VID: Carson Should Just Say 'No' to New Football Stadium
A plan to build a new football stadium in Carson, CA came one step closer to reality this week after the Los Angeles registrar certified that the measure had the signatures needed to qualify for a spot on the ballot.
Carson city council members will meet on Tuesday to decide whether to approve the ballot initiative for a public vote or bypass the process altogether and adopt the plan outright.
In February, the Inglewood city council adopted a plan to build an NFL stadium at the old Hollywood Park site. St. Louis Ram's owner Stan Kroenke has said that he will privately fund the construction of the proposed stadium so he can move the Rams back to Los Angeles.
The San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders are hoping a competing stadium plan in nearby Carson will be an alternative home if they cannot work out favorable deals in their hometowns. While details about the financing have yet to be released, the plan is reported to be similar to the San Francisco 49'er's stadium deal in Santa Clara, CA which required over $600 million in construction loans from the city.
Reason TV recently sat down with Chapman University's Joel Kotkin to talk about why giving public cash for stadium projects is a really bad idea. Produced by Alexis Garcia. Approximately 5 minutes. Original release date was March 17, 2015 and the original writeup is below.
"Anybody that drives around Southern California can tell you the infrastructure is falling apart," says Joel Kotkin, a fellow of urban studies at Chapman University and author of the book The New Class Conflict. "And then we're going to give money so a bunch of corporate executives can watch a football game eight times a year? It's absurd."
When the Inglewood City Council voted unanimously to approve a $1.8 billion stadium plan on February 24th, hundreds of football fans in attendance cheered for the prospect of a team finally returning to the Los Angeles area.
On it's face, the deal for the city of Inglewood is unprecedented—Rams owner Stan Kroenke has agreed to finance construction of the stadium entirely with private funds. The deal makes the stadium one of the most expensive facilities ever built and is an oddity in the sports world, where most stadiums require millions in public dollars to be constructed.
And while the city still waits to hear if it will indeed inherit an NFL team, the progress on the new privately-funded Inglewood stadium has set off a bidding war between other cities that are offering up millions in public subsidies to keep (or attract) pro-sports franchises to their area.
St. Louis has proposed a billion dollar waterfront stadium financed with $400 million in tax money to keep the Rams in Missouri. And the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders have unveiled a plan to turn a former landfill in Carson, California, into a $1.7 billion stadium to keep the Rams from encroaching on their turf. While full details of the plan have yet to be released, it's been reported that the financing would be similar to the San Francisco 49er's deal in Santa Clara, which saw the team receive $621 million in construction loans paid for with public money.
Even the fiscally conservative Scott Walker is not immune to the stadium spending craze. The Wisconsin governor wants to allocate $220 million in public bonds to keep the Milwaukee Bucks basketball franchise in the area. Walker has dubbed the financing scheme as the "Pay Their Way" plan, but professional sports teams rarely pay their fair share when it comes to stadiums and instead use public money to generate private revenue.
Pacific Standard magazine has reported that in the last 20 years, the U.S. has opened 101 new sports facilities and stadium finance experts say that almost all of them have received public funding totaling billions of dollars. Politicians generally rationalize this expense by stating that stadiums will generate economic revenue and job opportunities for the city, but Kotkin says those promises are rarely realized.
"I think this is sort of a fanciful approach towards economic development instead of building really good jobs. And except for the construction, the jobs created by stadia are generally low wage occasional work."
"The important thing that we've forgotten is 'What is the purpose of a government?'" asks Kotkin. "Cities instead of fixing their schools, fixing their roads or fixing their sewers or fixing their water are putting money into ephemera like stadia. And in the end, what's more important?"
Produced by Alexis Garcia. Camera by Garcia and Justin Monticello. Music by Jason Shaw.
Approximately 5 minutes.
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Why does Reason hate America?
America is the offspring of tired angels who group-fucked after playing volleyball with various planets, AJB.
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The Rams? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
“The important thing that we’ve forgotten is ‘What is the purpose of a government?'”
To provide bread and circuses?
and to employ idiots
Yes, and….
To perpetuate government?
…yes.
This person knows the proper purpose of government.
Charter schools are based on the logic of markets. Traditional public schools, by contrast, are based on the logic of the polis.
The market model assumes that people are rational agents, who make fully informed decisions to maximize their own (or their children’s) self-interest. In an unfettered market, popular products will be replicated to keep up with demand, while unpopular products should be discontinued. The market vaunts competition over collaboration; it prefers deregulation to oversight; and, it prizes the bottom line over any other possible value proposition. Consumer choice is the animating force of markets.
