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1. Sparkles Peterson Posted: February 09, 2008 at 12:18 PM (#2687050)He never drinks ... wine.
Then by all means get your blood tested, Matt. If you want to surrender your fourth amendment rights, by all means do--just don't try to force others to surrender theirs.
Probable cause, folks. Probable cause. It needs to apply to private entities, as well.
EDIT: Everything ought to be grandfathered-in, no current MLB's would have to be blood tested. A leauge of Burliegh Grimes types.
We most certainly will. It's a crime the way the Bronx Butt-plungers cheated those pure, red-blooded heroes on the Orioles and the Rangers and the Indians and the Red Sox and the Braves and the A's and the... well, anyway, thank heaven the Arizona Diamondbacks came along and wiped away the steroid stench from baseball's record books.
This is nonsense.
MLB blood-testing would violate no one's rights as no police force would be forcing the blood out of them.
Private entities should have the right set their own guidelines for employees... especially as far as banning illegal behavior goes.
I'm a big civil liberties fan and no fan of the drug war but government has no business telling employees what reasonable criteria they can and can't have as far as their employees goes.
It basically means he is Elliot Avent's number two man. Probably giving him that title made State AD Lee Fowler feel better about opening the coffers to basically hire a pitching coach.
Holliday has done a good job so far at State both in recruiting and developing pitching talent.
The guy knows his baseball.
Between Holliday and Brett Anderson maybe progeny of Oklahoma State coaches are the new market inefficiency : )
That means Cory Wine needs to step it up..
Sure it is.
But we're not talking about a boss who wants to do anything wacky, like say that his employees can't be staying out late at concerts over the weekend or something.
I think not engaging in illegal activity is a pretty reasonable criteria to put on one's employment.
Hey I don't want you robbing banks either that doesn't mean I get to audit you every week.
I've wondered that one of the many hundred occasions I've been on Avent Ferry.
He came to Raleigh from New Mexico, so I don't know if he has any roots in the area.
Now that I google his bio it says he went to college, and played ball, at NC Wesleyan in Rocky Mount (where current UNC coach/redass Mike Fox coached for ages) and got his start as an assistant coach and NC JC powerhouse Louisburg College.
No info on where he grew up or his family stuff, so maybe..maybe not
How in the world will that ever be the only way?
Or what if your boss is likely to say "What do you want me to do about it, you troublemaker? Why are you trying to destroy the organization? You know I can't prove anything. what am I suppose to do? Just take your word for it against all the others who will deny it?".
Then I would explain to him that his actions or lack of actions is causing a hardship to me that I will not tolerate and that I plan to take action.
Take a look at the noose thread. The workers complained, one boss said "ah it is nothing", did they then run to form some lobby to create a racial oversight group to enforce racial tolerance? No, they kept going and they got the action they felt was necessary. The world can function without a big brother.
Last time I checked using illegal drugs in MLB is against the rules.
Hey, murder still happens. I guess we change the murder laws so that when a murder takes place everybody in the area gets brought for an interview, DNA test, and finger printing.
Yes, looking the other way and doing nothing has failed.
Hey we've tried and failed on murder too, let's create the Minority Report.
jesus christ. they're so wrapped up in defending positions they took years ago they don't see how ludicrous their stances are now.
McCoy, you don't seem to grasp the difference between the applicability of Constitutional protections to public and private regulation.
Public regulation (aka Big Brother, Minority Report, etc) is subject to Fourth Amendment protections. This is an important limitation on government because the government alone can force you to do something entirely involuntarily.
Private companies, however, can do whatever the hell they want; Lots of employers drug test their employees. If you don't want to get drug tested, then you have the choice to work for an employer who doesn't test.
This, of course, extends to other Bill of Rights protections as well. Right to free speech: if you curse the IRS auditor? Nothing he can do. If you curse your boss? Fired. Right to a jury trial: if government thinks you stole $100k, it must prove so beyond a reasonable in a jury trial. If your boss thinks you stole $100k, you're fired. There are certain protections that Congress has extended to the private sector (Americans with Disabilities Act, anti-discrimination laws, etc), but none of those apply to drug users.
In my opinion it is unreasonable to do drug and blood tests on employees simply because they say they want a drug free environment in the workplace. That is my opinion, I'm not saying it is against my constitutional rights.
McCoy, it's rather noticeable that you didn't try to answer the question of what hasn't been tried short of blood testing that might prove an efficacious in stemming the cheating.
