11.08.07
Millionaires Demand more money from the poor!
OK, the subject line is a bit over the top, but hear me out before you object too loudly.
Professional basketball, a consortuim of billion-dollar private businesses with million dollar employees going under the name of the NBA is at it again. (See THIS PREVIOUS POST for the last time they got my attention.)
I’m not a fan of the freaks in short pants, but when they again come begging ME for money from my fixed income to help pay for a playhouse for excessively tall multi-millionaires, they get my attention.
Very recently the NBA (National Basketball Association) Commissioner, David J. Stern, took us to task for not breaking our butts to pay for the Seattle SuperSonics getting a new place to play at public expense.
Here’s a brief news story about that:
PHOENIX – NBA commissioner David Stern warned on Thursday that if the SuperSonics leave Seattle he sees no way the league would ever return to the city.
“I’d love to find a way to keep the team there,” he said, “because if the team moves, there’s not going to be another team there, not in any conceivable future plan that I could envision, and that would be too bad.”
At a news conference following his announcement that the 2009 all-star game would be held in Phoenix, Stern criticized the city of Seattle and the Washington legislature for its handling of the issue of funding a replacement for Key Arena.
Stern repeated earlier criticism of the mayor and city council for promoting a measure, overwhelmingly passed by voters, that requires any funds to help build an arena earn money at the same rate as a treasury bill.
That measure simply means there is no way city money would ever be used on an arena project, Stern said.
He also lamented that the state legislature refused to even consider continuing a tax that helped fund Seattle’s baseball and football stadiums.
“To have the speaker of the House say well, they just spend too much money on salaries anyway, so we need it for other things,” Stern said, casts aspersions on the whole league’s operations. “We get the message. Hopefully, maybe cooler heads will prevail.”
He was referring to a remark by House Speaker Frank Chopp last February when funding for a new arena in the Seattle suburb of Renton was proposed.
“They ought to get their own financial house in order when their payroll is over $50 million for, what is it, 10 players? I think that’s a little ridiculous,” Chopp said at the time. “They need to get their own financial house in order and if they did, they wouldn’t have to ask for public help.”
Here is the very short letter I wrote to the NBA:
ATTENTION: MR. DAVID J. STERN
The subject choices for these messages gave me a starting point: Business of the NBA.
Recently Mr. David Stern commented about my state’s legislature not allowing additional taxes from the citizens of the state to help support a billion dollar enterprise with millionaire employees.
First off, it is NOT the “Business of the NBA” how our legislature taxes the citizens of the state, and definitely not Mr. Stern’s business.
As one of the folks who would suffer additional taxes to help support a private business composed of millionaires, I would be more than happy to let Mr. Stern assume all responsibility for the taxes he wishes the state legislature to impose on my limited fixed disability income, and in turn he can have any and all interest I have in seeing the Sonics or any other NBA team.
If the team can afford to pay multi-million dollar salaries to individual players, they can certainly afford, much more than I can, to pay their own costs for a place to play. Don’t ask ME to pay for it.
Mr. Stern: Go away, and please take the Sonics with you…
(And remember, guys, you all signed a CONTRACT with the city the LAST time we put together a place for you to play at public expense. That contract requires you to play in that place until a certain date. That date isn’t here yet. Suck it up, guys, act responsibly, and play out your contract where you said you would, the way you said you would. After all, that’s what let you suck money out of our pockets LAST time…)
Tom