You Were Warned

A source at the Capitol – who was heavily involved in the battle against public funding for the Vikings stadium – emailed me with his first “I Told You So” moment of the new political epoch:

I believe I said, all along the campaign for endorsement…the primary…and the general election:

“The numbers that are being projected, from gambling revenue, to pay the Vikings stadium bonds are wildly optimistic and won’t come true.”

I was right. And there are 32 references in the legislation to the General Fund. So guess who’s left holding the bag? That’s right…the taxpayer.

We were ALL sold down the river by the likes of Steve Smith, Connie Doepke, and Gen Olson…in SD33…one of THE most conservative districts in the State.

And I got their legacy…RIGHT HERE!

Both sides – well, two out of three sides at the Capitol, anyway, the “establishment” GOP and the DFL – lied to the people about how the state-funded improvements to Zygi Wilf’s real estate investment would be financed.

We – the conservative Republicans – warned you; we were right.

21 thoughts on “You Were Warned

  1. If we didn’t have football or baseball to subsidize, we might actually have to encourage people to get LIVES of their own. Then where are we?

  2. I saw the medicated one on the news this morning, he says he’s believes that the course will turn around very soon. I guess psychotropics make one inclined to optimism.

  3. NOTE TO “DOG GONE”

    It’s been drawn to my attention that you, on your blog, have railed against people who come to “Penigma”, make claims you disagree with, and refuse to answer to the supposed correction you’ve given them.

    Frustrating, isn’t it?

    So I’ll tell you what – I asked you to elaborate on an inflammatory but unsupportable statement you made during the last session.

    Please see to my request – which is fully in line with the way you yourself run your own blog – immediately.

    Thanks.

    ——–

    Gosh, that was something brokered and passed by the MNGOP majority.

    There are no ‘conservative Republicans’. There are only conservative Republicans and extremist conservative (or even further right) Republicans. You Republicans have purged everyone else that was remotely moderate; liberal Republicans are as non-existent as the tooth fairy and magical elves at the North Pole.

    There is a rational basis for retaining sports teams (I’m not much of a sports fan so I have no personal passion for this decision either way). The bottom line tends to show that retaining major league sports teams are a good investment, even with substantial subsidies from state and local government.

    Once again, you’ve managed a poorly informed, highly partisan and superficial commentary.

    You might try reading up on the economic analyses that support the decision as solid economic policy and real math, not Republican math that substitutes ideology for numerical values.

    specific to football teams
    http://www.phil.frb.org/research-and-data/publications/business-review/2004/q2/brq204jc.pdf

    and this one addresses a variety of kinds of sports teams, and – if you read far enough – the benefits for revitalization and urban development as distinct from general stimulus of growth. It is a broader historic analysis of the economics of sorts teams and the locations which host them, than the one above, which focuses on 90s and later; this one goes back to the mid-20th century.

    http://www.uwlax.edu/faculty/anderson/micro-principles/stadiums.pdf

    One of the things which I have noticed in the casual reading I’ve done on this topic is that sports teams tend to attract more affluent consumers for sporting events, and this appears to be a factor in the thinking of state and municipal efforts to get or keep sports teams, the expectation that these affluent consumers will spend their money both at the sporting events and at businesses in the vicinity of them.

    While I can think of a lot more practical uses for the money, I do recognize that there is valid thinking for the value of this kind of public investment. I don’t know if the best possible deal was made, but I understand the reasons they tried to make it to justify the subsidy, and I’m not sure the word ‘lies’ is really accurate here.

    There has been a tremendous refinement in the ‘sports are an economic multiplier’ thinking, but the reality is that most professional sports have negotiated similar deals involving public money. Whether or not that results in the desired economic benefits has a lot to do with reasonable expectations, and how, and especially WHERE a stadium facility is placed and how the deal is structured. I don’t have the expertise to judge the savvy of the politicians side of the deal, and I doubt you do either. But given what I have read, this does seem to be a legitimate effort to benefit Minnesota, not deceive people.

    Dems, GOP combining in a conspiracy? To what advantage? Even you have to admit that is not very plausible.

  4. Little as I’ve come to care, I’ll go through the motions.

    Gosh, that was something brokered and passed by the MNGOP majority.

    DG – with all due respect, you are dense as a pile of bowling balls.

    I opposed both the Republicans AND the Democrats who voted for the stadium. I actively worked against Connie Doepke, in particular, in the conventions and primaries, after she voted for the stadium (among other things).

  5. You Republicans have purged everyone else that was remotely moderate;

    Reps. Abeler and Hamilton will be interested in hearing that.

    liberal Republicans are as non-existent as the tooth fairy and magical elves at the North Pole.

    You say that like it’s a bad thing.

    They’re not as rare as moderate Democrats inside the Metro area.

  6. “But given what I have read, this does seem to be a legitimate effort to benefit Minnesota, not deceive people.”

    You’ve been rolling in the bull sh*t again dog. The substantial benefit is to Wilf, and maybe Mpls, most of the rest of the state will get none. However if the funding “plan” doesn’t work out (it won’t) the whole state will be paying for it.

