Braves ditching The Ted for suburbs

Agree that minor league baseball is the best - particularly when you can catch an afternoon game on a sunny day.

 

The Tea Party is storming the Cobb County council chambers. Who do you think it was getting pissed off because they weren't allowed to speak in opposition to the stadium at this meeting?

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/tea-party-battles-business-over-braves-stadium

From the story: There's also the possibility of legal challenges for various components of the financing deal, including the plan to redirect existing property tax revenues to pay off stadium debt. Then, Dooley says, there's the task of going after the commissioners' jobs, first through recall petitions and, if that fails, when they're up for re-election.

"This is not over," Dooley said, "not by a long shot."

Dooley, BTW, is the head of the Atlanta Tea Party.


Also:

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-12-17/georgia-tea-party-takes-on-republicans-over-braves-stadium-taxes

From the story: Tea Party supporters clogged county telephone lines with calls complaining about at least $368 million in tax-supported bonds Cobb has pledged to back a $672 million new Braves stadium. Opponents last week filed a lawsuit in county court challenging the legality of the funding plan.

The Tea Party, which favors smaller government and less regulation, is taking on the Republican business establishment and aligning with environmental, education and transportation activists, showing that distaste for publicly-funded stadiums can unify political enemies.

“We’re all for capitalism,” Atlanta Tea Party leader Debbie Dooley said. “We’re against crony capitalism like this.”

Dooley said her group considers the stadium deal a waste of taxpayer money and corporate welfare awarded without adequate public input.


http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-12-18/tea-party-aims-chop-at-braves-stadium

FTS: Liberal talking head Lawrence O'Donnell was confident the Tea Party would cave to the big money. “Here we have the perfect test for the Tea Party,” O’Donnell said on MSNBC after the stadium deal was first announced. “A test the Tea Party will surely fail.”

On the contrary! In the coming days, the Atlanta Tea Party Patriots are expected to file a lawsuit against the Cobb County Board of Commissioners to block construction of the new stadium. The group’s leader, Debbie Dooley, says the deal represents an unconstitutional use of taxpayer money. She also doesn’t like the precedent it could set. “If Cobb County is allowed to get away with this, you can bet other counties will do everything in their power to circumvent a vote by the people for something like this," she said.


And:

Resident Patricia Hay said she’s against the project because of the partial use of taxpayer money and because commissioners were voting on it about two weeks after it was first announced.

“We’re going to take two weeks and ram it through. It reminds me of Obama Care.”

 

Hey, don't throw facts in front of Starman's liberal trash screeds.

 

If the teabaggers really cared as much about wasted tax money, etc etc yadda yadda, as they claim they do, they wouldn't be fuckin' around with phone calls and filing lawsuits in these stadium ripoffs...



They'd be fuckin' firebombing the joint. Not to mention availing themselves of their much-discussed Second Amendment Solutions.

 

Wow. Really?

When exactly have they done that before?

I must have missed all those Obamacare firebombs.

 

Next time you're in town, get about 10 miles away from the I-75/I-285 interchange at about 5:30, in pretty much any direction, and then see how long it takes you to traverse that 10 mile stretch. Then, let's throw another 15,000 vehicles into the mix on game nights. It's a gridlock nightmare now, I can't fathom what this looks like in 2017.

 

The chairman of the Cobb County Commissioners, Tim Lee, is a Georgia Tea Party favorite, having signed their manifesto in 2012. So I think it is fair to say this action is not very Tea Party of him and his comrades, whose county slogan, as emblazoned on the governmental website, says, "Low on taxes, big on business."

http://www.thegeorgiateaparty.com/31212-the-marietta-declaration-receives-county-gop-endorsements/

 

And by the way, I think the links previously cited as evidence of a Tea Party revolt against this action are five and six months old.

 

For shits and giggles, does anyone have idea where the non-partisan folks come down on this issue?
I have not yet seen a an editorial in the AJC on the issue. I'm referring to the stadium deal and the financing package.
The commission meeting was poorly handled (that's being kind), but what sort of support does the financing deal for the stadium have?

 

I follow the "Field of Schemes" blog. They quoted John Schuerholz , the Braves President, basically saying that it was done in this fashion so that no one could oppose the project. This thing was steam rollered through from day one. When the inital proposal was presented to the County Commission only two commisioners went in at a time to be briefed. The rest waited in the hall. The reason was that of three commssioners were in the room Georgia law requried it to be public. The vote came shortly after that. Non-partisan folks never had a chance to become involved.

 

On the record openly flouting open meeting/Sunshine laws? Lovely.

 

Schuerholz didn't basically say it, he flat out said it had to be done this way or it wouldn't have been approved.

http://deadspin.com/braves-president-stadium-deal-had-to-be-done-in-secret-1582023678