Category: economics

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Michael Jordan’s Pittance

Wow. Michael Jordan is going to donate $5 million dollars to aid teachers. He wants the money to “focus on giving kids an opportunity to excel and to achieve their dreams”. The program is called “Jordan Fundamentals”. Teachers can receive up to $2,500 in grants.

Can you believe the class and generosity of this guy! What a personal sacrifice! He saw a need, and just reached into his pocket and wrote a check!

Ooo. Wait! It looks the money will come from the proceeds of the “Nike Sporting goods Jordan brand”. Huh? The richest Athlete in the world doesn’t have a check book?

In other words, this is a marketing ploy. We are going to see ads asking you to contribute to the Michael Jordan Nike Jordan Fundamentals Program to help children excel and achieve their dreams. Yeah. And one of their dreams might be to become so rich and greedy and self-centred that you can have your accountants and lawyers create phony charities to raise money on behalf of your good name without having to sacrifice a penny of your own real wealth. You can drive around in your limo with your bodyguards and jewelry and pretend that all those suckers who pay $150 a ticket to watch you play basketball are investing their money in virtue and goodness.

Jason Kamros, a math teacher in Washington D.C., says “Yipeee!” You see Kamros had been spending up to $1,000 of his own money to use photography to help teach math to this grade sixers. He’s going to apply for some of Jordan’s “largesse”.

That $1,000 probably represents about 1/20th of Kamros’ annual take-home salary. Jordan’s $5 million potentially represents about 1/20th of his annual income, except for the fact that Jordan isn’t actually going to contribute a penny of his personal income. He’s going to contribute his name, which cost him nothing, last I heard. YOU are going to contribute the $5 million dollars by buying Nike Shoes. And your purchase of Nike-Jordan Shoes helps keep children in Indonesia employed in sweat shops at 15 cents an hour. And how much you wanna bet that Nike isn’t getting a cut as well?

It is one thing to demand a monumental pile of money to play basketball and then pretend not to be greedy. It is one thing to pretend to be generous and self-sacrificing when you are not. But surely it crosses all boundaries of decency to take money from your fans, give it to a charity, and then call the media’s attention to your “generosity”.

If I were Jason Kamros, I’d tell Jordan where to stuff it.

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Soma

A man writes Ann Landers:
“I am a 60-year-old man who doesn’t have any interest in anything or anyone. I’m bored with everybody I meet. I am bored with my job and bored with my life.”

Ann solves his problem: “You aren’t bored; you are depressed. But you don’t have to stay that way the rest of your life. See a doctor; and ask for an anti-depressant that will help you.”

Was there ever a better illustration of the rampant hypocrisy of our society’s stand on drug abuse? We spend billions of dollars a year trying to stamp out the recreational use of drugs by teenagers and the inner-city poor, and then turn around and, through that paragon of bourgeois values, Ann Landers, advocate that we go running for a quick hit whenever we feel a little depressed with the world.

In the meantime, a woman in Illinois has just been released after serving 20 years in prison for merely being in the same car as a drug dealer. I am not making this up. The drug dealer– classy guy, I guess– freely and immediately admitted that the three pounds of heroin were his and his alone, and that the woman didn’t even know about it.

The courts said, “We don’t care.” Those new “get tough on crimes laws” made it possible for the prosecution to convict her anyway.

While she was in prison, she acquired some legal skills and now plans to work as a paralegal. Ann Landers, however, is still on the loose.

What, really, is the difference between the Lithium this man’s doctor will probably recommend, and the cocaine sold on the street corners? They are both addictive. They are both escape hatches from the pressures of life.

The difference is, the class of people who use them.

* * *

Judy Sgro, who dared to challenge some behaviours by the police during her tenure on the Toronto Police Services Board, has been pushed out of the position of vice-chairperson. Somehow this really reassures me that the police are out there to make sure our civil liberties are well-protected.

November 1999: Once again, even though the crime rate is going down, the police in Waterloo County, Ontario, are requesting more money and more officers. So while Mike Harris keeps telling the rest of us to tighten our belts and make sacrifices for the good of the economy, the police get to go on fattening their budgets and payrolls and throwing their weight around as never before.

