Chanting Points Memo: The Dumbest Chanting Point Of 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?

12 thoughts on “Chanting Points Memo: The Dumbest Chanting Point Of All

  1. I love football.

    I hate extortion.

    It’s not complicated – football fans ought to pay for their leisure pursuits. When I fish, the state doesn’t buy my bait under the guise of it being an ‘economic multiplier.’ Nor do I expect them to.

  2. I just wish the left would find a position and stick with it, even if the Republicans happen to agree with them: Are they for or against “Corporate Welfare”?

    Because guying stadiums for (3-13) millionaires to play in = Corporate Welfare.

  3. “Guying” is what unattached homosexual men do at their favorite watering holes on Friday night.

  4. I’m a little less worried about what some in the DFL might say about a Vikings stadium then I am at the sight of Republican legislators falling all over themselves to come up with a new bill rather than doing the right thing and saying “no.” If this thing passes, it won’t matter whether a majority of Republican legislators actually vote against it – it will be the fault of the Republican leadership for ever allowing it to come to a vote and it will the fault of the Republican legislators who voted them into the leadership position in the first place.

  5. I think it is possible for Republicans to support the “corporate welfare” for the Vikings if they take the money from existing revenues. I mean, if you can’t cut spending, at least get something most of us think is worthwhile.

  6. “When I fish, the state doesn’t buy my bait…”

    No, but they just raised the cost of your license. The GOP caved to the environazis on this one, too!

  7. Better obtain a flak jacket, because if they don’t get a stadium there will be blood in teh streets I tells ya, purple blood in teh streets!!! Wourz than the OK corral!!!

  8. “When I fish, the state doesn’t buy my bait…”

    But the state probably did provide you with a boat ramp and maybe even stocked the lake with game fish. There is public investment in entertainment and culture.

  9. Correct, Bandit.

    And where did that DNR money come from? Taxes on fishing licenses and hunting licenses. Sportsmen pay for their hobbies, either directly at the bait store or indirectly, through taxes that support DNR.

    I suppose now you’ll want to argue that everybody subsidizes fishermen because gas tax paid for the highway to get TO to the boat ramp. That would make you unable to discern crucial differences, which would put you squarely in the Liberal box, as defined by this anecdote:

    Two men stood on the sidewalk near a little old lady. One man pushed the little old lady into the path of an oncoming bus. The other man leapt into the street and pushed her to safety, sacrificing his own life. A Liberal, observing it all, decided the two men were identical – both pushing around a little old lady.

    There is a crucial difference between spending the tax I voluntarily paid when I bought my fishing license to build a boat ramp, and pledging a portion of my future income to a billionaire.

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