I’m writing to urge you to adopt rules federally banning states, cities, and other municipalities from paying for sports arenas for professional teams. Or better, prohibit teams in leagues with over some amount of assets to play in municipally built stadiums. Model it after Seattle’s initiative, so municipalities have to be able to make money off the deal or no deal.
With the NBA telling the Kings they can’t relocate, part of the underlying reasoning they’re staying in a smaller media market with a worse offer is that town is willing to shill out an obscene amount of money to build an arena. The amount that cities are willing to bilk their taxpayers is a large part of the reason the Kings aren’t coming to Seattle. So, while it would probably be too late to get the Sonics back this time, this would better lay the groundwork for future.
It would also be fundamentally more decent. After all, these sort of deals are out of control, and most cities with sports teams are on the bad end of these types of deals, having to take much of the risk with any financial gain going to the teams. The teams rely on taxpayers to make themselves a profit.
It’s the sort of problem that, really, can only be solved at the national level. After all, as long as different cities in different states are competing for these things, the threat of leaving is going to be too great. These leagues that span the country are the sort of interstate commerce that Congress should be regulating. I don’t know if it could get through the dysfunctional Congress, but it’s worth a try.
And would this be punishment for the NBA for leaving in the way that it did, and then voting not to let us get another team? And to a lesser extent to MLB and the NFL for foisting bad stadium deals on is in the first place? Sure. But it’s still a better idea than having municipalities fight over teams with taxpayer stadiums.
Hugs and kisses
Carl Ballard
horsesass.org
“This is going to be short for me,” Stern said “I have a game to get to in Oklahoma City.”
Fuck you, Stern and fuck the NBA. I hope Hanson and Ballmer sue your ass to fucking Kingdom Come.
Oh, and fuck OKC and that asshole Bennett.
Steve, on 1 and 2, I agree, and can the city sue, they had reserved dates for basketball, because at the time, it looked like the move was going to happen.
You don’t get it, Carl. Seattle taxpayers don’t pay for our stadium any more than Twin Cities taxpayers pay for their stadium.
Here’s how it works. Stadium taxes are slapped on hotel rooms, rental cars, and restaurant meals. That means if someone from Minneapolis visits Seattle, they’re paying for our stadium.
But hey! It’s fair, because the Twin Cities do the same thing, so when we visit Minneapolis, we’re paying for their stadium.
In other words, it’s a game of soak-the-out-of-towners. All the stadium cities do it. I don’t know who invented this scam, but he probably got a big fat bonus for dreaming it up.
People think the Civil War ended in 1865. Ha! Little do they know, it hadn’t even started yet. People were naive in those days, they fought over land and slaves, they didn’t have a clue.
You don’t use gunpowder to wage civil war against other states. All you need is a sports team and a city council willing to play ball.
And this whole stadium/sports team relocation thing is really more the same thing as South Carolina giving Boeing incentives to build a factory there or Tennessee getting a Toyota plant. No amount of federal legislation is gonna stop it.
It’s the sort of problem that, really, can only be solved at the national level. After all, as long as different cities in different states are competing for these things, the threat of leaving is going to be too great.
So, maybe the voters in each place could, say, fire any elected official who engages in a year of secret negotiations to compete for a team? FIre enough misbehaving employees, and their replacements will act better, I’m thinking.
And would this be punishment for the NBA for leaving in the way that it did, and then voting not to let us get another team?
How about punishing the NBA by not watching their games, not buying their merchandise, and not encouraging our elected officials to spend time and offers of public money to have a team here?
I don’t know if it could get through the dysfunctional Congress, but it’s worth a try.
I’d rather have him work on a better national health-care plan, which is the reason he asked for the job in the first place. Maybe he could include psychological counseling for bereaved professional-sports addict withdrawal?
Actually, I think Jim McDermott has most pressing issues to deal with than whether Seattle gets an NBA team. He should, for example, sponsor legislation outlawing importation of products made with slave labor, political prisoner labor, or under unsafe or inhumane working conditions that don’t meet OUR standards.
At least six workers are dead, and more than 50 people are trapped, after a shoe factory building collapsed in Cambodia.
It’s time American consumers stopped handing their money over to “entrepreneurs” who treat human beings like that.
Mass Shooting Of The Day (TM)
“A woman and three men were hospitalized after a shooting in Southwest Philadelphia Wednesday night.
“Police say a group of people were hanging out … around 9:20 p.m. Suddenly, police say, someone took out a gun and fired 27 shots.
“A 20-year-old man was struck in the head while another man in his early 20s was shot in the shoulder. Police also say a bullet entered the home of a 21-year-old woman … who … was struck in the head as she stood in the front bedroom on the second floor of the house. Police say the woman was getting ready to go to bed before she was shot.
“Police say the 20-year-old man is in critical condition, the man in his early 20’s stable, and the woman critical … another man [who] was found with a gunshot wound … a few blocks away … was listed in critical condition.
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com.....45221.html
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Guess we’ll just have to live with this stuff, because our Second Amendment Rights (TM; pat. pend.) are too important to give up.
The plutocrats are spending their money. With prices like these for graffiti, the working class will have to take more pay cuts.
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news.....68791.html
Oh, and did I mention we can’t raise taxes on billionaires, because their consumption puts money back in the economy?
