Last night I was watching my (former) favorite team the Pistons stumble into an ugly loss against Sacramento.  Sometime during the game, there was a sideline interview of the Maloof Brothers, owners of the Kings.  What took place says a lot about how corporatists view the idea of a free-market…

Apparently there was a ballot initiative in Sacramento on election day asking approval of a sales-tax increase to fund a new arena — an’ it got curb-stomped:

After months of contentious wrangling and bitter public debate, county voters were poised to reject Tuesday a tax increase that would have partially financed a flashy new Sacramento Kings basketball arena.

Ballot measures Q and R proposed a quarter-cent sales tax boost to help raise public funds for a downtown arena and other projects. With 91 percent of precincts reporting, nearly 72 percent of voters opposed Measure Q and more than 80 percent opposed Measure R.

The thoughts of the Maloofs on this?  Insinuation that they’re going to move the team, interspersed with complaints like “it’s hard to raise taxes these days” & “we don’t know what to do next, can’t stay in Arco much longer”.  There’s only one word for describing that sentiment: balls.

For starters, the Maloof family is worth over a BILLION dollars — that’s with a B — and owns not only the Kings, but the Palms casino, a television production company, a distributorship for Coors, and a chunk of Wells Fargo.  They say that they need taxpayer dollars for a new arena, so how much would one cost?  For a convenient baseline, take the most recent arena built for an NBA team, the one for the Charlotte Bobcats: its estimated cost is $260 million, and it hosts everything from basketball games to concerts to professional wrestling.  Surely with all their investments & connections they can cobble together at least that much from private funding, right?  After all, the current Arco Arena was entirely privately funded, what’s wrong with doing that again?

Stupid question, I know.  Expecting billionaires to make investments with their own money, how silly of me.

If the structure of their operation is such that they need more money than they have at hand, here’s a novel idea: sell shares in a new arena w/ premium tickets to games & events.  Their own website says last year they got almost 2 million fans coming through, they can offer this and then finish off the new arena funding through traditional investment.  Here’s the best part of it all: it wouldn’t involve state-sanctioned THEFT…