"Moguls Steal Home While Companies Strike Out" Truthout 9/19/8

Moguls Steal Home While Companies Strike Out
Friday 19 September 2008
by: Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Here's an excerpt. Click the title above to read the whole article.

"On Opening Day in 1923, New York Governor Al Smith threw out the first ball and John Philip Sousa led a big brass band playing his famous marches. It was the Roaring Twenties, when the money flowed like bootleg whiskey, the pride before the fall. In 1930, the year after the market crashed, as the Great Depression began, Babe Ruth was taking home $80,000 a year, more than the president of the United States, Herbert Hoover. "Why not?" Ruth asked. "I had a better year than he did."

Yankee star Alex Rodriguez had a better year than both of them. This season, A-Rod is making $28 million, just part of an annual Yankee payroll of $209 million, the richest in baseball. Their owner, George Steinbrenner, is among the Forbes 400, one of the country's richest tycoons.

But when it came to paying for the new, $1.3 billion pleasure dome, the millionaires on the field and King Midas in his skybox came up with some razzle-dazzle plays to finance their new wealth machine - tax-free bonds, requiring ordinary citizens to subsidize the construction, and hundreds of millions more for new parking garages, a train station and parks that supposedly will replace the ones seized by the city to make room for the new stadium. The Little League games that used to flourish on sandlots just outside the old ballpark have been moved miles away, sent down to the minors on a long road trip.

That's O.K., you may think; there will be plenty of room in the new stadium for the tax-paying public to come root, root, root for the home team - even the Coliseum in ancient Rome had bleachers for the commoners. But, in fact, there will be 5,000 fewer seats in the stands. And while the Yankees reportedly promise that half of what's left will cost $45 or less, those seats that used to cost $250, right behind the dugout, will now cost you $850. And if you want to be near home plate, you'll have to cough up $2,500 - per game.

Meanwhile, there will be more luxury suites and party rooms where fat cats can gather, safely removed from the sweaty masses. Corporations and wealthy individuals will be able to rent the luxury suites for anywhere from $600,000-$850,000 a year - tax deductible - assuming they haven't filed for bankruptcy this week.

Why aren't the fans and taxpayers giving the Yankees a Bronx cheer? They did, but city officials rolled over them while making sure local politicians stayed in the lineup. The politicians are getting their own luxury suite at the new stadium for free - and first shot at buying the best available seats.

The new colossus will cast its majestic shadow across the South Bronx, one of the nation's poorest neighborhoods. The residents will watch from the outside as suburban drivers avail themselves of 9,000 new or refurbished parking spaces. Never mind all the exhaust, even though in this part of New York City respiratory disease is already so high they call it "Asthma Alley."

Not that the well-to-do in the infield seats will have to hear the wheezing. They'll have exclusive access to a private club, a private entrance and a private elevator, totems of this gilded age. Let the games begin."