The Neverending Grift

How dare workers expect more than $7.25 per hour! Don't count on a decent retirement or health care plan from your employer either. Fix poisonous lead pipes? Gonna have to wait. Repair potholes and crumbling bridges? Not this decade. Strengthen Social Security and Medicare? Not a chance! Maybe we should phase them out. 

More money for private, billionaires' sport stadiums? No problem. There's always hundreds of millions in public dollars for private playgrounds and speculation.

Milwaukee's Miller Park (now American Family Field) baseball stadium (for the Milwaukee Brewers) opened in 2001. Total cost to taxpayers was estimated over a billion dollars. Already, twenty years later, the Brewers need nearly $300 million more from taxpayers.

The same old myth is playing out in this greed and grift saga, wrapped in the contrived cloak of economic development and jobs. As the fairy tale goes, sports have a significant economic impact, spurring other developments, and creating jobs. And, as always, there's the threat of leaving. The Brewers may find a new host city if Milwaukee and Wisconsin don't fork over the cash.

Thought experiment: Can a business (sport team) claim to be infinitely successful and astoundingly economically impactful if, every twenty years or so, said entity must bribe and blackmail to be able to afford, supposedly, needed upgrades for their place of work (the sport arena)? 

Or, sadly, is that just how this blackmail song-and-dance shakes out, each and every time, in city after city? [Spoiler - yes, this is how it plays out in city after city, year after year.]

The boondoggles march on.

For Further Reading:
Site Selection Shenanigans

Stadium Swindle

Bonds & Bondage: Indentured to the Sports Stadium Cabal

Weekend Reading: Kimberly Clark Corporate Welfare Edition

Tax Incentives For Kimberly Clark Could Hit Roadblock In Senate Heading Into Election
Tax Incentive Package For Kimberly Clark Faces Challenges In State Senate
Kimberly Clark Ready To Consider Incentive Package From State
More Questions, A Few Answers, As Uncertainty Swirls Around Kimberly Clark's Wisconsin Mills
Kimberly Clark Says It's Open To Talks On State Incentives Package

Buying Jobs

Corporate welfare is abundant in Wisconsin.

As the Milwaukee Business Times reported:

The $2.85 billion in tax credits offered to Foxconn Technology Group is nearly 25 times more than the total incentives offered to the next 49 largest projects the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. supported this year... 

The remaining 49 projects in the top 50 are eligible for roughly $114.2 million in incentives, primarily through tax credits, although three projects are receiving loans.

Here's the top 10 corporate welfare bribes awards:

[source]

Here's a breakdown of the cost per job for the top 10 welfare recipients:

Scott Walker really loves handing out millions of Wisconsin taxpayer dollars to his corporate cronies. So, it's not that Republicans don't like spending money and using the government as a piggy bank, as they claim. They just prefer that low-income, working-class and middle-class go without, while giving most of the bounty to their corporate paymasters.

Republicans constantly bark about the Democrats "taxing and spending." Yet, Republicans do they same thing. The difference is that when Republicans do it, the benefits go to millionaires. And, instead of keeping taxes at a responsible level to pay for it, Republicans just run up the tab for someone else to figure out how to pay for it somewhere down the road. 

Republican policies are bad at creating jobs. They're really just using taxpayers dollars to reward their contributors. Republicans tax cut fetish is only indebting the country and preventing us from making necessary improvements and infrastructure advancements. 

We should be using our tax dollars to invest in better transportation options, greening of buildings, improving the electric grid and replacing our sewer and water systems. These, and other investments like these, are what will attract businesses and residents. This is what a broad-based plan for shared prosperity looks like.

Rather than short-sightedly picking winners and losers - the crony capitalism bribery that is the Republican plan for economic development - we should be making the general investments in our society (schools, workforce) and our infrastructure (road, trains, airports, water, energy) which benefits all and enables growth for the long term.

Pay To Play With The "Backdrop Boy"

"Tony The Tiger." Milwaukee Magazine. March 2018.

The Bay View alderman chairs the city Licenses Committee, which holds sway over tavern, restaurant and other licenses in the city. It's a demanding but powerful post with great fundraising potential: In 2017, 34 of 154 people who donated to his campaign fund did so either before or after they sought approval from his committee in 2016 or 2017. Some of these folks appeared before the panel more than once, making for a total of 54 occasions in 2017 when past or future donors were on the agenda for license matters, the vast majority of which were approved. 

A nice nugget from Milwaukee Magazine's article on Tony "Backdrop Boy" Zielinski. This insight shows the pay-to-play politician that Zielinski is. Another worthless public servant using the office to enrich himself and further his career [very similar to Scott Walker]. A reality far different than his scripted sound bites and oh-so-earnest press releases.

More On The Milwaukee Bucks Stadium Saga

It's time for the NBA to end its arena blackmail scam
Why Bucks' Entertainment District May Fail
Milwaukee Is Keeping Bucks, But Would It Have Been Better Off Without Them?
No, It's Not Cheaper To Keep Them
A Tale of Three Sports Facilities

Big League Confusion

Maybe it's just me, but I'm not a big fan of cliche as public policy. The current fervor over a new basketball arena in Milwaukee is full of them. Dan Cody recently opined, "Milwaukee [is] not only deciding on new stadium for the Bucks, but whether we're a major American city anymore."

Yes, without a professional sport team, we're not "big league." Sigh.

Cody proclaims, "Everyone agrees that the Bucks will need a new stadium in order to stay in Milwaukee." Everyone? I'll agree that nearly every professional-sport team-owner blackmails their host city into funding the majority of the cost for a new stadium.

It's all about Milwaukee's image. Where would Milwaukee be without the Bucks? (Stop laughing.)

In explaining what a "huge deal" it is to have a pro team, Cody rattles off Green Bay, Jacksonville, Nashville and Oklahoma City as examples of the transformative power of hosting a pro team. Yes, we all know what world-renowned tourist destinations these locales are. Look out Paris and New York, here's Nashville!

This is the intangibles argument. There's just something that can't be explained, but it's magical and it's a big deal. It just can't be quantified. We're supposed to make a multi-million dollar investment based on the idea of being cool, big league, etc.

Maybe we should be talking about the monopoly control professional sports have over the numbers and locations of teams, and thus their ability to blackmail cities.

Milwaukee already has a basketball and a baseball team. Yet, Cody offers, "Milwaukee is already seen by much of the Country as a city on the decline and giving up our NBA team will only increase that perception." So why isn't Milwaukee already "big league"? If sports teams are such catalysts, why is Milwaukee "on the decline"? We recently built (2001) Miller Park, shouldn't this have eased the decline? Why didn't Miller Park make us "big league"?

And, if logic hasn't been stretched far enough in this ridiculous debate cities have over providing more corporate welfare to team owners, Cody goes on to say, "This City and the area need to give people a reason to want to move here." The Bucks are already here. Where are all the young professionals attracted by the Bucks? Was there a boom in young professionals and activity in the City when the Bradley Center was built in 1988? (There wasn't.) Most move for family, weather, or a job, not because of a basketball team.

And, as I've repeatedly said, if stadiums are such no-brainers, such economic catalysts, why does the public have to assume most of the risk (cost)? Sports represent one-tenth of one percent of the local economy; and some think that is an overstatement.

We can't raise taxes for good jobs, for schools, for parks, for public transportation, for health care, for retirement, etc. But, to be cool, to be "big league," that's a reason for a new tax?

I like sports. It's another entertainment option for a city. But that's hardly a reason to give away millions of dollars.