What kills me about this is that PUBLIC funding will be used to build a stadium for the SOLE PURPOSE of watching overpaid athletes play a game that's best enjoyed by actually playing it yourself, with friends (and the occaisonal Rolling Stones or MacArtney concert, yawn). All this to the tune of a BILLION FUCKING DOLLARS. What else are people willing to spend a BILLION taxpayer dollars on? Public mass transit/rail? NO! Improved transportation infrastructure? NO! K-12 public schools? NO! Arts facilities and subsidies? NO! Decent artful architecture for public buildings? NO! Decent public housing for all the piss poor folks living there? NO! Museums? NO! But, sure, a BILLION FUCKING DOLLARS for a goddamn baseball stadium that'll be sure as shit to barely break even on year to year. Fuck professional baseball and fuck their stadium. For the shithole that DC is, they could certainly be spending a billion dollars on much, much better things than a goddamn stadium

geiginni wrote:What kills me about this is that PUBLIC funding will be used to build a stadium for the SOLE PURPOSE of watching overpaid athletes play a game that's best enjoyed by actually playing it yourself, with friends (and the occaisonal Rolling Stones or MacArtney concert, yawn). All this to the tune of a BILLION FUCKING DOLLARS. What else are people willing to spend a BILLION taxpayer dollars on? Public mass transit/rail? NO! Improved transportation infrastructure? NO! K-12 public schools? NO! Arts facilities and subsidies? NO! Decent artful architecture for public buildings? NO! Decent public housing for all the piss poor folks living there? NO! Museums? NO! But, sure, a BILLION FUCKING DOLLARS for a goddamn baseball stadium that'll be sure as shit to barely break even on year to year. Fuck professional baseball and fuck their stadium. For the shithole that DC is, they could certainly be spending a billion dollars on much, much better things than a goddamn stadium

You are absolutely correct.

It is nonsense.

geiginni wrote:What kills me about this is that PUBLIC funding will be used to build a stadium for the SOLE PURPOSE of watching overpaid athletes play a game that's best enjoyed by actually playing it yourself, with friends (and the occaisonal Rolling Stones or MacArtney concert, yawn). All this to the tune of a BILLION FUCKING DOLLARS. What else are people willing to spend a BILLION taxpayer dollars on? Public mass transit/rail? NO! Improved transportation infrastructure? NO! K-12 public schools? NO! Arts facilities and subsidies? NO! Decent artful architecture for public buildings? NO! Decent public housing for all the piss poor folks living there? NO! Museums? NO! But, sure, a BILLION FUCKING DOLLARS for a goddamn baseball stadium that'll be sure as shit to barely break even on year to year. Fuck professional baseball and fuck their stadium. For the shithole that DC is, they could certainly be spending a billion dollars on much, much better things than a goddamn stadium

Express 1/10 this much anger to your Congressmen and Senators about the fact that I have neither, please.

The publicly-funded, and perhaps somewhat privately-financed (great, more fingers in the pie) stadium deal is an expensive stupid mistake, but as a DC resident it's just the most current in a long list of worries I have. It's actually a pretty predictable outcome from a colonial seat of government that's beholden to its rich neighbors. We get whipsawed by the feds and the surrounding states all the time. Where's our federal representation? How about a commuter tax? Oh. Right. We'll have to check with the feds first. We're not your equals.

Indeed. Fuck DC. It's not like the nation doesnt mutter it under its breath every day we dont have statehood and self-determination.

The baseball stadium is just a symptom.

Not only that, but they were proposing a public bond issue to raise this BILLION DOLLARS. Which means they will be forced to pay interest over the term of the bond. What does that amount to? Maybe another $250-500 million?

