Billionaires Don’t Need Handouts Anti-Stadium Don’t Build It And Let ‘Em Leave

And you thought the baseball strike was disgusting. The brats of summer are at it again. The Seattle Mariners threaten to leave unless taxpayers build them a swankier stadium.

It’s high time taxpayers, somewhere, stood up to baseball industry blackmail. Too many cities have been shaken down, then left in the lurch for some field of dreams with greener grass.

Let ‘em go. Now. It’d be cheaper than re-enacting the boondoggles of the Kingdome’s construction and renovation, and then watching the M’s leave a new facility behind the next time they get the itch.

It takes gall for billionaire owners and millionaire players to demand a handout. But their audacity pales alongside the hypocrisy of conservatives like U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton, who took time out from hacking environmental protection, student loans and aid to the poor, and magnanimously encouraged the state to drop its purse into the Mariners’ tin cup. Gorton doesn’t give a damn if salmon go extinct or inner-city kids go homeless and hungry and suffer lousy educations, but he’s all for helping millionaires (with state, not federal dollars).

Washington’s Legislature recently completed an agonizing session in which it turned down badly needed improvements in universities, public schools, highways and other essential infrastructure all over the state. Lawmakers didn’t want to worsen Washington’s already oppressive tax burden.

Seattle taxpayers, who have the most to gain and lose, looked carefully at their city’s withering 8.2 percent sales tax rate and voted not to raise it for the sake of the Mariners. Should cash for a ballfield be taken instead from all of the state’s taxpayers? Without a vote? No! This state has better priorities.

Fans wail that the Emerald City would become a backwater if the Mariners leave. Alongside Microsoft, Boeing, the University of Washington and a port to the Pacific Rim, the M’s have all the importance of a raindrop in Puget Sound. Seattle’s future, and Washington’s, hinges instead on the enhancement of its business climate and education system. The outlandish sums required for another, fancier dome could be better spent, and should be. After two decades of athletic mediocrity, fans should write off this month’s winning streak as an overdue goodbye kiss.

, DataTimes MEMO: For opposing view see headline: Great team needs a great stadium

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