Scott Walker is America’s biggest hypocrite-The “fiscal conservative” is giving $450 million to we

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Tuesday, Aug 11, 2015 04:58 AM CST


Scott Walker is America’s biggest hypocrite: The “fiscal conservative” is giving $450 million to wealthy sports owners
As Walker attempts to win the hearts of "small government conservatives," there's something they should know


David Dayen



Scott Walker is America's biggest hypocrite: The "fiscal conservative" is giving $450 million to wealthy sports owners
Scott Walker (Credit: AP/John Minchillo)

Tomorrow, Scott Walker will stand on a stage at State Fair Park in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and betray virtually every conservative economic principle there is by handing out up to $450 million in taxpayer money to wealthy sports owners to pay for private infrastructure at a time when public infrastructure is crumbling.

The massive sum will go toward the building of a new sports arena for the Milwaukee Bucks basketball franchise, pleasing the team’s billionaire hedge-fund-manager owners, who threatened to move the team if they weren’t given taxpayer tribute. Conservatives in recent years have feigned concern about corporate welfare, and this deal is really the ultimate expression of it: hundreds of millions of dollars from teachers, waitresses, factory workers and shop owners funneled to pay for an aristocrat’s show palace rather than needed public service.

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We don’t upgrade anything in this country after 27 years. There are pipes carrying water to homes that date back to the 19th century. In Milwaukee, in fact, hundreds of those pipes burst at a record pace in 2014 due to the cold weather. Seventy-one percent of Wisconsin roads are in mediocre or poor condition, and fourteen percent of its bridges are structurally unsound. If you wanted to prioritize infrastructure projects needing attention in the Badger State, “replacing the arena we built in the late 1980s” would fall down the list, somewhere below “make sure the thing Wisconsinites are riding on in cars doesn’t crash to the ground.”


................ Lasry and Edens are worth around $2 billion each, but under the purchasing agreement they would only put up $150 million for the arena, with Kohl kicking in another $100 million. The rest would come from city, county and state taxpayers.

The usual discredited arguments propped up this deal. Wisconsin lawmakers promised great economic benefits from a new downtown arena. Walker said repeatedly it would be cheaper to keep the Bucks in Wisconsin than to lose them to some other city. This ignores the fact that the alternate universe where Wisconsinites don’t have a Bucks game to attend in April is not necessarily to sit in their homes and contemplate the darkness of existence. They’d maybe go out to dinner, with the economic activity simply substituted.

Numerous studies have shown no economic benefits to building a new stadium; it’s just something rich people say to get someone else to pay for the construction. Seattle is not a deserted wasteland because they lost the SuperSonics in 2008. They’re doing okay...........


http://college.holycross.edu/RePEc/spe/BaadeBaumannMatheson_Strikes.pdf