Crazy....

cry me a river! personally, i'm stoked baseball is coming here. the hogwash of why isn't that money being spent on the school system, etc... is such a joke. do you actually think the city has 600 million sitting in a shoebox trying to figure out how to spend it????? all of those problems have been here for a hell of a long time before this whole baseball thing and nobody said a fucking thing about getting them corrected. but now that the mostly moronic city counsel has the city's and the nation's attention, they want to get up on their soapbox and rant about the schools, poverty, roads, etc... if they really cared that much i would hope to think that something more would have been done for them up to this point. oh, and by the way, the majority of this money is coming directly from a stadium tax that people going to the games will pay on their tickets, food, beer, parking, merchandise, etc...

obstaclecorpse wrote:cry me a river! personally, i'm stoked baseball is coming here. the hogwash of why isn't that money being spent on the school system, etc... is such a joke. do you actually think the city has 600 million sitting in a shoebox trying to figure out how to spend it????? all of those problems have been here for a hell of a long time before this whole baseball thing and nobody said a fucking thing about getting them corrected. but now that the mostly moronic city counsel has the city's and the nation's attention, they want to get up on their soapbox and rant about the schools, poverty, roads, etc... if they really cared that much i would hope to think that something more would have been done for them up to this point. oh, and by the way, the majority of this money is coming directly from a stadium tax that people going to the games will pay on their tickets, food, beer, parking, merchandise, etc...

Becuase nobody gives a shit and works to make the money available otherwise, it's justified to spend that kind of money on a stadium??? Most stadiums are a financial loss to the cities that build them. Milwaukee spent over $600 million on their stupid stadium and they can't even make it pay for itself. The Twins wanted a new stadium to replace the less than 15 year old dome, and the good citezenry wisely told them to go piss up a rope, and the Twin Cities are a nice place - not the impoverished hellhole DC largely is.

It may be payed for by a stadium tax - if it gets paid off at all. Meawhile the city is incurring unbelievable debt through a bond issuance plus accrued interest over what, like 20 or 30 years or something like that! FOR A FUCKING STADIUM NO LESS!

If major league baseball is such a goddamn cash cow for the franchise owners let them pay for the fucking stadium themselves through their own bond issuance. If the masses need their goddamn baseball so badly, let them fork over a couple thousand bucks each for bonds they can cash in 20 years later. Leave the poor municipality out of MLB's exploitative manipulations.

But, what the hell do I know. The Plebians obviously need their bread(beer) and circuses (stadiums) more than roads, schools, and public services.

"But, what the hell do I know. The Plebians obviously need their bread(beer) and circuses (stadiums) more than roads, schools, and public services."

EXACTLY!!!!

geiginni wrote:Milwaukee spent over $600 million on their stupid stadium.

Yes and no. Actually, it's more like $750 million, but that's figuring that all of the bonds go to maturity and the project is never refinanced. You can even play with the numbers to get the price tag to $1 billion.

I'm not exactly sure what the final present day dollar figure was for Miller Park. Something in the $350-400 million range strikes me as closer to the truth, but that's figuring in some significant bad luck and resultant cost overruns. $250 million for that ballpark would have been a fair price if all had gone well.

Hey! It's a nice stadium! But it really doesn't matter. Stadiums are bad municipal investments, period. Taxpayers shouldn't be paying for them, and I don't understood why they continue to do so.

geiginni wrote:If major league baseball is such a goddamn cash cow for the franchise owners let them pay for the fucking stadium themselves through their own bond issuance.

That's exactly what the San Francisco Giants did -- just like any other business.

Well, except Costco.

endofanera wrote:

geiginni wrote:Indeed. Fuck DC. It's not like the nation doesnt mutter it under its breath every day we dont have statehood and self-determination.

The baseball stadium is just a symptom.

I live in D.C., too, endo, was born here, actually, and am far more comfortable with our District being a federal district and not a state.

I mean, c'mon dude, our fellow residents elected Marion Barry. Repeatedly.

Please don't demolish my argument by pointing out that the country at large elected George W. Bush.

Chris G wrote:Please don't demolish my argument by pointing out that the country at large elected George W. Bush.

I wont. They did, but I wont.

Howzabout this guy then?


Or this load a shit...


In comparison, Barry honestly doesnt seem like such a bad choice. Sure, the crack and corruption have done a number on his legacy, but at one time he was a leader.

Oh, I almost forgot...


And...


Seriously, no one should be able to mention the whole Barry thing ever again as proof of DC's inability to elect a competent leader. There aint a state in the nation that hasnt done as bad or worse, sometimes over and over again. And even if there is, we oughta have as much right to parade our ignorance on the national stage as the rest of 'em, right?

And honestly, laughs aside, I believe the federal protectorate has a lot to do with how bad things are here. No shit.