Some NASCAR guys were in Olympia today, and one unleashed this… gem. Analyst Darrell Waltrip on why the track can’t be built without public money:
“You know what, it’s math. My two and your two makes five. … With your help and with our help, everybody works together, this is a win-win. And it is a win-win in a much faster pace and a win-win with everyone involved.”
For $145 million, state taxpayers can help build a track that’ll be used twice a year.
UPDATE:
Well, if Waltrip thinks that two plus two makes five, perhaps we should spend that $145 million on math education? [–Goldy]
Twice a year? Boy, talk about decelerated depreciation schedules! It’ll never wear out. Long after we are gone, visiting aliens will marvel at the fact that we humans did master the concept of “zero”, and could have really been on to something with the discovery of the circle which couldn’t have been far behind.
My idea of win-win is owners build the required venues and I buy tickets to go to the events held in them. If there’s enough entertainment value, many other people will buy tickets, and the owner makes his money back.
If it’s crappy entertainment, no one comes back, and a lousy businessman goes under. I don’t have to pay taxes to pay off bonds on an empty stadium. That’s a lose for him and a win for me.
The only difference is Mr. Owner doesn’t get a sure thing.
How do I win in this deal? They want my tax money. Since all my tax money is currently being spent, it’s reasonable to assume this involves me paying MORE taxes. What do I get back? Are they gonna give me a cut of the profits? Of the concession revenue? Of the parking fees? Not fucking likely. The only thing I’ll get back is the demolition and environmental cleanup expenses 30 years from now, when they don’t want it anymore. Fuck them!!! Racing is a private business, and they can damn well put up their own capital, and keep their fucking greasy fingers out of my wallet.
I won’t even get a ticket discount in return for my taxes. Or a decent hotdog for seven-fifty. All I’ll get is the noise, fumes, traffic jams, and bills.
Fuck NASCAR! Fuck Clay Bennett! Why is Bush looking for terrorists under rocks in Iraq when we have them right here in our backyard! All Al Qaeda wants is my life. These bastards are out to get my money.
Plus, they’ll build more tracks than they can use,( Why not? They’re not payin’ for ’em!) and if the state (who has invested heavily in the track) doesn’t give them even more bennies, they’ll hold their events elsewhere. Because they will build more tracks than they can use.
THAT’S why they need PUBLIC MONEY — so they have you over a barrel.
Cheap labor conservatives.
With our weather constraints, we would only get one date per year….especially after Canada gets a race.
Remember folks, major league baseball is exempt from anti-trust laws. That is how these nanny state conservatives think….taxes are just another revenue stream to be tapped.
Roger Rabbit says:
Fuck NASCAR! Fuck Clay Bennett! Why is Bush looking for terrorists under rocks in Iraq when we have them right here in our backyard! All Al Qaeda wants is my life. These bastards are out to get my money.
02/22/2007 at 8:43 pm
Does “terrorists” mean the current regime in charge in Olympia? I guess Bush isn’t going to surge troops through this state in order to effectuate a regime change …
@10 Man you’re gonna milk the tits right off that cow, Richard! Give it up. If Rossi was governor, the basketball palace and NASCAR track would be done deals already, and condos would be going up in the Nisqually Delta to boot.
Man, I miss SIR. Circle-track auto racing is for small-town hotdoggers and well, inbred rednecks. Call me a snob if you must, but I haven’t given a damn about American racing in years. The only racing I pay any attention to these days is Formula One and the World Rally Circuit.
Race cars were not meant to only turn left!
You know you’re a Republican when….
you think pro wrestling is real, and NASCAR is an actual sport.
Hey, George W wouldn’t be where he is today if it wasn’t for the fine folks of Texas subsidizing his daddy’s friends’ pro baseball stadium. After those taxpayers ponied up, the team was worth a lot more (imagine that!), got sold, and George W made “his” first dollar bill!
Hey, look, Stefan and pals’ hard work over at Sound Politics are FINALLY rendering some real results! It’s no wonder the right-wingers are always so opposed to hate crimes legislation.
Two charged in racial abuse of Loyal Heights deli owner
A man and woman were charged with a hate crime Thursday for allegedly harassing and attacking a Ballard business owner because of his ethnicity.
Brian D. Lappin, 35, of Seattle, and Nichol A. Kirk, 25, of Shoreline were charged in King County Superior Court with malicious harassment, a felony. They were arrested Tuesday after entering Steven Saleh’s delicatessen at 2401 N.W. 80th St. to buy beer. Kirk was drunk and abusive toward Saleh, and his 18-year-old nephew, calling them “terrorists,” “un-American” and racist obscenities. Saleh, who is from Yemen, refused to sell to them, and they attacked him, court documents say.
