You’ve read the old saw that politics makes strange bedfellows, and you’re seeing that in the debate over the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal.
But you don’t need to go to Washington to see strange bedfellows. In Madison, some Republicans are pushing a new Bucks arena, and some are opposed, joined, it seems, by all legislative Democrats.
The latter may seem strange since Democrats overwhelm Milwaukee and Milwaukee County, and therefore you’d think Democrats would favor something that would keep some of their constituents employed. Republicans also pushed a Miller Park deal 20 years ago instead of Democrats, one of whom, Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist, wanted a downtown baseball stadium instead. The same has been the case with Milwaukee voucher schools, generally supported by Republicans and opposed by Democrats, two exceptions being Norquist and late Rep. Polly Williams (D-Milwaukee).
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker wants to send a quarter-billion dollars in taxpayer money to the billionaire owners of the Milwaukee Bucks, who are threatening to leave if they don’t get a subsidized new arena.
At the same time, however, presidential candidate Scott Walker wants to convince Republican primary voters nationwide that he is a conservative who can stand up to the special interests.
It’s a tough sell.
Walker, together with local Democratic politicians and the billionaire out-of-state owners of the Bucks, has negotiated a deal whereby the state and local governments pay for half the cost of a new $500 million arena for the NBA team. The state would borrow $55 million to build the arena, costing the state taxpayers $80 million over 20 years when interest is included. City and county governments would cover the rest.
Walker argues that the $250 million gift to the owners — billionaire hedge fund managers Marc Lasry and Wesley Edens, who live in New York — will pay for itself. “The price of doing nothing is not zero. It’s $419 million,” Walker said. “It’s not just a good deal. It’s a really bad deal if we don’t do anything.”
In short, Walker is asserting that the team and the new arena will bring in more tax revenue than the ransom money will cost taxpayers. …
The subsidy undermines Walker’s ability — especially in the general election for president — to tout his record as governor. Walker explains his cuts to government employee benefits and University of Wisconsin spending in terms of necessity — state spending was in disarray, and he had to make tough choices.
But if he’s handing $250 million to the Bucks’ owners, the spending cuts look different. It’s an easy — and not entirely unfair — line of attack for a Democrat: Walker cut $300 million from college kids, so he could give most of it to some millionaire business owners.
No doubt Walker’s subsidy to the Bucks will hurt him politically outside of Milwaukee.
The next question is: Should it?
If you are a fair-minded, thoughtful voter — in the GOP primary or the election — what does Walker’s corporate-welfare deal tell you about the man, about how he would be as president?
First, it shows that Walker’s conservatism — his belief in free enterprise and limited government — is more a disposition, a leaning, than a deeply held principle. He’s against government getting involved unless someone can make a good argument that in this case, it’s good for business. We’ve already learned this lesson, though, from Walker’s support for ethanol when he traveled to Iowa earlier this year.
Second, there’s the toughness question. Walker was supposed to be tough and unbending in the face of special interests—that’s how he beat the powerful government unions and the recall election. But when a league run by billionaires demands ransom of Walker, he forks it over just like your average mayor or governor would.
Third, Walker’s defense of the subsidy shows that he’s not a student of economics. It’s nearly unanimous among economists that stadium subsidies do not pay for themselves, and the research suggests that losing a sports team doesn’t hurt a city’s economy.
All interesting points. I would be more interested in Carney’s point of view on this subject were he actually a Wisconsinite who might have to live with the consequences of the Bucks’ leaving. Carney doesn’t. (More on that shortly.)
Carney seems shocked — shocked! — to find out that Walker is a politician. Walker isn’t that much of a small-government conservative, which should be obvious since there have not been large-scale government-employee layoffs since he’s been governor. (Teacher layoffs happen for the same reason they have always happened — diminishing layoffs in particular classes.)
The other thing Carney misses is the importance to the Republican voter of Walker’s successes against the education and Govzilla establishment, particularly public employee unions, which are a much higher priority among GOP-leaning voters than attacks on business. Teachers and other government employees did not vote for Republicans even before Scott Walker started running for governor.
It is perfectly obvious what is happening here, because it happened with the Brewers and Miller Park in 1996. Democrats are staying away from the Bucks to make Republicans do the heavy legislative work, and if it fails and the Bucks leave, Democrats can blame Republicans for the Bucks’ leaving.
