Nationals Park and Metro (a rant herein, please be warned)

Posted by Michael Kanick on Jun. 26, 2009 at 4:18 PM
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OK - this post is more about the stadium funding, Metro, and the tragic accident on the Red Line earlier this week, so I apologize in advance for the semi-baseball content - I'll be back to posts about the team in short order.

People in the Natsmosphere on Twitter have likely seen this hatchet job of an article already from The Nation where the author blames the tragic loss of life this week on Metro's lack of funding (somewhat true) but then makes the erroneous and illogical jump to blame the accident on public funding of sports in general and Nationals Park in specific.  Apparently author Dave Zirin failed both his classes in journalistic ethics but also research when in college, since he misses key facts in his piece:

1. That various sources have estimated it would cost $1 billion dollars to replace all of Metro's 1000 series train cars, which is 166% of the cost of Nationals Park (est. $600 million);
2. Nationals Park was paid for by a special bond issue and tax on businesses, in no way taking money from DC's budget that would have been used elsewhere (these taxes wouldn't realistically have been passed by the city council for anything other than a stadium);
3. Metro is funded by DC, Maryland, and Virginia - and MD and VA didn't pay a dime for the stadium (yet MD & VA residents give DC boatloads of money from the tax revenue from every sale at the stadium, from tickets to food).

Aside from those factual lapses in Mr. Zirin's article, the worst part is the sheer fact that he is using the terrible, preventable deaths of 9 people to grind his own personal political axe, less than a week after the accident.  Have you no shame?

In the interest of political equal time, the libertarian CATO Institute makes the same awful moral misjudgement here, with Randal O'Toole grinding their axe when the victims have not yet all been put to rest.  In their defense, at least they did not make the poor logical jump and blame Nationals Park, instead they just ignore the facts about the rail line to Tyson's Corner and make the shoddy connection that this extension of the system is to blame, though that extension is a seperate budget item just approved this year, not money that could have been used to upgrade the existing train cars.

I'm sorry that I've had to waste the space where we should be talking about baseball, and instead subject you all to a rant about morally vacuous political opportunists who make me ashamed to be part of the same world of political practitioners and media elite who seemingly have no heart.

Idiots.