According to Governor Mark “Bored DIlettante” Dayton, NFL players get into trouble – bar scuffles, DUIs, shooting each other, dogfighting – because they’re just like you:

Football players aren’t ordinary citizens, [the Governor] said, and compared the game to combat.

”It’s basically slightly civilized war, and then they take that into society, much as solders come back, and they’ve been in combat or the edge of it and then suddenly that adjustment back to civilian life is a real challenge,” Dayton said.

You heard him right.  The Governor – who got a draft deferment by staying in college and then working as a substitute teacher until his number went away – says that NFL players, many of whom started on the fast track to stardom in high school, waltzed through college in dumbed-down academic programs and “work” at playing an overgrown sandlot game for millions of dollars a year, misbehave because they’re just like you are after you get home from a tour or two in Afghanistan or Iraq (or Desert Storm or Vietnam).

It’s a bit of a whack upside the head to see that George Chapple – better known as “Dark Star” – has passed away:

Chapple grew up in Ohio and Long Island, NY. He was a Vietnam veteran, and originally came to the Twin Cities with his parents in the 1970s.

After dabbling in the auto business, Chapple became known to radio listeners in the 1980s via Steve Cannon’s WCCO Radio show where he handicapped horse races at the newly-opened Canterbury Downs (later renamed Canterbury Park).

Before that, though, he was a regular caller on sportstalk shows all over the Twin Cities, including KSTP when I was there in the mid-eighties.

The brief Strib obit skips past what was a convoluted and almost comical path to sports-radio celebrity.  When I first met Dark, he was hosting a cable-access handicapping show at Canterbury Downs, in the next press booth over from the KSTP Sportstalk show I was producing.  I ran into him again in…er, 1988?  He and, of all people, Mike Gelfand were hosting an evening sportstalk show on the old AM1470 in Anoka, doing a remote broadcast from an old Chi-Chi’s in Brooklyn Center.  In both cases, he bellowed out “Mitch!” – to me, one of the lowliest peons on Twin Cities radio – like I was Steve Cannon himself.

It wasn’t long after that that he got his job at ‘CCO.

And I spent years thinking of that example – going from regular caller to night-time host, one of America’s dream jobs.  And the lesson of that example – make your own opportunities, and be both creative and persistent about it – was in the front of my mind in 2003 and early 2004 when I first broached the idea of an all-blogger talk show to AM1280.

So anyway – RIP Dark Star.

Senator Sean Nienow explains his votes on the Vikings stadium – and its half-billion-dollar infusion of public money –  in the Isanti-Chisago Star

It wasn’t just the price tag that compelled me to vote against sending the bill to the governor. It has a structurally unsound funding mechanism and it ignores and belittles the expressed will of hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans.

Not just belittled us, but insulted our intelligence.  I’m not someone who’s built a lot of “cherished family memories” around our underachieving football franchise – and I feel sorry for those that have.

Beyond that, though?  The Vikes’ strategy – ratchet up the sentiment, and then threaten to pull all of that out and go to LA (without threatening it directly, since it’d be a stupid idea for the NFL, and anyone who isn’t blinded by sentiment knows it) – was a masterpiece of cynical PR arm-twisting.  Also loathsome.

Nienow repeats some of the fiscal cautionary notes that many of us have been sounding for months:

In order to pay for the stadium, charitable gaming will need to more than double. To raise enough revenue, charitable gambling will have to increase about 130 percent over current levels. That increased level of charitable gambling will then have to be maintained for 30 years. Put that into the context of reality: Charitable gambling decreased 31 percent over 10 years.

You can see we are bucking a negative trend with hopes that we will reverse the trend, increase gambling by much more than double and then keep up that level of gambling for three decades. When this mechanism proves unsustainable and short on revenue, you the taxpayer will be on the hook to pay the stadium bills.

When that happens, it will be money taken directly from education, health care and other services we provide, to pay for the stadium.

Oddly, the governor and mainstream media were very, very quiet about this “feature” of the stadium “deal”.

