To: House and Senate Republican caucuses
From: Mitch Berg, UppityPeasant
Re: Major League Soccer
Now comes word that Minneapolis’ new “Major League Soccer” team has begun sniffing around the legislature, looking for public funding for a new stadium.
Bill Maguire – former CEO of United health group, a company that has made billions and billions of dollars from the socialization of American healthcare – is buttonholing Tom Bakk and Gov. Smith Dayton to try and figure out the best way to begin extorting taxpayer money for, you guessed it, another sports stadium.
Let me speak with precise frankness.
If any Republican votes, for any reason, for public funding for any more stadiums, ever, I will devote whatever energy I have to their political obliteration. I will give their endorsement challengers all the air time and blog space I ethically can. I will work the challengers’ phone banks, drop their literature and pound their signs. I will help the challenger identify caucus goers, and drive them to caucus night. If that doesn’t work, I will do whatever I can to bring voters to the polls to support the challenger. I will join with whatever insurgency stakes itself to removing any and all pro stadium voters from office, and from politics.
Bill Maguire is worth well over $1 billion. He and his supporters could build a soccer stadium with the change under their car seats. Not that they need to – the Twin Cities is home to the country’s biggest soccer complex, up in Blaine. There is absolutely no need – none, Nada, zilch, zip, bupkes – to build a stadium at all, much less with taxpayer money.
This is not a threat. This is a promise.
If you people can’t draw a line in the sand over this, I’m afraid there’s absolutely nothing that you will.
That is all.
Not that there is any justification for public funding for billionaire subsidies…but especially considering Minnesota seems to have this tendency to go through pro soccer teams like disposable diapers…
What is especially galling is that they went through all the “drama” of whether or not they’d be awarded a franchise … all with the assumption that they’d get a public-funded stadium. Seems to me that that would be a pretty significant hurdle to clear, either for a league to approve or for a businessman looking at his investment. This implies either the fix is in, or Maguire is an idiot. Or perhaps since he got rich by the government redirecting other people’s money to him he simply thinks this is how it is done. And who could argue with that?
To be fair their stadium in Blaine makestrel midway stadium look like a palace. Complex does not equal stadium mitch. But yes it will be privately funded. Now as a season ticket holder to MN United I will recuse myself from any further discussion as I am too biased.
Having grown up near Chicago, I can see a municipal stadium to serve the needs of the city, but customizing it to fatten the wallets of the Wilfs, Pohlads, and Maguires is where I draw the line. They can build their own luxury boxes.
The Prince of Darkness is a MN United season-ticket holder? Proof that there is a Hell.
Yup, it actually used to be a little pro club in Mayen, Germany, but they went winless and had to “absteigen” all the way to the U.S. :^)
We could finance it by a surcharge on homosexual bars and bathhouses and sales of anything colored lavender. Cuz let’s face it — soccer is gay.
Hey, I’m just trying to start a dialogue here, to raise awareness.
MN is an existing team with an existing stadium. I see no reason why they can’t continue to use their current digs until it’s currently sold out and they need a larger venue to accommodate the demand. At that point, I’d assume they could secure any private loans required. As a bonus, they wouldn’t have to deal with Kelm-Helgen and Mondale.
If they immediately wanted a larger facility, there’d be a perfectly good option, if we only hadn’t written into law a monopoly for Ziggy at The People’s Stadium.
NW I got to keep my eyes on the hipsters somehow.
I’ll hold yer coat, Mitch, and when you get ’em on the ground, I’ll put the boots to ’em.
I drive by a stadium for which I had no vote and wait for choo-choo trains I have never ridden but must pay for – every day.
When archeologists dig up Minneapolis in 1000 years the question they will undoubtedly ask is ‘what were they thinking?’
Relax. The team has already said it’s privately financing the stadium. So, good for them. They’ve asked for a sales tax break on materials which is SOP for large building projects, which this is. Unless conservatives suddenly have a problem with tax incentives for business growth?
I think conservatives might have more of a problem with sales tax rates that make people considering large projects think “I wonder if we can get a tax break on that?”. *shrug*
I’m all for business growth. If cutting taxes is the way to make it happen, let’s do it. For everybody. Not only the politically connected. And not only for pet projects.
Joe nails exactly why I object to targeted tax exemptions–OK, so in effect we’re going to tax the local businesses, some of which have been there for decades, to bring someone new into town, possibly competing with the existing tax base? Does no one see a problem with that?