More locally pertinent perspectives come from Rick Esenberg …
When I was a young lawyer, one of my elders at Foley & Lardner taught me the essence of a good settlement in litigation. To paraphrase, you want to reach a deal which is so good for you that the other side will cringe, but not so bad for them that they won’t shrug. Although negotiation professionals often bang on about “win-win” solutions, most one-off deals – unless overridden by the needs of an ongoing relationship – are ultimately governed by this dynamic. …
Lot of folks say that Edens and Lasry should pay more for the arena happen because “they can afford it.” The statement is true, but irrelevant. People – and billionaires are no different – generally do not spend even what they can afford, unless it is in their interest to do so. A person’s interest might include charity, but my guess is that Edens and Lasry’s desire to make a gift to a city from which they are not from and where they do not live is quite limited.
But these guys are in a bit of a trap. Right now, it looks like they have made a great deal. They wanted to own an NBA franchise (which can be a form of consumption for billionaires) and they do. In addition, the team is probably worth much more than they paid for it. As O’Donnell points out, with the NBA’s new TV contract in place, the LA Clippers sold a few months after the Bucks for two billion dollars. While the Bucks in Milwaukee are worth nowhere near a franchise in Los Angeles, it seems certain that they are worth more than the $550 million that Edens and Lasry paid for them.
So these guys are looking like winners. But, unless the arena is built, they lose that victory. They will no longer have their shiny NBA toy and, perhaps more importantly, someone else will enjoy the increased value of the Bucks. Edens and Lasry can keep the gain on the bargain basement price that they paid only if the team stays here. (While the Bucks in Milwaukee are certainly worth less than the Bucks in Seattle, it still appears – even in Milwaukee – that they are already worth much more than the sales price.)
So, quite apart from what they can afford, it is in their interest to contribute to the deal. You’ve got to give Herb Kohl credit for setting it up this way. While he made out like a bandit on his investment in the Bucks, he certainly left money on the table for his hometown.
But the reason that Edens and Lasry must throw in some money also limits the amount that they will throw in. Remember, to keep the team, they have to keep it here. And it is worth less here. Putting aside the thrill of owning a sports franchise, let’s assume that they believe the Bucks are worth $725 million and a little bit more if the team must stay in Milwaukee. They ought to be willing to put $150 million into the arena deal so they can hang on to that “little bit more” in value. (They should also factor in expected appreciation discounted to present value, but I’m trying to keep the example simple.)
So how much are the Milwaukee – as opposed to the Seattle – Bucks worth? How much will make the owners cringe and yet shrug ?
The Bucks are a beloved sports team, yes, but they are also an important business to both its city and its state. As conservatives, we pride ourselves as being pro-business, free market capitalists who understand that to achieve economic growth, government must work with (not against) the private sector.
Whereas liberal taxation and over-regulation stifle enterprise and inherently view business as a sort of enemy to be demonized when convenient and always made to “pay its fair share” (which, as it happens, is determined by liberals in government), conservatism understands that private enterprise is a partner whose success shouldn’t be punished, but encouraged.
Encouragement, of course, does not mean corporate welfare, and this is why so many conservatives are so divided about the current proposal to use $250 million in taxpayer money to pay for approximately half of the Bucks’ new arena.
This is why I am so conflicted, because while I love my team, I also love my fellow taxpayers and don’t want city and state government to place an undue burden on them so that fans like me can keep wearing our jerseys and buying our tickets.
Remember, though, the Bucks are a local business every bit as much as they are a local team, and are as such a significant contributor to the state and local tax base. Each year, the estimated tax revenue from NBA salaries alone is estimated to be approximately $6.52 million. The NBA has just signed a new $24 billion network television rights agreement, and the resulting player salaries and revenue sharing cuts are expected to rise exponentially when that agreement kicks in next season.
Anticipating this rise, Governor Walker estimated that the annual revenue from taxes on NBA player salaries could rise 8% next year to a little more than $7 million and a full 25% to $8.15 million in 2017.
And that’s just in player salaries. The Bucks themselves also employ more than 160 workers, from coaches to trainers to professional scouts to ticket sales representatives—all of whom pay state income taxes and many of whom pay local property taxes.
