With this move — and a resched­ul­ing of the com­bine from early March to mid-to-late March — the NFL pretty much has an event in every sin­gle month of the off-season.

Jan­u­ary is the Playoffs.

Feb­ru­ary is the Super Bowl (and the Pro Bowl if it con­tin­ues on…).

March is the Combine.

April is the start of free agency signings.

And now May is the Rookie Draft.

Say what you want about Good­ell, this is smart marketing.

Roger Good­ell con­firmed Tues­day at the NFL’s spring meet­ings in Boston that the draft will be moved to May in 2014, some­time between the 8th and 17th of the month.

Good­ell said the change was needed next year because the venue, Radio City Music Hall, will host an Easter show in April.

“At this late stage, for us to do it the right way, we don’t see hav­ing any choice but to move the date,” he said.

How­ever, Good­ell said he expects the draft to remain in May, with other adjust­ments to the NFL’s cal­en­dar, includ­ing the dates for the com­bine and the open­ing of free agency, to be dis­cussed with the play­ers’ union.

He said try­ing to stage the draft in April would mean the NFL would have to find a dif­fer­ent venue or city. He empha­sized, how­ever, that the league is pleased with its expe­ri­ences at Radio City Music Hall.

“We think we have found a loca­tion in New York that meets our require­ments and where we think we can con­tinue to grow the event,” he said.

Under the cur­rent col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ment, Good­ell can set the date of the draft with­out the NFLPA’s approval, although he would pre­fer to have the union’s bless­ing to main­tain league harmony.

Good­ell said own­ers “didn’t reach any con­clu­sion” in their dis­cus­sion about chang­ing the dates of the com­bine and free agency.

“We are nego­ti­at­ing that with the union,” he said. “We have a dis­cus­sion with them some­time in the next cou­ple of weeks, and I am sure that will come up. We think that is a good change for fans and for football.”

By the way, June now would be the start of mini-camps and  “OTA’s” oth­er­wise known as “Orga­nized Team Activ­i­ties,” July has the start of Train­ing Camp, August has pre-season games; with the real thing kick­ing off in September.

The move also has one other ben­e­fit for teams after the Draft.  If the Draft really is this late, nearly all four-year seniors in col­lege will have had their com­mence­ments and received their degrees.  That will allow team to not have to worry about new draft picks miss­ing OTAs (as hap­pened this year for some) and other activ­i­ties because they don’t have their col­lege degrees yet.

[NFL union bylaws and the CBA cur­rently state that you must be three years removed from high school before enter­ing the league. If you stay for the fourth year and are grad­u­at­ing, you can’t par­tic­i­pate until awarded said degree with the rest of your grad­u­at­ing class at your col­lege.  Actu­ally hap­pened to a few teams this year.]

The biggest hur­dle to any sort of sched­ule and cal­en­dar change is going to be con­vinc­ing the NFLPA that there will be enough time for vet­eran free agents to be signed and learn the sys­tems their new teams use.  Usu­ally, the Com­bine is the start of the “NFL New Year,” which means that’s when free agents can begin look­ing for new teams.  Report­edly, the new cal­en­dar is sup­posed to say the new start of the year is a few weeks after the Super Bowl.

With some vet­er­ans still unsigned as of right now, or cur­rently strik­ing last-minute deals, that’s some­thing the NFLPA may have a hard time believ­ing will be pos­si­ble under a new calendar.

It will be an odd adjust­ment to get used to, but frankly, I won’t miss it.  This move should have been done years ago.

Of course, it wouldn’t be nec­es­sary if they actu­ally had the balls to pay the Post­mas­ter Gen­eral like any other pub­lic employee instead of a mid-six-figure salary (said to be $400K to $500K) and deal with its high union and pen­sion costs.

The U.S. Postal Ser­vice will stop deliv­er­ing mail on Sat­ur­days in an effort to cut costs for the finan­cially strug­gling gov­ern­ment agency, the Asso­ci­ated Press reported Tuesday.

USPS will save $2 bil­lion annu­ally and will begin the cut in August. Pack­age deliv­ery will continue.