Another provision in the law is not even for the Vikings stadium-refurbishing Target Center. Minneapolis residents recently added a requirement to their city charter requiring a public vote before the city spends more than $10 million fixing a sports arena. This law eliminates that expressed will of the people.

If today we can ignore their will, tomorrow it can be yours. That’s a dangerous precedent.

And it’s just a matter of time before the next major league franchise will be wanting new digs.

XCel is over fifteen and pushing twenty, after all; Target Center is twenty and change; “renovations” aside, both of those clubs will be demanding new stadiums before too long.

And their idiot fans will put on their jerseys and their wolf masks and mob the capitol and demand that the next bunch of gullible weak-kneed “moderate” saps do the will of the team and the Strib.

My question was always “If we don’t stop this organized larceny of the public largesse, who will?  If not us, who?”

Nienow, and most of the freshman class of Republicans, voted to let the 1% pay for their own real estate upgrade, and this blog thanks them.

Read the whole thing.

And get ready.  Because I figure we’re less than a decade away from the next such campaign.

(NOTE:  Kudos to Mr. D, who – to the best of my knowledge – coined the term “Helga Braid Nation”).

Sorry if my output is a little light today.

I was watching all those idiot Vikings fans hooting and hollering, and those chucklehead Vikings players doing their idiot dances on camera, over the news that Zygi Wilf’s and the NFL’s exploitation of the state’s stupid and gullible classes convinced a majority of legislators to allow Wilf to pilfer hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers to buff up the  value of his private investment, and I guess I chundered so long and hard it was impossible to write much.

Sorry about that.

Clearly, Mark Dayton knows his niche; go for the gullible, the easily manipulable, the people who think money comes from unicorns from on high, or who just don’t care that they’re making other people pay for their recreation.

I’m going to spend a little time going over the votes of the Republicans who supported the stadium.

Let’s start with the Senate.

You can look at a fairly interesting map of the votes in the House and Senate; the map isn’t entirely unpredictable; third-ring exurban Republicans voted (mostly) against it; Republicans in swingy districts, and moderates, voted “yes”.

Let’s break ’em down:

Democrats voting yes

I’m not going to bother analyzing them – they’re all hopeless anyway.

Bakk (Cook); Bonoff (Minnetonka); Cohen (St. Paul); Goodwin (Columbia Heights); Harrington (St. Paul); Higgins (Minneapolis); Kelash (Minneapolis); Koenen (Clara City); Langseth (Glyndon); Latz (St. Louis Park); Metzen (South St. Paul); Pappas (St. Paul); Reinert (Duluth); Rest (New Hope); Saxhaug (Grand Rapids); Sheran (Mankato); Sieben (Newport); Skoe (Clearbrook); Sparks (Austin); Stumpf (Plummer); Tomassoni (Chisholm); Wiger (Maplewood)

Democrats voting no

Now, I’m pretty sure Mark Dayton has to be loving the fact that the GOP is the party tearing itself apart over this – the only eight DFLers voted against the bill:  Dibble (Minneapolis); Dziedzic (Minneapolis); Eaton (Brooklyn Center); Hayden (Minneapolis); Lourey (Kerrick); Marty (Roseville); McGuire (Falcon Heights); Torres Ray (Minneapolis)

Republicans voting no

No arguments here.  They’re the good guys and gals:

Benson (Ham Lake); Brown (Becker); Chamberlain (Lino Lakes); Dahms (Redwood Falls); Daley (Eagan); DeKruif (Madison Lake); Gazelka (Brainerd); Gerlach (Apple Valley); Hall (Burnsville); Hann (Eden Prairie); Hoffman (Vergas); Kruse (Brooklyn Park); Lillie (Lake Elmo); Limmer (Maple Grove); Newman (Hutchinson); Ortman (Chanhassen); Parry (Waseca); Thompson (Lakeville); Vandeveer (Forest Lake); Wolf (Spring Lake Park)

Carlson (Bemidji); Fischbach (Paynesville); Gimse (Willmar); Howe (Red Wing); Ingebrigtsen (Alexandria); Jungbauer (East Bethel); Koch (Buffalo); Magnus (Slayton); Michel (Edina); Miller (Winona); Nelson (Rochester); Nienow (Cambridge); Pederson (St. Cloud); Robling (Jordan); Rosen (Fairmont); Senjem (Rochester)

I have to say I’d hoped for much better from Niennow, who has been as solid a supporter of the taxpayer as there is (UPDATE:  And rightly so.  Nienow’s vote was apparently a parliamentary dodge.  My apologies).  And I didn’t expect much from a few of the others – especially the retiring Michel, who has nothing to lose – sad to say.

