Assigned reading for today: Huffpost article on the pros and cons of publicly subsidizing wealthy NFL team owners’ desire for new stadiums. Along with other stuck-in-the mud cities, the article cites otherwise impoverished St. Louis’ current pathetic efforts to retain a NFL team (any NFL team). The money quote:

If the benefits aren’t flowing to cities, they are instead going primarily to NFL owners. A 2012 Bloomberg analysis found that since 2000, new stadiums had helped double team values across pro sports, and Baade noted that while it appears NFL teams are now putting more of their own money in than they used to, they are doing so primarily out of revenue streams — luxury boxes, personal seat licenses and other in-stadium revenues — that either wouldn’t exist without a new stadium or are larger because of it.

“The public sector is underwriting most of the risk,” Baade said, “while most of the benefits that accrue, accrue to the teams.”

No real news there, but the point of view still seems to be too revolutionary for set-in-their-ways Missouri political elites represented by Governor Nixon and St. Louis Mayor Slay.

I do understand that Mayor Slay and Governor Nixon like the idea of union jobs that would probably result from a stadium project along with what they possibly hope would be some concomitant North Side development. But there are other ways to spend infrastructure dollars and create jobs that would actually benefit the city’s citizens instead of ripping off taxpayers. In this regard, the article notes that a new report “links the subsidization of new stadiums to higher poverty rates and lower median incomes in their home cities, and it found that most NFL cities fared worse by both measures after paying for a new stadium.”  

Whereas black NFL players are saying they’d refuse to play for a team owned by Rush, and

Whereas Post-Dispatch columnist Kevin Horrigan explains that Limbaugh hates socialism and that the NFL is a highly socialistic organization, and

Whereas NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell believes that because of Rush’s racism, Limbaugh should not be allowed to buy an NFL team,

Be it resolved that we will all go over to St. Louis Democratic activist Peter Glickert’s new site, No Rush Limbaugh for the St. Louis Rams, and sign his petition. He aims to get 5,000 signatures by November 15th, and the site looks to be going viral. He got fifty signatures in less than a day, and the word is spreading. In fact, KSDK is covering it without Glickert even notifying them about it.

Of course, Glickert is also getting negative attention in the form of threatening e-mails. No surprise there. Rush is a purveyor of hate, and the dittoheads follow that lead.

Click here to sign the petition.

Update: Petitions on this one are the fad? Anyway, Brave New Films has one going as well. I signed both. Might as well.

Kevin Horrigan’s Sunday P-D column explains that there’s hardly a more socialistic organization than the NFL; his characterization of it is irrefutable. And Rush wants in on all this socialism? Brilliant column.