However….
In the polis model, people’s motivations are understood as complex, but not exclusively self-interested. People can and will act out of shared values and a sense of mutual responsibility. Nonetheless, government has a role to play, too, serving as a counterbalance to market pressures that might lead to “the tragedy of the commons,” when individuals acting out of self-interest deplete a common or shared resource. Governmental oversight and involvement can also help guard against corruption, cronyism and other market machinations and combat the marginalization of citizens who lack the capital (economic or otherwise) to make markets work for them. The driving forces of the polis model are protecting the interests of the most vulnerable, while safeguarding the democratic rights of all citizens.
WRECKERS!
government has a role to play, too, serving as a counterbalance to market pressures that might lead to “the tragedy of the commons,”
Someone does not understand what “tragedy of the commons” means, I see.
Governmental oversight and involvement can also help guard against corruption, cronyism
And just holy flipping derp.
Yeah, reading that was like being slapped. I almost fell out of my chair.
It’s what happens when someone who can’t even conceive of a free market attempts to write about the free market.
She understands the words that define the term, but she misapplies the term because she thinks that schools are a “commodity” and not a “service.”
Educrats are not oil, water, or gems. They are below-average babysitters for the most part, with the occasionally competent teacher stuck in the turdpile.
So… education is a shared resource? And it can be depleted?
The driving forces of the polis model are protecting the interests of the most vulnerable, while safeguarding the democratic rights of all citizens.
How cute.
The zero-sum mentality is on full display.
There are many reasons why charter school proponents may be tiring of defending their sector. But until they can mount a robust argument about how their sector fulfills the democratic imperative of public education, let us refuse to allow them to shift our gaze away from those students left behind.
The willful ignorance on display in that article is truly impressive.
Imagine the horror if she connected her “students left behind” with W and his compassionate conservatism.
Yeah, and when charters *do* focus on helping the “children left behind,” progs write headlines like this:
“Dynamic Community Charter School is rallying parents and lobbying lawmakers. But should its model of segregating special-needs kids even be allowed to exist?”
http://www.indyweek.com/indywe…..id=4371398
As if these concern-trolls weren’t actually interested in having charters serve special-needs students.
I liked this bit of concern trolling recently from WaPo.
The most recent cautionary tale comes from North Carolina, where professors at Duke have traced a troubling trend of resegregation since the first charters opened in 1997. They contend that North Carolina’s charter schools have become a way for white parents to secede from the public school system, as they once did to escape racial integration orders.
Yeah, because black parents have no interest at all in “escaping” (what a revealing word!) the regular public schools in favor of charters.
All those applicants for seats in charter schools? All by whites! Blacks are perfectly content where they are. The public-school establishment knows what’s best for blacks, and they don’t want outside agitators giving them ideas.
The education plantation.
At least they served bacon on the plantations. Try ordering bacon at a public-school cafeteria.
OT:
The Hoff. Trigger warning: Nazis
A masterpiece.
Carson should say no to a football stadium even if it were entirely privately financed. Because Raiders.
Even Carson is a step up from Oakland. Just sayin’
“But until they can mount a robust argument about how their sector fulfills the democratic imperative of public education, let us refuse to allow them to shift our gaze away from those students left behind.”
Whut? I keep reading that but it makes no sense to me.
Charter schools are dismissed out of hand because they can’t, in her opinion, mount a robust argument that they fulfill a ‘democratic imperative of public education’, whatever the fuck that is. Never mind that charter school kids do so much better than PS students.
Shifting our gaze away from those students left behind? I don’t know what that means. If there are public schools operating, how are students left behind? Is she saying that no one should be able to excel because everyone can’t excel? Public schools are crappy so we can’t allow good schools to exist?
I think she is full of shit.
They are arguing that devoting resources to charter schools hurts public schools, so the students that can’t get into the charter schools are “left behind” in a public school system that increasingly serves the worst performing students, thus leading to more cries to devote resources to better charter schools, further hurting public schools, etc etc.
But they fail to answer a very simply question: How does one fix public schools? Because the model of the past several decades isn’t working.
Meanwhile, you know what it is? Charter schools.
The fact that charter schools and school choice actually are the way to save public education either doesn’t register or, worse, registers completely and is the main reason they hate charter schools in the first place.
Their answer is always more money. But they will never say how much per student they need. Not like that hasn’t been proven to be false anyhow.
