Most hardball political tactics are unattractive, but I have a soft spot for this from the notoriously brass-knuckled mayor of Chicago:
The Chicago angle on this is that Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s former chief of staff, has been trying to put together a deal for the city to put $100 million or more in tax incentives into a Wrigley [Field] rebuild.
Now, Joe Ricketts’ political support for conservative causes is no secret. And his children, particularly son Tom Ricketts, run the team day to day.
Beyond that, another of Joe Ricketts’ kids, daughter Laura Ricketts, is a lesbian activist and major fund-raiser for Mr. Obama.
Still, it’s not unfair to ask whether money the city would ship the Cubs would free up family cash to trash Mr. Obama. At a bare minimum, the timing is very, very, very awkward.
Joe Ricketts wants to spend 10 million dollars or more trashing the president with scurrilous attacks during the Democratic National Convention. He may not approve a plan that was presented to him to revitalize the Jeremiah Wright controversy, but he solicited that plan and others. He did that at the very same time that Rahm Emaunuel was working on a plan to help his family upgrade the aging home of the Chicago Cubs.
The Mayor was livid when he read that the Ricketts were going to launch a $10 million campaign against President Obama – with the type of racially motivated ads that are insulting to the president and the presidential campaign,” said the aide, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the situation. “He is also livid with their blatant hypocrisy.”
The aide also said Emanuel, who is Obama’s former chief of staff, has cut off communication with the family.
“The Ricketts have tried to contact the mayor, but he’s said that he does not want to talk with them today, tomorrow or anytime soon,” the aide said.
If your family is so rich that it can blow 10 million bucks on advertising that is unrelated to your businesses then you can easily come up with 100 million to renovate Wrigley Field. Even if Emanuel was not a former consigliere of the president, he would find it politically impossible to continue his support for the Wrigley project. Chicago, after all, is a Democratic town that loves the president. But he is a former consigliere. And that means that a certain family is now dead to him.
This idiotMr. Ricketts is, of course, free to go beg a loan from his friendly neighborhood bankster, like most of us lesser individuals on the socio-political ladder. Good luck Mr. Ricketts – have your checkbook ready for the closing fees and happy interest paying. Too bad the taxpayers of Chicago won’t be picking up your tab.We should mail everyone in Rickett’s immediate family an “I’m With Stupid” T-shirt.
The problem with that, of course, is that he would have to raise his personal debt ceiling, which he won’t do unless there are corresponding spending cuts, like reducing the Cubs payroll.
Umm, no. Please see my post downstream.
no fan of Rahmbo, but BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAH
“he does not want to talk with them today, tomorrow or anytime soon.”
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
You brought a smile to my face, Booman!
So. The main benefactor of a superpac called Ending Spending wants $100M in tax breaks to fund his business empire and plans to spend $10M attacking the President for excessive spending using racially charged imagery and he expects Obama’s former hard man to support him in his endeavours?
When cognitive dissonance couples with hubris, the results ain’t pretty.
Are you keeping an eye on what’s happening in Rhode Island?
Republican uber-duche Curt Schilling took out a $75,000,000 loan to start his game studio back by Rhode Island. The game was actually pretty fun, but no where near popular enough to cover the costs. Basically Schilling’s company (38 Studios) is in the slow motion process of going belly up and forcing the state of Rhode Island to have to repay the loan itself with, which interest, comes to +$1,120,000.
Yeah taxes are evil, Schilling you fucking asshole. That’s why you want to hoover up tax money and not deal with the consequences.
Whoops, $112,000,000 forgot some zeroes.
I get it, but I’m not sure who the fool(s) is/are here.
When it comes to the sports cartel, there’s plenty of precedent for the wealthy owners of professional sports teams to extort massive amounts of public money for new stadiums for their teams.
Prime example being Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and one of the wealthiest men in the U.S.. So wealthy that he owns two teams in Washington, the Portland Trailblazers and the Seattle Seahawks.
In 1996-1997, prior to Allen buying the Seahawks in 1997, he “lobbied aggressively” for a new stadium to be built for the team, and some of the cost (in this case $300 Million out of the total $425 Million cost) be paid for by Washington taxpayers.
This extortion was put to public referendum; Washington Referendum 48, and barely won- by less than three percent of the vote. The democratic governor at the time supported this use of public funding.
This scenario has been repeated again and again in nearly every city where the team owner(s) demanded a new stadium.
Thus it’s no surprise the owner of the Cubs demands public money (my understanding is the total is more like $200 Mil) for new construction on property adjacent to Wrigley Field.
It’s irrelevant whether Mr. Ricketts can afford to finance his project solely with his money. Why should he when typically cities/states eagerly help with the cost?
If Illinois was not so far in the hole, it’s a no brainer they would cough up some money, because after all, the Cubs are sooooooo important to the state economy.
http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Washington_Public_Stadium_Authority,_Referred_Bill_48_(June_1997)
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/05/joe-ricketts-man-behind-new-super-pac-loves-corporate-welfar
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Thanks largely to former House Speaker Tom Finneran (part of a trifecta of convicted speakers here in the Commonwealth), Massachusetts adopted a policy about 20 years ago of refusing to use public dollars for stadium/arena/ballpark construction.
The state will pay (and has paid generously) for “infrastructure improvements” near sports stadiums. But thanks to the “Finneran Rule”, Massachusetts paid nothing for Gillette Stadium (Patriots), the Garden (Bruins and Celtics), or Fenway Park (Red Sox)—all of which are newly built or expanded in the past 20 years.
Thanks, this is a good example of how it should be done, but more often than not, this is not how it’s done.
love this story so much! – love the Mr. T title, Boo. love all the comments, guys.
kind of limited internet access right now, but logging in to share the laughs. and btw, Happy Birthday Cabin Girl!!! hope a delicious Cabin Cake was part of the celebration.
It’s cool this is going down but…
…he’s currently doing his level best to undermine the power of the State of Minnesota in a dispute with one of his buddies.
Take the bad with the good but hey Rahm, fuck you.
I said it yesterday and I mean it..fuck them getting one damn dollar of Chicago taxpayer monies.