I got to talk on Air America for a few minutes today about welfare for sports team billionaires!

[ddeclue]

This time its the Marlins owner extorting a half a billion dollars (+interest) from Miami Dade.

I spoke out about how the Marlins owner has been at this for years and how we're already screwed in Orlando thanks to Rich DeVos and the City and County giving him a half a billion+ interest (2 billion overall) for a new basketball arena and how gov't services are being cut back and how FL is in a sever budget crisis already without handing out welfare to sports team billionaires.

Here in Orlando the whole house of cards is collapsing because it was all based on ridiculuously optimistic tax revenue growth and a lot of borrowing in the first place. We warned them, they didn't listen. Hopefully Miami Dade will learn their listen from Orlando and Orange County's stupidity.

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

[indepat]

1. Living in the hometown of the fully taxpayer-funded Heisley Palace wherein the team owner gets

all the revenue and benefits of ownership, including the, was it a nine-figure naming rights, while the taxpayer gets saddled with the entire cost thereof, I share your pain, anguish, and outrage. A local sportswriter chided my naivete and ignorance in thinking such an arrangement wherein the team owner gets all the benefits and revenues of ownership without any of the cost burden normally associated with ownership surely would not be a "public purpose" as required for public funding: silly me. :P

Edited to make first sentence a complete sentence

[MikeNearMcChord]

2. I think this will be the last time you see this.

The NBA is trying to get loans to save some of the teams, the NFL and the players union may face some brutal realities next season, even MLB is admitting that times will be tough. These palaces for Billionaires and Millionaires will look quite peaked, since who is going to pay the outrageous costs after the tickets like $7 beer or $6 hot dogs.

[ddeclue]

3. That is what is so outrageous about the Marlins...

wanting to use TDT (Tourist Development Tax) to fund their stadium...

they can't even fill the seats with locals when the tickets are dirt cheap and the parking is dirt cheap - how can they claim this is a legitimate use of tourism dollars since clearly no tourists are flying from Cleveland in any significant quantity to watch the Florida Marlins play?

It's outrageous and someone needs to put a stop to this blackmail. If the Marlins or the Magic want to leave town I'll give them a ride to the airport... buh bye! Don't let our warm weather hit you in the ass on the way back to Detroit or wherever...

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

[bunkerbuster1]

4. I love baseball, and I think players earn every penny they make, but the owners...

well, it's basically an organized crime ring.

[ddeclue]

6. I see you're a Mets Fan... Aren't both the Mets and the Yankees getting gov't funded stadiums

from NYC and the state of NY also?

How much is that costing and what is getting short changed for these two new stadiums in NYC?

I for one think its a crime against history to tear down Yankee stadium even if they legitimately need a new stadium and they paid for it totally out of their own pocket.

I'm not a Yankees fan (I'm a Braves fan so no love lost there) but I have to recognize that this is where Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio played ball and it is a piece of national history that should be made into a monument to baseball and preserved.

Let's just tear down the Coliseum in Rome while we're at it too... the owner wants more box seats...

:sarcasm:

[bunkerbuster1]

8. You are correct sir!

My loyalties to the Flushing, NY-based national league enterprise go back some decades, but I'm appalled that federal funds are used to sponsor the damn stadium.

[zbdent]

5. don't they practice a form of socialism?

I mean, no matter how good or how bad your team is, you still get the same amount of $$$ from the TV contracts as any other team ...

and Murdoch licked his chops as he signed the check to the NFL ...

[underpants]

7. Stadium deals are pure falacy and even the right agrees on that

The idea is that sales tax will replace the money localities (or sports authorities) create by issuing bonds but there is no proof that that actually happens. Even a rightwing hack like Walter Williams has written on how it just simply doesn't add up .

BTW- the reason that Bush had any money at all (and could run as a "successful rich businessman" ) was due to a land grab for "The Ballpark" for the Texas Rangers.
http://www.angelfire.com/ok5/pearly/htmls/bush-sec5.html


HOME: JANUARY 16, 1998: NEWS

Governor Deadbeat
Bush Makes a Killing While Arlington Stuck With Fee
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A519405