If the Bucks leave Milwaukee (which is a near-certainty if an arena deal isn’t agreed upon), all 160 of those jobs—and the tax revenue they generate—would disappear.
Moreover, the most recent Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce analysis of the BMO Harris Bradley Center’s overall economic impact found that it “supports 2,350 jobs with an annual payroll of more than $73 million, while its net impact supports 1,068 jobs with an annual payroll of more than $29 million.”
If the Bucks leave Milwaukee, many of those jobs—and the tax revenue they generate—would disappear as well, leaving taxpayers to fund the maintenance of the facility without the millions in revenue generated by 41 (or more) NBA games per year.
Without those games, sales tax revenue on tickets, concessions, and merchandise would be lost as well. So would hotel tax revenue from not only out-of-town fans, but also visiting NBA teams, which typically have traveling parties of 30 or more.
Radio and television rights to broadcast Bucks games also generate tax revenue and help to support the salaries of hundreds of FOX Sports Wisconsin and Scripps Media employees, from on-air personalities to camera operators to producers to salespeople. …
In addition, a substantial amount of the Bucks’ annual taxable revenue comes from outside of Wisconsin in the form of the NBA’s revenue sharing agreement and luxury tax system under which the league’s more profitable teams in effect subsidize its less profitable teams. Last year, the Bucks made a whopping $18 million in revenue sharing and an additional $3 million in luxury tax payouts. That reportedly turned a $6.5 million loss for the 2013-2014 season into $14.8 million worth of profits that were then subject to taxation.
If the Bucks leave Milwaukee, all of that out-of-state revenue sharing and luxury tax money will leave Wisconsin’s tax base.
In other words, Wisconsin’s taxpayers would be out millions of dollars per year in corporate and individual income tax revenue and stuck with millions of dollars in BMO Harris Bradley Center maintenance fees that would likely not be covered by the Marquette basketball and Milwaukee Admirals hockey games and occasional concerts that the arena would still host.
Esenberg’s and O’Donnell’s perspectives are interesting beyond what they say for this reason: Esenberg writes for Right Wisconsin, a creation of the late Journal Communications, whose WTMJ radio has been the originating station for the Bucks for their entire existence. WTMJ and Right Wisconsin are now owned by Scripps Media (the broadcast half of the ill-advised Journal sale), which definitely has a financial stake in whether the Bucks stay or go. I haven’t kept track, but I think Right Wisconsin has run more pieces against the stadium deal than for it, despite the fact that Scripps stands to lose money if the Bucks leave. (WTMJ, in fact, dumped the Badgers in favor of the Bucks two years ago.)
O’Donnell, meanwhile, works for WISN, WTMJ’s competition, which could stand to gain by WTMJ’s losing the Bucks. (Perhaps, however, WISN has on its to-do list wrestling the Bucks’ rights away from WTMJ.)
An interesting juxtaposition of 45 years for these two songs:
The number six single today in 1948:
Then, the number 17 song today in 1993 by Green Jellÿ (which began life as Green Jellö — and we have the CD to prove it — until the makers of Jell-O objected):
Nicholas Kristof apparently wrote this in the New York Times …
… So a single egg takes 53 gallons of water to produce. A pound of chicken, 468 gallons. A gallon of milk, 880 gallons. A pound of beef, 1800 gallons of water…Like most Americans, I eat meat, but it’s worth thinking hard about the inefficiency in that hamburger patty — and the small lake that has dried up to make it possible.”
Like most Americans, I eat meat, but it’s worth thinking hard about the inefficiency in that hamburger patty — and the small lake that has dried up to make it possible.”
Any moron who thinks it takes 53 gallons of water to produce an egg is as stupid as a salt block. A chicken starts to lay when it’s about 6 months old. It lays an egg a day. It drinks a couple of cups of water a day.
A dairy cow produces about 8 gallons of milk per day. It would have to drink over 7000 gallons of water per day for Kristof’s statistic to work.
It’s tougher for me to gauge the water the cows drink, because the pond is replenished by the rain and I can’t measure it, but a single beef cow yields about 800-900 pounds and is butchered in about 2 years. The calf would have to drink about 1.5 million gallons of water for Kristof to be correct that it takes 1800 gallons per pound of beef.