Gee, I don't know what could they do? Hmm, how about not tolerate drug use? I mean gee golly maybe if they didn't tolerate it then by golly maybe it wouldn't be so prevalent? The funny thing for me is that you are arguing for testing even though testing clearly doesn't work. Are the olympics clean? Is the NFL clean?
If you create an atmosphere where drug use is tolerated even encouraged then you won't solve anything in regards to the drug problem. Testing won't do it, taking their first born won't do it, nothing will.
Every one of your examples are things that are unreasonable because it is the government doing those things. If your boss thinks you might have been involved in a murder, he sure can bring you in, ask for you to be fingerprinted, and fire you if you refuse.
Many employers in a wide variety of industries conduct drug testing. That's all that we are proposing in MLB: you want to work for us, we drug test you. You refuse, we suspend/fire you. What's the problem?
As for the law, Kevin brought up the stolen car. I brought up murder because again Kevin talked about the law. He said if the laws on the book don't work you change them. I replied that murder still happens that doesn't mean you take draconian actions to make it work. I was simply responding to what I was given.
PS: Can my boss really request to fingerprint me because he thinks I am involved in a murder and if I don't he can fire me? I've got to believe if he does that I've got some legal recourse.
This is your problem. You want new laws passed to restrict the rights of businesses to supervise their employees. The analysis of whether legislation along this line would be beneficial, however, necessarily takes place in a legal framework. You refuse to take that step, so the discussion stalls.
I"m sorry next time I'll try to be a supreme court judge or a senator before I commence talking about employment. I think employees should have the right to expect a drug free environment and sober employees. I don't think they should have the right to then perform tests on their employees to find out if they agree with that view with zero evidence to actually create the need to test that employee.
By "not tolerate", what do you mean?
How about not employ people who supply drugs? How about not having bowls of drugs out on tables? How about instead of having meetings on whether or not steroid player X will be an injury risk thus should we acquire him or not they instead say we don't want him? How about when a trainer/manager/coach sees or finds drug use they do something other then look the other way? How about owners and GM's do a little research into their possible acquisitions and when they find drug use they don't sign them? I dunno how about they do something other then throw there hands up in the air and say "There is nothing we can do" and then promptly hand out a 100 million dollar contract?
If the Mitchell report taught us anything it taught us that you didn't need a drug test to find out who was doing drugs. All you had to do was look around and you found it.
I agree. Of course, this little platitude ignores the fact that that's exactly what's been happening. MLB has been acting -- going so far as to reopen an already-agreed-to CBA -- because Congress has been threatening them if they don't implement the drug policies Congress favors.
In any case, your response misses an important point: the issue here isn't what rules employers should have, but how an employer should to enforce them. An enforcement policy can be unreasonable even if the rule it's trying to enforce is reasonable. (I wouldn't expect Kevin to grasp this concept, because he's a fascist.) Few people would have a problem with an employer who fired an employee who was abusing his children -- but that doesn't make it reasonable for the employer to send someone over to the employee's house unannounced whenever he feels like it to check to see whether the
Do people realize how extreme the "Olympic style testing" that tfbg9 endorses is? Not only are athletes subject to testing whenever and as often as the governing bodies decide, but athletes must keep the governing bodies informed full time exactly where they're going to be at all times -- whether on vacation or training -- so the testers can show up unannounced and demand blood.
So do blood tests 3 random times per year, and grandfather it in? I don't feel its fair to enact new rules on people already under employ like that, but it would be reasonalble I think to bood-test 2 or 3 random times per year to people not currently under a MLB contract, or players who have prevouisly been under a MLB contract--all future, new players IOW.
Wonderful. Then when just about all employers require blood-testing, go get a job as a janitor, or picking fruit off the books. Pretty simple, indeed. It wouldn't surprise me to discover you still believe in the "free contracts, freely arrived at" fairy tale.
I agree probably the most reasonable course is to just rat on your cooking the book colleague.
Alternatively, an external oversight group? Don't MLB already have an testing program?
Regarding reasonableness, what if the oversight group includes steps to review tax returns, credit card bills, internet usage, recording your phone calls? As well, as lack of oversight on the oversight group for releasing information to your colleagues, family, media, and general public.
External oversight group (whatever that means) might be where one person (kevin) thinks is within reason, but come on, the oversight group can do any number of things that would be borderline reasonable or stepping over to unreasonableness.
Er, no. This is nonsense: The idea that human rights are something that can only be violated by governments.
Whites Only, please? After all, it's your restaurant!
Private employers have used testing to find out whether employees smoke cigarettes. Do you support this? And, are you also suggesting that private employers act as agents of the police in the event they believe they have uncovered illegal activity?
