Don't sweat the details, Jack. I hear they're going to tap the Portland Water Bureau to cover those MLS salaries.

This podunk town could make a Chicago Alderman blush.

Major league soccer cease to exist, cease to exist, cease to exist.

By golly, I feel a song coming on!!

One part of the "smart business model" the owners of MLS have adopted is to treat the players poorly. It's all part of the joy of working for millionaires with a sense of entitlement.
Of course, the Timbers Army is too geeked up to notice or care.
I was recently stunned when one of the main proponents of the Timbers argued that the Henry Paulson bailout had been paid back by institutions such as Goldman Sachs.
It's applicable here since Henry Paulson is a minority owner of the Timbers and Beavers and it's his son who is currently dazzling Randy and Sam.
The truth is that TARP was actually a slice of the total bailout and firms like Goldman Sachs recieved many billions in backdoor bailouts.
The notion that they got back into a strong position by good management or a recovering economy and then paid back the government for the help they temporarily needed is 100% false.
These shocking bonuses - many billions of them - were just a direct transfer of wealth from the taxpayers to the firms. They only earned the money in the sense that they ran the scheme.
Look for Matt Taibbi's new piece explaining the details and comparing the various scams used here by Wall Street to common street scams by hustlers and grifters played for centuries.
The fact that our civic "leaders" are working this hard to make the Paulson family even richer is a DISGRACE.
Sam and Randy come off as local-yokel, self-absorbed dummies. I imagine a scene back on the East Coast where the Paulsons are saying, "We even require the taxpayers to chip in on the hourly wages of the workers. These provincial dullards don't know who they're dealing with here. And get this: Their poor civil servants at city hall actually think they're the slick ones. It's priceless. Monford, another Brandy, please."
The new Taibbi piece is available at rollingstone.com. The newstand cover reads, "The Return of the Vampire Squid: How Goldman Sachs Scammed the Bailout".
The article is called
"Wall Street's Bailout Hustle"

Beck and Clapton are on the cover.
Enjoy.

By the way, here's the latest on the restroom situation, based on the plans submitted by Paulson to the city.

The stadium's seating capacity after renovation would be 27,913, but there would be enough restroom fixtures to adequately serve only 11,838 spectators, based on the MLS Venue Design Guide. And it's a similar situation when it comes to food stands.

However, MLS has waived all of its requirements for restrooms, food stands, and seating at PGE Park, without providing the methodology upon which it based that decision.

But where all of those 16,000-plus surplus spectators would pee isn't the city's concern, because the city council has accepted the MLS waiver, no questions asked.

Heck, the Timbers Army can take its cue from the British hooligans it emulates and simply pee in the aisles. That oughta take some of the pressure off the latrine shortage.

No, it doesn't surprise me. No more than, for example, that Cesar Chavez was "honored" today by a news spot notifying us that someone died in the notorious "Powell & Cesar Chavez" intersection. Another reason why Mr Chavez's foresighted family separated themselves from the divisive identity politics and shameless pandering that forced this fraudulent gesture upon the residents of this city?

But where all of those 16,000-plus surplus spectators would pee isn't the city's concern....

The reason the plans are approved, sans adequate restroom capacity, is that everyone knows these kind of attendance numbers will never be realized.

Ya wanna bet a pair of season tickets that the MLS Timbers will sellout 80%+ in their inaugural season?

The NFL and NBA are having labor issues too, I'm sure the snarky posts about those leagues folding are in the queue right?

Bill's first sentence (and not much else) makes a lot of sense. The MLS was structured in a way that tilts the playing field sharply toward ownership, these growing pains are simply the MLS growing up into a league where the quotes around Major can finally be dropped.

In my opinion its perfect timing that these problems are being ironed out the year before our city steps into the league, I feel bad for the Philly Union though.

There's no doubt that the Timbers will sell out many of their games -- if there are games. Without a league, however, there'll be no games.