When the crime rate went up, the police said they needed more officers because there were more criminals. Now that the crime rate is going down…. well, I guess it’s too much to expect. Just as it might be too much to expect that the police, when the crime rate goes up, might admit that they’re not doing a good job, instead of asking for more money.

Sometimes, I’m not totally opposed to the conservative agenda. It’s the rank hypocrisy that bothers me. If Mike Harris had declared that all of Ontario, teachers, the poor, the rich, industry– everyone– is going to have to tighten their belts, I could have seen some benefit to that. But inevitably, with the Republicans in the U.S. and the Conservatives in Canada, the real agenda is not to reduce taxes, but to shift the burden from the rich to the poor. When Harris talks about reducing taxes, he’s not talking about you and me. He’s talking about those people who inhabit the private boxes at the Skydome, and with whom he’d rather spend his off-hours anyway.

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Robbing the Poor

While Americans pour billions of dollars, through charities, into foreign aid, American banks rake back more than ten times as much, in interest payments on loans negotiated with illegitimate military dictatorships. Most of these loans were used to line the pockets of the generals and their cronies, or buy weapons from U.S. and European manufacturers. The weapons were used to put down rebellions by their own people. The people were rebelling against governments that squandered their money on weapons instead of schools, agricultural development, roads, and hospitals.

This is an unbelievable fact but it is absolutely true: the so-called “third world”, the poorest countries on the globe, pour billions of dollars into the economies of the rich West, while receiving barely a trickle back in foreign aid. Their schools, hospitals, and transportation systems are starving for funds. Their people are literally starving. Yet we shamelessly continue to demand that they pay us back every last penny of the money borrowed by scumbag generals who seized power illegally, ruled by force, and tortured and exploited their own people.

Any person with common sense can see that if a bank chooses to lend money to a dictator, they have no right to expect the oppressed victims of that dictator to repay the loans. First our banks raped these countries; now they demand that they make us dinner.

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The Working Poor

Thirty percent of Americans earn less than $8.00 an hour. That is roughly $320.00 a week, about $1333.00 a month or $16,000.00 a year.

This is where the welfare mothers go. Remember the welfare mothers? They all got kicked off welfare, didn’t they? One of Bill Clinton’s real little moral compromises.

So while Congress spends tens of millions of dollars and all their waking consumptive hours contemplating impeaching the twerp for consensual groping, the welfare mothers and working poor continue to lead their desperate little lives wondering if the Kraft dinner might be on sale tonight, or if the kindly clerk at the Quickie mart will zap the hot dog for them.

Where do these people live? To rent a decent apartment…. well, no– to rent a grubby little pathetical hole in the wall somewhere, you need about $500 a month minimum. You also need first and last month’s rent. So they live in broken down trailer parks or dingy hovels or their cars. Health care? Out of reach. Dental care? You must be joking. But they smoke and they drink and they have parties. And the weirdest thing of all: these people, who have nothing, share with each other. They help each other out.

I experienced this first-hand when I was in college. I ran about $500 short one semester. I went to a number of people to ask if they could lend me some money. Who lent me money? Fellow students. An underpaid professor. An unemployed friend. Who refused? A car dealer. A friend who had all his money tied up in mutual funds. Someone else had to put a new liner in her pool.

It is one of the saddest statements on the morality of our civilization that the poor give a higher percentage of their incomes to charity than the rich do.

The latest Houghton Mifflin 5th Grade History books devotes a grand total of 332 words to the Depression. It devotes 339 words to the career of Cal Ripken Jr..

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The Wilder and Crazier Lawyers

New Approach to Gun Control

Since the lawyers have finally taken care of the evil tobacco industry, let’s think about some good things lawyers might do for us.

I have an idea. The lawyers sued the tobacco industry because the tobacco industry markets a product which has been proven to cause serious medical problems for the consumers that use it, and which costs our society billions of dollars to provide medical treatment for these consumers.

