Passing the buck ...

Reggie · Bastard Joined: 11 Nov 2011 Posts: 953 Location: MinnySOta

Referendum.

Minneapolis/Minnesota is still trying to find a way to buy the Vikings a stadium.

I'm not going to argue right or wrong on the public-subsidized stadium issue, though it should be noted that the reason every team cites when crying for a new stadium is that a new venue would provide additional revenue streams which would allow the team to remain competitive in their sport.

That particular argument is pretty fucking lame. You only need new revenue streams because you have exercised zero ability to control your payroll.

Having said that, some poindexters in the Vikings stadium process are now calling for a state referendum on the issue.

Referendum. Rear-endum.

Have some fucking balls, I elected you to make those decisions. Quit shirking your job in the hope of remaining popular and keeping your job in the machine.

If we're gonna referendum this issue, why not let the populace vote on every issue, including something actually important?

Who the fuck needs elected representatives if they're gonna push the job back to us.

Rear-endum.

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Don · Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 1:52 am Post subject:

I don't think that the public should be funding a sports stadiums. I think it's best that there be a referendum on this because a large portion of the public seems to disagree with me on the value of sports to a society.

This was made abundantly clear to me when 10,000 tickets sold out in minutes to a memorial ceremony for Joe Paterno. Yes, he had a very successful career. He also turned a blind eye to a child rapist because the guy was a good coach and it would bring negative attention to the athletic program.

Now that we have the internet, we should be working on a method to allow citizens to have their say on bills that come before the State and Federal legislatures. Most are very complicated and take up hundreds of pages, so we still need someone to analyze things and make a final determination. But they would then be responsible for defending their AYE vote when 70% of the comments asked for a NAY.

The main problem to this is Anonymous. If they can hack into any machine, then General Electric should have no trouble getting in to manipulate the results on something that would grant them a large tax break. Voting machine fraud goes on all the time, online voting would allow someone to affect votes over a much larger area than previously possible.

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OtagoPaul · Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 4:42 pm Post subject:

I'm with Reg on this. Referenda are just a convenient way out of a difficult decision by politicians afraid of the ballot box. While in theory they sound like a more democratic approach to lawmaking, in the end most people don't give enough of a shit, so small groups of people with strong opinins end up driving the debate and making decisions. In America, where it seems you guys seem to go to the polls every 20 minutes, this will just reduce turnouts even more. (It's not just a US problem. In NZ we have experienced declining voter turnouts for the past 20 years, from 94% of eligible voters in 1984 to less than 75% last year).

I don't know the various processes in the States, but here there is usually an opportunity for members of the public to submit on legislation when it is being considered by select committee. It is very easy here to make a submission, I think you can do it by email. Whether the fuckers take any notice is up to them, and up to us to judge at the ballot box. They are, after all, our representatives, not our sock puppets.

We don't really have the sporting franchise system here (we have a very few examples in Basketball, Soccer, Rugby and Rugby League), our main sports teams are representative teams, "owned" and operated by the local sport administrations. As such they have a stronger connection to the community than a franchise that might be moved from one town to another by its owner.

In our situation (and taking into account our small populatin bases) I believe that local communities should be contributing to the development of community facilities like stadia, but they shouldn't be building a facility to be used exclusively by a profit-making private entity.

In the case of The Vikings, they are demanding the sort of state welfare that conservatives deride for poor individuals, but demand for private businesses on the basis that they can take their toys somewhere else. LPG has a good post on this on his blog: http://www.thesqpeg.blogspot.com/2011/12/dont-go-please.html

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