But for the rest?

I think an explanation is in order.

It looks like the stadium is a done deal.  The fat lady is warming up in the locker room.

And people – Republicans, mostly, although there are exceptions – are angry about it.   Some are angry enough to start a Facebook group to yak about un-endorsing Legislators (Republicans, naturally, mostly) who voted for the stadium.

Now, setting up Facebook pages is easy and cheap.  Primarying legislators is work, and expensive.   Keep it all in context.

But there is a valid point, there; Republicans ran on a “fiscal responsibility” platform – and then caved in to a billionaire seeking Wilfare.

There is a valid response; the team tapped exploited this state’s boundless reserves of sentiment for our team.  And they exploited the key fact about Mark Dayton; he was elected by the stupid, and Dayton and his people know how to make the stupid turn out.  Daily during the stadium debate yahoos in purple staggered about the halls of the capitol and wrote beer-stained letters and misspelled but irate emails demanding that the stadium pony up for their recreation, their “tradition” (of losing), “their” team.  And that adds up to votes.  Stupid, entitled, spoiled-rotten votes?  Yep.  And they count just as much as the votes of smart, or at least ethical, people.

And the bitch of it is this; a legislator can have voted right on every single issue – the budget, taxes, deregulation – but if they’re threatened with losing office to a worthless DFL challenger who puts on a purple cap and bellows on cue, what the hell good is any of it?

Republicans who voted for the stadium owe the voter an explanation.  There are a few I’m willing to accept; if a conservative with a 75+ rating from the Taxpayers League is in a district where he or she is up by less than five in a district full of pinheads who dress up like vikings, I’ll buy it.

More either this noon or tomorrow, depending on how much I like putting the numbers together.

To: Minnesota Vikings
From:  Mitch Berg – Bears Fan
Re:  Your Fiscal Plans

Dear Mr. Wilf,

if having “Mitch Berg” come to your new bit of political swag stadium and spend money on user fees, or going to some pull tab machine to lose a pre-planned amount of money to pay for the stadium improvements to your investment on the public dime is in any part of your plans, please subtract from your plans appropriately.  Not going to happen.  You will not see one voluntary dime from me.

(I was going to add “If any of my legislators vote for this bit of legislative larceny, I’ll work tirelessly to remove their lame asses”, but I think you know I’m “represented” by Sandy Pappas and Rhea Montgomery, so I’ll be working tirelessly against them anyway).

I’ll be at Alary’s with the Bears fans.  That’s a private sector business.

Unless they demand money from the state to pay for improvements to their real estate.   Then I’ll tube them too.

The Vikings may suck, they may in the Super Bowl.  But you, Zygi, will never voluntarily get a dime from me.

That is all.

It’s been popping up on leftyblogs and leftytweets for the past couple of days – the Minnesota GOP is “Anti-NFL”.

It’s odd that Democrats in Minnesota have picked National Football League to rally around, given their long history of union-busting, affiliations with organized crime, and – most germane, here in Minnesota – making a huge industry out of jacking up states and cities for taxpayer-funded subsidies to support the one-percentiest people of all, professional football owners and players.

The NFL have developed a routine; demand the public pay for stadiums (so they and their owners don’t have to).  When taxpayers and the lawmakers they elect balk, exploit “fan loyalty” (the greatest source of wasted energy in the universe) by threatening to move the team to some other city.  Play the local political parties against one another, like colonials playing tribes against each other, to browbeat the politicians into caving in.