I don’t think it’s entirely false. Affluent areas will often have good public schools and it stands to reason that at least part of that is because they can afford good teachers, good facilities, etc.
But affluent areas also have educated and involved parents and stable home lives, which is probably more important than the money.
I was going to point out how Utah spends less per student than any other state in the United States but 91% of the population has at least a high school diploma.
Probably some kind of wacky Mormon stuff.
Leave them behind…
The World Needs Ditch Diggers, Too
“Is she saying that no one should be able to excel because everyone can’t excel?”
Yes. That is what progressive truely believe. That is why they want to turn the US into a third world country. Because it’s only fair that we all be equal. Of course we know from their instruction manual that some animals are more equal than others. Those would be your Philosopher Kings or Vanguard, ie liberal elitist.
Harrison Bergeron was supposed to be a cautionary tale, not a blueprint…
Open carry in Texas? Not if the cops can help it.
While most Democrat amendments failed, the final bill did include a compromise to include concerns from police.
While some lawmakers pushed for so-called constitutional-carry where no license is required, the legislature finally opted to require a special open-carry permit for which owners have to apply.Those poor policemen. We cannot allow the proles to have an equal footing.
I am really surprised Texas isn’t already open carry.
It is completely bizarre to me that there are places that allow CC but not OC. Seems completely backwards.
Guns are, like, super-scary and intimidating to the general public. Unless you’re wearing a badge, then it’s okay.
But…
TEXAS!
IIRC, PA used to allow OC but it was next to impossible to get a CC permit (this was 40 years ago).
Because the rent won’t wait
Just wanted to share a well-crafted, honest piece of journalism.
Oh, they said did they.
I guess that is better?
Why are they working there if the salary is so terrible? I’m sure it doesn’t come close to allowing them to subsist. Oh, what’s that, while the classification of poverty is set for incomes below a certain amount (conveniently excluding government assistance) living in poverty is a completely subjective term. Maybe they should adjust their lifestyles to better fit their income.
But if people did just that then who would take all those entry level jobs? They wouldn’t have anyone to fill them and they’d have to offer more money to people to get them to.. oh, wait..
Not to mention that no job in NYC pays “minimum wage”. My first job here – a hotel job which requires zero skill other than tolerating the public – paid $10 an hour (something like 4 dollars over the minimum) and that was almost 20 years ago.
These people are lying liars.
This warms my heart =
People in Switzerland, racing American Muscle Cars up a mountain. Glorious.
It makes me feel good to know that while there are masses of tards protesting capitalism in Europe right now, there’s at least still some Swiss Rednecks doing burnouts in the Alps.
Oops.
FBI overstated forensic hair matches in nearly all trials before 2000
Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country’s largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.
The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death. Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison, the groups said under an agreement with the government to release results after the review of the first 200 convictions.
Pay of $15 an hour would save taxpayers $200-$500 million a year in food stamps and Medicaid spending, his report said.
Yeah, right. Because those benefit eligibility levels won’t be adjusted for inflation.
What will happen is thousands will lose their jobs and need even more state assistance. This isn’t an effort to raise people above the poverty line, it is an effort to enslave the proles. They want them dependent on the state for their every need.
Like others here I have given up on the notion that these people are well intentioned but mistaken. The Iron law holds: Foreseeable consequences are not unintended. They are just plain evil.
What amazes me is that there are cities that have done this already and immediately the businesses affected closed down. Even then they had some mealy-mouthed excuses as to why it was not the fault of the minimum wage hikes. Shameless and evil, just like our very own shreek.
“Even then they had some mealy-mouthed excuses as to why it was not the fault of the minimum wage hikes.”
In SF a lefty bookstore took it in the shorts from the new m/w, but the owner still supported it IN SPITE OF THE FACT THAT IT WILL PUT HIS ENTIRE STAFF OUT OF WORK!
He’s surviving now on contributions; you can guess how long that will last, and he still maintains that it’s a good idea.
What sort of evidence does it take to get through to that level of ignorance?
Is a billion dollar football stadium built on the violence of confiscated fucking bucks worth one fan?
Start working at home with Google! It’s by-far the best job I’ve had. Last Wednesday I got a brand new BMW since getting a check for $6474 this – 4 weeks past. I began this 8-months ago and immediately was bringing home at least $77 per hour. I work through this link,
Go to tech tab for work detail ????????????? http://www.jobsfish.com
it is really difficult to decide to build a new football stadium ,but any dicision must be good for people