Republicans Rally Political Clout to Stop Progressives From Owning Baseball Teams

No really. The free market is dead. It's a "Just Us" ownership society apparently.

Your free spending, big brother, moral authoritarian, nanny state Neocons are rallying to stop a bid for a major league baseball team because a minorty partner happens to be George Soros and a major GOP contributer happens to want it instead.

Tom Davis (R-VA)- Democrats can't own MLB teams
DailyKOS
Wed Jun 29th, 2005 at 05:27:14 PDT

To me, hearing this story was just stunning. Its good to see the R's attacking the issues that matter to us, like whether George Soros can be a minority owner of the Nats.

And no, I'm not kidding...

WashingtonPost.com
Excerpts

It was all right for Schott, the racist collector of Nazi memorabilia, to own a baseball team for years, but it's not for Soros, the billion-dollar philanthropist and Nobel Prize nominee?

That's exactly what some Republicans on Capitol Hill are suggesting, led by Tom Davis, the Republican from Virginia who is trying to steer the sale of the Nationals and who says Soros is just not the kind of person "we need or want in the nation's capital."

An even nastier abuse came from Rep. John Sweeney (R-N.Y.), who actually suggested baseball's antitrust exemption might be in trouble on the Hill if MLB let Soros have the Nats.

You can't help wondering what's behind the outrageous attack on Soros, who isn't even a major partner in the bid for the Nats. (Local entrepreneur Jon Ledecky is the real bidder.) Isn't it strange that rival bidder Fred Malek, the head of the Washington Baseball club, just happens to be a very big GOP fundraiser? And isn't it strange that, in a telephone interview, Davis went out of his way to praise Malek's bid? And isn't it strange that these attacks on Soros from Republicans came on the very day that Ledecky and his partners were being interviewed by MLB?

Davis doesn't bother to hide his agenda. He says straight out that baseball needs to cultivate some good will on Capitol Hill at the moment, given the steroid investigations, and that selling the team to billionaire Soros, a critic of President Bush and a massive financial supporter of liberal causes, would anger him.

"They could use some friends on the Hill right now, and this is not the way to make them," Davis said yesterday

But Davis has another problem with Soros, too. He's an "out of towner." Listening to Davis, you wonder if he's next going to say Soros's Hungarian accent is too thick.

"I mean, to me, Soros is the guy who has so much money and wants to buy the world," Davis said. "I mean that's not what baseball's about. This is above all a fan sport. This is the Nationals, and they're going to give it to some multinational?"

No, you're going to "give it" to a Republican contibutor if you manage to block it. Soros was going to buy it nimrod. You know, capitalism. Heard of it?

Commies.

Jeeesh,
I would really hope that politics of Soros was the reason for the uproar but after doing some checking on other issues of late, I have to admit that it may very well be
One quote that caught my eye:

An even nastier abuse came from Rep. John Sweeney (R-N.Y.), who actually suggested baseball's antitrust exemption might be in trouble on the Hill if MLB let Soros have the Nats

Which if you use in conjunction with a quote later on the link:

"You've got a league with a steroid problem, and you're going to sell the team to a guy who is pro marijuana? I just don't think we need or want that in the nation's capital. I just don't think you want such a polarizing figure."

Put this together with the goverments contention that drug trafficers support terrorism........ Possible usage of the Patriot Act on this one.
Very scary thought that this may well be the future of our nation.

Take a look at the thread that I started yesterday
To Arms! To Arms A Call for all Americans! Time to overthrow the Goverment!
Which basically is an arument to demonstrate that the US goverment as well as the Supreme Court may be in violation of the Constitution.

Rant request permission to add a link to my thread pointing back to yours as another possible example of the goverment trampling the Constitution.

Can we finally stop referring to the current iterration of the Republican party as "conservatives"?

Being a conservative means favoring limited government intervention. When Republicans in Congress have ratcheted up government intervention to a point where they are manipulating ownership of baseball teams to shut out people on their McCarthyist "blacklist," they have abandoned every shred of conservatism.

This blatant abuse of political power exposes the true nature of these people--which should not even be associated with anything conservative. It is regressive.

Marge Schott and George Steinbrenner aren't Polarizing figures?

Spare me. These people are insane. If you can afford to buy a team, buy a team.

Congressmen have no business deciding who can and can't buy something based on their dislike for the other person's politics.

Conservative pundit Michelle Malkin is having none of this!

SOROS, SPORTS PORK, AND STUPID REPUBLICANS
By Michelle Malkin · June 28, 2005 10:07 AM

Well, well, well. It took George Soros for hypocritical Republican politicians to finally oppose tax-subsidized sports stadiums and antitrust exemptions for baseball.

Mark this down as a milestone moment when I side with the likes of Soros and Democrat Rep. George Miller, who asks:

Why should politics have anything to do with who owns the team...So Congress is going to get involved in every baseball ownership decision? Are they next going to worry about a manager they don't like? I've never seen anything as impotent as a congressman threatening the baseball exemption. It gets threatened half a dozen times a year, and our batting average threatening the exemption is zero.

Joe Weedon at The Yellow Line has it exactly right:

It’s the Congressional Republicans that are making this a political issue, not George Soros or his ownership group. If Congress wants to be fair, perhaps the ownership groups that include ex-Senator Peter Fitzgerald and ex-Secretary of State Colin Powell should also be barred from owning the team. In fact, maybe President Bush should be asked to return the millions he made from the sale of the franchise formerly known as the Washington Senators (Texas Rangers).

It's about time faux fiscal conservatives in the GOP got called on for their longtime championing of publicly financed sports palaces and special government exemptions, which have enriched many private individuals on both sides of the political aisle. This stupid anti-Soros stunt is blowing up in Republicans' faces.

As well it should.

Well, Soros is not a big baseball guy or so I have been told. Its politics as usual. Did'nt Soros help bankrole moveon.org? Im not saying its okay, but this seems like political payback pure and simple.

It's the natural end result of the Right's incessant "liberals == traitors" hate rhetoric.

Certain rights should be denied those not loyal enough to the ruling junta, they are, after all, enemies of the people.



I am supposed to go on a flight to Arizona in a month , I have to wonder if I am on a "no fly list" because I've been publicly critical of the administration. I find it hard they actually believe all those people are terrorists, so I wonder what gets you on such a list... so far no-one's talking, and the only way to find out if you're on the list is getting taken aside when you're trying to get ontp your flight.

So now, in addition to "no fly lists", some think we need to create "no buying MLB teams lists." After all, the filthy liberals are clearly bosom buddies with the terrorists, and we can't have Al Quaeda infiltrating the Nats, they might replace the hot dogs in the stands with falafel, or commit some other atrocity.

[edit on 6/30/05 by xmotex]