I am surprised Nicholas Kristof has enough brain power to breathe on his own, let along draw a paycheck.
… followed by K.C. Jenkins …
How much water do you think it takes to grow the grain to feed a chicken per day? …So a single egg takes 53 gallons of water to produce.” ??? That chicken gets 1.5 lbs per bird per week. Grain crops do use water, BUT THEY DO NOT USE IT UP. They take in water, then most of it is released by its leaves back into the atmosphere, where it ends up as rain, coming down to grow more crops, etc.
… and James Hankins …
The calculations in this article are total rubbish.
… and Mick Wenlock …
well Nicholas “Bag of hammers” Kristof is parroting some things he has read. The essential point that Kristof is missing (because he really is that appallingly stupid) is that it is the *usage* of 53 gallons of water that helps produce the egg. Not the DESTRUCTION of 53 gallons. Somehow he is conflating use with destruction. The amount of water trapped in the production of the egg is, of course, miniscule. Most of the water returns to the environment where it is reused. Even the moisture stored in the egg. It is a deception that environmentalists continue to use because they hope that most people will not actually go “huh?” and think about it.
… and Steve Aucella …
And remember, the Earth is a closed system. We have about the same amount of water now that was here on Day One, more or less. It just moves around all the time.
… and John Hudock:
The more significant point is that nothing really “uses” any water. The earth is pretty much a closed system with respect to water. The water that was here when the first humans started farming is still here. Water gets continuously recycled. Unless there are local drought conditions there is no reason to conserve water at all. Something I wish Al Gore understood before sticking us all with toilets that need to be flushed 3x.
Keep that in mind with the predicted deluge of rain today. (The closed system, not Algore’s low-flow toilets.)
Today in 1964, one day after the Rolling Stones recorded their “12×5” album in Chicago, Chicago police broke up their news conference. (Perhaps foreshadowing four years later when the Democratic Party came to town?)
The Stones could look back at that and laugh two years later when “Paint It Black” hit number one:
One year later, David Bowie released “Space Oddity” …
… on the same day that this reached number one in Great Britain:
Wielding subpoenas demanding information on anonymous commenters, the government is harassing a respected journalism site that dissents from its policies. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York claims these comments could constitute violent threats, even though they’re clearly hyperbolic political rhetoric.
This is happening in America — weirdly, to a site I founded, and one whose commenters often earned my public contempt.
Los Angeles legal blogger Ken White has obtained a grand jury subpoena issued to Reason.com, the online home of the libertarian magazine I edited throughout the 1990s. The subpoena seeks information about commenters who posted in response to an articleby the site’s editor Nick Gillespie about the letter that Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht wrote to Judge Katherine B. Forrest before she sentenced him to life in prison without parole. Ulbricht was convictedof seven felony charges, included conspiracies to traffic in narcotics and launder money, and faced a minimum sentence of 20 years in prison. The letter was an appeal for leniency.
Gillespie, who declined to comment on the subpoena, aptly described the letter as “haunting.” In it, Ulbricht expressed the libertarian ideals he said animated his creation of Silk Road — the same ideals that Reason upholds. The portion Gillespie reproduced reads:
I created Silk Road because I thought the idea for the website itself had value, and that bringing Silk Road into being was the right thing to do. I believed at the time that people should have the right to buy and sell whatever they wanted so long as they weren’t hurting anyone else. However, I’ve learned since then that taking immediate actions on one’s beliefs, without taking the necessary time to really think them through, can have disastrous consequences. Silk Road turned out to be a very naive and costly idea that I deeply regret.
Silk Road was supposed to be about giving people the freedom to make their own choices, to pursue their own happiness, however they individually saw fit. What it turned into was, in part, a convenient way for people to satisfy their drug addictions. I do not and never have advocated the abuse of drugs. I learned from Silk Road that when you give people freedom, you don’t know what they’ll do with it. While I still don’t think people should be denied the right to make this decision for themselves, I never sought to create a site that would provide another avenue for people to feed their addictions. Had I been more mature, or more patient, or even more worldly then, I would have done things differently.
The letter depicts Silk Road as an attempt to bring libertarian ideals into the real world — a virtual version of the seasteading schemes for new countries, hopelessly naive, perhaps, but certainly not evil in its intentions.