Naturally, Mark Dayton and the DFL, driven by pure cynicism as they are, have taken the bait.  “The GOP will let the Vikings leave!”, they whine.  “They’re part of our cultural legacy!”

And it’s true.

They’re part of that rancid little corner of our “cultural legacy” that says “Give me something for nothing!  Take other peoples’ earnings to pay for my recreation!  My and my family’s obsession with a billionaire’s enterprise justifies taking money from you and your family, by force.  Skål Vikings, suckers!”

So yeah.  I’m anti-NFL. Zygi Wilf and Roger Goodell can, and should, pay for the stadium by themselves; he can dig it out of  his pocket, float a private bond paid for out of proceeds from Vikings enterprise revenue and tapping the vast amounts of private equity that’s been sitting on the sidelines for years.  Or offering stock in a Vikings Stadium enterprise, complete with shopping, parking rental and hospitality, that would be a license to print money.  Or from charging drifters for illicit services at bus stops, for all I care.

But if you care about what’s right, and moral, and ethical?  Everyone should be “Anti-NFL’.

The NFL’s racket has to stop.  Someone has to stand on principle.  If not us, now, then who and when?

I’m used to seeing left-leaning writers like David Brauer tossing kudos on Twitter to DFL legislators.

But when I saw him punching up this op-ed here by GOP representative Dean Urdahl, responding to the Strib’s Jim Souhan and his pro-stadium, fact-challenged hatchet job earlier in the week?

That was news.

Urdahl:

Jim Souhan’s attention-grabbing April 18 column (“No point in dumbing down stadium issue”) has generated much discussion — even more since readers have learned elsewhere that I voted “yes” in a House committee to advance a Vikings stadium bill.

Citizens also have been interested to learn that, while quoting me, Souhan omitted key sentences that would have made my legislative intent clear.

Why would this happen?

Because it’s very much in the Star/Tribune’s interest to get a public subsidy for the Vikings.  Because the Vikes are a huuuuuge moneymaker for the Strib and its owners, who have a large and ill-advised investment to protect.

It appears that Souhan neither attended the meeting about which he wrote, nor listened to the audio from it, nor reviewed the transcript before penning his column. He also did not contact me before taking great leaps in asserting what my thought process was.

The sad truth is that Souhan ended up with a column based on a false premise and filled with ignorance and distortion.

Urdahl proceeds to shred Souhan.  Read the whole thing.

Joe Doakes of Como Park writes:

If the State doesn’t spring for a billion-dollar stadium, the Vikings will move the team to Los Angeles.

The little old lady next door told me if the City doesn’t pony up for a new senior recreation center with better tables and chairs, the Como Park Canasta Club will pull up stakes and relocate to Highland.  Don’t think they won’t!  And THEN we’ll be sorry.

This is getting out of hand.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

I’m told a snowmobile club was about ready to ask the Legislature to mandate 12 inches of snow north of I94 by December 15, or they’d all load their trailers and drive north, too…

On twitter, some of the people who want the Minnesota taxpayer to pay for them to have stadium are using the hashtag #fanrevolt, in terms of “revolting” against the Legislature if they don’t cough up the tax money to pay for their recreation.

Not against the Vikings, who can afford to build their own stadium.

Not against the NFL, which organizes the blackmail of every city and state where they want – not “need”, mind you, but want – a new stadium.

No.  The Legislature.  Whose majority was elected on a “spend less” platform.  It’s not like you couldn’t have seen this coming.

I wonder who’s paying for that effort?

At this blog (and much moreso at Gary Gross’ Let Freedom Ring and Mr. D’s eponymous Neighborhood), we’ve been trying to unpack the fabrications behind the Dayton / Bakk stadium proposal – including the fantasy that electronic pull tabs are going to cover the state’s contribution.

One thing I haven’t done is look into what the team supposedly contributes in terms of taxes.

Paul Udstrand at Thoughtful Bastards has, though:

According to [MinnPost’s Joe Kimball] a group going by the name: “Home Team Advanage” has issued a “report” claiming that MN stands to loose $533 million dollars if the Vikings leave the state. HTA claims that the Vikings have generated $320 million in sales tax revenue, and $360 in income tax revenue from Vikings players since 1982.

