{"id":54146,"date":"2015-07-06T08:00:06","date_gmt":"2015-07-06T13:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=54146"},"modified":"2015-07-05T23:56:03","modified_gmt":"2015-07-06T04:56:03","slug":"quintuple-whammy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=54146","title":{"rendered":"Quintuple Whammy"},"content":{"rendered":"

A year or so after he finally\u00a0departed the Minnesota Vikings, the\u00a0City Pages\u00a0<\/em>has finally pulled its collective head out of Chris Kluwe’s\u00a0ass long enough to do some reporting about the taxpayer-funded improvments to Zygi Wilf’s real estate portfolio<\/del> the Vikings and their stadium.<\/p>\n

And while Corey Zurowski’s piece is\u00a0not quite on par with the reporting the Pages\u00a0<\/i>did during Steve Perry’s heyday, it’s not bad.<\/p>\n

Oh, yeah – as anyone who was reading conservative blogs before 2010 knows, the stadium is a lousy deal for taxpayers<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Minnesota and Minneapolis taxpayers are on the construction cuff for a combined $498 million \u2014 the state $393 million and the city $150 million. [But don’t 393 and 150 add up to 543? – Ed<\/span>]\u00a0<\/em>In both cases, the public funds are being floated by taking on debt, not cash.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[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. \u00a0Read the whole article for the whole story about the principal, interest and taxes.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, including many that aren’t run by billionaires from out of state:<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh, well. \u00a0You’ve gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A year or so after he finally\u00a0departed the Minnesota Vikings, the\u00a0City Pages\u00a0has finally pulled its collective head out of Chris Kluwe’s\u00a0ass 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\u00a0not quite on par with the reporting the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[308,2],"tags":[207],"class_list":["post-54146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entitled-america","category-minnesota-politics","tag-stadium"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54146"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54173,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54146\/revisions\/54173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}