That line of reasoning sounds simple and logical enough. But the tobacco industry is just a start. Why not sue the companies like Browning Arms (Utah, makers of the Browning shotgun), or Smith & Wesson that make guns? Here again we have a product which is bad for the consumer, but which the consumer stupidly buys anyway, deluded into thinking the product enhances his manhood or femininity, and which causes death and untold suffering, and which costs us taxpayers billions of dollars every year to provide medical treatment for the casualties.

This is really not much of a stretch, folks. The government routinely analyzes products or activities that are harmful to the public and, if it is proven that the harm they produce exceeds their usefulness or value, they enact legislation to prohibit or restrict it. The government does this for pornography, cigarettes, alcohol, toxic chemicals, radiation, drugs, and so on. The government even assumes that anyone who buys a recordable CD might be thinking about duplicating a copyrighted piece of music. It doesn’t wait to see if you are actually going to do it or not. It ASSUMES you are, and taxes you for it. Gives the money to the recording industry so they can pay their lawyers.

Now, the government looked the tobacco industry and came to a weird conclusion. It said, well, you do a lot of damage to people’s health. You lie to them and deceive them. You probably put additives in that increase the users level of physical addiction. Pay us and we’ll let you continue to do these bad things.

If Mosanto corporation, for example, produced a fertilizer that caused cancer in the people who eat the food grown with it, would we accept a payment from Mosanto in exchange for letting them continue to sell it? Only if we were complete idiots.

Guns are dangerous. Only an idiot would believe they do more good than harm. Think about it. Would we be safer in a world where everybody had a gun, or where nobody had a gun?

Since the government has already made a bargain with the NRA to allow the continued sale of almost any kind of gun you can imagine, we have no alternative but to hire lawyers and sue the gun industry.

Of course, if the end result is an agreement similar to the one reached with the tobacco companies (Clinton had a much better proposal but the tobacco lobby bought off enough Republican Congressmen to get it killed) what we will end up with is this: the gun lobby acquires immunity from further prosecution in exchange for about $250 billion dollars, almost all of which goes to the lawyers anyway. The $250 billion dollars are earned back by the gun lobby mainly by applying surcharges to sales of weapons to the military and police departments. Not only does the taxpayer get to fund the legal challenge, they also get to pay the penalty. And the icing on the cake: we have the same problem as before, except that it’s worst, because the gun manufacturers will have immunity from prosecution.

We could do the same for weapons manufacturers. Sue them for hundreds of billions of dollars for all the suffering and death they contribute to people around the world. Give all the money to the lawyers. We get to continue providing weapons to every 2-bit revolutionary or reactionary government in every sad, pathetic little starving country in the Third World, while, once again, the lawyers make a killing.

Don’t look at me. You elected the fools.

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Those Wild and Crazy Lawyers

Quick– who made more money this year? Microsoft Corporation or a couple of lawyers in Texas?

Right. The lawyers. Well, almost. You see this group of lawyers represented the State of Texas in negotiating a settlement (read “sell-out”) with the tobacco companies. In exchange for lots of bucks, paid to the lawyers— ooops! Paid to the Plaintiffs! That’s you and me! —the tobacco companies get to continue marketing death and disease to American children. What a wonderful country!

So how much did the lawyers bill the State of Texas for their noble services, defending the innocent consumer against evil, ruthless, greedy corporations?

How much you say? Well, these are lawyers, after all. So the amount might be a little excessive. What d’ya think? Take a guess? How much should a lawyer be paid for a couple of years of work, doing research, bribing employees to turn over internal documents, and ordering health studies already paid for by the tax-payer through government funding of Universities and Research Organizations? How much?

$10 million?
$20 million?
$50 million?

Oh, come on now. These are REALLY SMART TALENTED LAWYERS. After all, the average lawyer would have tried to get tobacco companies out of the business altogether. But that would have made the tobacco companies very unhappy. So these superior lawyers actually found a way to make everybody happy. The government gets money. The tobacco companies get to stay in business. The taxpayer gets to continue smoking away.

$100 million?
$200 million?
$500 million?