There’s really no way to avoid the conclusion that these numbers are flat out distortions and fabrications. The $320 million figure comes from a 2009 RSM McGradrey report that was commissioned the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission. I’ve excerpted the relevant table and provided it below:

Udstrand includes a bit of spreadsheetery:

Spreadsheet courtesy the thoughtful bastards at "Thoughtful Bastards", where it's probably much easier to read.

As you can see, the tax contributions since the Metrodome opened are listed in columns starting with the Twins. If you look at the totals you see that the Vikings total has been $166,514,612. So where does HTA get the $320? Notice the total for ALL sports in the very last column is $319,306,727. HTA rounded it (wrongly) up to $320. In other words they almost doubled amount the Vikings have paid by included ALL taxes generated by ALL pro sports activity. The actual vikings contribution once you subtract personal income tax is $52 million. I find it hard to believe a bunch of business boys can’t read a basic spreadsheet so one has to suspect this is NOT an innocent mistake. At best it’s beyond sloppy research.

HTA also claims that the Vikings pay $20 million a year in state income taxes. The actual figure for 2010 was $12 million.

There’s much more.  I’ll urge you to read the whole thing.

And then remember that every single portion of the Dayton / Bakk stadium plan fails to add up – the City of Minneapolis’ contribution, the expected doubling in gambling revenue, or the projected benefits.

Nothing!

One upside of having a news site like the MInnPost:  while they are fashionably center-left, they are not completely in bed with the Sports-Industrial Complex.   Since they don’t “sell” any more “copies” on Vikings game days, they can actually report, y’know, facts.

Like this bit by Marlys Harris on the top five things they’re not telling you about the stadium.

Although it may be telling that they ignore the two parts that are directly traceable to the DFL – RT Rybak’s unfulfillable promise re the Minneapolis sales tax, and the complete fantasy behind Tom Bakk’s gambling revenue proposal.

Still, the more reporting people do on this mass-fleecing, the better.

What’s one way to guarantee fighting will remain a staple of professional hockey?

Have Ralph Nader argue against it.

Reading his open letter to Gary Bettman, you can tell Nader hasn’t watched too much hockey in, say, the last several decades. After conceding there is no evidence directly connecting fighting to brain injuries…he says, “[r]epeated head trauma has shortened the careers of Pat LaFontaine, Eric Lindros, and Keith Primeau.  Currently, concussions are threatening the careers of Pittsburgh Penguins’ superstar Sidney Crosby and the Philadelphia Flyers’ Chris Pronger.”

 

First thing’s first: How many of those guys got concussions from fighting? Primeau maybe?

The off-ice deaths of Derek Boogard, Rick Rypien, and Wade Belak (all of whom Nader cites in his impassioned plea for new rules attention) have certainly re-focused discussion on how the NHL is addressing the issue of concussions and brain injuries.  Every sport is rightly doing so.  But changing any of the rules of hockey likely won’t significantly reduce concussions when the players on the rink are getting bigger, stronger and faster.  Witness the NFL where despite a litany of new rules designed to protect players most at risk for such injuries (QBs, WRs & DBs), concussions were only increasing (167 in total in 2010; the 2011 numbers haven’t been finished but were up to 146 by only week 12).  And this in a sport where fighting might earn you a five week suspension, not a five minute one.

If rules need to be adjusted to reduce concussions, it ought to be on the amateur levels where the differences in size and talent are more extreme than on the professional.  A 2010 Canadian study of junior hockey showed a higher rate of concussions per game than anything the professionals have to worry about.  And those concussions had nothing to do with fighting since fighting is already banned in such leagues.

If the NHL wants to take steps to finally ban actual fist-a-cuffs in games, fine by me.  But let’s not pretend that doing so accomplishes anything related to reducing brain injuries.

Don’t forget – if you live in Ramsey County, they’re collecting petition signatures against a stadium tax at Donatelli’s in White Bear today from until 6PM.

