The Unspeakable in Full Pursuit of – a Football Stadium

Corporate Welfare |
By Andrew B. Wilson | Read Time 1 minute

Oscar Wilde described fox-hunting as “the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.” We can make the same point about Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, Saint Louis Rams Football Owner Stan Kroenke, and the Great Riverfront Stadium Hunt.

Nixon and Kroenke are two squires cut from the same cloth – a trophy-hunting governor who thinks he can pick winners and losers and a super-rich developer with a long history of currying favor from government entities.

In this situation, we may debate the question of whether it is worse (i.e., more “unspeakable”) to give or to receive. Here we are talking about the award of hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ assistance to a hugely profitable sports business that does nothing to advance the public good.

It is at least appropriate that the object of the hunt is made largely of concrete.  Along with the unwarranted subsidies, that makes it doubly indigestible – both from a gastronomic and an economic viewpoint.

About the Author

A former foreign correspondent who spent four years in the Middle East and served as Business Weeks London bureau chief during Margaret Thatchers first two terms as Britains prime minister, Andrew is a regular contributor of essays and commentaries to leading national publications, including the American Spectator, the Weekly Standard and the Wall Street Journal. As an independent writer since 1993, he has written attention-getting speeches for a wide variety of business leaders, including the CEOs of the Air Transport Association of America, Boeing, Coca-Cola, Eli Lilly, McDonalds, J.P. Morgan Chase, Well Point and Zoltek Companies, Inc., with more than 45 speeches published in Vital Speeches of the Day. A 1964 graduate of Saint Louis Priory School and a 1968 graduate of Stanford University, with a B.A. in English Literature, he joined the Show-Me Institute as a fellow in January 2011.

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