The Las Vegas raiders (yes this is political not sports)

[DonCoquixote]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/sports/football/nfl-oakland-raiders-las-vegas.html?_r=0

Normally sports is a distraction from politics, but here we have an opportunity to use the sports world to focus on exactly what is wrong with politics. I'm speaking of the fact that the Oakland Raiders are moving to Las Vegas. First, let's go ahead and focus on the fact that most sports owners are billionaires and that most of them are Republican. However, despite having enough business acumen to be able to pay the salaries of multimillionaires, they always seem to need public funding for stadiums.

Now, let's dig a bit deeper. These billionaire sports team owners make their money from the lower and middle classes. Even those that live nowhere near the people that their team represents still make their money from selling something. However, the politics they pick almost always demands that a community spends less on itself. If community wants to spend on schools, they attack it. If community wants to spend the keep toxins out of its environment, and the words for clean water and keep the trash of the streets, they get mad. But whenever it comes to something that can make them richer, all the sudden they need to be the first priority, because if not this community will be punished because they did not offer precious sacrifices of gold to sports team owners.

First off, if you guys are such geniuses that you can own a sports team and even provide one of the few acceptable outlets for black and brown millionaires in this society, why do you have to keep coming to the public did demand funds? Let's not pretend that you are asking the stadiums to be built for our benefit, you want that stadium to make more money for you, because when a sports team does not make money, you blame the stadium. It's not like a franchise like the Oakland Raiders, a team that had such fan loyalty it might as well have been a religion, was not able to make money. No, the son of the team owner wanted to make more money. After all, it's not like he had his father's talent to make his own fortune, no, he just had to sell the team to make more money. Then again, this country is currently run by a brilliant businessman (sarcasm flag flown way high) who inherited his money from his father, who inherited money from his father, but supposedly is self-made, just as his children will claim that they were self-made, especially his daughter who has an office in the White House.

Of course, all the NFL's sports franchises except one agreed with this, because everywhere from San Diego to Houston to Tennessee a bunch of old sports owners see a chance for their family to make lots of money. Many cities want sports franchises, and are willing to go ahead and hock their children's future to get them. My own Tampa Bay was very much one of the cities, indeed, the construction of my local high school was held hostage as part of the deal to approve a tax to build Raymond James Stadium. Raymond James Stadium is often held up as the example of why city should cave in and give a sports owner a stadium. After all, camp has had a few Super Bowl since then, and the Republican national convention, in part, as a sort of reward for being among the first cities to cave in. Cities like Philadelphia caved in and or to imitate Tampa.

Of course, I can tell you that despite having that new stadium, and despite all these little prizes that we won, our schools are awful, our roads are awful, and thanks in part to this "tax", the sort of tax that we would never use to educate our children or fix our roads, we have even less ability to solve our problems. But we kept the Buccaneers from being stolen by Orlando! When we won our one Super Bowl, against the Oakland, soon to be Las Vegas Raiders, the media pretty much repeated the mantra "if we did not do that stadium deal, we would not have had the Buccaneers when our Super Bowl for us!" The foolishness of those in Tampa Bay that bought that con job is a sad contrast to the strength of those in Oakland who refused to get fooled.

As one of the great rivals of Oakland, as someone who remembers how much greater nation aided in our guts because we stole their coach John "Chucky" Gruden, as someone who saw Oakland fans in Tampa, like an invading army, earning one of the most there are some reputations in professional sports, I will testify that no one, especially Mark Davis, a.k.a. another rich boy pimple on his dad's ass, can dared doubt the strength of greater fandom. It is a shame to see one of the great sports nations outright disrespected and yes punished, emphasize punished, because they did not offer human sacrifice or two in addition to the mound of gold. Oakland, this is going to take a lot for a Buccaneers fan like me to say, but as of right now, you won the bigger game, because you showed guts that we should of showed.

So to sum, sports franchise owners encourage the belief that these billionaires automatically benefit the society, and therefore demand the first cut of our meat, what none Dare call socialism for the rich. The fact that they do this for no other reason than to get richer shows the sheer craven, crass, crude faces behind the mask of gold, or in this case, black and silver. Whenever the billionaires and the pawns that they buying Congress start talking as if they are some Atlas holding up the world, we need to remind them of who pays their salary, and thanks to Trump not even bothering to wear such a mask, we're coming closer, and closer, where the illusion that is held their power no longer works. This is politics, this is the force behind politics.

Postscript: I do not think it is ironic that a team that stole Oakland Raiders is a town like Las Vegas. Hey, I know Nevada went for Trump, and I know many people in Vegas are the sons and daughters of union workers. However, let us be fully honest, Las Vegas is a town that was founded by gangsters that wanted to run casinos, stole money from labor unions to fund those casinos, and built the fairyland of fake Eiffel towers and pyramids to attract the middle-class into spending money there.

Of course, most of the current owners of the casinos are not gangsters who at least understand that if they make mistakes they can end up in a hole in the desert. They are not gangsters who at least had to prove themselves in Chicago or New York before being handed a casino in Vegas. No, most of the owners the casinos now or corporations straight from Wall Street, run by billionaires like a certain current president of the United States. Of course, unlike the gangsters that preceded him, he was allowed to run a casino, go broke running a casino, and wound up getting more money. If Trump was a mafiosi, he would've ended up like Bugsy Siegel by now, a.k.a. the founder of Las Vegas. Bugsy Siegel was in effect executed, even though his Las Vegas idea turned out to be more profitable than any of his fellow mafiosi could've ever dreamed of because he lost money that was a pittance compared to what your average billionaire manages to lose every year and still without a hint of shame attempt to rob taxpayers of the money we need to maintain our roads, maintain our schools and otherwise hold up the society that makes them money.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

1. This is the main reason that I gave up on the NFL years ago.

If the owners don't completely fund the construction of their stadiums, then the teams shouldn't be privately owned.

Arguments that the teams "add business" to an area overlooks the fact that those areas would benefit even more if the public also owned the teams.

At least I know that my local college team isn't going to move! I'm about ready to give up watching any football, however, given the troubling reports of brain damage.

[Jamaal510]

2. I have been

astounded by the number of Raider fans I encountered on FB and elsewhere who are actually OK with this. They actually have the nerve to call us "fake fans" and "city fans" for being disgruntled over this. Most of these people have probably never even been to Oakland and have no idea what it's like to lose a team not once but twice. They expect us to remain loyal to an owner who refused to show loyalty and respect to our city, and who refused to cooperate with Oakland leaders. That would be like staying in a relationship with an abusive spouse. Mark Davis should GTFO right now. I hope the City won't even let them play at the Coliseum this upcoming season.

[Nevernose]

3. Nevada went HILLARY

Also, the taxes funding (part) of the stadium come from room taxes, not taxes on residents. It will provide many jobs, temporary and permanent, part and full time. Mostly, it's just one more facet in the main industry: entertainment.