PolicyGuy

Friday, April 29, 2005


Stadium Tax: A Case of Cynicism Validated.
In 1996, Bruce Lambrecht and Rich Pogin created Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility, an outfit that opposed taxpayer funding of stadiums. Today, the men are two cheerleaders in a plan to use the public to build a stadium for the Minnesota Twins, a private company with a near-billionaire owner and many extremely well-paid employees.

So what happened? Well, consider this: Lambrecht and Pogin just happen to own the land on which the stadium will be built--land which they hope to sell the land for $13 million.

Did I mention that the taxpayers don't even get a vote on this deal?

"Justice Louis D. Brandeis'?s metaphor of the states as "laboratories" for policy experiments ... had almost nothing to do with federalism and everything to do with his commitment to scientific socialism. .... To this day, it continues to inhibit a truly experimental, federalist politics." -- Michael S. Greve

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