USPS Wash­ing­ton D.C.-area spokesman George Maf­fett told POLITICO that USPS will issue a five-year finan­cial plan in early March, some of which will be announced later Wednes­day, though he did not con­firm that Sat­ur­day mail deliv­ery was stopping.

“The Postal Ser­vice plans to issue a revised com­pre­hen­sive five-year finan­cial plan in early March. This plan will iden­tify impor­tant cost reduc­tion activ­i­ties and steps to restore the Postal Ser­vice to long-term finan­cial sta­bil­ity. On Wednes­day, we plan to dis­cuss some of these addi­tional cost reduc­tions,” Maf­fett said.

As more Amer­i­cans are rely­ing on email instead of postal let­ters, Maf­fett noted that the agency must reeval­u­ate its fis­cal path for­ward in order to survive.

“The Postal Ser­vice is cur­rently on an unsus­tain­able finan­cial path and must move for­ward with actions that are respon­si­ble and nec­es­sary,” Maf­fett said.

You mean all the increased junk mail didn’t say them?  No kidding.

The real tragedy of this move is that even though this will save $2B for the USPS, they had an annual loss of nearly $16B in fis­cal 2012.  There’s a lot more left to cut.

Great pick up from the guys across the lake at the Mack­inac Cen­ter for Pub­lic Pol­icy (Dis­claimer: I have friends there.).  Seems that the union talk­ing point that “states with right-to-work laws earn less” is done by fudg­ing the numbers.

Over the years, Big Labor has inten­tion­ally done them while whole­heart­edly ignor­ing one fac­tor: The cost of liv­ing between dif­fer­ent places in the coun­try.  (H/T Red­State)

Scores of right-to-work crit­ics rang­ing from politi­cians to econ­o­mists have cited lower per-capita incomes in right-to-work states as why the new law is not good for Michigan.

How­ever, not fac­tor­ing in cost-of-living exposes a flaw in that analy­sis, said Mack­inac Cen­ter for Pub­lic Pol­icy Fis­cal Ana­lyst James Hohman. Once that is con­sid­ered, Hohman said the per-capita income is higher in right-to-work states than non-right-to-work states.

For exam­ple, Texas per-capita income was $37,098 but would have a pur­chas­ing power of $49,700 in the state of New York in 2007, accord­ing to Hohman’s analy­sis. New York’s per-capita income was $47,852.

Hohman found that in terms of Michi­gan dol­lars in 2000, right-to-work states had 4.1 per­cent higher per-capita per­sonal incomes than non-right-to-work states when fac­tor­ing in cost of liv­ing. Michi­gan was con­sid­ered a non-right-to-work state because the law was passed in late Decem­ber 2012. Hohman said the right-work-states didn’t sur­pass non-right-to-work states until 2003.

“One of the most basic argu­ments repeated time and time again by right-to-work oppo­si­tion is that Michi­gan is going to lose income by pass­ing this law,” Hohman said. “That just isn’t the case. When you adjust for what a dol­lar can get you, the dif­fer­ence reverses itself.”

Hohman used the cost of liv­ing index done by polit­i­cal sci­en­tists William Berry, Richard Ford­ing and Rus­sell Han­son. They adjusted for cost-of-living in every state from 1960 to 2007.

A dol­lar buys dif­fer­ently in dif­fer­ent loca­tions.  Gas prices vary from place to place, as do any other com­mod­ity; even groceries.

Any econ­o­mist knows this, and for unions to not just hide this infor­ma­tion, but out­right lie about it is a dis­ser­vice to both them­selves and their members.

Believe the real news about this announce­ment is two things.

1) Illi­nois is about to issue $500 mil­lion in new bonds as part of the bud­get plans of Demo­c­ra­tic Gov­er­nor Pat Quinn — the lamest duck gov­er­nor in the coun­try.  This news will only effect the sale of them.

2) The Land of Lin­coln barely dodged the bul­let from drop­ping from an “A-level rated bond” to a “B-level rated bond.”

