Tell Mr. Stern to Get Those Rings Ready

 

Hot national debate: Should food stamps be used for junk food?

Telling people what they can consume is always dicey in politics, as state Sen. Ronda Storms learned when she waded into a debate about food stamps and junk food.
By John Dorschner
jdorschner@MiamiHerald.com

In the raging national debate about how to combat America’s obesity epidemic, one of the touchiest topics is whether taxpayer-funded food stamps should be used to provide junk food for the poor.

During the last state legislative session, Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Brandon, was attacked by both liberals and conservatives when she proposed that food stamps shouldn’t pay for such items as sodas, candy bars and chips. “I got it from both sides of the aisle,” she laments about Republican and Democratic opposition.

Democrats attacked her for trying to tell poor people how to behave. Republicans said she was advocating that big government should order people to eat their broccoli.

Even so, Storms and many in the national anti-obesity fight are not going to let the matter die. Americans’ fat now costs more in healthcare than the effects of cigarettes, and some are urging a crusade against obesity similar to that mounted by anti-smoking forces.

“It took 50 years of anti-tobacco campaigns to lower the smoking rate from 50 percent to 20 percent” of the population, notes John Peters, chief strategy officer for the University of Colorado Center for Health and Wellness. And he says it could take that long to reverse the epidemic of obesity, which now afflicts 35.7 percent of American adults, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and can lead to lifelong chronic health problems like diabetes and hypertension.

Like the anti-tobacco campaigns in the past, the anti-obesity drive is becoming highly politicized. In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has proposed a ban on supersized soft drinks, and the talk of a national tax on soft drinks has grown so intense that American Medical Association’s House of Delegates last week decided that the proceeds of such a tax, if enacted, should be dedicated to improving consumer healthcare education.

In the food stamp debate, it galls leaders like Storms that taxpayer funds can be used to exacerbate the problem since obesity rates among the poor tend to be higher than among the affluent. “It just makes no sense to me. They can’t purchase Fred Flintstone vitamins with food stamps, but a Mountain Dew is fine,” Storms says.

Plenty of people disagree with her. During the last legislative session, her bill was opposed by big-business lobbyists from the beverage industry, convenience stores and Corn Refiners of America, producers of the high-fructose corn syrup that adds so many calories to foods.

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit Florida Partnership to End Childhood Hunger said Storms’ proposal “creates new hurdles for families already struggling to meet their most basic daily needs.”

Since food stamps are a federal program, any local proposal to alter the provisions must be approved by Washington. The most publicized effort so far came two years ago when Bloomberg asked the federal government for a two-year pilot program banning the use of food stamps for sugary drinks. The Obama administration said no, because the prohibition would be too hard to administer.

“It’s an incredibly contentious issue,” says Candace Young of the Philadelphia-based Food Trust, which is working with Miami-Dade health officials in trying to bring healthier foods to poor areas. “We don’t have a stance on that issue. Half the people feel passionately one way, the other half feel passionately the other way.” Source

 

Dreaming of a Heat dynasty — and dollar signs

 

 

Championships can be a tipping point. Some teams become one-hit wonders. The Heat and its fans hope for something lasting. A championship in hand, the Miami Heat faces a new challenge: establishing a dynasty, both on the court and financially.

In professional sports, champions rise and fall, only to be quickly forgotten. Quick: Who won the World Series two years ago?

But some teams obtain gold-standard status through sustained performance and national cachet. (Think Lakers, Yankees, Celtics and Patriots). It carries them past one year’s triumph or disappointing season to link the team’s name to a certain exalted era. A question for the Heat: Will the franchise be the Miami Dolphins of the 1970s (prolonged excellence) or the Florida Marlins of the 1990s?

“It could be like when the Heat won [the championship] last time. Demand for tickets went way down, because the thrill of the chase was gone,’’ said Miami ticket broker Michael Lipman. “Or, they could be like the old Bulls and Lakers, and become a dynasty. Brokers made millions on those teams.”

The time between now and next year’s playoffs will test the staying power of Heatmania. For fans, a question is whether they will have to pay even more for seats in an arena that already charges some of the league’s top prices.

The Heat’s bottom line also gets particular attention in cash-strapped Miami-Dade County, which has yet to collect any money in a profit-sharing deal with the team now playing its 12th season in the tax-subsidized arena.

For sure, the Heat’s second championship in six years will spark a windfall for the team. But the Heat’s championship victory over Oklahoma City offers a particularly tricky case, experts said, given the high expectations that followed LeBron James’ arrival in 2010 and the sense of destiny denied when the team lost last year’s finals to Dallas.

According to Forbes magazine’s annual ranking of professional sports teams, the Miami Heat saw its value increase from $363 million to $457 million since 2010, when James and Chris Bosh joined Dwyane Wade as the Heat’s so-called Three Kings.

Under Forbes’ formula, the Heat is the sixth most valuable NBA franchise, behind, in order, the Lakers, Knicks, Bulls, Celtics and Mavericks.

The 26 percent spike in the wake of the LeBron signing raises a question: How much higher can it go?

“This will be a more modest increase,” said Patrick Rishe, a sports business analyst and economics professor at Webster University. “The arena has been pretty full, and if local media deals and sponsorships are locked in for a few years, this lessens the size of the value spike.”

Still, the Heat has gone from a team playing below its potential to reaching it — and matching the haughty prediction James made shortly after defecting from Cleveland that “not five, not six, not seven,” but even more championships would be his.

OFFSEASON BUZZ

David Samson, president of the Miami Marlins, said winning matters more financially than the hype surrounding a hot, newly assembled team — even one as grandiose as the Heat.

“The offseason buzz is when you sign LeBron and Bosh. It ends quickly if the team doesn’t win,” said Samson, whose Marlins won the World Series in 2003. (Their first title, in 1997, was under different ownership.) “But when you win a title, you have a much longer-lasting, almost permanent buzz. The buzz that Miami had when they signed LeBron is nothing compared to the buzz they have now.”  Next   Source