Is this new to just me or common knowledge? Has everyone already made this connection between the train crash that happened in the capital of the richest nation on earth and runaway public spending on sports stadium? Or is this report/connection nothing more than socialists sharing ideas with other socialists?
There were the families of the dead on television: the inconsolable loved ones of train operator Jeanice McMillan, 42; David and Ann Wherley, both 62; Mary Doolittle, 59; LaVonda King, 23; Veronica DuBose, 29; Cameron Williams, 37; Dennis Hawkins, 64, and Ana Fernandez, 40. A teacher, a young mother, a retired National Guard major general, a woman who cleaned office buildings while raising six children—all gone, leaving devastated friends and family behind…
The wreckage [is] not an accident… It is a crime scene. And it happened for one reason: the twisted policies of the under-funded Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. The WMATA gets no dedicated federal funds despite the fact that it serves thousands of federal workers. In fact, it has no dedicated source of funds at all, depending on fares and ads for three-fifths of its budget.
The rest is a pittance from the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia, creating an under-funded, overstretched system called by the Brookings Institution “deficits by design.”
…Employees have told the Washington Post that the first two cars of the striking train were two months overdue for maintenance on “braking components.” In addition, the trains involved in the collision were recommended to be taken off the tracks altogether or significantly retrofitted back in 2006.
The Post also reported that Deborah Hersman of the National Transportation Safety Board said, “They have not been able to do that, and our recommendation was not addressed. So it has been an unacceptable status.” Even worse, we now know that Jeanice McMillan probably pressed the emergency brake, and it did not respond.
The Metro has now become our broken levee: an utterly preventable tragedy if only people in government had the will to do the public good. And as in New Orleans, whose Superdome sucked up public money better spent on flood control, if publicly funded stadiums hadn’t become a substitute for urban policy, we wouldn’t be mourning today.
The boondoggle of government-funded stadiums is just one example from a society that provides handouts to billionaires at the expense of ordinary citizens’ needs.
D.C. MAYOR Adrian Fenty should be crawling under a rock right now… [He needs to] explain why the District of Columbia is on the hook for a $700 million ballpark, where the city’s last-place team in the National League’s Eastern Division toils in front of their dozen or so biggest fans? Why, under your watch, does the D.C. government own skyboxes at all sporting venues? Why are you in discussion for more stadium spending—on soccer, hoops and the mother of all stadium deals, the possible return of the Washington Redskins from suburban Maryland to the District?
Every billionaire sports owner has his hand out, because Fenty has shown that he will turn his pockets inside out for them…
Our refusal to build another bloody stadium for the Sonics has turned into a blessing. Imagine the pain of paying for that chunk of nonsense during the deep and present recession. The whole business would have been a total mess. The Sonic’s relocation must not be seen as a terrible loss but as the dodging of a bullet that was aimed at the heart of reason.
Will stadium madness return? Not for as long as the recession lasts. As psychologists know very well, humans make better decisions when they are down than when they are up.
Quite so, Charles. Quite so.
Chalres wake up, many people have said stadiums are taxing the poor to pay for entertainment for the rich by the rich, while the proper public sector esp. including transit infrastructure is woefully underfunded.
Locally, when people say screw the $4 billion bored tunnel, usually it’s with the notion there are other, better things to spend the money on.
Like the local opposition to the stadiums was called “Citizens for more important things.”
Why do reporters insist on calling the District of Columbia “Washington”? We already have a state named Washington, and to refer to an area on the opposite side of the country as Washington is confusing!
@3, I am sorry for your disability.
In answer to your question, Charles, YES, stadium madness will return, and in fact has never gone away, despite one or two examples of turning away. The fact is, Americans care more about sports stadiums than they do train operators, or passengers, who are expendable. Surely you noticed that Steve McNair and Michael Jackson got fancier funerals than the DC crash victims? People pay lip service to other values, but the fact is: sports and entertainment are more important than people. Period.
Charles, it’s really quite amazing how coherent you are early in the day before you’ve had a chance to get all boozed-up. You are, of course, bang on. A great post – thanks. (It would have been even better if there had been a pic of a half-naked woman with it, though.)
@3 don’t be an ignoramus, Washington State was NAMED for Washington DC which pre-existed Washington State by about 85 years.
Don’t be so sure the madness is over, our neighbors to the south Portland approved not one, but two new stadiums. THIS YEAR. One for a POSSIBLE major league soccer team and one for a MINOR league baseball team. If a relatively sensible city like Portland falls for it, no city is immune.
Adding to the madness the leader of the owner groups is Merrill(Merritt?) Paulson. You may know of his father, Mr. TARP/Goldman Sachs, former treasury secretary Hank Paulson. I know some apologist is going to say just because the father is an asshole doesn’t mean the son is too. He is, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
Uncoordinated much, Charles?
@8, how incredibly astute of you to notice that all opposition to billion-dollar sports stadiums is predicated upon athletic ineptitude. Because, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, no one in America is more physically fit than sports fans. You yourself, I presume, are a prodigious athlete?
Fatass.
Was just a question but, yeah, uncoordinated people tend to dislike sport as it brings up memories of failure and humiliation. Sport is fundamental. Strong societies require it. I’m skinny and athletic.
@7: I’m pretty sure that the MLS team is way more than ‘possible’ at this point, especially since the city is giving them money now. The only possible part of it was stadium financing, and well…
But it is truly outrageous that cities foot the bill for stadiums for private teams. Where else puts up with this?
Congrats, Seattle, you’re smarter than Omaha. (not that it was ever in doubt.)