Illi­nois may have Chicago act­ing as a jobs mag­net to puff up its num­bers, but its rela­tion­ship with its pub­lic employee unions is the dark mir­ror of what Wis­con­sin has done since the enact­ment of Act 10.  Its bud­get is in chaos and a live-action train wreck for all the world to see.

Illi­nois fell to the bot­tom of all 50 states in the rank­ings of a major credit rat­ings agency Fri­day fol­low­ing the fail­ure of Gov. Pat Quinn and law­mak­ers to fix the state’s hem­or­rhag­ing pen­sion sys­tem dur­ing this month’s lame-duck session.

Stan­dard & Poor’s Rat­ings Ser­vice down­graded Illi­nois in what is the lat­est fall­out over the $96.8 bil­lion debt to five state pen­sion sys­tems. The New York rat­ing firm’s rank­ing sig­naled tax­pay­ers may pay tens of mil­lions of dol­lars more in inter­est when the state bor­rows money for roads and other projects.

“It’s absolutely bad news for tax­pay­ers,” said Dan Ruther­ford, the Repub­li­can state trea­surer.
Illi­nois received its bottom-of-the-pack rank­ing when it fell from an “A” rat­ing to “A-minus.”

That’s the same rat­ing as Cal­i­for­nia, but Cal­i­for­nia has a pos­i­tive out­look. Illi­nois’ frag­ile over­all finan­cial sta­tus net­ted it a neg­a­tive out­look, putting it behind Cal­i­for­nia over­all. The rat­ings came out now because Illi­nois plans to issue $500 mil­lion in bonds within days.

Exactly how much Illi­nois’ credit-rating slide ulti­mately will cost tax­pay­ers is unknown until the demand for the state’s bonds is mea­sured in the mar­kets. But Ruther­ford esti­mated the state will pay $95 mil­lion more in inter­est than if Illi­nois had a AAA rat­ing, which is much higher.

Even before the down­grade was revealed, Quinn said in Chicago the “pres­sure is higher than ever” to solve the pen­sion prob­lem because “credit rat­ing agen­cies are scream­ing at the top of their voice” for final action.

[…]

One other omi­nous point in the Stan­dard & Poor’s report is that inac­tion could lead to down­grad­ing Illi­nois to “BBB,” an “unusual” low rat­ing for any state. The agency noted a “lack of action on pen­sion reform and upcom­ing bud­get chal­lenges could result in fur­ther credit deterioration.”

“Most states will build reserves when the econ­omy is per­form­ing well, and that typ­i­cally pro­vides a cush­ion when the rev­enues dete­ri­o­rate,” said Robin Prunty, the S&P ana­lyst who heads the agency’s state rat­ings group. “But Illi­nois has never really car­ried or accu­mu­lated any kind of bud­getary reserves.”

Not sur­pris­ingly, they has been called to deal with pen­sions a mul­ti­tude of times by both Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans in Illi­nois.  Also not sur­pris­ingly, the  state’s pub­lic employee unions have claimed any attempts to change the cur­rent pen­sion sys­tem is uncon­sti­tu­tional and would be fought tooth and nail.

Illi­nois has cre­ated this hell, it is now time for them to burn in it.

From the final para­graph of the opin­ion of 7th Cir­cuit Court Judge David F. Hamil­ton, a 2009 Obama appointee to the court, on the Act 10 ruling.

Hamil­ton, con­curred in parts and dis­sented in oth­ers in a sep­a­rate opinion.

As I said at the out­set, elec­tions have con­se­quences.  The United States Con­sti­tu­tion does not for­bid all leg­is­la­tion that rewards friends and pun­ishes oppo­nents.  The prin­ci­pal pro­vi­sions of Wisconsin’s Act 10 may fit that descrip­tion, but they are still con­sti­tu­tional under the gen­er­ous stan­dard of rational-basis review.

Trans­la­tion:  Best of luck in any future appeal unionistas.

(H/T Instapun­dit)

Well said sir.

“Talk­mas­ter” is the Twit­ter han­dle of Neal Boortz, lib­er­tar­ian talk radio host based out of Atlanta.

Just to point out to any union hacks who want to get cute with out-of-context quotes from Ronald Rea­gan about col­lec­tive bargaining.