Let’s kill this idea but good.

My only comment re: the whole “Patriots Vs. Giants” bit?

(BRIEF SOTTO VOCE ASIDE: Yaaaawwwwwwn)

Three weeks until pitchers and catchers report for spring training.

Tim Tebow gettingi knocked out of the playoffs is not “proof God doesn’t exist”.

It doesn’t matter how loudly you repeat it, or how much spittle flies out your mouth when you do.

In addition, it is wrong to say “Religion is losing” the game, as Christianity has no actual theological stance on the outcome of a football game, and you’d have to be a demented narcissistic douchebladder to suggest it (and, indeed, you are).

That is all.

Tim Tebow beats the Steelers,credits God, moves on:

“When I saw him scoring, first of all, I just thought, `Thank you, Lord,”‘ Tebow said. “Then, I was running pretty fast, chasing him — Like I can catch up to D.T! Then I just jumped into the stands, first time I’ve done that. That was fun. Then, got on a knee and thanked the Lord again and tried to celebrate with my teammates and the fans.”

Behind Tebow’s 316 yards passing, the Broncos (9-8) are heading to New England for a second-round game against the top-seeded Patriots on Saturday night.

And let the caterwauling begin.

In rough order (i.e., either can move up or down 2-3 positions in the list depending on my mood):

“So you’re willing to see the Vikings leave?”:  I’m a baseball fan – and to the extent I care about the NFL, I follow the Bears.  So I really don’t care.

Seriously?  No more or less so than I am to see Medtronic or Bill’s Gun Shop or the corner deli or 3M leave.  They’re businesses.  In a perfect world, they’d all stay here because taxes and regulations and just plain living and doing business in Minnesota were attractive enough.  And let’s be honest, we do subsidize businesses, to an extent; tax-increment financing is the main tool Minnesota cities use to draw and keep businesses, which is a sort of subsidy.  And we constantly trade public infrastructure spending – road, water and sewer improvements – for business commitments.  And in some cases, we do it because business owners say “cut us a break or we’ll move to Texas”.  And sometimes we cave, and sometimes we just let ’em go – usually depending on the business’ or its’ executives’ political clout.  I oppose it then, and I oppose it now.

“For Only $122 Per Minnesotan, It’ll Create Jobs!”: Oh, don’t be a doof.  That $122 will create jobs anyplace you spend it.  Whether I spend it at the corner grocery store, or at Guitar Center, or at Bill’s Gun Shop, or on Amazon, or at Keegans Irish Pub, it creates jobs.  In fact, if I recall correctly, a dollar spent on stadia creates fewer jobs than a dollar spent elsewhere, on average (and King Banaian will let me know if I’m wrong on that, I’m sure).

“Wow – “No Public Money For Billionaires?”  Some Republican you are!”: It’s a fair cop.  I’m a libertarian/conservative first, and a Republican second.  Corporate welfare does the economy no more good than subsidizing eternal poverty does.

“The Vikings are a part of our cultural heritage!”:  So is the Minneapolis music scene.  Tell you what – I’ll drop $122 on your stadium (on penalty of going to jail if I don’t) if you throw $122 and buy me the Replacements boxed set (on penalty of going to jail if you don’t).  Or, I don’t care, any other part of our “cultural heritage” – mallard carvings or Guthrie tickets or polka lessons or lefse ingredients or New Ulm beer or Edmund Fitzgerald books or Saint Paul Saints swag or any other part of our “cultural heritage”.

Sound fair?

“No – the Vikings are an integral part of our cultural heritage!”: Oh, they’re integral?  Then problem solved.  If they’re an “integral” part of Minnesota, they can’t leave; they – and/or presumably the state itself – would cease to exist.

“Wow, Mr. Conservative Talk Show Host – “No Money For A Stadium” is the same position John Marty takes!””  Wrong.  John Marty takes the same stance that I take.  Since he favors all manner of other government subsidies – arts, MPR, eternal poverty – I’m the one being consistent.

