SPORTS

If You Build It, Will They Pay?

Luxury stadiums are on the rise. A top seat can cost $150,000. Beer costs extra.

By Johnnie L. Roberts and Andrew Murr | NEWSWEEK

Published Oct 10, 2008

From the magazine issue dated Oct 20, 2008

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Discuss

Posted By: ObamaYesWeCan @ 11/01/2008 5:05:06 PM

Comment: This moronic scumbag Samuel J. Wurzelbacher "Joe the Plumber" had his AZ driver license suspended

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/128323

Wurzelbacher, who lived in Mesa in 2000 and had an Arizona driver's license, had his driver's license suspended by the Arizona Department of Transportation Motor Vehicle Division on May 4, 2000, following a nonpayment of a court-imposed fine for civil traffic violations, according to court records.

...owes nearly $1,200 in back taxes, according to public records, still owes more than $700 to the Mesa court system.

Records show he was cited for failure to stop at a red light and for failure to provide proof of insurance on Feb. 9, 2000, in a black Dodge truck at the intersection of Dobson and Baseline roads in Mesa.

After failing to pay his original fine of $627.50 issued in March 2000, his license was suspended and the fine was handed over to a collection agency along with a 16 percent surcharge. The now-resident of Holland, Ohio, still owes $727.90 to the Mesa Municipal Court, according to court records.

Hopefully the collection agency will break both of his legs so he'll never be able to walk nor work ever again. This typical Republican scumbag deserves it.
- Posted By: tmackc @ 11/03/2008 8:42:18 PM
  
  Comment: To ObamaYesWeCan - If that's the case, Ted Kennedy should get the death penalty for the death of the poor girl killed in the car he drove off the bridge. If you think that there are no democrats with traffic violations or unpaid taxes, you must have an extremely low I.Q.
Posted By: metsfan30 @ 10/25/2008 6:39:53 PM

Comment: What does Joe the Plumber have to do with 150k luxury seats? I agree with tmack, all walks of life have been convicted crimes and owe back taxes.

It is too bad that banks cannot make their users wear <a href="http://www.chastitydevicesformen.com>male chastity</a> devices on their bank accounts.

http://www.chastitydeviceformen.com
Posted By: tmackc @ 10/23/2008 12:55:22 AM

Comment: Wow, none of these comments have anything to do with this article. It looks like an Obama campaign rally. Anyway, to ObamaYesWeCan, you think Joe needs his legs broken? You think republicans are the only people who get tickets or owe back taxes? The man did not ask for the attention he has received, nor do I think he is anywhere near a political icon. I would be interested in your view of Ted Kennedy's moral and ethical past if you are to be so sharp with Joe Wurzelbacher over a minor traffic offense and a tax debt. And to the post by Nins, I see that you have the most basic understanding of the Great Depression, or at least overheard someone talking about it. However, if you will go back and do some more research on the current economic crisis, you will see that Ben Bernanke warned of serious problems with the economy and probability of a recession back in 1999. Guess who was president back then. Bernanke seemed to have a better understanding of the economy than Alan Greenspan. You also stated that it was Bush that deregulated the banking industry. That is false. President Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999 which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 which deregulated the banking industry. I'm not sure where you got your information.
Posted By: Nins @ 10/21/2008 1:34:11 PM

Comment: People on these bogs are fond of saying that the current economic meltdown was caused by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac underwriting bad mortgages. While Fannie and Freddie obviously are guilty of writing bad mortgages, and worse, guilty of lobbying Congress to allow them to do so with impunity, their actions are just a small piece of the puzzle when it comes to determining who (or what) caused the financial crisis we face today.

In 1929 the stock market crash caused the banks to fail, because the banks were in bed with the stock market. Back then, banks owned investment houses, so when the stock market fell, the banks fell too. This triggered the Great Depression. So in 1933 the Congress wrote laws that regulated banking, making it illegal for banks to own investment companies, mortgage guaranty companies or insurance companies. The idea was to keep key industries separated by a fire wall, so that if one industry failed the whole economy would not go down in flames.

But the Republicans under Bush deregulated the banking industry. Senator Phil Gramm wrote legislation (the Gramm Rudman Act, the Gramm Leach Biley Act, etc.) that stripped away the regulations in the financial and insurance industies. He pushed them through the Republican Congress and they were signed into law by Geo. W. Bush. John McCain voted in favor. Everybody said how great it is to deregulate and create free markets.

Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch each gave over a million dollars to Senator Gramm's re-election campaign.

The economic collapse that happened later was a direct result of the deregulation, and here's how: the banks wrote bad mortgages, then bundled the mortgages into investment vehicles that they sold all over the world, and they even got firms like AIG to insure the investments. It was all a house of cards.