To be sure. Obviously, I believe blood searches to be pretty damned unreasonable.
Never forget that not having to do drugs to compete is the *benefit* of drug testing to the player, not the burden. I have friends who are likely to go pro or semipro in triathlon. When you read about cyclists on EPO sleeping with heart rate monitors, who have to wake up in the middle of the night and exercise to prevent blood clots and heart attacks, the burdens of testing seem pretty insignificant.
That seems to be part of the issue, no?
I assume something that is fairly bargained for, where the lost of privacy and the risk of shoddy implementation is compensated.
Your oversight thing digs into the private lives of the employee, not corporation, so there is that difference.
And as applied to MLB, or where there is an adversarial relationship/history between the employee and employer, I feel the doomsday scenarios is a consideration.
Unless you're MLB.
As someone said, if you don't like drug testing, don't work for an employer that wants to test you for drugs. That's a choice I've made, except when I took a job that involved a security clearance.Exactly.
No. But I support their right to do this.If you mean, "should they report illegal activity to the police," it depends what that illegal activity is. If it's malum in se, sure. If it's drug use, no.
Matt Holliday is with us. And really, even if most players did agree, many of them would keep quiet because they don't want to see their friends get thrown out of baseball.
And really, even if most players did agree, many of them would keep quiet because they don't want to see their friends get thrown out of baseball.
In other words, even if they did agree, they would disagree.
Like I say, it's a burden, but it's hardly insurmountable. Maybe you go on vacation on three hours' notice, but I tend to know where I'm going weeks in advance. And staying in contact is hardly impossible when you can just carry a cell phone. Hypothetical testing regimes can be as simple or as onerous as we want to make them, of course, but there's nothing inherently unworkable about them.
Libertarians (and here I want to specifically exclude Nieporent, based on his comments in this thread) occasionally act as though the only legitimate contract is a single, pairwise set of agreements arrived at between exactly two participants without reference to other contracts. That doesn't mesh well with the idea of a drug testing program, where a group can obtain a large but not easily divisible benefit at the cost of the individual members of the group being compelled to give up their ability to defect from the agreement. Collective bargaining necessarily involves some coercive power to enforce group decisions. The issue of PEDs is so closely related to the purpose and interests of a sports league that I don't buy the libertarian critique.
Oh, and the state bar association, you won't believe what you have to tell them before you're admitted to the bar.
Is this unreasonable? 1,000s of private employers do this to 100,000s+ of employees every year.
I won't have to get a job as a janitor, not that being a janitor is beneath me, because I don't do drugs. I don't even know what "picking fruit off the books" means. Is that a drug induced side-effect? I'd be free to work for whomever I chose. I don't need to distort the 4th Amendment so I may continue with illegal activities. Stop doing drugs, get a haircut and get healthy. Godspeed.
test them all store the blood just like the rapists convicted on DNA evidence let their blood do the talking
And then the bill got passed, the government showed it was serious about enforcing it, some of the the recalcitrant saltines got used to it, some of them sublimated their resentment by switching to the Republicans, but one way or another the world survived, and nobody (maybe not even Nieporent when you get down to it) really equates public accommodations laws with police states anymore.
I have absolutely no idea whether MLB will ever institute random blood testing, but I can pretty much guarantee that if it does, after a few years nobody except a few ideologues will give a flying f uck about it. And to prove just how full of hot air these ideologues are in their protestations, I also predict that they'll still keep going to games in spite of it. And attendance will continue to rise, further proving just how little fans "realy care" about this so-called harbinger of "fascism."
Their rights are certainly being violated if the collective bargaining was the result of the government threatening to take away their rights under the 4th amendment. I know that a certain someone here believes in a fascist police-state in which someone that is accused of something has no rights if we just "know" that the person is guilty, but nobody else here believes that.
Actually, come to think of it, that's a much bigger public health story than PEDs, which isn't properly public health at all, except to those who are looking for gov't funding.
Most people thought Jim Crow was perfectly fine. I imagine that back then you weren't going around using that as an argument not to care.
And, yes, misnamed private accommodations laws are tyrannical.
As is so often the case, Andy is very eloquently nihilistic. Most people don't care about anything, Andy, other than whether they get laid and whether their kids are abducted by child molesters. Right and wrong has nothing whatsoever to do with how many people care about an issue. That simply isn't an argument for anything.
Of course all I was doing was echoing the scores of posts where you've found great significance in the fact that attendance remained steady or went up in the face of the steroid revelations. Since people like Kevin and me didn't stay away from games or cancel our Extra Innings package, we're merely posturing in our anti-steroids position, as are the millions of fans who agree with us but still keep up with the game.
