Friday, March 07, 2008

The Cold Turkeys, by gimleteye

Michael Lewis does a fine job untangling the crime to the public interest embedded in the terrible deal approved by City and County commissioners for a new professional baseball stadium for the Marlins.

The question of the day: how long can our elected officials-- at least the majority of them--continue as though their only job is to accommodate real estate flippers?

Perhaps the majority of our elected officials don't know any other way to behave.

The terms of the ballpark agreement are so beneficial to the Marlin's ownership, who would reap a multi-hundred dollar windfall when they decide to flip the team to new owners, it begs investigation by law enforcement. (Oops: law enforcement is too wrapped up nabbing college kids who collected signatures against county commissioner Natacha Seijas.)

It leaves one wondering, again, for the ten thousandth time: where is the voice of the Miami Herald editorial page?

What Miami needs more than any ballpark or museum is to replace the unreformable majority of city commissioners and county commissioners who are serial violators of the public interest.

In recognition of the fact that advertising dollars from the real estate flippers are not coming back-- gone like wisps from a crack pipe-- I propose a new name for the Miami Marlins. Let them be called, The Cold Turkeys.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

appears both these posts could be written as one:"County Commissioners serial violators of the public interest."

Anonymous said...

Why do you hate anyone that purchases real estate as in investment?

Anonymous said...

The city and county commissioners who voted to waste taxpayer dollars are delusional. Who actually thinks taxpayers need to support multi-millionaire baseball team owners and players. And the players mostly live in Broward County. Could it be that selected insiders will be getting some of the $650 mil in baseball stadium money?

And what about those museums? Another disaster waiting to happen.

The North Coast said...

To the "anonymous" who asked why we hate "anyone who invests in real estate".

We hate anyone who invests the taxpayer's dollars in real estate to profit only the developer/seller/politician's crony who will be the principal beneficiary at the expense of the taxpayers.

WE are being looted to death in every city, coast to coast, to benefit centimillionaire sports team owners, politicians' cronies, and megabucks developers.

Look at any sports stadium, big box store, half-vacant shopping mall, and anything at all funded by TIFs, and consider you and I helped pay for this, and consider what our return on investment is.

What you're seeing is the death of our cities and neighborhoods, and our own financial decimation as individuals and as communities, to benefit the politically connected and already-rich.

SteveBM said...

This is a sore topic for me as it really blows my mind. I fail to see how investing $585M+ on a PAC that appeals to a small section of the population (and loses money daily at an alarming rate) and then tossing another $500M+ to build a stadium for the Marlins makes any sense, especially when this city has a major problem with public transportation. Thats over 1 BILLION DOLLARS and both of those initiatives only appeal to a small section of the population and a very small one at that. That money would be better spent towards a method of public transportation, especially since the next brain bustling idea is to have us citizens pay to use special lanes on 95 if we want to avoid traffic. Total bullshit.

Anonymous said...

The county has 100 ways to spend your money on speicality projects while crying poor mounth on projects that benefit large numbers of taxpayers. How about the water theme park at metrozoo? How about the S Dade performing arts center and the big PAC? How about the old arena? How about the FAT, FAT slush funds for commissioners that they use to buy votes?It's never ending but there is no money for roads, courts,parks,or County staff (the workers not the administrators).

Anonymous said...

How about wasting $500 mil on the proposed two-three museums? On public waterfront park land? Even if the museum promotors wrest away the taxpayers money then who will cover the massive operating losses? Massive operating losses.