Come on– don’t be shy! These the same intelligent, compassionate, competent professionals you see every day in the movies and on television, except that you never see the scene where they present their bills and take almost all of the settlement money they weaseled out of the greedy, amoral, unfeeling corporation. How can a lawyer live off of a measly $500 million dollars nowadays? Be reasonable! There are SO MANY expenses. Postage. Clerical work. Filing. Thinking. Reading. Subscriptions. Donuts. Get SERIOUS!

$1 billion?

A mere BILLION? When Michael Jackson makes almost a tenth of that? When Bill Gates makes ten times that much! And how much more important is a Texas lawyer than the owner of the greediest corporation on the face of the earth? Give me a break.

$5 billion?
$10 billion?

Now you’re getting reasonable! But not too reasonable.

$25 billion?

Right on! Yes, these Texas Lawyers are asking for $25 billion dollars for negotiating— GET THIS– a $17 billion dollar settlement. In other words, for recovering $17 billion dollars from the tobacco companies for the lucky tax payers of Texas, they ….. well, they want to keep all the money. Yes ALL of the money. YES, ALL OF THE MONEY. But that’s not all folks! The taxpayers of Texas, in compensation for all the medical costs of taking care of all of the victims of smoking addictions, get to PAY these Texas Lawyers an additional $8 BILLION! You lucky Texans! Not only do you get to have tail-gate parties at Huntsville State Prison where they execute completely worthless, disgusting, evil, unredeemable human beings almost every night— you also get to pay a bunch of lawyers $8 billion dollars for……. well….. for…..

Well, fortunately, the lawyers and the tobacco companies got together and decided that it wouldn’t be fair to hit the citizens of Texas with such a large bill. They said, “What? Are you crazy?” Well… And they decided that those Texas Lawyers should ONLY receive $3.3 billion.

Whew! Here I was all upset over nothing! A mere $3.3 billion! How many lawyers were involved? The New York Times doesn’t say, but several other states had teams of three or four leading lawyers and their staffs. But– get this– some lawyers represented as many as 30 states. Do they get paid once? Are you an idiot? Does Michael Jordan get paid once even though he plays in 30 different stadiums?

Well, yes he does. But that’s Michael Jordan. He’s not a lawyer.

One of the lawyers for Florida, Steven Yerid, said the costs are justified. Why? Because that’s how much lawyers should make? Because their work is so terrible, so risky, so dangerous, that even a $14.95 an hour coal miner wouldn’t take it on? Because they are so smart that they scare Stephen Hawkings?

No. He said the fees were justified because “the costs come from the industry”. In other words, we’re justified in taking any money we can lay our grubby hands on because we are lawyers. We just ARE.

Furthermore, he says, the lawyers might have ended up with nothing if they had lost the case. So, because these lawyers might not have won the case, they are entitled to demand as much money as they please.

Remember, this line of reasoning is coming from a lawyer, someone you might need to depend on for your life if you’re ever charged with a serious crime in Texas.

Pity me. I thought this case was about public health and liability. Instead, it is clearly some new kind of industry, in which clever entrepreneur can sue somebody out of the blue on the off chance they might collect a few billions. Who do they sue next?

What does the public have to do with it? Go suck a camel.

The industry will pay it? Ha ha ha. The industry?!!! Where does this idiot think the “industry” gets its money? From the smokers! So, not only will very little of this money from the tobacco companies actually find it’s way into the medical facilities of Texas (aren’t most of their medical facilities used to gas convicts anyway?), but the smokers will pay more for cigarettes in order to pay the lawyers who negotiated a deal in which tobacco companies can now market their disease- causing product with impunity.

Now, who was this lawsuit supposed to benefit?  Who were the victims of the corporation’s malfeasance?  Who was harmed by the evil practices of these public entities who profited from their misery?  That’s right: the smokers.  The same people who are paying for the settlement!

There are some scandals that shock you. There are scandals that boggle the mind. There are scandals that baffle you, because the scale of the moral atrocity is so far beyond normal human experience that you can’t even begin to comprehend it. The Savings and Loan Scandal. The loans to 3rd World Dictatorships at usurious interest rates. Windows 95.

