The Manning boys

By now, with super bowl sunday around the corner, we probably have all oogled and googled about Peyton manning and his kid brother Eli.  But one brother who has stayed out of the limelight is Cooper; the oldest of the three.  Below is an excerpt from si.com circa 2006.

"In Sunday night's Manning-Manning throwdown at Giants Stadium, the most hyped regular-season opener in NFL history, two strong-armed brothers will go at it for three hours while a rapt nation alters its viewing habits. For those of you who might have missed it -- all nine of you -- Sunday is the new Monday, and if Madden/Michaels/Costas & Co. can't adequately hammer home that point, Peyton and Eli most certainly will.
When the show is over, one quarterback will experience a bittersweet victory, while the other will be bummed. This will almost certainly trigger a heartwarming hug, the signoff NBC so eagerly seeks.
If only the network could capture what a real Sunday night disappointment in the Manning household once looked like.
"We had very heated battles back there on the basketball hoop in the backyard, and Sundays were always the most intense games of all," recalls Cooper Manning, the eldest of the three Manning brothers. "That's because Monday morning was garbage day, so whoever lost the game had to take out the cans the night before."
The Mannings grew up in a house that, unlike most others in New Orleans' Garden District, has a decent-sized grass yard in the front. Hauling the cans along the side of the lawn and out onto the street was a more daunting task than it sounds.
"You had to open a fence and drag them about 25 yards to the street, over a bumpy dirt path that was full of large tree roots," Cooper remembers. "And with three boys in the house, plus all the friends we'd have over, we had a lot of garbage. This was before they made the cans on wheels, and we'd always have old ones with the bottoms falling out. Inevitably, you'd try to drag two or three at a time, and one would fall over and all the crawfish and shrimp and other crap would fall out and you'd have to try to scoop it up."
Suffice it to say that for the loser of that Sunday's matchup, the words "you stink" took on added significance.
"I'm telling you, it was brutal," Cooper says. "You know Sunday nights -- you're lazy, catching up on homework, depressed that the weekend is over. Mom would say, 'Somebody's gotta take out the garbage.' And you'd go, 'By the way, I banked that last shot in -- have a nice walk.' The whole thing took about seven or eight minutes, and it was pure luxury watching Peyton have to deal with it."


Cooper, who now works as an institutional broker for an energy research firm, is two years older than the Colts' quarterback, and far more jocular by nature. The Garbage Wars were always between him and Peyton, and/or their father, Archie; Eli, five years younger than Peyton, wasn't even allowed on the court, which in this case was a good thing. Says Cooper, "Eli probably never had to take out the garbage in his life."
Archie, the protective dad scoffed and said, "Aw, Cooper likes to say that Eli never had to take out the trash because we babied him...." The former Saints quarterback stopped himself, laughed and said, "You know, maybe he didn't."

govt: too big to fail?

here is another take on those infamous words that were once used to refer to our financial system - picture this: calls to inquire about your health insurance coverage reminds you of dealing with the dmv; rows and rows of available tellers but they all point you to another line; another long and slow moving line. Metro North trains are almost never on time anymore and the travelling experience is almost as good as NJ Transit and Amtrak.  When looking for a job, you go to the government job boards to see what is available; the government is also there for a student loan, with a forgiving debt after 20 years; 10 years if you are a government worker.

The average government worker gets paid 75k, well above the private sector, pension and retirement after 20 years.  Very nice, but where is the government getting the Obama money from?  Does he have a secret stash he plans to share with everyone?  Or is the government going to pick the pockets of the private sector?  What happens when the government makes a greater incentive to work for the government, what happens to the private sector?  Now, remember this, the government does not produce anything.  The government is funded by the private sector.  The private sector is what keeps the economy running.  The bigger the government, the bigger the burden for all the taxpayers.

Will you ever receive Social Security?  Forecast is not looking good under this government.  Will Medicaid fall under the same fate?

The next time you are on a DMV line or waiting on a post office line; the person who you are waiting for to help you, they probably make just as much as you, with better benefits, less working hours, all sans degree.  What in their life have they done to warrant a job; a high paying job, great benefits and you never get fired???  Can they survive the expectations of a private sector job?  Zoom out and think larger scope.  Imagine the government taking over more of the private sector and infiltrates your daily life with public service employee.  Will service improve or worsen?  Let me answer that question for you.  Service will worsen from the same public sector that relies on your tax dollars to fund their service.  What does that mean?  In the clearest of clear narratives, you are paying for that horrible service.  You are paying for everything the government wants to do.

Getting back to my question.  Can a government be too big to fail?  No - that is just it.  A government too big will fail.