An Arizona newspaper had an article the other day about the high cost of having a NFL team in your state. They started out talking about the $750 million that Georgia taxpayers ponied up for their new stadium, the site of this year's Super Bowl. Then they went into an even bigger taxpayer tab for the Las Vegas taxpayers who are enticing Oakland's team to move there. They never even got into the half billion dollars that Minnesota taxpayers subsidized the Viking owners. I am sure there are more and there will be more yet, as time goes on.
All of this to subsidize people, already billionaires in their own right. When you throw in the concessions, seating rights, parking and other ways they make money off the stadium, it really smacks of a sweetheart deal.
In a perfect world, where there was money enough to go around for everything, this wouldn't be a problem. But that's not the case. Our governments are increasingly trying to find more ways to tax us for services; because they no longer have the money to finance basic necessities. They call the new taxes fees, surcharges or user taxes but in the end they are just more taxes by a different name and they do this because no politician wants to be labeled as a tax raiser.
Someday when the roads are unfit to drive on, when the bridges are falling down, when the dams are leaking and the water is unfit to drink, we will look back at how our government spent its money-correction, how they spent our money-and wonder how things could go so wrong. What's that you say? These things are already happening? Oh well, we can always go to the football game.
Mike Holst
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Crosslake