The two defendants went to the store from a nearby tavern, court documents say.
Bail was set at $10,000 for both defendants, who remained Thursday in the King County Jail.
They face three to nine months in jail if convicted, said Dan Donohoe of the county prosecutor’s office.
The same company that is demanding public funding for a Kitsap track is building a racetrack in New York with ENTIRELY PRIVATE funding? If private funding is good enough for New York, I say it’s good enough for Washington state.
http://www.naparstek.com/2005/.....-track.php
You’d think that it wouldn’t be all that difficult for the city to work out similarly innovative transportation management plans for the stadium and arena projects, seeing as how the MTA owns the land at both sites and would be the beneficiary of any program that compels fans to take a train rather than drive. But this kind of creative planning has been nonexistent. Amazingly, the raceway builders appear to be the only developer in the city really thinking about ways to reduce automobile traffic and increase the use of mass transit.
ISC is also showing far more sensitivity to its local environment and future neighbors than the Jets and Nets. They have committed to preserving and enhancing the 250 acres of fragile wetlands on their property. During most of the year, a large portion of the site will be given to the community for use as sports fields, and nonprofit organizations can host charity events at the track for free. Printupp also says that ISC is open to figuring out a way to allow its ferry docks to be used year-round for daily commuter service.
But the biggest contrast of all is in the financing of the projects. Whereas the Jets and Nets are asking for hundreds of millions of dollars in public subsidies, the entire $550 to $600 million cost of the speedway is being paid for privately. The racetrack is expected to generate $45 million a year for the city and state, not including all of the additional revenues earned off of money spent on hotels, fried Twinkies and 9/11 memorabilia.
I think it would be best to let Halliburton build it. This would be far more efficient, considering their “track” record.
Let’s not forget that the entire racetrack proposal in Kitsap County is highly dependent upon (a) some 80,000 out-of-state visiters finding hotel rooms in Seattle/Bellevue during the same weekend, probably in the summertime when hotels are already full; and (b) that they all can take the ferry across the sound (during a summer weekend) at roughly the same time to get to the race, and (c) that you can get some 20,000 to 30,000 cars from the ferry docks to the racetrack in something less than four hours.
Now THAT’s where the real public subsidy arises – in the expectation that the State and County will put a complete re-build of our transportation priorities on hold so we can accomodate traffic to this race track in time for the first race.
And after the hypothetical “out-of-state-visiter” spends fourteen hours trying to GET TO the track, but instead misses the entire race and has to consider how he is going to GET BACK to his hotel room, do you really think they will ever come back again? I wonder how that figures into the math in the NASCAR proposal – that the only out-of-state-fans will be ones who have never been here before, or haven’t heard reports of the horrible traffice conditions, and haven’t talked to anyone who has ever been here before.
And let’s not forget that NASCAR racing is something they don’t do in the rain, so it is really only viable in this area from mid-July to mid-September.
The whole thing may well cost the taxpayers more than the viaduct tunnel, before its over with. I say take the money the Sonics and NASCAR want us to spend on them, and put it into the tunnel project instead. It has just as much posibility of increasing sales tax revenues from out-of-state tourists flocking to the waterfront as any of the Sonics or NASCAR proposals.
@11 Showing my age here. . . .I remember the “Super H Modified” class screamin’ around that track. . . . .
Remember a year or so ago when NASCAR wanted to build a track just north of Marysville? It actually made a lot of sense to locate it there. Just off I-5, it would still be able to use the hotel availability of Seattle/Bellevue, as well as lots of room for RV lots between Marysville and Arlington.
But the State said that Snohomish County would have to pick up the cost of the local road improvements, and Reardon said the county couldn’t afford it, so that deal was dead.
If Snohomish County couldn’t afford to widen an on-off ramp and surface streets a relatively short distance from I-5 to the racetrack, then how is Kitsap County going to re-build their entire road network?
Yes the Publican connection to Nascar is fitting since there’s a big cheating scandal at Nascar right now, it only makes sense that the folks who stole the White House would get along so well with the Bible-thumpin rednecks of Nascar.
While the track can be used for other races and events I don’t feel gov’t should pay for ANY private sports venues be it basketball, auto racing or hackey sack.
Hey! I’ve turned lefter all my life. Will there be interest on all the back pay owed me?