SOS: Stadiums Or Schools
I live in NYC. I went to the Jets game a couple of weeks ago. First pro football game I’d been to since I was a kid. A lot of fun. Last night I turned on TBS and watched the Yankees win their first game of the post-season. I didn’t have much interest in the Mets’ miserable year.
What these 3 franchises have in common, besides their geographic proximity, is that they play in stadiums that sit next to abandoned stadiums that have been deemed obsolete or, in the Jets case, next to the stadium they’ll occupy next season, as their current home is due to be mothballed following the current campaign.
So in this era of gargantuan government deficits, whether national or local, government largesse has been extended to the fat cats who own professional teams, while government belt tightening causes increasingly crowded classrooms, decreasing social services, and higher property taxes.
It’s not like the pro teams couldn’t live without their new digs; they just felt they needed more luxury boxes and softer seats to satisfy their elite season ticket holders. And yes, I’m aware that building the new stadiums required a labor force that had two years of steady work. Ask them now how they feel about the ultimately toxic combination of their current unemployment and their kids receiving a sub-par education that takes the “D” out of American Dream.
It’s a poor reflection on our system and society when we subsidize the class that doesn’t need subsidizing, while imposing harsher burdens on the class that does.
And it’s an indication of our shortsightedness as we slowly destroy the middle class workers/consumers that have kept this country humming.
We”ll keep humming, but it’s no longer a happy tune.
5 Comments
Leave a Response
Additional comments powered by BackType
Just another in the long list of outrageous actions in the name of free enterprise.
There will be a war in this country – but not a culture war or a race war. It will be a class war……the haves vs. the have-nots. And there are a lot more have-nots than haves…….and their numbers are growing every day that more jobs are lost and the recession goes on.
The primary role of government is to look out for the health and safety of its people. We have not been and still are not doing that.
Get the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan NOW. Save all that money and all those lives. Neither of those wars can be won.
Spend all that money on insuring that everyone has access to affordable health care……that schools teach people how to think.
How do you think the culture war will come to a conclusion? The country is very divided. Do you think there may be armed confrontations. Military action?
I would like to think that the cultures would blend together and everyone would learn to live in peace and harmony, but I think while religious fundamentalists become more extreme, that seems a remote possibility.
The culture war is a lie fabricated by the extreme right to distract from real issues. The real war in America is a class war.
the culture war. as long as the DEMS keep bringing in the illegals, the war is won on that side. if the REPS can take some control back and secure our borders, the war is won on this side. I am voting for the REPS