Oppose Corporate Handouts? Thank the DFL
In the words of the Pioneer Press, a committee of the Minnesota House has dealt "a potentially fatal blow" to a public bailout of the NFL. To which I say, "Thank you, DFL." Why? The Republicans on the House Government Operations and Elections Committee voted in favor of corporate welfare, 5-4, while the DFL members voted against it, 5-1. So which party is the party of limited government?
Notice also that (once again), big business is in favor of big government: According to the Pioneer-Press, "Representatives of labor groups and executives from Target, U.S. Bank and other corporate organizations testified on behalf of the bill." No surprise there (think of Adam Smith), but still worth noting.
As for DFL committee members who voted against the bailout, a person can have lots of different reasons for voting for or against a piece of legislation at the various stages of the process. They may include protecting one's political allies. Some Republican commentators have said, well, "it's just the DFL protecting their financial backers, the Indian tribes who want to maintain their legal monopoly on gambling." I don't know, but perhaps--and "whatever." If it's another obstacle to bad policy, bad governance, and bad economics, I'm for it. Sometimes people do the right thing for the right reason; sometimes they do the right thing for the wrong reason. Either way, the right thing is done.
Finally, on the matter of dealing with the favor the law gives to Indian tribes: If you want to break the monopoly, you don't do so by transforming it to a duopoly or oligopoly; you open up the market to everyone. To borrow a cliche known by any mother, "two wrongs don't make a right."
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Update: It appears that the Republican members of the committee were even more pro-stadium than I thought. According to Politics in Minnesota, "When faced with a roll-call vote to pass the bill without recommendation and re-refer it to the House Taxes Committee, Republican committee members Rich Murray and Duane Quam voted 'pass.' When it was clear the bill was going down in defeat, they changed their votes to 'nay.'" Based on the P-P account, I had counted Quam as being opposed to the bailout; it looks like he was actually for it, so the Republican talley was 6 in favor, with only 3 opposed. A shoutout goes to Joyce Peppin, who voted "no" on two votes in the committee, as well as to Rich Hancock, who did the same. According to Politics in Minnesota, Hancock "indicated his objection to using public dollars to pay for private enterprise." In another article, PIM notes that "GOP leaders, meanwhile, sought to lay the blame on DFLers’ in ability to offer more than one vote for passage." That's one way of putting it.