And then there is the king of all scandals, the mind-blowing, baffling, stunning, incomprehensible, MOTHER of all scandals. And this is it.

So while you’re sitting there eating your chips and watching the sanctimonious republicans try to impeach the president for consensual groping in the Oval Office— consider where your hard-earned tax dollars are really going.

And weep, wail, gnash your teeth, bash your head against the wall….. what else are you going to do?

Get yourself a lawyer?

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Home Taping is Now Legal!

I don’t have a CD player in my truck so in order to listen to my favourite CDs, I have to copy them onto cassette tapes. Is that legal? We don’t really know for sure, do we? Music publishers used to try to tell us that it was not legal, but I think they’ve given up. Everybody does it.

It’s not just that everybody does it, though. Music publishers, like software publishers, have been trying to convince us for years that when you buy their products, you are not buying the physical disk on which the product is shipped, and which you would then be free to copy. You are buying the right to use their intellectual property (if you could call the Spice Girls “intellectual property”). If you were only buying the disk, you could make as many copies as you want. But if not, then you certainly have the right to use their intellectual property in your car or wherever you want. Nobody says, “you can buy this new Spice Girls CD– but you can only listen to it when you’re in your house.”

Think of all the people you know with stereos and cassette decks. How many of them, that you know of, are serving hard time right now? “Wha’dya in for, son?” “Err… home taping.”

Well, as of January 1, 1999, the music publishers, apparently, are going to agree with reality. That’s right. And you heard it here first.

You see, as of January 1, 1999, you will pay an extra 50 cents for every blank cassette tape that you buy in Canada, depending on length. That 50 cents will go to the legal body representing the music publishers and will be distributed to them, and, supposedly, to their composers and artists, as compensation.

Compensation for what? For home taping, you dummy!

Wait a minute– if I’m paying them for home-taping, then… gasp! That’s right. They are entering into an agreement with you, an implied contract, an exchange of money for services. And the service is none other than the right to copy music onto that cassette. No more guilt feelings! No more self-imposed restraint! Buy all the tape decks you want. Make as many copies as you want— after all, it’s not illegal anymore! You’re paying for it! It’s as simple as that. If you aren’t going to copy your CD’s, then what are you paying for? Nothing? You’re handing over your hard-earned dollars to the music publishing industry… just because you want to???

I want to thank the government and the recording industry for finally displaying some common sense. And for finally making good music available at a price we can all afford. For only about $.50 a cassette, plus the cost of the tape, we can now make all the copies we want.

I’m not positive, but it looks to me like you might even be able to sell those copies. Why not? You paid for it. The government and the music publishing industry have agreed on a “fair price”. They have agreed that 50 cents represents what it costs them when you copy one of their CDs onto your own tape. Okay. Fair enough. And the more tapes you buy, the more you pay. Since you’re paying for every tape, you should be able to make as many copies as you want! And since you’ve already paid for the music, you should be able to sell your copies to other people. I know it sounds naughty, but don’t worry: you’re paying for it!

There is a similar “tax” on CD’s used to record music in the U.S. and Canada. I find it really interesting that the same country that passes laws that allow handguns to be purchased by almost anybody, had decided that it should apply a special tax to every recordable CD sold just in case some people decide to make an illegal copy of something.

The NRA has an annual budget of $80,000,000.00. That’s almost as much as Mike Piazza makes in seven years. Don’t you wish you had $80,000,000.00?

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Newt Gangrene and the Pacs

Newt Gangrene and PACS

This reminds me– during the height of the cold war, the evil Soviet Union, of course, had a TOTALITARIAN government. The United States, on the other hand, was a DEMOCRACY.

In a DEMOCRACY, the people are free to elect the leaders they choose. In a TOTALITARIAN country, the people have no choice: you have to elect whoever the party tells you to elect.

Of course, in a DEMOCRACY, special interests are free to give as much money to politicians as they want to in exchange for special favours, like laws extending copyright protection…. oops! Forget that. That wouldn’t be right! That would mean that we really don’t have a DEMOCRACY at all, that America is actually ruled by wealthy, special interests! Not true. They are free to give as much money to the politicians PAC as they want to. There. That’s better. Then the PAC gives the money to the politician.