Judge Forrest handed down a sentence even more draconian thanprosecutors had sought and made a point of condemning Ulbricht’s political views. “In the world you created over time, democracy didn’t exist,” she said. “Silk Road’s birth and presence asserted that its…creator was better than the laws of this country. This is deeply troubling, terribly misguided, and very dangerous.”
Whatever you think of Ulbricht or Silk Road, you can see why libertarians might be upset. A federal judge has just made the belief that it’s good for people to have “the freedom to make their own choices, to pursue their own happiness, however they individually saw fit” part of her justification for the most punitive sentence short of the death penalty. Her rationale offends libertarians on two grounds: It punishes political views and it punishes their particular political views.
The Reason commenters expressed heartbreak and rage. “Damn, it’s painful to read that letter. A life sentence for providing a platform for people to do what they do regardless — just making it easier,” Lady Bertrum wrote in the first response. “The rightness of his worldview bumping up against his naivety and arrogance is awful.”
Unfortunately, such ladylike responses aren’t typical of Reason commenters, who often sound like drunk teenage boys trying to one-up each other. They tend to forget that their online pals aren’t the only ones reading what they say. In his post, White described Reason as a “leading libertarian website whose clever writing is eclipsed only by the blowhard stupidity of its commenting peanut gallery.” Puerile they undoubtedly are, but Reason commenters are also harmless (unless you care about reasoned political discourse or the image of libertarians).
In this case, they were furious and, in their fury, some of them got nasty. “Its judges like these that should be taken out back and shot,” wrote Agammamon. “Why waste ammunition? Wood chippers get the message across clearly. Especially if you feed them in feet first,” responded croaker. “I hope there is a special place in hell reserved for that horrible woman,” commented Rhywun. “I’d prefer a hellish place on Earth be reserved for her as well,” chimed in ProductPlacement. (Reason has since removed the offending comments.)
No one in their right mind would take this hyperbolic venting seriously as threatening Judge Forrest, who back in the fall had personal information published on an underground site, along with talk of stealing her identity or calling in tips to send SWAT teams to her house. The Reason commenters, by contrast, included nothing so specific.
As White notes in his post, which offers a detailed legal analysis of the situation, the comments “do not specify who is going to use violence, or when. They do not offer a plan, other than juvenile mouth-breathing about ‘wood chippers’ and revolutionary firing squads. They do not contain any indication that any of the mouthy commenters has the ability to carry out a threat. Nobody in the thread reacts to them as if they are serious.” Nobody even assumes the judge will see their comments. Why would she?
Venting anger about injustice is not a crime. Neither is being obnoxious on the Internet. The chances of one of these commenters being convicted of threatening the judge are essentially nil. Conviction isn’t the point. Crying “threats” just makes a handy pretext for harassing Reason and its commenters.
The real threats aren’t coming from the likes of Agammamon and croaker. They’re coming from civil servants in suits. Subpoenaing Reason’s website records, wasting its staff’s time and forcing it to pay legal fees in hopes of imposing even larger legal costs (and possibly even a plea bargain or two on the average Joes who dared to voice their dissident views in angry tones ) sends an intimidating message: It’s dangerous not just to create something like Silk Road. It’s dangerous to defend it, and even more dangerous to attack those who would punish its creator. You may think you have free speech, but we’ll find a way to make you pay.
How is this Obama’s fault? Obama is the president. Presidents appoint the attorney general, federal judges and U.S. attorneys. (And thanks to Bill Clinton and Janet Reno, U.S. attorneys are now shown the door every time a new president takes over.)
If Moviepilot‘s reporting is correct, among other things students won’t really have to worry about the 2015-16 school year:
It seems not a year can go by without someone out there claiming it will be our last. Whether it’s the rapture, nuclear war or general garden-variety extinction, some conspiracy and biblical theorists just love to get everyone else slightly perturbed at the threat of our destruction. I say ‘slightly perturbed’ because let’s face it, it’s not the first time we’ve heard this.
This time, the various blogs are claiming the world will end at some point between September 22-28th, 2015. For the most part, the actual reasoning behind our inevitable doom is a bit confused, but the main line of thought states an asteroid will collide within the year, which will then usher in an oppressive world government controlled by the New World Order. What’s Apparently Going To Happen?
