Reply #25: No, what frosts me above all [View All]

[Lydia Leftcoast]

is that our current elected officials keep telling us we that raising taxes for anything else is out of the question. No can do. Forget it. State must be lean and mean. Damn people think government should hand them everything on a silver platter. Bla-bla-bla. So working people lose their medical insurance (Minnesota Care), and Metro Transit, already mediocre, is going to provide less service at a higher price, and schools are having to shut down programs and fire teachers. All in the name of Not Raising Taxes.

Must...not...raise...taxes. This is all I've heard from politicians since moving back here.

Oh, but wait, there's a proposal to fund a stadium, and suddenly, the real opiate of the people, professional sports, kicks in. Now we absolutely must fund this pet project of one of the richest men in the state because, oh my God, if Pohlad had a tantrum and moved the twins to Oklahoma or something, our quality of life would totally go down the tubes. We'd be the South Bronx in no time.

Yeah, right.

Why should pro sports go to the head of the line when much more necessary services are being cut? I don't doubt that I'm already paying taxes for things I don't like, but why add new ones for frills when essential services--the ones that really make for "quality of life"-- are being cut?

How do we know that the proposed stadium isn't going to be deemed inadequate in twenty years, just as the old Met Stadium was in the 1980s and now the Metrodome is? So the county will own the stadium. Big deal. So now the Metropolitan Facilties Sports Commission is going to be stuck with a literally white elephant in the form of the Metrodome? With the Twins gone and the Vikings agitating for a new stadium of their own (will we have to pay another sales tax for this?), we will potentially have three full-size stadiums, which is more stadiums than we have sports to put them in.

i'm for funding public needs, but not private businesses, because no matter how much you "love" the Twins, they're a private business, strictly in it for the money, and they have absolutely no loyalty or obligation to the public. They need to move to the rear of the line.

When we stop closing schools and firing teachers, when we have a real transit system, when the working poor aren't thrown off the only medical insurance available to them, then maybe we can talk about a dedicated sales tax to benefit one private business that is already rolling in money, whose owner could build his own damn stadium with his pocket change.

Yes, I know that governments give tax breaks to companies to move to their areas. Oregon did it in the late 1980s, lured all sorts of semiconductor manufacturers. Oregon was going to be "Silicon Forest." Then the market changed, and almost all those manufacturers packed up and left. So much for building prosperity with tax breaks. Meanwhile, the tax burden has shifted so that corporations pay almost nothing, and individuals have what amounts to a flat income tax. Oregon's schools are in even worse shape then Minnesota's, and if you think that Minnesota has anti-tax sentiment, you should see those libertarian-tinged Republicans in Oregon!

My position--fund essential services first and can the illusion of achieving prosperity through corporate welfare--is hardly a libertarian position.

Don't let your love of sports blind you to the fact that you are being HAD.