Collectivist utopias never work. We’ve been told that over and over by the good folks over at the National Review (or, at least, back when people read it). You would think Gary Bettman was a subscriber. But he was out working the fields and writing poetry, and now the NHL is belly up, another dashed dream of Bolshevism. As a consequence, NFL owners are looking warily at the implosion. Sure, their ‘intentional community’ always had nicer digs, and was more popular with townies (they probably had better drugs), but their old magic — convincing powerful, moneyed pseudo-liberals to fund their self-involved exploits — is faltering.
Wednesday, the Giants blinked when whatever crony-saddled private public partnership that runs the Meadowlands demanded a last-minute change to their clusterfuck of an agreement to expand the locus of Northern New Jersey culture. I can’t quite sort out the details, but the state wanted a guaranteed $3 million if the Jets deal fell through — or didn’t, I can’t remember — and somehow it is related to an “entertainment complex” called Xanadu (god, don’t you hope it will entail a skating rink — or at least opiates?) and a horse racing track. Anyhoo, the team put their foot down. Stamped it just like a petulant eight-year-old who still has 20 more years of parental hegemony staring them in the face. Why? Because the Giants’ leass runs until 2026. That’s right, the Giants’ lease will last longer than Social Security.
Like any good, family-funded anarchists, the Tischs’ & Co. seem to think that other people should not only love their communist paradise, replete with revenue sharing, centralized planning, and wage control (hell, they pay for everyone’s health care too, right? Fucking socialists.), but they want them to pay for it as well. Sure, they were gonna pony up some scratch, but they were also asking for a distinctly hippie-like rent of $1 a year, which was about one six-millionth what the mean old gubmen was asking for.
Today, the government got real, going to court just to show how serious they are. So serious that the Giants haven’t even tried to break their lease yet, but just in case they are thinking about it, there’s a lawsuit waiting. Mike, ever the coy debutante, played it distinctly cool, adding more evidence to the speculation that his nose need be medically extracted from Woody Jonhson’s ass.
Maybe we should just get real about revenue sources: Giants Stadium should be renamed Springsteen Stadium. Or Mike should build one over here. Considering that The Boss can draw better in two weeks than either the Giants or Jets do in a year, and it creates less scheduling conflicts, and you can have a much more event-friendly seating plan, why not back a winner for once? Of course, that would obviate the homoerotic Mandingo fantasy of pasty white guys buying, selling, and trading big, brawny guys who get all sweaty for them every Sunday.
No, no, let’s erase such thinking and get back to the tawdry soap opera that everyone lamented would be impossible if we voted in someone as dry and unexciting as Bloomberg. Just in case you haven’t honed your sense of irony precisely enough by reading Vice, you can mull over how interesting it is that every day, another rich, powerful guy makes noises about how he can get it done better, and then turns around as asks the goverment for a handout to kick start the process. You will wonder if that concept hasn’t been tried elsewhere, and been massively (if incorrectly) discredited over and over, by those very same guys. There is even a specialized name for it: welfare.
ON A RELATED NOTE, there is an excellent round-up at Transfer, a site that makes me sometimes think I’m not that mean a guy after all, on a particularly noxius eminent domain dustup in Connecticut. Since it’s gone national, it may be that a favorable ruling for the property owners might mean that the Times has to pay market-rate pricing for a development site in, oh, 43 years or so.
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Giant stoops.
Collectivist utopias never work. We’ve been told that over and over by the good folks over at the National Review (or, at least, back when people read it). You would think Gary Bettman was a subscriber. But he was out working the fields and writing poetry, and now the NHL is belly up, another dashed dream of Bolshevism. As a consequence, NFL owners are looking warily at the implosion. Sure, their ‘intentional community’ always had nicer digs, and was more popular with townies (they probably had better drugs), but their old magic — convincing powerful, moneyed pseudo-liberals to fund their self-involved exploits — is faltering.
Wednesday, the Giants blinked when whatever crony-saddled private public partnership that runs the Meadowlands demanded a last-minute change to their clusterfuck of an agreement to expand the locus of Northern New Jersey culture. I can’t quite sort out the details, but the state wanted a guaranteed $3 million if the Jets deal fell through — or didn’t, I can’t remember — and somehow it is related to an “entertainment complex” called Xanadu (god, don’t you hope it will entail a skating rink — or at least opiates?) and a horse racing track. Anyhoo, the team put their foot down. Stamped it just like a petulant eight-year-old who still has 20 more years of parental hegemony staring them in the face. Why? Because the Giants’ leass runs until 2026. That’s right, the Giants’ lease will last longer than Social Security.
Like any good, family-funded anarchists, the Tischs’ & Co. seem to think that other people should not only love their communist paradise, replete with revenue sharing, centralized planning, and wage control (hell, they pay for everyone’s health care too, right? Fucking socialists.), but they want them to pay for it as well. Sure, they were gonna pony up some scratch, but they were also asking for a distinctly hippie-like rent of $1 a year, which was about one six-millionth what the mean old gubmen was asking for.
Today, the government got real, going to court just to show how serious they are. So serious that the Giants haven’t even tried to break their lease yet, but just in case they are thinking about it, there’s a lawsuit waiting. Mike, ever the coy debutante, played it distinctly cool, adding more evidence to the speculation that his nose need be medically extracted from Woody Jonhson’s ass.
Maybe we should just get real about revenue sources: Giants Stadium should be renamed Springsteen Stadium. Or Mike should build one over here. Considering that The Boss can draw better in two weeks than either the Giants or Jets do in a year, and it creates less scheduling conflicts, and you can have a much more event-friendly seating plan, why not back a winner for once? Of course, that would obviate the homoerotic Mandingo fantasy of pasty white guys buying, selling, and trading big, brawny guys who get all sweaty for them every Sunday.
No, no, let’s erase such thinking and get back to the tawdry soap opera that everyone lamented would be impossible if we voted in someone as dry and unexciting as Bloomberg. Just in case you haven’t honed your sense of irony precisely enough by reading Vice, you can mull over how interesting it is that every day, another rich, powerful guy makes noises about how he can get it done better, and then turns around as asks the goverment for a handout to kick start the process. You will wonder if that concept hasn’t been tried elsewhere, and been massively (if incorrectly) discredited over and over, by those very same guys. There is even a specialized name for it: welfare.
ON A RELATED NOTE, there is an excellent round-up at Transfer, a site that makes me sometimes think I’m not that mean a guy after all, on a particularly noxius eminent domain dustup in Connecticut. Since it’s gone national, it may be that a favorable ruling for the property owners might mean that the Times has to pay market-rate pricing for a development site in, oh, 43 years or so.