Omaha hosts the College World Series. A couple years ago, the NCAA basically told us to build them a new stadium, or they’d take the CWS elsewhere. We did, and now we’re stuck with an expensive stadium that they haven’t even broken ground on yet. Also, since our Minor league team can’t use it, they had to build a new stadium too – in the next county. Omaha will never see that money.
The lesson: when a petulant brat threatens to take his ball and go home, call them on it.
@10: then why build massive stadiums for spectator sport? If sport is fundamental, wouldn’t that money be better spent building community sports centers?
@10, you’re on crack. Baseball, football, NASCAR fans are fatter than people who aren’t.
And the subject at hand isn’t whether sports should exist, but whether governments should pay massive subsidies to the billionaires who own the teams. I like sports myself, but I think the billionaires should build their own stadiums, just like Boeing has to build its own factories and Nordstrom its own stores.
I agree with everything you posted except that last sentence, Charles, which is total crap. People make better decisions when they’re down than when they’re up? Really? Do you KNOW what happened in the Weimar Republic elections of 1932?
@10,
I’m very well coordinated, thank you very much. I’d probably like sports a lot better if it weren’t for the majority of fans, who are a bunch of ninnies.
@13 – The spectator aspect is most important of all! Bringing thousands of people together to cheer, imbibe, and share the ups and downs of a sports team is a gift to a community.
Fnarf, governments steal and spend our money in a lot of different ways. A sports stadium is an investment in community the same way arts funding or road work is. It’s absurd to look at stadium investments as the reason people are dying in a rail accidents. My original comment was simply a guess that Charles probably isn’t a sports fan if he buys into this absurdity.
@17, your “investment” argument falls flat when you consider that sports stadiums, unlike trains, roads or arts projects, are not built for the advantage of spectators but for that of billionaires. The billionaires would, in fact, build their own if they were forced to; they did in San Francisco. Paul Allen could build a hundred Qwests with his (unearned) billions. Sports franchises, unlike roads, are above all licenses to print money — and to stroke up the egos of the ultra-rich. Let them pay for their own hardons.
@17: Public roads and art are available to the public. Sports stadiums are available to… paying customers.
@17: That’s why all European cities don’t have community, or sports stadiums, right? Or sports fans, for that matter. Their teams have to pay for their own damn stadiums, so clearly that’s the case.
Fnarf, it is somewhat rare to find a sports franchise that turns a profit. The only reason billionaires buy teams is because they are the only ones who can afford such expensive toys. The governments that front for stadiums are simply hoping to inject life into their local economies.
Charles, haha.. I see now that it isn’t you lack of sport appreciation or coordination that offends you. It is simply another manifestation of your hatred toward the middle class crowd that sports attract.
@21, bullshit. Sports franchises are enormously profitable to their owners. Owners however know how to manipulate the tax code to show a paper loss. Teams maintain two sets of books. This is especially easy in baseball, where you are allowed to depreciate PLAYER SALARIES (50% over five years), which are your largest expense. But the biggest gain is capital gain, as the franchise increases in value. You can show fake paper losses for five years, then sell the team for $200 million more than you paid for it.
That’s where a big chunk of George W. Bush’s fortune came from; his rich oil buddies gave him a share of the Texas Rangers, which he couldn’t afford, and then he sold on after the tax advantage ran out at a massive profit. Boom, instant campaign fund.
You suffer from another misapprehension about sports economics, that the teams “inject life into their local economies”. They don’t, really; they provide a handful of extraordinarily well-paid jobs (the players), and similarly small number of managerial and service jobs, and a lot of minimum-wage grunt work, like the guy who brings you your beer and hot dog. Research into the economic advantages of a sports team is abundantly clear: it’s a very small positive. One study commissioned around the time the Mariners were angling for their new park suggested that the regional impact of the team was about equal to that of the downtown Jay Jacobs store (now gone). But no one ever suggested building Jay Jacobs a $500 million facility.
“Investing” in sports stadiums is just about the worst investment any city can make.
Fnarf – A good “Beerman” can earn $40K – $50K a season. Most operate like independent operators. They can pre-pay for x beers and sell them for x price. The more they hustle the more they earn. Towards the end of the game (or time to sell beer) they start cutting deals.
That’s all I’ve got. Otherwise I agree with most of what you say.
@23, how many earn that much? Most of the vendors I see are stuck with those poles of inedible cotton candy in a tub, or other gunk. Most of them aren’t old enough to sell beer, which suggests that there aren’t a ton of lucrative spots available. And the people at the food booths — we paid a billion dollars for fast food jobs?
Like I said I agree with most of what you said. The guys who bust their butts can earn pretty good money even if they’re slinging souveniers. Nobody’s going to get rich but you earn more than min. wage if you work as a vendor (not at the snack stands) a host or security guard. It’s like anyplace else, filled with crappy low-paid jobs, some good ones and a few really good ones. I still don’t agree with cities paying for a stadium or cutting tax breaks to make it practically free.
17 is absolutely right – to say out of the vast budgets of federal, state, and local government that somehow sports stadiums and public transportation are an either/or proposition is ridiculous.
@ PC,
Washington DC and the State of Washington were both named after our first President, George Washington.
@ Charles,
The average American is a moron. The average voting American is too intellectually lazy to realize this. They vote based on the best commercials on TV, versus actual facts. They fund entertainment for the rich, while public services go wanting, based on the flimsy premise that big business will pay more in taxes (despite generous tax breaks) , and public services are too expensive. They’ll spend $4 million dollars on the funeral of a rich man, but won’t fund homeless shelters.
@21, if you want to look down on the middle class you have two ways: the aristocratic way or the marxists way. both have contempt for this one group. because i have no royal blood in me (though my father claims my grandmother is the granddaughter of a princess and a warrior), my way is the marxist way.