An open letter to Rush Limbaugh

Pretend for a moment that you have no emotional attachment to the game of football. Look at a professional football team as just another business that might want to locate a factory in your city.

Do you think that it is fair that a billionaire team owner and his millionaire players should receive government funds (tax money taken not only from "the rich" but from middle and working class citizens) to build the facilities in which to conduct their business?

If it is morally wrong for the government to take the money of one private citizen and give it to another private citizen for that citizen to pay his or his families health care costs (and make no mistake it is morally wrong for the government to do that) then in what universe does it become right to take taxpayer's money and use it to build or upgrade a sports stadium in order to attract or keep a major league franchise?

After all the success you have had as a champion of conservative ideas do you really what to throw away every last trace of your moral authority by becoming a corporate welfare queen?

Because as a team owner that is exactly what you would be, just another bloated parasite sucking on the government tit.

If you became a team owner you could never again condemn misappropriation of taxpayer funds without labeling yourself as a rank hypocrite.

The NFL can't even claim that professional football couldn't survive without government subsidies because we have witnessed in recent years the explosive growth of NASCAR whose facilities are all financed entirely with private money.

The argument made by governments looking to justify taking taxpayer money and and using it as corporate welfare to lure a sports franchise to their city is that a team is a big boost to the local economy.

A number of economic impact studies which were not paid for by governments looking to justify spending public money on a sports team have shown that the true effect on a cities economy from a sports franchise is at best minimal and at worst slightly harmful.

Until the NFL and the NBA and Major League Baseball all reform their business practices so that they are no longer detestable parasites using government force to partially finance their operations no conservative ought to have anything whatsoever to do with them.