Billionaire Beggars

Being a mostly red blooded American male I should be all excited by the football season.

I mean, really, what else matters in life?

And here in sad sad Arizona, "our" Cardinals are doing very well.

That's supposed to compensate for the low wages, crappy schools, hillbilly politics, racist sheriffs, brain dead populace, suburban sprawl, cultural wasteland, and all the rest of the ongoing river o' shit that is life in Arizona. Did I mention we have championship golf, too?

Bread and circuses, baby. Bread and circuses.

Unfortunately, I just can't bring myself to root root root for the home team.

Nothing against the players or the coaches. I'm sure they're a fine bunch of guys, with just the right mix of wife, and/or girlfriend, and/or child, and/or drug, abusers mixed in.

And I'm fine with all that. No, really, I am. I guess it's the libertarian in me.

What I can't abide are the team's billionaire beggar owners, the lovely Bidwill family.

Look in the dictionary under institutionalized mediocrity and there's a picture of Bidwill pere et fils.

4 winning seasons in 26 years in Arizona. This in the NFL, a league that does everything it can to insure parity. Wow. Because Arizona is the land of eternal optimism, after just one winning season the Cardinals were rewarded with a shiny new stadium at tax payer expense. This new bauble increased the value of the team enough to make the Bidwill's billionaires. Shouldn't that be enough for one lifetime?

But it's not enough. No, it's never enough.

Hardly a month goes by without young Michael Bidwill whining about the Cardinals not getting their fair share of something. Parking or signage or whatever. Their "partners", the City of Glendale, may crash and burn financially, but until Mikey's happy with his cut, nothing else matters.

Of course, they are not alone in this. Every major city in America has been, or will be, held hostage by some billionaire scum who owns the local team and wants something--usually a tax payer funded new stadium to replace the tax payer funded old stadium. Because, well, you know, old stuff's creepy.

Not nearly as creepy as a bunch of old white men with too much money and power and an overwhelming sense of entitlement...

Go Team!

You Decide!!!!!

So I get this flyer in the mail the other day from a group that calls itself Keeping the Promise.

It reads, in part: YOU DECIDE A Glendale casino means gambling everywhere...including near your family

Apparently, if I don't do something, there will be casinos all over the place, including in my neighborhood!!!!

Yikes!

I mean YIKES!!!

What the people who sent me this flyer want me to do is contact my nitwit US Senators, Johnny Mc and Flakey Jr., and tell them to stop the Glendale casino that the Tohono O'odham tribe is planning on building.

Otherwise....cue ominous music....dum dum dummmm!

Repeat after me, Native American tribes are recognized as sovereign nations. And their rights to build casinos on tribal land have been upheld by the courts.

Personally, I don't give a rat's ass whether or not this particular tribe builds a casino on their land near Glendale, or anywhere else for that matter. Nobody makes you gamble. Plus think of all the cheap shrimp cocktails, prime rib specials, and classic rock concerts! Besides, if there's any criminal element involved, certainly we can trust Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Tom Horne and the rest of our crack law enforcement crew to root them out. Yes, I am being sarcastic again. It's a character flaw, I know. But there it is.

How the flyer makes the jump from one more Indian casino to "casinos in neighborhoods and near schools" and "bars and restaurants offering gaming" is beyond even my hyperbolic imagination.

I guess it's the same kind of wishful thinking that takes a centrist Democratic President from Hawaii and makes him into a wild eyed, Muslim Kenyan Socialist hell bent on destroying "our" way of life.

Yawn.

The most interesting aspect of this is why anyone in a position of power in Glendale would object to a 365 day a year business enterprise drawing folks to that poor benighted place. It is beyond me. After all, they rolled over like submissive puppies for a 8-10 game days a year football emporium that will ultimately cost well over a billion dollars of tax payer money. And a 50 day a year hockey arena that costs the city 15 million dollars a year in fees--in addition to the bond debt costs of building it. Oh, and don't forget the Camelback Ranch spring training facility. You know what they say, a hundred million here, a hundred million there, and pretty soon we're talking about real money. Real money which the City of Glendale doesn't have. Like the 3 million bucks they've already dropped trying to fight this casino.

Go figure.