But you can't deduce feelings---or even depth of feelings---about steroids one way or the other merely by looking at attendance figures.
You've droned on time and time again about how attendance figures show that fans don't "really" care about steroids. But if they start grabbing players for random blood tests, you're also not likely to see any fan boycott. You know that.
And while you might say that all this shows is that "most people don't care about anything," I'd say it shows that fans love baseball too much to let either steroids or forced blood testing disrupt their fandom. If Hillary can put up with Monica, we can put up with Barry Bonds.
Case in point: If baseball were to impose random blood testing over the head of the Union, and it were upheld in court, would YOU stop going to games? Would Ray? Would Dial? Would any of your fellow travelers on this subject "prove" their sincerity by renouncing their fandom in protest of this fascistic move?
IOW you wouldn't care one way or the other if they started random blood testing over the protestations of the players. That's cool; neither would I. But what about Nieporent and the hard core libertarians?
(*) And as I explained on several occasions, by "don't care" I meant "don't have strong feelings."
Am I missing something, or aren't all employers allowed to drug-test now? In my history of employment, I've taken one drug test and it was to get an access card for HSBC in order to enter their data center to fix their machines. I considered refusing but I was a relatively new employee in that office and I wanted to pick my battles. Even that was "one and in"; there was no regular testing even for permanent employees.
I haven't heard of any law firms drug testing, although the government positions seem like they might be so inclined. There are plenty of fine jobs out there which don't require a test.
But you can't deduce feelings---or even depth of feelings---about steroids one way or the other merely by looking at attendance figures.
You can reasonably reach the conclusion that people don't care enough to stop attending games on a large scale. There are things that are bad enough to affect attendance; this clearly isn't one of them.
That isn't to say that the average baseball fan doesn't have a preference. I'm sure an overwhelming majority would prefer no steroids to steroids. I doubt there are too many people out there who changed their decision on whether or not to attend games because the steroid policy isn't strong enough.
what about Nieporent and the hard core libertarians?
If there were no anti-trust exemption for baseball, I would have less of a problem with steamrolling drug testing over the players' wishes. I think MLB operates in something between a truly private entity and a government entity because of it's special status with government interference in the market. Because of that special status, the players should have more of a say.
I think any mandatory drug testing on the part of an employer is a violation of individual privacy rights and should not be done. I wouldn't suggest laws prohibiting it, but I think an employer that doesn't test is better to his employees.
I've taken one, back in my security clearance days. Except in special cases like that, I wouldn't work for an employer who required it.
Huh? The antitrust exemption involves the government not interfering in the market.
My sentiments exactly: it's a private contractual matter between employer and employee, so if the two sides agree, it's nobody's business to step in and forbid it -- but I don't think an employer should do it any more than he should require his workforce to be Methodist. (Unless it's a Methodist church, in which case it seems reasonable.)
No, you weren't. My argument was very very different than yours. My argument is "The fact that most people don't care shows that most people don't care." (*) Your argument is "The fact that most people don't care shows that people who do care are wrong." Those arguments may start with the same words, but yours is not an echo of mine; yours is making a completely unfounded and unrelated assertion.
(*) And as I explained on several occasions, by "don't care" I meant "don't have strong feelings."
Actually, David, my argument was just what I said:
But you can't deduce feelings---or even depth of feelings---about steroids one way or the other merely by looking at attendance figures.
That goes for people on both sides of the steroids issue---case in point, you and me---who care about the issue in question, but who don't "care strongly enough" to boycott the game if the policy swings in the wrong direction.
Unless, of course, I'm mistaken in your case, and you really would boycott baseball if it instituted mandatory blood testing without the assent of the MLBPA. I'm assuming that you "don't care enough" to do that, but correct me if I'm wrong.
And so even though you've run on like a six pack of the clap about the horrors and the inhumanity of random blood testing, if push came to shove you wouldn't "care strongly enough" to withhold your money from the game because of it.
Which makes you a brother under the skin, of sorts. You might even say a "moderate." Glad to know it.
That was worded poorly. I mean to say that the government exempts MLB from playing by the same rules as other markets.
But do you care, David Nieporent? Do you care "strongly?" Are you one of the few and the proud who will back up their words with action?*
If baseball forced random blood testing on the players, will you merely spend another few dozen threads fulminating about jackboots and the Fourth Amendment, or will you stop going to games and watching them on TV? You still haven't answered that.
* And offering to kickbox Kevin doesn't count, at least not in this context. We'll have to wait until Memorial Day for that little spectacle.
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