Senator John McCain wanted to change that. He wanted new rules to enforce what the old rules were supposed to enforce: limitations on how much “soft” money a politician can receive.

John McCain doesn’t have many friends these days.

I watched Newt Gangrene speak to his PAC tonight, thanking them for helping preserve freedom and DEMOCRACY.

But, hey, this is a DEMOCRACY. So we go to the polls and exercise our choice. Those poor Russians! In our country, we regularly elect the people we choose.

Of course… it is a little strange… during all the years of the cold war, which country, do you think, most often re-elected the same guy who’s been in there for ten, twenty, thirty years already, who is fat and corrupt and tired and bloated and isolated from the the people he represents?

That’s right: the good old U.S. of A.

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Karacter and Politics

Karacter

What is character? The Republican’s keep trotting out the word “character” because they think it’s something they have and Clinton doesn’t. Someone with “character” doesn’t cheat on his wife. Oops. Bob Dole left his first wife to shack up with Elizabeth at the Watergate hotel. Where’s your first wife, Newt? The one that had cancer?

How about that fling of yours, Henry Hyde? Well, a “character” has principles. Oops. Gingrich has been charged with more than 60 violations of various ethics rules for House members. George Bush refused to intervene to prevent slaughter in Bosnia because he was afraid he would lose the next election.

Well, a “character” doesn’t give in to cheap temptations. Oops. The Republicans, eager for campaign money, keep granting all the wishes of corporate America so the money keeps pouring into those PACS. Oops, oops, oops.

Well, a “character” doesn’t sneak around recording conversations illegally, doesn’t cheat in order to get his way, doesn’t blow things out of proportion or sensationalize, and knows the value of discretion and honor. Kenneth Starr, anyone? Linda Tripp? A “character” doesn’t preach one thing and practice another. Henry Hyde, are you there?

It’s weird how this group of self-serving, conniving, dishonest hypocrites seems to have succeeded in hi-jacking the term “character”. Most people know pretty well what is meant by “character”. Honesty and integrity. Above all else, a willingness to put principles ahead of expediency. Clinton failed in regard to Monica Lewinsky, but he hasn’t done all that badly in almost every other area of government. Henry Hyde and his fellow leaders of the holy jihad, currently conducting show-trials in Congress, have demonstrated over and over again a willingness to sell their votes to whichever corporate lobbyist carries the fattest check.

This isn’t mere hypocrisy. You have to understand that while this show trial continues, Congress has been writing laws that take money away from middle-class and poor voters and hands it over to the rich as quickly as possible. Disney and Citibank are only two of the beneficiaries. Archer Daniels Midland. Microsoft. RCA. Boeing. Line up boys: the pork barrel’s full and nobody’s looking!

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Mike Piazza Pie: Sports Economics

Mike Piazza now makes $91 million for playing baseball, for seven years. How on earth can they do it? Only 30 years ago, the entire New York Yankees baseball club was valued at only $12,000,000.

Well, it’s a free country. If a baseball owner wants to pay an athlete $17 million a year to play a game, why shouldn’t he?

They can pay Mike Piazza $91 million because fans continue to flock to the stadiums and plop themselves in front of their television sets to watch Mike Piazza play baseball. From that money, the New York Mets pays its players. And like every other business, they pay all their other expenses, like administrative staff, office space, scouts, managers, and rent or mortgage for the stadium… and taxes.

Well, wait a minute.

Yes, yes, the Blue Jays pay $11 million dollars a year in taxes on the Skydome. But who built the Skydome? You did. With your tax money. We paid $321 million to build the Skydome and then we rented it to the Jays for considerably less than it costs to operate it.

That is why the Skydome Corporation is now bankrupt.

This year, Hartford, Conn. is donating $350 million to the New England Patriots. And Maryland is donating $220 million to the Baltimore Ravens NFL team, and kicked in an extra $80 just to make owner Art Modell happy.