Dishonest Business Practices Dep’t
Know those stores that guarantee to match competitors’ prices? They’re lying.
http://lifeinc.today.com/_news.....ntees?lite
tensor @6 is correct.
Legislation is not going to solve the problem. The solution to the problem of working people paying for the play things and excess profits of the 1% is personal and collective action.
If you don’t (and I certainly do not) like your elected officials giving away money to billionaires and underfunding your schools, vote ’em out.
If you don’t like the way a sports association or a business holds up weak politicians and municipalities, don’t patronize them.
And, of course, organize your friends, family and neighbors to join you in the fight for economic prosperity.
@4 RR, I love your furry little head, but on this one you’re wrong. The taxes involved don’t exclusively hit out-of-towners – plenty of local people rent cars, go to restaurants, and even use hotels (bunnies should know all about the activities that necessitate the latter…) But even if they did, projects like Hanson’s use up large chunks of the city’s bonding capacity – meaning that much less the city can use to finance other major projects, like, say, fixing the Magnolia Bridge. A lot of the corporate subsidies in the Hanson deal are indirect.
As other commenters noted, the business model of the four major men’s team sports is now specifically based on what a lot of other large corporations do – set cities (and countries) against each other in a competition for who can offer the most taxpayer subsidy to attract a business or facility. But the pro sports subsidies are enormous and direct – the “jobs” argument isn’t nearly as powerful with local politicians or the public as the “root for your favorite team!” argument.
In fact, you can make the argument that forcing cities to pony up money is far more democratic than financing such stadiums privately – rather than the locations of teams being controlled solely by the whims (and market interests) of a random billionaire, the public has some say. Of course, if the leagues cared about that, they wouldn’t ban public ownership of the teams. The one grandfathered exception – the Green Bay Packers – is a model of how a pro team can be run. And that’s exactly why the leagues will never allow another situation like it.
I’m pretty sure Jim would be down with pushing the legislation you’re proposing, along with a lot of other worthwhile things. Unfortunately, any such (or even a meaningful budget) don’t have so much as a prayer of getting anywhere near the House floor as long as that chamber’s current leadership is concentrating on what they consider far more urgent priorities, to whit:
(1.) Impeaching Obama
(2.) Repealing Obamacare
(3.) Dismantling Social Security
(4.) Finding terrorists under the bed
(5.) Repealing Obamacare
(6.) Blaming Obama for any terrorists found under the bed
(7.) Accusing Obama of conspiring to provide other concealment for the terrorists they can’t find under the bed
(8.) Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!
(9.) Repealing Obamacare
(10.) Impeaching Obama
(11.) Zealously protecting the Second Amendment rights of every man, woman, child, domestic animal and household appliance in America to keep and own firearms, excepting of course the terrorists found under the bed.
(12.) Repealing Obamacare
(13.) Promoting “decency”.
(14.) Persecuting “sluts”.
(15.) Blaming Obama for the deficit.
(16.) Taking credit for reducing the deficit.
(17.) Impeaching Obama
(18.) Impeaching Obama
(19.) Impeaching Obama
.
.
.
I do think the NBA grab for taxpayer’s wallets is a national problem, just as the grab for other businesses using taxpayer subsidies.
Remember the old Arms Control Treaties like SALT and SALT II which were designed to keep the countries involved from accumulating an endless supply of weapons? We need one now within the U.S. to end the proliferation of public money for private businesses, starting with the NBA, NFL, etc. Then we can go after states which lure other businesses to relocate using taxpayer money.
The problem isn’t just that Seattle doesn’t have an NBA team, despite bringing the best offer to the table. The problem is that the combined effect of such subsidies on the financial welfare of the cities involved, and their taxpayers.
How many more cities have to file bankruptcy when the economy takes a downturn because they paid or promised too much to private businesses, and are sadled with expensive arenas/stadiums which have no value after ten years when the sports franchise decides it needs something better? How many children go without textbooiks, teachers go without pay raises, roads and bridges don’t get fixed, because there isn’t enough money or bonding capacity after the stadium is accounted for?
No government anywhere should be allowed to spend money on anything athletic. And Seattle doesn’t need a team…
The solution to the problem of working people paying for the play things and excess profits of the 1% is personal and collective action.
Actually, Carl back-handedly admits just how well collective action led to a law that has now kept Seatlle from squandering money on subsidizing professional sports:
Model it after Seattle’s initiative, so municipalities have to be able to make money off the deal or no deal.
This law has now proven him right:
… they’re staying in a smaller media market with a worse offer is that town is willing to shill out an obscene amount of money to build an arena. The amount that cities are willing to bilk their taxpayers is a large part of the reason the Kings aren’t coming to Seattle.
He knows Seattle’s voters won’t ever consent to changing R-91, except maybe to take any and all forms of public subsidy off the table, so he asks to make our tougher standard national. While that’s a great idea, the NBA has enough money to keep it from passing, so there’s no reason to bother trying.
I don’t know which irony is better: that Carl was perfectly willing to use public subsidies to deprive another set of sports fans their team, then got angry when Sacramento’s mayor beat McGinn at that very game, or that HA is grousing at a victory by voters over plutocrats. Either way, I’m glad we won’t be spending any more money on a sports league which has expressed such scorn for the loyalty and support Seattle gave the Sonics for decades.