Ted Rall
http://rall.comTed Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
3 Comments.
Imagine if Greece or Rome had this “incentive” to destroy their own cultural history … but then again, starting with how the Catholic Church burned the intellectual property of all pagans they encountered, THIS is how you erase entire human cultures.
DanD
Companies threaten to move out if they don’t get concessions from local government. Did they learn this from sport teams or vice versa?
A major chain threatened to move out of town if the town didn’t buy a soon-to-be-empty lot for them so they could build a gas station on it. The deal made was that they get to keep the town’s portion of the sales tax customers so the corporation can use the retained tax receipts to make payments on the lot they now own.
Of course, that means a cut in public services and maybe a tax increase on residents to make up the difference. Private wealth extorted at the cost of public impoverishment. next comes downsized fire and police departments, school and library budgets.
The Green Bay Packers made sure their team wasn’t going to fly by night by mandating distributed ownership by citizens of Green Bay’s Brown County. The individual citizens own controlling shares in the team.
http://leagueoffans.org/2012/04/06/green-bay-packers-ownership-structure-remains-the-ideal/
“The best town in pro sports is also the smallest: Green Bay, Wisconsin, home of the Packers.
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“The Green Bay Packers are a publicly-owned non-profit with a unique stock ownership structure. Green Bay’s bylaws state that the Packers are “a community project, intended to promote community welfare.” What a refreshing approach.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/the-green-bay-packers-have-the-best-owners-in-football-10202011.html
The Packers led the NFL in apparel sales last year—the top two selling jerseys in the league were Packers Aaron Rodgers and Clay Matthews—making $27 million just through the pro shop inside Lambeau Field and the site Packers.com. All that swag, and those endless sellouts, made the Packers the 11th-highest-revenue team in the NFL in 2011, with total income of over $280 million, despite the fact that it plays in by far the smallest of the league’s 32 cities. (Ironically, this success means that Green Bay pays into the NFL reserve fund set up to redistribute revenue from larger market teams to smaller market teams.)
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