New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg’s running for a third term, and assures us that he’s spent the last eight years busily fighting the good fight on behalf of middle-class New Yorkers.
Consider the deal he cut with the Mets and Yankees when they proposed building two new stadiums to replace two perfectly functional ballparks. Neither team pays rent or property taxes on the city-owned land donated for the projects. In fact, the city condemned parkland for the new Yankee Stadium, promising to substitute artificial turf on the roofs of new Yankee parking garages. Stadium construction was financed through $1.9 billion of tax-free municipal bonds and the teams received a indirect subsidy of $640 million to upgrade the roads and train stations around the stadiums. All in all, the Daily News estimates that it adds up to a $1.2 billion check from taxpayers to two for-profit private partnerships. Oh, and the stadiums were built smaller, because limited product commands higher prices. All so the boys of summer can charge $350 (Yankees) or $90-$210 (Mets) a seat to sit twenty rows back from the field (or where I sat for $15 in high school).
Mayor Bhujle would’ve taken a slightly different tack if Steinbrenner or Wilpon had come sniffing around City Hall for taxpayer subsidies. I’d have encouraged the Mets and Yankees to shop their product around. See how much they’d make if they became the Las Vegas Yankees (2006 Metropolitan Area GDP: $92 billion). Or maybe the San Antonio Mets ($73 billion). I’d remind them of the size of the New York market ($1,124 billion) as I summarily threw their asses out of my office. I’d then get back to work, figuring out how I might use that $1.2 billion to get the Second Avenue Subway built faster, or maybe to pay the police better, or perhaps to fix leaky school roofs quicker.
Then I’d feel I’d earned the right to make a commercial like this:
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Enemies Everywhere
There was Obama in Europe, practically declaring himself an Al-Qaeda operative by claiming that America is not a Christian nation! Doesn’t he know that America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles? God only knows what those non Judeo-Christian heathens believe in, but I’m damn sure it’s not mom, baseball and apple pie.
And why is he wasting time visiting Europe, populated as it is by socialists? Not just socialists, but the worst kind: European socialists who ride bikes to their five hours-a-week jobs and then take trains to beach resorts for their six-month vacations. These are the people that we’re apologizing to for our arrogance? They should be thanking us for being arrogant enough to save them from Hitler and the Russians. And speaking of the Russians, there was Obama, kissing up to Comrade Medvedev and the Red Chinese during the G20 summit! Ronald Reagan would’ve never wasted time talking to socialists, let alone communists!
You won’t catch me vacationing up north this summer, either. Those Canadians betrayed us by staying out of Vietnam and Iraq, and then they think everything’s peachy when they change their Daylight Savings Time dates to correspond with ours. It’s only called “the longest undefended border in the world” because we haven’t gotten around to invading them yet. And maybe the time has come to rid North America
of universal health care and the French language once and for all.
But Canadians are an undercard to those Muslims! They may not be able to make a decent toaster, but those Islamofacist thugs are the #1 threat to our way of life. And Obama wants to negotiate with suicidal Iranian mullahs bent on building a nuke and Fedexing it to Osama? What a waste of time. We all know that negotiations work best when Presidents declare “You’re either with us or against us.” Toughness is the best medicine for these folks, like when we orchestrated the 1953 coup against a democratically elected Iranian prime minister. No wonder they hate us for our freedom.
But enemies also lurk closer to home. Can you believe that Obama shook hands with Hugo Chavez! No doubt he’s teaming up with Fidel(and probably Al Qaeda and the Mexican drug cartels) to destroy our English-speaking, SUV-driving ways. And in close partnership with that gay liberal Marxist-Fascist Barney Frank, who’s plotting to make all of us embrace his sick lifestyle. Give these Harvard/Upper West Side/Hollywood liberals a few more years in power, and they’ll have you driving down to the government-owned bank in your government-mandated Prius to hand in your guns, wait in line for an abortion, and pick up your assigned gay partner on the way out.
Anyway, gotta run. Sean is interviewing Rush on Fox.
And why is he wasting time visiting Europe, populated as it is by socialists? Not just socialists, but the worst kind: European socialists who ride bikes to their five hours-a-week jobs and then take trains to beach resorts for their six-month vacations. These are the people that we’re apologizing to for our arrogance? They should be thanking us for being arrogant enough to save them from Hitler and the Russians. And speaking of the Russians, there was Obama, kissing up to Comrade Medvedev and the Red Chinese during the G20 summit! Ronald Reagan would’ve never wasted time talking to socialists, let alone communists!
You won’t catch me vacationing up north this summer, either. Those Canadians betrayed us by staying out of Vietnam and Iraq, and then they think everything’s peachy when they change their Daylight Savings Time dates to correspond with ours. It’s only called “the longest undefended border in the world” because we haven’t gotten around to invading them yet. And maybe the time has come to rid North America
of universal health care and the French language once and for all.
But Canadians are an undercard to those Muslims! They may not be able to make a decent toaster, but those Islamofacist thugs are the #1 threat to our way of life. And Obama wants to negotiate with suicidal Iranian mullahs bent on building a nuke and Fedexing it to Osama? What a waste of time. We all know that negotiations work best when Presidents declare “You’re either with us or against us.” Toughness is the best medicine for these folks, like when we orchestrated the 1953 coup against a democratically elected Iranian prime minister. No wonder they hate us for our freedom.
But enemies also lurk closer to home. Can you believe that Obama shook hands with Hugo Chavez! No doubt he’s teaming up with Fidel(and probably Al Qaeda and the Mexican drug cartels) to destroy our English-speaking, SUV-driving ways. And in close partnership with that gay liberal Marxist-Fascist Barney Frank, who’s plotting to make all of us embrace his sick lifestyle. Give these Harvard/Upper West Side/Hollywood liberals a few more years in power, and they’ll have you driving down to the government-owned bank in your government-mandated Prius to hand in your guns, wait in line for an abortion, and pick up your assigned gay partner on the way out.
Anyway, gotta run. Sean is interviewing Rush on Fox.
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