mentally or physically defective” persons; the insane; alcoholics; persons with epilepsy, tuberculosis or contagious diseases; paupers and vagrants; criminals; prostitutes; anarchists; polygamists; political radicals; and contract laborers.

The Immigration Act barred most immigration from Asia. Chinese immigrants were already barred by the Chinese Exclusion Acts and the Japanese by the Gentlemen’s Agreement. In addition, the act created the "Asiatic Barred Zone,” which encompassed India, Afghanistan, Persia (now Iran), Arabia, parts of the Ottoman Empire and Russia, Southeast Asia, and the Asian-Pacific islands.

The act contained extensive provisions for enforcement. Penalties were imposed on any persons or corporations who encouraged or assisted the immigration of persons barred by the act or contract laborers.

The law can be explained, in part, by:

1. Disruptions caused by prior immigration in the first decade of the 20th century – nearly 8.8 million people in 1901-1910, adding one new American for every eight residents in the United States in 1900. In 1907 alone, 1.3 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island. 
2. Eugenics theories then popular that categorized individuals and races as superior and inferior. Adolf Hitler didn't write Mein Kampf in a vacuum.
3. Nativist sentiments exacerbated by America's entry into World War I.

The 1917 law slowed down the rate of immigration. But another 5.7 million immigrants were added in 1911-1920, and in 1920-21 the rate was back up to that of the first decade. In 1924 a more restrictive law was passed requiring immigrant inspection in countries of origin, leading to the closure of Ellis Island and other major immigrant processing centers. The immigration quotas begun in 1924 turned out to be more effective at controlling the numbers of new Americans.

PEACE | Carnegie Endowment Report

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has just published its 2016 annual report. Here is the letter accompanying the report, which can be accessed online.

Dear Colleague, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace I am very pleased to share with you the 2016 annual report of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace—the oldest international affairs think tank in the United States. Andrew Carnegie founded the Carnegie Endowment at a critical historical juncture. The foundations of the system of international order that had prevailed in the nineteenth century were beginning to crack. Catastrophic war and disorder loomed. The last great surge of the Industrial Revolution was transforming the global economy. The Endowment became an invaluable actor across the rest of the century, helping to establish and reinforce the new system of order that emerged out of the two world wars and produced more peace and prosperity in the second half of the twentieth century than Andrew Carnegie could ever have imagined. The world is once again at a transformative moment. Profound forces are shaking the underpinnings of international order: the return of great power rivalry; the emergence of new powers; deepening challenges to order in key regions; the growing use of new information technologies as levers of disruption and division within and among countries; the shift of economic dynamism from west to east and destabilizing economic stagnation and dislocation; and a surge of populist nationalism. [Emphasis added by this blog.] As you read this report, I hope you will gain an appreciation for the depth and breadth of our enterprise and the value of an institution like ours to help leaders in boardrooms and situation rooms around the world keep pace with a rapidly transforming world. I look forward to keeping in touch and welcoming you to Carnegie in the near future. Warm Regards, Bill Burns President Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

CarnegieEndowment.org BEIJING BEIRUT BRUSSELS MOSCOW NEW DELHI WASHINGTON

ANNE FRANK | U.S. Center Blasts Trump Ban

President Donald Trump (L) and Anne Frank (R), who was
captured by the Nazis and died in captivity. 

The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect (formerly the Anne Frank Center USA) has issued this statement signed by Steven Goldstein, the Center's Executive Director:

As President Trump prepares orders to wall out Mexicans and shut out refugees from America, today marks one of the most hateful days in our nation’s history. Donald Trump is retracting the promise of American freedom to an extent we have not seen from a President since Franklin Roosevelt forced Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II. Today the Statue of Liberty weeps over President Trump’s discrimination.

President Trump is beyond the wrong side of history. He is driving our nation off a moral cliff.

When President Trump uses national security as a guise for racism, he doesn’t strengthen our national security. He compromises our national security by engendering disrespect for America by people around the world.

Make no mistake, suspending visas for citizens of Middle Eastern and African countries is not called national security. It’s called prejudice.

President Trump is now exacerbating the largest global refugee crisis in history. His slamming America’s doors on the starving, the wounded and the abused is a grotesque blot on our nation’s history of freedom. The President’s actions are an embarrassment to the timeless vision of America as inscribed by Emma Lazarus to “give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

Demonizing refugees and immigrants, and spending billions of taxpayer dollars to keep them out of our nation, will go down in American history as one of the most tragic deviations from our national conscience.

Related Links: Remembering the Holocaust . The Nazi Occupation and Resistance in Holland . Majority of Americans Now Disapprove of Trump's Actions . Trump's First Five Days . Time Coverage of Anne Frank Center

TRUMP | Disapproval Exceeds 50%

Disapproval of Trump actions already passes 50 percent.

After one week, America is not liking what Trump is doing.

A majority of Americans say they do not approve of President Trump's actions as of Saturday, Jan. 28.

The Gallup Poll keeps a daily tab on the percentage of Americans who approve or disapprove of the job Donald Trump is doing as president. 

The tab is based on telephone interviews taken every day with approximately 1,500 adults throughout the United States.

Gallup claims its sample is reliably constructed and the margin of error is only ±3 percentage points. Margins of error are typically computed for the 95 percent confidence level, meaning once every 20 polls the error will exceed the margin, even if there are no flaws in the design of the survey.

In this case, the same survey has been conducted for many years, which makes it more useful and reliable. President Trump's approval ratings can be compared with  those of past presidents in the Gallup Presidential Job Approval Center.

NYC COMPTROLLER | 2nd Annual Florida Meeting

Standing, L to R: Steve Newman and
Eric Wollman. Seated: John Tepper
Marlin. Photo by Alice Tepper Marlin.

The second annual Florida meeting of the Former Office of the Comptroller Employees Association (FOCEA) took place in Vero Beach, Fla., with a 50 percent increase in attendance over last year! That is, attendance of full members rose from two to three:

• Deputy Director, Contracts, Bureau of Asset Management, Eric Wollman, Esq.
• Former First Deputy Comptroller Steve Newman.
• Former Chief Economist John Tepper Marlin. 

The combined number of years of NYC Comptroller's Office service of those attending the Florida meeting was 40+24+13=79.

The meeting occurs annually during the week following a collectors' convention in Titusville, Fla. But this is not a rule–FOCEA has no rules.

The meeting started at 12:30 pm with drinks, chips and avocado dip, and continued with crusted tuna slices and salad, finishing with blueberries and ice cream and coffee.

Spouses, FOCEA Florida Meetup, 2017. L to R:
Alice Tepper Marlin, Rosemary Polsky-Newman.
Photo by JT Marlin.

The main topic was Transitions, it being the end of the first week of the Trump Administration.

(The lineup of NYC Mayors and Comptrollers is unchanged from the 40-year list shown in the 2016 meeting report.)

The attendance of spouses doubled, from one to two:

• Rosemary Polsky-Newman.
• Alice Tepper Marlin.

The meeting adjourned at 4:30 pm. 

More photos
2016 Florida FOCEA Meeting.
1992-93 NYC Gatherings.