Quintuple Whammy

A year or so after he finally departed the Minnesota Vikings, the City Pages has finally pulled its collective head out of Chris Kluwe’s ass long enough to do some reporting about the taxpayer-funded improvments to Zygi Wilf’s real estate portfolio the Vikings and their stadium.

And while Corey Zurowski’s piece is not quite on par with the reporting the Pages did during Steve Perry’s heyday, it’s not bad.

Oh, yeah – as anyone who was reading conservative blogs before 2010 knows, the stadium is a lousy deal for taxpayers:

Minnesota and Minneapolis taxpayers are on the construction cuff for a combined $498 million — the state $393 million and the city $150 million. [But don’t 393 and 150 add up to 543? – EdIn both cases, the public funds are being floated by taking on debt, not cash.

[pullquote]At four percent and change, that means $26 million in interest alone in the first year.[/pullquote] Plus maintenance and the inevitable “improvements” that’ll be needed.  Read the whole article for the whole story about the principal, interest and taxes.

And King Banaian reminds us that on top of all that (and the minimal economic benefit it’ll bring, and even that mostly in the form of money that would’ve been spent elsewhere being spent downtown), the e-pulltabs that were set up to float the state’s share in this bit of larceny are taking money away from other Minnesota non-profits, including many that aren’t run by billionaires from out of state:

The number of bingo halls using paper, not electronics, is down to six in Minnesota after the closing of St. Cloud’s Bingo Emporium….State Senator John Pederson of St. Cloud says the tax on pull tabs was raised to 36-percent last year to help fund the Vikings stadium, which put paper-bingo halls in a “very, very difficult situation.”

Oh, well.  You’ve gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet, right?

8 thoughts on “Quintuple Whammy

  1. I like football. Its not that. But how the heck did the NFL get so powerful that they can make cities across the country subsidize the millionaire players and billionaire owners with billion dollar palaces?
    And since the NFL has become such a leftwing organization (see treatment of Arizona and Indiana), maybe we should have a condition attached. The highest paid employee can earn no more than…say 200 times what the lowest paid employee makes. So the star player’s pay is limited to 200 times what the gal selling popcorn makes.

  2. It is a completely open conspiracy between big downtown money and the NFL vs taxpayers. It is the moral equivalent of theft.

  3. Don’t be so sure that the City Pages has extricated their collective head from Kluwe’s posterior. Remember, Chris was last seen locally suing the Vikings. Another possibility is that the TSA neglected to return said head after a preflight search.

  4. Someday after the new football stadium has been open for awhile and everyone is thrilled/told to be thrilled with its design and performance, Governor Dayton will be looked upon as a visionary………………..(sorry, I spit up a little in my throat) who led Minnesota to even greater amounts of above average children, strong women and good looking men. Meanwhile, I’ll remember him mainly for this:
    “Myron Frans got a $35,347 raise after telling the Legislature electronic pull tabs would bring in $35 million of tax revenue per year for the Vikings’ stadium.”
    via http://looktruenorth.com/9-blogs/2454-the-dfl-s-immoral-pay-increases.html

  5. Lessee….annualized cost of the state’s contribution to the stadium, not to mention other gimmes to the ViQueens, is $50 million (assuming 5% bond yield and 20 year depreciation of the new Crystal Cathedral), or about $5 million/game, or, assuming full houses of 73000 each game (dream on), a subsidy of $68/ticket. All for a team that I root against 16 games per year.

  6. It hasn’t dawned on the citizens of Hennepin County, nor Minneapolis, that they’re being “played.” They keep thinking the Star/Trib is dealing straight with them.

  7. I love my Vikings, no questions about it.

    But as the post commander of a rural VFW, I see the hit in additional taxes to our charitable gambling’s bottom line. Charitable gambling, mind you, that sends every dollar of money raised right back into the community it was raised in. Every dollar that the state takes in taxes is a dollar that doesn’t go to veterans, patriotic programs and youth programs.

    I still love my Vikings, but I’ll never spend a dollar for a ticket to a Vikings game in that stadium.

  8. I heard Corey Zurowski on the morning show on the other talk station last week. They had on that lady who was in the American flag dispute with her condo. Corey came right out and said “I support flying the American flag. Absolutely. No restrictions. C’mon. It’s the AMERICAN FLAG.” or words to that effect. The only thing I could think of was “how badly did he shnooker the City Pages’s HR Department to get hired with that kind of thought running around in his head?”

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