At least the Blue Jays paid their taxes last year. And so did the Expos. But the Cardinals and the White Sox, and the Red Sox, and the Reds, and the Dodgers, and the Rockies, and the Mets, and all the other teams? Not a penny.

How can that be? This is a multi-million dollar business! These owners are filthy rich. They pay their players absurdly extravagant sums of money to do what most of us would gladly do for nothing. And they don’t pay taxes?!

No, they don’t. They don’t pay taxes, because foolish citizens and even more foolish politicians have decided to use tax payer money to subsidize professional sports teams.

You see, Mike Piazza doesn’t care who he plays for. You do. You are a fan. You want your team to win. You are loyal to your team even if they lose. Loyalty is a good quality.  But baseball players have the loyalty of rats. If the New York Mets didn’t offer to pay Mike Piazza more money, he was going to go play for someone else!

But the New York Mets didn’t have enough money for Mike Piazza. How would the owners of the Mets make a profit if they had to pay Mike Piazza more money?

Well, they can cut other expenses, like those horrific stadium costs. But if the team cuts those costs from its budget, who is going to pay for it? Why the city, of course! But where does the city get its money? From property taxes. And where do property taxes come from?

Right– you. You with your $45,000 a year. You are going to give tax money to the New York Mets (if you are citizen of New York) so that they can give Mike Piazza an additional $4 million per year.

But the tax payer would think that is a dumb idea. So instead of the city giving a check to the Mets, it gives them a deduction on their taxes. And then it chips in for a stadium. And then it provides police and traffic services for free.

This is all no secret, by the way, though you would think it would be almost unimaginable that voters would be so stupid as to approve these arrangements. Sports Illustrated has been ranting about this devious little scam for years. A few smart politicians and journalists have caught on as well. And the voters in Minnesota caught on, and recently turned down a proposal to make a gift of a $100 million stadium to the billionaire owner of the Twins, who then threatened to move the Twins to some town with more idiots in it.

It is one of the biggest scandals in modern history: taxpayers subsidizing multi-million dollar contracts for spoiled athletes! And you just know that some of these same owners and athletes and sports journalists and politicians who approve of these arrangements would be among the first to complain bitterly about their hard-earned tax dollars going to a single mother on welfare. Freeloader! Parasite! Give us back your $500 a month and go find a job! Maybe you can park Mike Piazza’s spare Rolls Royce for him, if you’re good.

The problem is that too many cities give in to owner blackmail: build me a stadium or I move to a different city. And the city fathers weep and wail– “Alas, we cannot be without our sports team!” and issue a bond or debenture and build a stadium and forgive them their annual property taxes. Cities without sports teams plead with the Expos or the Twins: move here and we will give you millions of dollars. Millions of YOUR dollars.

And you voters stand for this??? You re-elect these guys? Are you insane?

The Baltimore Orioles, thank you, paid for their own stadium. Hurray for Baltimore! But they still don’t pay any taxes. [According to the Toronto Star of Nov. 29, 1998, the taxpayers paid $254 million for Baltimore’s stadium. When I find out who’s telling the truth, I’ll update this.]

Now, you will hear many supporters of these professional sport teams argue that the teams generate a great deal of revenue, including tax revenue, and attract jobs, and therefore, more than “pay for themselves”. Right. You can apply this argument to absolutely any business you like: banks, car makers, theatre companies, insurance companies, computer makers, anybody. They all generate revenue and taxes. Big deal. Pay your taxes and shut up.

And the issue has been studied: the economic benefits are grossly exaggerated, especially, as I say, compared to other possible investments.

The only solution is for all the cities to get together and agree that none of them will subsidize major league professional sports in any shape or form whatsoever. No subsidized stadiums. No tax concessions. No free police guards. Not even a parade (a long civic advertisement for the team). Tell the major leagues to conduct their businesses like everyone else: you balance out your income vs. your expenditures, and if you can’t afford to pay Mike Piazza $91 million, you offer him less.

Even better, the federal governments in both Canada and the U.S. should outlaw civic funding of sports stadiums.