If there had been no deregulation, sure we would have had a bunch of bad mortgages, and the mortgage guaranty and real estate industries would have suffered, but there would not have been a global financial meltdown, since the problem would have been contained in one sector of the economy. You can thank Geo W. Bush, Sen. Phil Gramm and Sen John McCain for the meltdown, since they were strong proponents of deregulation.

Furthermore, although Fannie and Freddie are now holding the bulk of these bad mortgages, Fannie and Freddie did not originally write most of these mortgages. They bought them after the fact, bundled by banks/investment companies. Fannie and Freddie got screwed by the Wall Street fat cats. And so did you, if you pay taxes.

What is Phil Gramm doing today? He works as a lobbyist in Washington, trying to make it legal for the Swiss bank he represents to sell Death Bonds in the United States. Nice guy, Phil Gramm. Incidentally, John McCain has said that he wants to appoint Phil Gramm as Treasury Secretary. Some people just can't learn from their mistakes.
Posted By: Nins @ 10/21/2008 1:27:58 PM

Comment: After 9/11, the US government started rounding up Muslims without cause and without due process of law, like we did to the Japanese Americans in WWII. The Bush administration called it's main internment camp Guantanamo Bay. While there are certainly many guilty terrorists held in Guantanamo, there are also many innocent American citizens who have been held illegally for years without even being charged with any crime. They have been tortured by our government. Some of them have died.

Recently the Supreme Court ruled against the Bush administration in the matter of Guantanamo Bay. The Supreme Court Justices were NOT on the side of the terrorists. They were on the side of the Geneva Convention, that says you can not torture POWs, and on the side of US laws that state you can not imprison a person without charging them with a crime and bringing them to trial. I'm sure that like most Americans, the Justices who voted against the illegal, immoral doings at Guantanamo didn't feel sympathy for the terrorists. They felt sympathy for the laws of AMERICA, the land of the FREE, where even rat finks get a fair trial.

Meanwhile, back in Iraq, the Bush administration is busy trying to build a smokescreen to hide the CRIMES they have committed. Those pesky weapons of mass destruction. Just think, the National Debt went up over 6 trillion dollars under Bush. More than 2 TRILLION of it went directly into the pockets of Halliburton, a corporation owned by the Cheney family. Halliburton is now a DUBAI corporation and therefore is not subject to US taxes. All that money they took out of the US Treasury is going into the coffers of a MUSLIM country.

Did you hear about how the US government is being charged millions for Halliburton deliveries of sand into Iraq from Kuwait? Sand. Like there is a shortage of sand in Iraq? Another contractor shipped sand from Idaho to Iraq at our expense. Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz discusses these and other excesses of our current government's out of control spending in Iraq.

Your grandchildren will be working like slaves to pay off this debt, so that the Bushes and Cheneys can live the high life in Dubai.

Yeah, they're patriots, Bush&Co. They wear flag pins. And hide the money they stole from America in Dubai.

And they want me to believe that Obama is a socialist. Right.

In case you think McCain is any different than Bush, watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdJUCU1UH2w
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Posted By: syedrafeeq @ 10/18/2008 7:29:56 AM

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Posted By: SharedThought @ 10/16/2008 12:26:18 PM

Comment: If some people are wiling to pay this kind of money and can afford it, then I hope they have a good time. But for me personally, I would never be wiling to pay that kind of money to see a sporting event, a music concert, or any other entertainment. Watching on TV is good enough for me.
Posted By: earth3650yahoo @ 10/16/2008 12:49:44 AM

Comment: Crazy but true! And, the seats will sell in new stadiums, no matter how outrageous the cost seems to be. What the Red Cross (or a similar agency) could do with that kind of revenue!
Posted By: NormanOder @ 10/15/2008 5:58:33 AM

Comment: Though the article states that "not only the Yankees, but also the Mets, Jets, Giants and New Jersey Nets will all be getting new digs," construction has not begun on the new Nets arena in the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, which faces various challenges (lawsuits, credit crisis, availability of tax-exempt bonds).
Posted By: NormanOder @ 10/15/2008 5:56:38 AM

Comment: Though the article states that "not only the Yankees, but also the Mets, Jets, Giants and New Jersey Nets will all be getting new digs," construction has not begun on the planned Nets arena in the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn and there is some doubt it will ever be built.
Posted By: unregistered @ 10/14/2008 6:49:23 PM

Comment: Left out of this discussion is the fact that we, the taxpayers generally pay for these palaces while the team owners reap all the benefits of naming rights money, concessions, parking revenue, in-stadium advertising, and anything else they can think up. What do the taxpayers get? "Civic pride".
More at <a href="http://www.fieldofschemes.com">Field of Schemes</a>
Posted By: brandscout @ 10/14/2008 4:56:05 PM

Comment: As the economy grows shakier, all teams as well as StubHub should be concerned about season???s ticket renewals. I think it's too bad that, as you point out, spectator sports stopped being about fun and games long ago. In fact, reintroducing the fun could go a long way toward building a following - something every team needs these days. For more on putting fun back in the fan experience, see my posting at www.retailhitsandmisses.blogspot.com
Posted By: cani77 @ 10/11/2008 9:31:33 AM

