Take It Or Leave It?

I love basketball. I love free enterprise. I dislike corporate socialism and wealthy hypocrisy about the role of government in spending your tax dollars.

You know the fun certain conservatives have about welfare queens driving around in Cadillacs picking up cigarettes, lottery tickets and whiskey with their government provided checks? Yes, there is abuse in any system devised by mankind in the spending of other people's money; it is true for the bottom rung of our society and also for those in the top 1%.

However, there is one difference: Those living from hand-to-mouth on a daily basis admit it, while the 1% claim they deserve it because they are job creators.

Clay Bennett, Jeff Records and the other owners of the Thunder are successful businessmen – some through their own enterprise, while others inherited great resources. Most are generous, civic-minded individuals who have made Oklahoma City a better place to live, work and raise a family.

However, that does not mean that, in order to keep the Thunder here, taxpayers should put up 95% of the cost in making that happen while Bennett, etc., pony up 5% – unless you think that's a fair and square deal for about 18,000 folks out of this state's four million citizens to enjoy the best basketball games found anywhere on this planet.

I am not a socialist or communist but maybe will admit to being what passes for a liberal in this state. I served in our Legislature for 28 years and evaluated dozens upon dozens of proposals to keep or entice private sector businesses in Oklahoma. I voted for some and opposed others.

However, I never even saw one that asked so little of the owners and so much from taxpayers as this one.

Even the deals offered to Panasonic, Canoo and other job creators required payback if they failed to create the thousands of jobs promised. The Thunder has 18 players on the team now and will be allowed only 18 in the future. Yes, the building of a new arena will require construction jobs and those, too, will be subsidized by state tax dollars.

A new baseball stadium in St. Petersburg, FL is going to cost $1.3 billion. Owners and taxpayers will split 50/50 the price tag.

Surely our talented mayor and staff could have cut a better deal than 95/5 unless, and this is always possible, they are not as talented and effective negotiators as portrayed or, maybe, they didn't negotiate at all but just accepted the take-it-or-leave-it proposal from the ownership group.

And finally, as Mayor Holt says, the voters will decide on Dec. 12, anyway.

Those are the folks that, for the most part, know exactly the cost of a loaf of bread today compared to a year ago, which means they count their pennies; so maybe they want to keep a single penny instead of giving it to folks who count their money in different and much larger denominations?

We'll see. I just report. You decide.