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http://connard.blogspot.com/2004/12/bush-league.html

Cool search engine. What did you use to make it work?

I have lived in DC for 35 years. In that time I have watched our area grow in leaps and bounds and yes w/o Baseball. But you PJ are an idiot. This is not about overpaying. It's not about wether it will help our area grow. It's about Baseball. It's about giving this city just a little class. Our beloved Redskins play in MD. Our Mayor was a crack head. We are run by the US Government. We are the Capitol of the US and we're a joke. Oh, not you, you live in NORTHERN VIRGINIA! Baseball is the national pastime. It is america and it's just what this city needs to get back a little dignity and personality. So sit your butt down and shut up.

At the risk of suffering a Ron Artest crackerjack shower, allow me to offer an argument to my fellow libertarians about what Cropp did to the baseball deal.

Cropp, Barry, Catania – the whole forsaken bunch who oppose the deal are not libertarians or free marketers in any way. They are de facto socialists who will take your money at the point of a gun for any welfare scheme that catches their fancy.

The idea that they are standing up for local businesses or care about minimizing government intrusion into DC business operations is betrayed by every other tax, regulation, inhibition and prohibition they impose already.

The baseball deal – unlike every other DC government program – is not a social welfare scheme. It may (or may not) enrich owners but that factor is incidental: the deal is designed to bring a team here, not to redistribute wealth.

Let’s consider an analogy. Think of the DC government as a gaggle of raging drunks. Worse, they extort money and then squander top dollar for bottom-shelf liquor binges. Now, for once, in their stupor, they consider using the ill-gotten money for something healthy and enjoyable. To oppose that one good outcome while indulging the rest is just folly.

Understand, they are not going to now suddenly become sober fiscal conservatives because the baseball team is gone. Hell, half of them wanted to take the money and pour it down the DC public schools sinkhole. The reality is that they will use their refurbished class-warfare image to make the city still more socialist.

I wish they would stop stealing, too. I think the harm they’ve done in pretty much every sphere of civic life is incalculable. But until the libertarian revolution cometh, the sensible approach, the realistic approach is to oppose the likes of Cropp and Barry, whatever the issue. And in this case, if rebuking them gets us a baseball team then glory be, play ball!

Jim, don't you dare call yourself a "libertarian." It is an insult to those of us who genuinely advocate libertarian principles.

Shorter Jim M: "Government handouts are okay as long as it's for welfare that I like."

Eric:

You know I am the biggest supporter of the Grays as a name, however if the Expos come for only one season, they should be called the "Lame Ducks". Each game after the national anthem, they could release a Duck to fly off, only to be shot by a trap shooter.

Jim just isn't an ideologue, like some of the commenters here.

Cropp, Barry et al. will get over their newfound infatuation with fiscal responsibility as soon as Tony Williams's career and DC baseball are both dead and buried. Meanwhile, the political stereotype they have reinforced is that you cannot do a deal with the city government, because its members' word cannot be trusted.

All MLB asked was that once bought (with the concessions arranged over the previous 2 weeks), Cropp and her minions stay bought. Even that much dealing was a gesture of good faith by MLB, given that City Council had given Williams and the Sports and Entertainment Commission authority to make a deal two years ago. Far be it from me to defend MLB's overall handling of the Expos (not calling up players in September '02 when they were fighting for a wild card was a travesty), but I can't really fault them for being livid.

Jim's not an ideologue. He just plays one on TV. To be surprised that political manuevering might go on around something as major as relocating a baseball team is to be ignorant of the entirety of American history.

Yes, yes, yes. I know that the stadium deal violates the libertarian intellectual purity code. But, as Nathan Arizona said, if a frog had wings it wouldn’t bump its ass a’hopping. EVERYTHING the DC government does is anti-libertarian.

What’s so bad about trying to stick it to Barry and Cropp for once? And we get a ballclub out of the deal..! If Cropp prevails it is a victory for libertarians in only the most abstract, naval-gazing way. Worse, it will strengthen her bona fides as a populist wealth redistributor (psst, for libertarians, that’s bad).

And hey, Skip, I was one of the 421 idiots in DC who actually voted Libertarian in November, so make an argument or pipe down.

A half-billion dollar government handout to one of the wealthiest businesses in the United States is just an aw-shucks violation of the "libertarian intellectual purity code"?

Please. Rationalize away.

Quick additional -- here's a terrific piece from Tom Knott today about how Linda Cropp is using eminent domain to crush small businesses in DC:

http://washingtontimes.com/sports/20041216-115731-9985r.htm

Still think she's cool?

I fail to see how this deal violates the "free market". Set aside the fantasy world of libertarian purity, which is interesting, perhaps even commendable, but has absolutely no resemblance to how business and politics are actually conducted in this country or any other. And set aside the problem of the MLB's "monopoly power" - aren't antitrust laws a violation of libertarian principles, too?

In the reality where government entities like the District government are expected to, and must, pursue these kinds of projects if they are going to occur, MLB and a group empowered by the DC Council (including Linda Cropp) negotiated a deal to move the Expos to DC. Given the market realities between the two parties, MLB was able to extract a DC-funded stadium as part of the price. The two parties agreed on that price. What's more "free market" than that?

You can bet that if the Nomads aren't contracted out of existence, they'll be playing in a stadium built or at least guaranteed by somebody's taxpayers in two to three years time. That's the price of a team, and MLB won't back off on it. Las Vegas is ready to pay that price with bells on. If your position is "let them," so be it. But don't pretend there's any chance of DC getting an MLB team under any other kind of deal.

"Still think she's cool?"

I don't think she's anything but a typical politician. I do think that your Gordian-knot style contortions to justify your own position are pretty cool, however.

You might want to check in with national headquarters, by the way:
http://www.lp.org/press/archive.php?function=view&record=687

"Libertarians cheer DC Council for rejecting stadium welfare deal"

I especially liked this part: "Seehusen placed a congratulatory phone call on Wednesday to Linda W. Cropp, the Democratic chairman of the D.C. Council, who shocked her colleagues late Tuesday night by requiring that half the money for a new baseball stadium come from private financing."

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