“It’s an investment in the community!”: Well, you’re half right.  It’s an investment – in Zygi Wilf.  Wilf is a real estate mogul; he makes his money by having his investment appreciate.  The Vikings, even with their current awful season, have appreciated considerably since he bought the team.  A new stadium – especially attached to immense parking concessions and a vast swathe of retail and entertainment space, as in the Arden Hills site – will tack a huge premium onto that investment.  Now – what’s the only thing better than a huge premium?  A huge premium that someone else pays for so you can reap a huge windfall and not have to pay – or at least not have to pay full price – for.  Zygi’s a big boy.  He can pay for his own immense freaking windfall.

Any more?

Let’s be clear on this; I oppose government funding for stadiums.  All of it.  Any government.  Ever.  End of sentence.

Zigi Wilf could afford to build his own stadium.  But the status quo in the sports industry today is to treat stadia as a public good – which is a loathsome perversion of the idea of “public good”.

The big “Zero” in this debate so far has been Governor Dayton. The Governor’s entire approach to this issue could be summarized as “Hey, you guys – get something done! I don’t want the NFL goons tramping through my office again”; it’s what peple call “leading from the rear”.

And if there’s a hero? It’s the Senate GOP Caucus. It was the Senate Republicans – especially Senator Robling – who’ve managed to cut the crap and get “both” sides – the NFL, the state, and the various local and county governments who,alternately, crave the crowds and commerce but who’ve gone all Ron Paul about paying the tab, and of course RT Rybak, who wants to commit his city full of compliant DFL sheeple and ripe business sucks to a big share of the tab…

…which is dumb, but hey, I didn’t vote for him. Anyway – for cutting to the chase, and getting Zygi Wilf out of all of our pockets and fixing him up with a politician who actually believes he has the political oomph to stick his city with a $1000/head bill.

Am I cynical to say “it’s your problem, now, Minneapolis”?  (No, I’m not being a hypocrite; I have been to exactly zero Vikings games at the Dome since 1987 – and even then, I was working).

On a bit of a tangent – this is a great example of an issue where principle and politics are completely at war.  It is a fact that if you’re a conservative, spending public money on stadiums is anathema.  It’s also a fact that this is a state full of voters who want their damn football team, and they don’t really care (or think that hard about) who pays for it.  Emphasis on “voters”.

It’s not the ideal solution – especially if you’re in Minneapolis – but the fact that we have a (potential) solution is entirely due to the Senate GOP caucus.

The question isn’t so much “will the Packers go undefeated this season”.

The question is “who did Organized Crime decide will beat the Packers in the Super Bowl, by just inside the spread?”

The Strib’s Mike Kaszuba on why the Vikes threats to move are likely as not just a cheap bluff, not unlike your teenager threatening to run away.

It’s about the numbers:

If the National Football League were to let the Minnesota Vikings leave the state over the team’s inability to get public financing for a new stadium, it would be tampering with what has been a golden goose.

Television ratings for the Vikings in recent years have been among the best in the league, according to the NFL and Scarborough Sports Marketing, a New York-based subsidiary of the Nielsen Company and Arbitron Inc., the media and advertising ratings giants.

And it goes beyond market share:

The percentage of Minnesotans who watched a game on television, attended a game or listened to one in a given year consistently tops 60 percent, said Bill Nielsen, vice president for sales at Scarborough Sports Marketing. “Over [the past] 11 years of data, the lowest [rating] was three-fifths of the market,” he said.

More importantly, Nielsen said, polling shows that Vikings fans fit the demographics most sought by television advertisers. “Vikings fans make more money per household than the total [Minnesota] market, their homes are worth more, they’re more likely to be employed full time, more likely to be college educated,” he said.

Read the whole thing; TV ratings don’t make the Vikings move-proof, by any means.  But the Vikings are trying to shake up the voters with the threats (see teenager reference, above).

To: Governor Dayton
From: Mitch Berg, Bears fan
Re: Just a suggestion

Governor,

Just a quick point of order; badgering…

“It’s time for leaders of the Legislature to show some leadership to get this project approved,” Dayton said at a Capitol news conference.

…is not “leadership”.

