Sports

Guide to Golf in Connecticut (Ct Magazine.)

...the big four commercial sports make operating profits of $1.6 billion, Forbes has calculated - but their taxpayer subsidies exceed $2 billion a year (and that's before the estimated $864 million Mayor Bloomberg and Uncle Sam just handed to the New York Yankees) according to Neil deMause, coauthor of a book on sports subsidies. In other words, taxpayers literally provide all the profits of MLB, the NFL, NBA, and NHL combined. David Cay Johnston in Mother Jones January/February 2009


(from Public Citizen)

$10 million. This is the amount of money Bank of America - currently receiving $45 billion in bailout funds - spent on a five-day Super Bowl promotional blitz.

Just think what even a portion of that $10 million could mean to citizens like you and me. It could mean the difference between foreclosure and keeping a home, between unemployment and keeping a job, between skimping on prescriptions and affording health insurance.

Yesterday, we told you about Public Citizen's new campaign, Operation Accountability, and our goal to gather 100,000 signatures in favor of giving Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis a pink slip. Thousands of activists have already signed, calling for an end to irresponsible corporate spending before one more penny of taxpayer money is spent on a bailout.

Will you join us in taking action? http://action.citizen.org/t/6693/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=1823


 

(From a Democracy Now interview of January, 2008. David Cay Johnston talks about his new book Free Lunch.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON:... George Steinbrenner is getting over $600 million for the new Yankee Stadium in New York. The New York Mets are getting over $600 million. In fact, the City of New York gave them money to lobby against the taxpayers to get more money. Rudy Giuliani gave $50 million to the two teams for that purpose.

The new owners of the Washington Nationals baseball team in Washington, D.C., paid $450 million for the team. But, in fact, they got the team for free, because the subsidy they’re getting for the new stadium is worth $611 million. We actually paid these people to buy the team.

Now, in this country right now, we are spending $2 billion a year subsidizing the big four sports: baseball, basketball, football and hockey. It accounts for all of the profits of that industry and more. Now, there may be individual teams that make money, but the industry as a whole is not profitable. And that’s astonishing because the big four leagues are exempt from the laws of competition. By the way, irony is not dead, because here are people who are in the business of competition on the field who are exempted by law from the rules of economic competition.

(read more of this) to find out how George W. Bush became wealthy. It is an amazing sports story.

Congress Probes How New Sports Stadiums Turn Public Money into Private Profit

Casinos Paid Politicians Big Bucks to Keep Gambling on College Sports Legal (2001)

Ten Biggest Naming Rights Deals

Top Ten Dumbest reasons to build a new Stadium

Field of Schemes

Chavez Loyalists push to close Golf Courses (8/12/2009)

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