Well, according to a theory known as the Blood Moon Prophecy, September 2015 is important because it marks the end of a lunar tetrad – a sequence of four successive blood moons – that began in April 2014.
According to some biblical theorists, these blood moons – each of which coincided with a Jewish holiday – mark the end times described in the Bible in Acts 2:20 and Revelation 6:12. Some, such as Youtuber Lewey7777, seem to suggest this wrath of God will be manifested as an asteroid which will collide with the Earth during the period of the final blood moon. One blog, titled 888whistleblower.com claimed:
“Most likely we are for real talking about is the end of all life on this planet. The efforts to stop the process, which could very well be an inevitability, aren’t working. The methods they are using are right in the skies above your head, and they are still top secret.
Most likely they are making the end come sooner, and there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do except wake up to what is going on, and wake our friends and family up, at the risk of looking like a fool. One thing I think I can assure you though, is that the end is coming, and I don’t think it is that far away.”
Other conspiracy websites such as BeforeItsNews.com, have suggested other events which occur during September 22-28th also point unflinchingly towards annihilation. These include:
The Pope, who is apparently the anti-Christ, talking to the UN on September 23rd about the Post 2015 Sustainable Development Agenda – or the “New World Order plan.”
CERN intends to conduct experiments with the most powerful cycle of the Large Hadron Collider yet.
Large scale military exercises – most notable Jade Helm.
The apparent stockpiling of food, weapons and ammunition in underground bunkers.
Video games, films and television shows pointing to the apocalypse. They state: “Titles include Tomorrowland, Mission Impossible, Call of Duty Black Ops III, Mad Max. All are being used to condition using subliminal messages for the coming and acceptance from the masses of events that will unfold very soon.”
“NASA knows of no asteroid or comet currently on a collision course with Earth, so the probability of a major collision is quite small. In fact, as best as we can tell, no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years.”
Also, as I suggested above, this is not the first time we’ve heard this. Let’s just remind ourselves of some of the most recent apocalyptic portendings:
1,000 AD: A rise in Christian activity was prompted by fears the millennium would usher in the end of the world. People left their jobs and homes only to be disappointed when the year changed and no Horsemen of the Apocalypse had arrived. The original predictors claimed it was because they miscalculated Jesus’ age and that the world would really end in 1033. We all know how that turned out.
February 1524: Astrologers in London noticed a strange alignment of the planets Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation of Pisces. This led some to claim a giant biblical flood was imminent. Some sought shelter on high ground only to return home completely dry and a bit embarrassed.
Fall 1982: In 1980, popular television evangelist Pat Robinson told viewers of The 700 Club: “I guarantee you, by the end 1982 there is going to be judgment on the world.” It didn’t happen.
2000: The second millennium also came with apocalypse fears, although this one was about computers. The so-called millennium bug would supposedly fry computers all around the world – plunging us into a new dark age.
May 21st, 2011: US pastor Harold Camping claimed rapture would arrive in 2011, after initially getting the date wrong in 1994. His claims were widely reported, and some of his followers even sold their belongings.
December 21, 2012: The much vaunted end of the Mayan calendar was similarly linked to the end of the world. News flash: It didn’t happen.
Of course, perhaps it is true, and I’m just a member of that insidious New World Order/Illuminati/Zionist/Globalist conspiracy? I guess we’ll have to wait until September to find out.
I don’t recall Robertson’s claim of impending judgment. I do recall Y2K (I remember radio talk show host Art Bell reporting on power outages in Quebec in the middle of the night on New Year’s Day 2000), and this blog covered Camping and the Mayans. Before Robertson, there was also a prediction of doom stemming from the planets’ all being aligned, covered by none other than Leonard Nimoy in his “In Search Of” series.
Of course, denying the conspiracy proves you’re part of it.
The number one album in the country today in 1971 was Paul and Linda McCartney’s “Ram”:
Today in 1972, Bruce Springsteen signed a record deal with Columbia Records. He celebrated 19 years later by marrying his backup singer, Patti Scialfa.
Birthdays today start with the Wisconsinite to whom every rock guitarist owes a debt, Les Paul:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 