{"id":3955,"date":"2007-01-19T08:31:59","date_gmt":"2007-01-19T16:31:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2007\/01\/19\/not-with-my-300-million-you-dont\/"},"modified":"2019-12-20T11:41:22","modified_gmt":"2019-12-20T19:41:22","slug":"not-with-my-300-million-you-dont","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2007\/01\/19\/not-with-my-300-million-you-dont\/","title":{"rendered":"Not with my $300 million, you don&#8217;t&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:6155,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/seattlepi.nwsource.com\\\/local\\\/300387_sonics19.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20080821093947\\\/http:\\\/\\\/seattlepi.nwsource.com:80\\\/local\\\/300387_sonics19.html&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-08 19:05:20&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-08 19:05:20&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>The Sonics &#8212; who used to be the Seattle Sonics until Seattle voters passed Initiative 91, &#8220;which prohibited the city from using tax dollars to subsidize a pro team unless the subsidy generates a certain profit for the city,&#8221; and are now searching for another city to house them &#8212; want to build a $530 million dollar arena&#8230;<a href=\"http:\/\/seattlepi.nwsource.com\/local\/300387_sonics19.html\" title=\"Seattle PI: Sonics present plans for new arena\">and they want taxpayers to pony up for $300 million of it<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Sonics can kiss off, as far as I&#8217;m concerned.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve always been flabbergasted at the amount of money poured into professional sports, and especially the amount of money thrown at professional athletes. It just makes my head hurt when those people in charge of such things then ask that the public &#8212; many of whom couldn&#8217;t give two figs for professional sports in general, let alone any particular team &#8212; essentially be required to pay to support them.<\/p>\n<p>You want $300 million of <em>my<\/em> tax dollars? Put it towards education. Put it towards actually doing something to improve transit in Seattle, instead of half-assing your way through a series of stopgap measures, or instead of bickering about what to do for so long (or stubbornly insisting on ridiculous, expensive, impractical options, like the [thankfully, now dead] tunnel replacement for the Alaskan Way Viaduct) that nothing ever gets done. Put the money towards something &#8212; or <em>anything<\/em> &#8212; that would actually benefit <em>everyone<\/em>, not just those who get their rocks off by watching <em>other<\/em> people play a game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You want $300 million of _my_ tax dollars? Put the money towards something &#8212; or _anything_ &#8212; that would actually benefit _everyone_, not just those who get their rocks off by watching _other_ people play a game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2043],"tags":[14,140],"class_list":["post-3955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-politics","tag-seattle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3955\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}