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Tuesday, March 28, 2017

The new Golden Fleece Awards...

... go to the Braves of Atlanta. 

The Las Vegas Raiders have nothing on them. (For now, anyway. In a few years, the Raiders will truly become the sport world's all-time welfare shyster.)

The Braves will bank more than $350 million from taxpayers in Georgia and Florida, two bastions of "fiscal conservatism." (Not to mention Red State Nevada, owned and operated by the Hon. Sheldon Adelson.) 

Next time we have the urge to complain about anybody's contract - even Ellsbury's - let's remember the disgraceful avalanches of public money regularly banked by poor-mouthing owners... billionaires, who pretend to be millionaires, so that we'll feel sorry for them. Will we ever wise-up, or will it be carved into the Baby Boomers' gravestone that whenever the sports owners rattled a cup, the politicians of both stripes came running to write public checks?


If the revolution ever comes, may the first thing torn down be the goalposts. (Hat tip to Tom, anger is mine.)

5 comments:

KD said...

Wow this touches a sore spot. Taxpayers making these rich dudes richer and we get to drive on crappy roads and bridges, fly out of run down airports, support the world police force (otherwise known as the U.S. military), and pay for slacker's and bum's subsidized life style and over-priced medical insurance and care.

can't wait until I retire, reduce my tax burden to as close to zero as humanly possible, shed the parasites, give the finger to my masters and end my partial enslavement (which, considering all the taxes I pay and the nanny state I live in, is at least 50% of my time). Then I can sit back, Enjoy the Decline, and not take this crap so personally.

yep I'm grumpy today....

TurkeyStanley said...

Was just reading the wiki article about the Barclays Center the other day:

"The arena is formally owned by the Brooklyn Arena Local Development Corporation, a public entity. It is leased to private entity Brooklyn Events Center, LLC for $1.00.[2][28] Being publicly owned, the financing of the stadium was eligible for tax-exempt bonds, which were issued in 2009 for a total of $510,999,996.50.[29]"

So a "public" entity gets $511 million in public financing and then leases the space for $1. And it's right out there in the open. Talk about a bullshit workaround.

el duque said...

The Buffalo Bills' stadium lease runs out in 2023. What are the odds there'll be a 2024 in Buffalo?

KD said...

They will always put the touch on us, the great American Middle Class because, as my mother explained to me more than 50 years ago, "That's where the money is". we've been pooping out those golden eggs for so long now that the old goose is getting a little scrawny. Some of us are even starting to hiss and honk, as if that really matters (see 2016 election results). But the elite have a plan for the masses. At our own expense, of course.

Bread and circuses, man. Bread and circuses.

Time for a drink!!

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