Comment: In a few weeks we will make a choice that will decide our future.
I follow an economist named Bob Proctor. He has called the top and bottom of every market crash since the 70s correctly.
Also, he perfectly predicted the current real estate market meltdown and the picture he paints about what will happen in the next couple years
is terrifying.He thinks it will be worse then the great depression.
The banks in the U.S. are going under one after the other. Countrywide ,Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch , Fanny and Freddy Mae ,AIG
The government took them over because they are essentially bankrupt. Even with the goverment nationalizing hundreds of billions of dollars in debt the stock market is crashing
the credit markets are frozen and all of us may suffer beyond anything in the last 80 years.
McCain just like Bush " doesn't understand the economy".
That not just my opinion its his own words. Not only does he not understand how to fix it but he does not understand exactly what is broken.
It is no surprise that he doesn't. The people that make up these securities use complex mathematical models very few people understand.
Bush and McCain both can take the credit for this mess since they helped deregulate the laws that were protecting us.
Bush's economic advisor Phil Graham wrote the deregulation bill that allowed banks to take huge risks with all of our future.
Now, Phil Graham is the head of McCain's economic policy.He is also McCain's choice for the next secretary of the treasury.
No one in this country can afford for that to happen. The last time Bush met with his economic advisors was in March. He didnt realize that anything was wrong. Phil Graham had the guts to say that we are in a mental recession after he helped create the worst economy meltdown in our lifetime. Check out this link to the truth http://my.barackobama.com/keatingvideo
It will take the best and brightest minds in the world to get us out of this nightmare. As bad as Bush has done, McCain would be
even more destructive because things are in much worse shape. The next president will not inherit a surplus like Bush did but a crashing economy and a 11,600,000,000,000 (trillion) dollars deficit. Most of it Bush created and it will take decades to pay it back.
If you do what you have always done then you will get what you have always got.
When it comes to policy Bush and McCain are the same 90 percent of the time.
So why are the polls even close then ?
Mccains team just said they no longer want to talk about the economy.Instead they would like to spend time talking about obama
which means running the biggest smear campaign in history.
They think they can just tell you lies and you wont be smart enough to see through it
Let's teach him we are smarter than that .
Elect Obama Biden 2008

Check out this video of sarah palins interview and ask your self if she understands what she is talking about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r36Xc0GG4iQ
Posted By: cani77 @ 10/11/2008 9:31:22 AM

Comment: In a few weeks we will make a choice that will decide our future.
I follow an economist named Bob Proctor. He has called the top and bottom of every market crash since the 70s correctly.
Also, he perfectly predicted the current real estate market meltdown and the picture he paints about what will happen in the next couple years
is terrifying.He thinks it will be worse then the great depression.
The banks in the U.S. are going under one after the other. Countrywide ,Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch , Fanny and Freddy Mae ,AIG
The government took them over because they are essentially bankrupt. Even with the goverment nationalizing hundreds of billions of dollars in debt the stock market is crashing
the credit markets are frozen and all of us may suffer beyond anything in the last 80 years.
McCain just like Bush " doesn't understand the economy".
That not just my opinion its his own words. Not only does he not understand how to fix it but he does not understand exactly what is broken.
It is no surprise that he doesn't. The people that make up these securities use complex mathematical models very few people understand.
Bush and McCain both can take the credit for this mess since they helped deregulate the laws that were protecting us.
Bush's economic advisor Phil Graham wrote the deregulation bill that allowed banks to take huge risks with all of our future.
Now, Phil Graham is the head of McCain's economic policy.He is also McCain's choice for the next secretary of the treasury.
No one in this country can afford for that to happen. The last time Bush met with his economic advisors was in March. He didnt realize that anything was wrong. Phil Graham had the guts to say that we are in a mental recession after he helped create the worst economy meltdown in our lifetime. Check out this link to the truth http://my.barackobama.com/keatingvideo
It will take the best and brightest minds in the world to get us out of this nightmare. As bad as Bush has done, McCain would be
even more destructive because things are in much worse shape. The next president will not inherit a surplus like Bush did but a crashing economy and a 11,600,000,000,000 (trillion) dollars deficit. Most of it Bush created and it will take decades to pay it back.
If you do what you have always done then you will get what you have always got.
When it comes to policy Bush and McCain are the same 90 percent of the time.
So why are the polls even close then ?
Mccains team just said they no longer want to talk about the economy.Instead they would like to spend time talking about obama
which means running the biggest smear campaign in history.
They think they can just tell you lies and you wont be smart enough to see through it
Let's teach him we are smarter than that .
Elect Obama Biden 2008

Check out this video of sarah palins interview and ask your self if she understands what she is talking about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r36Xc0GG4iQ