The Democratic governor said he was prepared to unveil his stadium plan Monday but postponed his proposal last week after Republican leaders told him they opposed a special legislative session to consider a stadium bill.

Sort of like all your budget plans?

I digress:

Two rank-and-file Republican lawmakers have been drafting stadium legislation, but House Speaker Kurt Zellers and Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch have not proposed any ideas for funding a stadium and don’t want a special session to address the stadium issue until someone else offers a plan for them to consider.

Dayton asked of the leaders, “What are you for? What are you willing to support?”

Not sure what you think they’re supposed to do, Governor.  Drop everything to become the de-facto PR agent for a billionaire (or really a convention of billionaires) that’s trying to shake the citizens of this state down for another billion we don’t have and don’t want to spend?

Like you are?

Just saying.

That is all.

There is no issue facing this state for which Representative Phyllis Kahn (DFL, Berkeley-via-Minneapolis) can’t come up with a tortuous government intervention.

The Vikings stadium? Natch; she wants to the state to sell shares, Packers-style, to give the state and “the people” a 70% share in the team:

The community ownership idea has been floated before but Rep. Phyllis Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis, said Monday she would introduce legislation to require Gov. Mark Dayton and the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission to work with the National Football League to make it happen. The commission owns the downtown Minneapolis Metrodome, the team’s home for nearly 30 years.

“Dayton asked for all ideas to be put on the table and that’s exactly what I’m doing here,” said Kahn. “No single idea [for funding a new stadium] has gained enough traction to pass the Legislature.”

But remember – this isn’t a 1920’s-era Wisconsin businessman proposing the idea.  It’s Phyllis Kahn, a woman for whom I’d make a joking comparison to some off-the-charts lefty whackdoodle, except that I can’t really think of anyone in Minnesota that’s farther out than her, so it just doesn’t work.

And, given that, we have to ask “what would a publicly-owned Minnesota Vikings look like under a plan involving Phyllis Kahn?

10. The Vikings would be at the Legislature begging for Local Government Aid every odd-numbered year.

9. The team would be required to participate in affirmative action to ensure they signed enough minorities.

8. The team name would need to be changed to something more reflective of Minnesota’s changing ethnography.  Something less violent.  In tune with the changing times.  Perhaps “The Minnesota Womyn”.

7. The team’s training camp would need to provide vegan options in the cafeteria.

6. The actual footballs would have to be made with no animal products.

5. NFL Players Association: Out.  SEIU: In.  (Bonus:  No need to change uniform colors).

4. The team would have to open roster spots for women, the handicapped, transgendered and non-athletic.

3. Rather than referees, each game would be decided by the crowd reaching a 90% consensus on all alleged rules violations, followed by a restorative justice process.

2. The team would be required to travel to the games via mass transit or bicycle

1. Blocking and tackling would need to be done verbally (including well-defined “safe words”) rather than via violence.

Others?

To: The Entire Twin Cities Media
From: MItch Berg, Schlub Taxpayer
Re:  Think, For Crying Out Loud

Jackals,

Watching your “coverage” of the Vikings stadium issue, I have to wonder if you haven’t taken a leave of absence from your DFL gigs and taken on some sabbatical work for the Vikings and the NFL.

Look – we all know your management all want a new stadium; it means more money for your organizations.  We get that.

But get real; The NFL wants and needs a franchise here; it’s one of the best football markets per capita in revenue and ratings. Jacksonville, to pick one, is a bad, former expansion team in a market that only cares about college ball; it only makes good business sense for the Jags to move – if you care about good business.  And the NFL does; it’s just that as the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce will tell you, “getting free stuff from goverment” is good business – at least, in the short term.

The NFL is bluffing us. They, and Wilf, are like a bunch of spoiled teenagers manipulating their parents.

They’re not going to move.  But they will try to make the taxpayer think they will – and like any spoiled teenager they will manipulate you, the media, with your need to keep your own bills paid (and I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re not actively shilling on the NFL’s behalf – which is a bit of a stretch, WCCO and Star/Tribune, if you catch my drift).

That is all.