on politics and baseball
a quick follow-up to Wednesday's debate over baseball in DC courtesy of the ever-insightful King Kaufman of Salon.com:
The tide seems to finally be turning against baseball in the "give us a stadium or you won't have a team in your town" scam. Even the Cardinals couldn't get the city that loves them dearly to build them a home outright. But you can't blame rich mendicants for wanting to keep their hands out. When it pays, begging's easy work.
The D.C. Council's private financing requirement only applies to construction of the stadium itself, Cropp says, and that's been estimated at $280 million. Since stadium cost overruns average about 20 percent, you can think of that as $336 million, assuming a project in Washington has a chance to only be average in terms of cost overruns.
But Cropp says $140 million is all that's needed, and expressed confidence Wednesday that that amount can be raised. Even the mayor's office says there's a proposal from a parking company that could bring in $100 million.
Cropp is pretty clearly grandstanding here, suddenly standing up to baseball when the headlines are a lot taller than they would have been before a deal was struck and the happy announcement of a new team for the nation's capital was made.
But politicians grandstand all the time. Just last week Sen. John McCain once again puffed out his chest and threatened to do something about the national security threat of baseball players shooting steroids into their asses, while continuing the long congressional tradition of ignoring baseball's ridiculous antitrust exemption, something that actually calls for legislative remedy.
So why not for a change have such peacock strutting actually benefit the people? Whatever Cropp's motives -- perhaps she has her eye on Williams' gig -- she's doing the right thing.
Last month Washington voters booted out three council members who were in favor of a taxpayer-financed stadium deal and voted in three candidates who opposed it, including former Mayor Marion Barry. As usual the people, who have to actually pay the freight on ballpark boondoggles, were squarely against the deal struck by the politicians, who get credit for securing the sparkling new toys and are long gone by the time the bills come due.
Comments
I'm sorry, did he just give DC residents credit for voting for Marion Berry? That's gotta be a first.
Posted by: jake | December 17, 2004 02:25 PM