Puh-LEEEEZE, Brer Paulson! Don't throw us in that briar patch!

Gee that seems a shame, especially after Vera guaranteed us that Glickman/Gariner could pay back that $35M for all those luxury boxes for minor league ball.

Yet look today, we're still a mnior league town.

Speaking of water bills, my 1400 square foot home in Rose City Park, just got hit with a $380.00 bill. From the “Forest to Faucet,” was paid for in my Great Grandfather’s time. From the “Downspouts to the Dipsh*ts,” is on my clock!

Brad.. it's only the beginning unless the community revolts. Grandma Milly has been banking blood since June to save for future rates. Can we say skyrocket?

This might be a good time to contact the people at the Pumpkin Patch on Sauvie Island, and see if they might be interested in laying out a ball field in the vicinity of their Halloween maze. Then we could invite those 19th-century "base-ball" re-enactors from Fort Vancouver to come on down. Now, wouldn't that be a great way to spend an afternoon!

SCHOOLS NOT STADIUMS: CHALLENGING BACKWARDS GOVERNMENT SPENDING PRIORITIES WITH SPORTSWRITER DAVE ZIRIN! A PUBLIC PANEL DISCUSSION FEATURING:

DAVE ZIRIN writes about the politics of sports for The Nation, SLAM magazine, the Progressive, the Los Angeles Times and edgeofsports.com. His books include A People's History of Sports in the United States and Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games We Love.

JULES BOYKOFF is a former professional soccer player and currently an associate professor of political science at Pacific University in Oregon. He is the author of Beyond Bullets: The Suppression of Dissent in the United States.

SANDRA CHILDS is in her 20th year of teaching and is currently a teacher-library media specialist at Jackson Middle School in Portland. Several of her articles have appeared in Rethinking Schools magazine, and she co-edited the teaching guide for Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.

While public schools are in a world of pain with budgets slashed to the bone, politicians act like these are problems beyond their control. In truth, they are the result of an attack on public education that has seen the system starved. One way this has been implemented is through stadium construction.
Over the last generation, we've seen $30 billion in public funds spent on stadiums. Yet there is not one example of a sports franchise lifting or even stabilizing a local economy. These projects achieve so little because the jobs created are low wage, service sector, seasonal employment.

Join the International Socialist Organization, Portland Area Rethinking Schools, and radical sportswriter Dave Zirin for a panel discussion aimed at challenging backwards government spending priorities, and offering some ideas for what we can do about it.

Sunday, October 17th at 3pm. Portland State University, Smith Memorial Student Union Multicultural Center (Room 228).

Free Parking (in structure across the street from the Smith Building). Childcare available upon request. Contact pdxiso@gmail.com for more information.

Sponsored by: Portland Area Rethinking Schools and the International Socialist Organization

Paulson moved his team, and I moved my family. Portland's problems only impact me when I hit a pothole.

I will leave Oregon before I pay any new taxes. Many others will follow when the unfunded pension, health, and disability sludge hits the fan.

So glad we moved to Reno. Sure the economy stinks here; but at least there's no trolleys (or any plans in the making), a decent AAA Baseball Stadium and a team that draws 5500 on a bad day, can get anywhere by car in about 15-20 minutes and it's only a two hour drive to see the Kings play in Sacramento.
Can't say we miss anything in Portland other than our family, friends, and our baseline seats at Blazer games.

Paulson is a wealthy carpetbagger who came into town and snookered the rubes, Randy and Sam, with the promise of a third rate major soccer league team. Look at the ticket prices for the best seats and tell me who is going to consistently pay up to $75 a game to see a mediocre product.

No more baseball in Portland and in a few years, likely no soccer. Portland - a true minor league town.

Mick Farr:

Paulson is a wealthy carpetbagger who came into town and snookered the rubes, Randy and Sam, with the promise of a third rate major soccer league team

Bob T::

True, sports team owners have for many decades been addicted to corporate welfare, but people need to remember that none of this is possible without the entity of government. Paulson could not take a single penny from anyone unless the government were to do it for him. And this would be taken under the guise of "public infrastucture" or some other nonsense. Even "New Urbanism", as a real city must have its sports (lest some other smaller town get it, where "sprawl" will then occur). And the facility could be yet another excuse to build a new light rail line or something.

The hard part is for all of these people who support these deals (and they exist across the political spectrum, in large numbers) to grasp the fact that without this welfare and partnership, professional sports will not go away, just like it had existed and had been expanding for decades in the late 1800s will into the 1900s. Because of the government subsidies we have lost the chance to see how stadiums and arenas would have developed over time. They would be simpler, smaller, and far less expensive. Maybe salaries would be lower as well. No big deal -- the world will never run out of people who would love to play a sport for a fraction of what the pro's make now.

Bob Tiernan
Portland

Amen, Bob T.

Baseball is much less popular. National League Championship Series Game 2, placing 15 in this market.