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David Kay Johnston, in his new book, "Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill)," talks about the extent that tax-payer subsidies support Major League sports in this country, with particular attention to the new Yankees stadium being built in The Bronx. In a recent interview with Amy Goodman at Democracy Now!, he pointed out,

Now, in this country right now, we are spending $2 billion a year subsidizing the big four sports: baseball, basketball, football and hockey. It accounts for all of the profits of that industry and more. Now, there may be individual teams that make money, but the industry as a whole is not profitable. And that's astonishing because the big four leagues are exempt from the laws of competition. By the way, irony is not dead, because here are people who are in the business of competition on the field who are exempted by law from the rules of economic competition.

George Steinbrenner is getting over $600 million for the new Yankee Stadium in New York. The New York Mets are getting over $600 million. In fact, the City of New York gave them money to lobby against the taxpayers to get more money. Rudy Giuliani gave $50 million to the two teams for that purpose.

Johnston also points out the connection between tax-payer subsidized sports stadiums and the demise of public parks, with the concomitant repercussions of urban violence:

At the same time that we're doing this, we are starving our public parks for money. And I show in Free Lunch how the rise of urban gangs and now suburban gangs is connected to this. We used to have all sorts of programs in this country after World War II for young men and young women on Saturdays and during the summer and school holidays, where even if you didn't have any money -- didn't matter that your parents didn't have any money, because -- and I know this because I did it as a child -- you could go to any one of a half-dozen different places, and there were organized activities to keep you out of trouble. After all, idle hands are the devil's workshop is not exactly a radical new idea. Well, we've cut and cut and cut those programs to fund two different subsidies: one to sports teams' owners, one that goes to Tyco, General Electric, Honeywell and some other big companies. And, lo and behold, we've had a big rise in urban violence because of the vacuum being filled by young people who no longer have these organized activities.

This issue is particularly relevant to the new Yankees Stadium going up in the Bronx today, as the NY Times is reporting:

The cost of replacing two popular parks where the new Yankee Stadium is being built has nearly doubled. At the same time, several of the eight new parks, which were supposed to be completed before the new stadium opens next spring, have been delayed by as much as two years, according to city documents.

None of the replacement parks have been completed, and construction on several has not yet started; however, the parks department has built a temporary replacement park on a parking lot in the area, opened a ball field this spring at a school almost a mile to the east, and is building a sports field at a recreation center about a mile to the north.

As Johnston discusses in his book, local residents are pissed:

"We've lost our biggest park, and what we've been reduced to is this parking lot,” said Anita Antonetty, 51, a South Bronx resident, referring to the temporary park at Jerome Avenue and East 161st Street. "We lost hundreds of trees that were 80 years old, and now there's this monstrosity of cement across the street from where people live."

These delays are going to last FIVE years, while the stadium is scheduled to open on time next year:

The delays mean the neighborhood will go at least five years without some of its sports fields: Stadium construction in Macombs Dam Park started in 2006, and the permanent replacement park will not be completed until 2011. "The real emphasis was on building a stadium for the Yankees, and the community and the parks were an inconvenient afterthought," said Christian DiPalermo, executive director of New Yorkers for Parks, an advocacy group. "The Yankees couldn't miss a season, but it was O.K. for the community to miss five years of parkland and be shut out of a community benefits agreement."

The new Yankees stadium is straight up corporate welfare, and when it affects the parks system, it hits the trifecta of appearing in our DEMOCRACY, EARTH, & MONEY sections - a perfect example of Consilience, where seemingly disparate ideas are actually connected in more than one way.

It's up to us to fight corporate welfare and focus on our neighborhoods and community building. Let's stop the transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest, a practice which is eating at the moral fiber of this country and turning our society upside down.

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Watch the David Kay Johnston interview on Democracy Now!

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