  7. There is a rational basis for retaining sports teams

    And, as King Banaian has shown us, many more rational reasons for not pumping public money into stadiums.

    And then there’s the whole “right and wrong” issue. Zygi Wilf blackmailed the state into pumping over a billion dollars into improving his investment for him (look for him to unload the team not long after the stadium is built).

    I’d read your articles, fully confident that your assessmment of the articles is as inaccruate as your treatment of the issue (and pretty much every issue). But it’s just not worth it anymore.

  8. The “economic multiplier” has been debunked time and again. Teh bottom line is that sports owners have a lot of money and they ply it liberally with lawmakers. It’s a concept even the doggedly can understand. Money talks, taxpayers walk.

    I love football. I hate extortion.

  9. The silver lining is that while you, yes you the poor taxpayers of Minnesota, have just been f*cked again, the GOP *did* give you a reach-around in that the stinking leftists of “Happy to Pay” land will be paying the most to feather Zygi’s nest.

    “Study: Downtown Mpls. restaurant taxes highest in nation”
    http://www.startribune.com/politics/statelocal/140774953.html

    And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to indulge myself a bit at their expense.

    BWAAAaahahahahahahahaaaaaaa…Pay Up Suckas!..hahahahahahahahaaaaa!

  10. Yea, swiftee. On their morning propaganda broadcast, WDFL was crowing about Minnesota being claimed a top tourist state. Makes one wonder what they were smoking when the award was made.

  11. If Mitch or one of the rest of you enterprising sorts want to do some real reporting, find out how many distributors of e-tabs have actually been licensed to sell in MN. Dave Thul’s piece on TN regarding Owatonna is repeated in many cities.
    First machines were less than 3 months ago. We might want to wait a little while before going Chicken Little, but much of this is a regulatory issue right now. Distributors can’t get licensed to sell machines, but ask charities not to get them from competitors. See http://m.startribune.com/news/?id=179223381

  12. Kare 11 reports only 75 venues have E-tabs available right now, while the state had projected 150 by now.

    King is correct that the hurdles have been higher than expected or actually getting the system in the door. But the lack of interest on the part of veterans groups to use E-tabs will mean a long lasting drop in the amount of revenue they bring in.

  13. I play my share of pulltabs and it dosent take a genious to figure out that the serious players will not play the E-tabs, so if they don’t get new people to play the revenue will not materialize

  14. I tried to engage in serious discussion with Dog Gone at Penigma but it was hopeless. For every factual point I made, she had a dozen illogical diversions. Couldn’t knock down the lies as fast as she put them up. Finally gave up.

    Even simple points escape her: I said her entire basis for asserting the theatre madman wore invincible body armor was one press conference so I wanted more confirmation; that morphed into me “cherry-picking” data and proves I’m a liar. There’s no way to engage in rational discussion with people like that.

  15. “There’s no way to engage in rational discussion with people like that.”

    Welcome, glad to have you aboard.

    As Mitch will attest, I’ve always been a strong proponent of letting stinking leftists post comments without conditions, however Mongrel Cur is an exception IMO. Not only does she lower the quality of discussions, she censors her own comment threads.

    dg;don’t post.

  16. Swiftee, there is some value in seeing just how far gone the left is. A person who writes that drivel day after day cannot be faking it, she must truly believe she isis in the right, that her vision of society not only will prevail, but should.

    And she is not alone. I view the dog as a barometer of leftist irrationality.

  17. Bonhoeffer had DG sussed out even before she was born. His statement is why I monitor DG’s comments – not to engage, but as an early-warning system. Emphasis mine:

    “Against folly we have no defence. Neither protests nor force can touch it; reasoning is no use; facts that contradict personal prejudices can simply be disbelieved — indeed, the fool can counter by criticizing them, and if they are undeniable, they can just be pushed aside as trivial exceptions. So the fool, as distinct from the scoundrel, is completely self-satisfied; in fact, he can easily become dangerous, as it does not take much to make him aggressive. A fool must therefore be treated much more cautiously than a scoundrel; we shall never again try to convince a fool by reason, for it is both useless and dangerous…

    “…The fact that the fool is often stubborn must not mislead us into thinking that he is independent. One feels in fact, when talking to him, that one is dealing, not with the man himself, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like, which have taken hold of him. He is under the spell, he is blinded, his very nature is being misused and exploited. Having thus become a passive instrument, the fool will be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that is is evil.

  18. Night Writer is correct, DG faithfully voices the “thoughts” of a sizable percent of the left that represents a real threat to our culture and our constitution. However reactionary and repugnant she bears watching.

  19. Joe, I’ve come to the point where the only value monitoring lefty papspew has is entertainment value. I can honestly say I haven’t run across a leftist idea worth debating, or a leftist worthy of debating it with for years.

    With some few exceptions, they are just not very smart people. And to make matters worse, many are sporting some fairly significant mental defects on top of the run of the mill ignorance.

    And lest you think that is hyperbole, consider the quality, or lack thereof, of the intellectual talent on display in our institutions of higher learning…then consider the fact that they represent the cream of the crop.

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