The Runback: Find Your Bag Elsewhere

Two Metro areas. Two long-term sports fixtures who all think they need billions of your taxpayer dollars to survive. Neither is deserving of state-funded support.

Welcome to another week of The Runback. Have you been enjoying The Duckpin? Do you have comments or suggestions? Do you want to write for us? Let me know at theduckpin@gmail.com. And please be sure to follow on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Thanks in advance.

News and Politics

• Andy Harris Among Republicans Who Broke Earmarks Promise: The guy who said "I will never support earmarks!" has requested quite a lot of them...

• The Pence Perception Problem: Won't the real Mike Pence please stand up?

• Marylanders Deserve Better than Superintendent Choudhury: Time to End the School Test Results Cover-up

• Dan Cox Still Accepts No Blame: Maybe at some point, Dan Cox will man up and take responsibility for his loss and for the disaster that he personally has brought to this state. But that day is not today.

• AM Radio Bill Not as Lame As You Might Think It Is: AM Radio provides a necessary public service to millions of Americans

Sports

• Coyotes Are Road Kill in Arizona: After twenty years of disastrous ownership, failed referenda, and bankruptcy, NHL hockey is dying in the desert.

The Monday Thought

Another banner weekend for The Preakness and the state’s ridiculous infatuation with spending taxpayer dollars on horse racing:

1/ST Racing, owners of Pimlico Race Course and the Maryland Jockey Club, said Sunday in a news release that a combined 65,000 people attended Friday, which was Black-Eyed Susan Day, and Saturday. By comparison, roughly 182,000 attended the events over two days in 2019, meaning turnout this year was a little more than a third of the total for the last Preakness before the pandemic.

The Preakness reclamation project was always a bad deal and every year it looks worse. No matter how much Democratic leaders boast about their commitment to horse racing in the state, the public always responds with a resounding thud. The public has a clear message for those Democrats who want to spend billions on a jobs project.

Meanwhile, at the other end of I-95, a new group of billionaires are ready to look for a state handout:

Now that the franchise is poised to change hands (following approval by the league), the splashy stadium chase is back on across all sides of the Potomac River.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that newly-elected Maryland Governor Wes Moore, a former star wide receiver at Johns Hopkins, issued a clear-eyed statement about a future Commanders stadium shortly after the agreement news broke.

“The Commanders have called Prince George’s County home for 25 years, and Governor Moore is committed to continuing this long-standing partnership,” the statement said. “The Moore-Miller Administration congratulates the new owners and upon approval by the National Football League, looks forward to continuing conversations with the Commanders about our vision for the future of the team in Maryland.”

The Hogan Administration was ready to spend money on infrastructure for a Commanders stadium, but not on the stadium itself. That was bad enough. But Wes Moore is ready to go all in to spend money on giving the team a sweetheart deal at your expense:

“I’m absolutely willing to leverage taxpayer dollars if we know there’s going to be a significant societal return on the investment,” Moore told Axios in April.

Two Metro areas. Two long-term sports fixtures who all think they need billions of your taxpayer dollars to survive. Neither is deserving of state-funded support. Both should survive on their merits and on the market. And both can feel free to leave; there will never be a rate of return for the taxpayer that justifies the exorbitant expense. I understand both massive companies want their bag of cash, but they can feel free to find their bag elsewhere.

Enough is enough.