Steven L. Taylor

Retired professor of PoliSci and college dean. I continue to write and research about democratic institutions.🖖🤘

[Steven L. Taylor @drsltaylor]

@clarencehilljr Plus, people forget (or weren't alive at the time) to remember what it is like not to have a QB. The space between Aikman and Romo was rough. And I also remember Romo getting similar flak. I want more playoff wins, too, but I also like having a top 10 (or better) QB period.

[Steven L. Taylor @drsltaylor]

@DerekBellow8 @clarencehilljr All of the Milton discourse (esp from "fans" who think he is somehow competition for Dak) is just insane. In a QB-starved league, Milton received no interest. This should tell everyone all they need to know. You want to debate Howell v. Milton, have at, but Dak v. Milton? Come on

[Steven L. Taylor @drsltaylor]

@Marcus_Mosher You would think this would quiet the Milton discourse. No other team wants him on their regular roster and, at best, he lands a PS slot. That should tell everyone what the entire league thinks, not just the Cowboys.

[NYTPitchbot @DougJBalloon]

I converted to Catholicism last week. Here’s what the Sermon on the Mount gets wrong.

[NYTPitchbot @DougJBalloon]

Trump's inability to distinguish between reality and AI slop raises new questions about Joe Biden's mental acuity.

[Steven L. Taylor @drsltaylor]

@lordsutch I was thinking the same thing this morning when NPR reminded me of this “convention” and its goal.

[NYTPitchbot @DougJBalloon]

Doctors say that childhood vaccines save thousands of lives. A guy who shits himself in public and struggles to pass basic cognitive tests say they cause autism. For busy parents, it can be hard to know who to trust.

[Steven L. Taylor @drsltaylor]

@EWErickson “seems”?

[NYTPitchbot @DougJBalloon]

The vast majority of our outlets are owned by right-wing billionaires and last night our most prominent political reporters spent an hour chuckling along with a clearly senile Republican president as he insulted them incoherently. Here's why our media has a liberal bias problem.

[Steven L. Taylor @drsltaylor]

@SarahHuckabee Who in the world is trying to do so?

Do you all not tire of this nonsense?

[Steven L. Taylor @drsltaylor]

@EWErickson It's as if they aren't serious about those promises, and maybe they don't deserve support.

[Evan Kirstel #B2B #TechFluencer @EvanKirstel]

@Travispaints

[Travis Chapman @Travispaints]

I painted a happy ending to the bison story

[NYTPitchbot @DougJBalloon]

My kids have measles, I lost my job, and a parasite that the CDC no longer monitors has given me explosive diarrhea. But at least now there’s no plaques honoring Black scientists at the Smithsonian.

[David French @DavidAFrench]

I cannot believe he said that out loud and with a straight face. Here he is three weeks after Jan. 6.

[Steven L. Taylor @drsltaylor]

@lordsutch It dates back farther than that. I think Limbaugh used to use it. But agreed: it is a shortcut.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

In Germany, a talented 14-year-old earns his club money. In America, his parents pay the club $15,000 a year.

That single inversion explains why "we will not" is the most accurate line ever written about US soccer.

FIFA built a global system for this. Training compensation and solidarity payments send a cut of every transfer fee back to the clubs that developed the player, from age 12 onward. Develop one future pro and your academy gets paid for a decade. Barcelona's La Masia, Ajax, every Bundesliga academy runs on this logic. The kid is the asset.

US Soccer refuses to enforce those rules. When Seattle's Crossfire Premier claimed its $60,000 share of DeAndre Yedlin's transfer to Tottenham, it got nothing. Claims on the Dempsey and Bradley transfers died partly because the federation couldn't even produce the youth training records.

So American clubs earn zero dollars when a kid turns pro. They earn when a kid enrolls. Which makes the parent the customer, and the product is whatever keeps the parent writing checks: travel tournaments, hotel weekends, $500 showcase events, private training at $100 an hour. Elite pathways run $8,000 to $20,000 a year. A comparable academy spot in Italy costs about 120 euros.

Follow the incentive one level deeper and it gets darker. A club dependent on fees can't cut its weakest paying players, so rosters optimize for retention over development. The scouting pool shrinks to families who can afford the cliff, which appears around age 11, exactly when development matters most. The country runs a talent filter sorted by household income instead of ability.

Every four years someone proposes fixing this. The proposal always requires the people profiting from the $15,000 model to vote themselves out of business.

They will not.

[NYTPitchbot @DougJBalloon]

Children born in the United States to non-citizens should not be allowed to become citizens or to serve in Congress.

by Marco Rubio

[Steven L. Taylor @drsltaylor]

@MZHemingway I am old enough to remember when maintaining the status quo was kind of conservatives' thing.