Yeah… This is not how to defend voter identification laws — if you think they’ll have any chance of being overturned. Don Yelton, a Republican party muckety-muck, now has social permission to spout off racist comments, and the Daily Show was simply lucky enough to record them.
Somehow, I missed this detail about the University of North Carolina-Charlotte’s football stadium, now named after Jerry Richardson:
The school had discussed seeking $5 million for temporary naming rights, with an eye toward renewing or signing another agreement after 15 years. Instead, Richardson came along with the $10 million offer and the stadium name was set in perpetuity.
Note: This was after Richardson asked local governments for money to help fund a remodel of the Carolina Panthers’ Bank of America Stadium, and eventually landed some $87 million. So, for $5 million, UNCC sold out its football stadium’s name in perpetuity rather than wait another few years to rinse and repeat. Awesome!
You know what else is awesome? The UNCC football stadium is nice, but didn’t have to be built. By its own calculation, the university borrowed about $40 million and raised the rest through other means, but what about the other options? What about BB&T Park, the new facility being built for the Class-AAA minor league baseball Charlotte Knights in uptown Charlotte?
Obviously, it wouldn’t work to put UNCC’s football team in BofA Stadium for most games right away, as they might only draw 20,000 people (the new stadium holds about 16,000, with plans to expand to about 40,000), but the university could have put money toward building BB&T in such a way that about 15,000 people could watch football there, and then once (if) UNCC gets popular enough, they could move to BofA Stadium.
It’s true that playing baseball in football stadiums is a terrible idea, but playing football in baseball stadiums has a long and proud tradition, and baseball stadiums tend to be far more pleasant places for spectators than football-only facilities. For example, see how AT&T Park, in San Francisco, has been arranged for college football games.
With minimal, if any, changes, BB&T Park could be set up in a similar way, with the football field running from the first base foul territory out into left field, and temporary stands erected in right field. Ideally, the field would be all artificial turf (the good stuff that acts, more or less, like grass; not the carpet, of course), as many minor league parks and football facilities use. But if you want to insist on a grass field, guess what? The minor league baseball schedule ends at the start of September, so there’s virtually no overlap!
I get it: the school wanted a nice shiny toy for itself on campus. However, as a public institution spending public money, it ought to have told Richardson (a.k.a. the dude that had just played hardball with the state for access to the public teat) to go jump in a lake.
And the school really ought to have considered subsidizing the Charlotte Knights’ stadium in exchange for a few tenant perks since, as the Knights point out on their own web site, the land for their new stadium is valued at around $24 million and is being leased for $1 per year. It would have been a win-win for everyone. (Except Jerry Richardson, as it should have been.)
It’s not necessarily easy to make money on college football, especially as part of a non-BCS conference, and this was an opportunity to try something truly revolutionary for a mid-sized city: Leverage one entity’s inability to go anywhere to help entice another entity to stay, while still giving the people the college football team that they appear willing the bankrupt themselves in order to get.
(Image cc-licensed: "DSC_6420" by DigiDreamGrafix.com)
(Image cc-licensed: "UNR @ AT&T Park" by Zack Sheppard)
This Stephen Moore piece from the Wall Street Journal is a classic WSJ opinion piece in that it subtly distorts what the GOP leadership in North Carolina has done with its fiscal policy in order to make it appear sound. Specifically, these lines kill me:
To their credit, Mr. Berger and his fellow GOP lawmakers have passed a pro-growth plan that will slash the state personal income tax rate to 5.75% from 7.75% by 2015; cut the corporate tax to 5% from 6.9%; and eliminate the state estate tax.All of this will spur growth and job creation. Yet unions and others on the left pummel the plan as a giveaway to the rich.
Cutting taxes at this time may be the correct thing to do, given that we want to encourage people to spend money, but what Moore will not admit is that the protesters are correct, and that the state government is redistributing money to rich people, largely because GOP legislators believe it’s the correct thing to do — Moore simply won’t own that. Tellingly, he leaves out that the “tax cut” for the state income tax also involves switching to a flat tax, and he makes no mention of the legislature’s moves to broaden sales taxes to include more types of sales. In other words, all of the added revenue is going to come from people lower on the economic ladder, all of the spending cuts will hurt people lower on the economic ladder, and the Republican government believes things will work out in the end.
Furthermore (and it’s way more complicated than can be summarized here) a major element of North Carolina’s economic policy since the 1920s has been to differentiate itself from other Southern states, and they’ve done it with a certain amount of success. Universities! Roads! Tech industry! Banking!
Now that this brand of modern conservative is in charge of the state, it’ll be interesting to see how much like South Carolina the GOP aims to be.
Near South Park Mall in Charlotte, NC, sits the best Tex-Mex restaurant in town: Paco’s Tacos. Pictured above: what they call Tuna Carnitas, ancho-chile-crusted tuna bites, served one way on a tortilla and another way in a lettuce wrap. Though a touch salty on its own, the spice crust makes perfect sense if you make sure to get some avocado and slaw in every bite.
In August 1988, the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, celebrated the opening of a brand new 24,000-seat arena, soon to be known as the Charlotte Coliseum. The mayor and governor were on hand for opening night of course, but the Reverend Billy Graham provided real star power, and he took the opportunity to pronounce, “This is more than a coliseum that will meet the needs of a great city. This is a symbol of Charlotte’s vitality, its commitment to the future and that Charlotte truly has its place in the cities of the world.”
Graham was right. First the Coliseum, and now Time Warner Cable Arena, site of this year’s Democratic National Convention, have been symbols of Charlotte’s demographic upheaval, their use shadowing the city’s ongoing quest to be known as something more important than a sleepy landmark between Richmond and Atlanta.
