This might do the trick. When Norm boasts in the glory of corporate welfare that he helped provide the Minnesota Wild. A company that continually tries to have get out of their end of the contract by requesting their loans be forgiven while simultaneously asking for public money to build a practice facility for the team:
Call him on it:
Then watch St Paul’s former mayor call me a grinch for opposing corporate welfare for the NHL:
Perhaps pointing out that Norm Coleman used the public’s money to subsidize his private entertainment went too far?
Apparently it was for @normcoleman because that’s when he blocked me.
I imagine that politicians like Norm Coleman would prefer that taxpayers forgot about the corporate welfare they gave away. Yes, we have the Wild. We’re paying for them every day. Even when they don’t make the playoffs. Even when they’re on strike. Even when there’s a lockout.
Money that taxpayers continue to pay to subsidize a private business that competes for entertainment dollars against other locally owned businesses that don’t receive hundreds of millions of dollars in public subsidies. If Norm Coleman had walked down Payne Ave as mayor and asked people what the city could do to make their lives better, subsidizing the NHL probably wouldn’t have been at the top of the list. Different priorities.
Perhaps Coleman wouldn’t be taking credit on Twitter on a Saturday night in 2013 for having made the streets safer or schools better on the East Side of St Paul in the year 2000, but that’s the kind of good government stuff we need more of from our politicians.
Maybe it makes me a fun-hater to think that NHL fans are perfectly capable of using their own money to pay for their own entertainment rather than rely upon corporate welfare with the help of Norm Coleman? The only thing better than paying full price to watch Derek Boogaard contract CTE is to pay a taxpayer subsidized price to watch Derek Boogaard contract CTE, eh?
This post was written by Ed Kohler and originally published on The Deets. Follow Ed on Twitter: @edkohler
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It IS about different priorities…
..is there some obligation to make the lives of people on Payne Avenue better? Or maybe the only thing better than watching the sale of meth on Payne Aveneu is to watch a taxpayer subsidized sale of meth on Payne Avenue, eh?
It’s a matter of priorities and opinions. There isn’t a right ot wrong answer and, while no fan of Norm’s, I can certainly understand why he grew tired of Sanctimonious Ed