It really shouldn’t be necessary to say this in a democracy, but Republicans drunk on power seem to have forgotten. So here goes. It is still legal to be a Democrat in the state of Wisconsin.
In this country, people should never have to worry about being penalized for voting for the president of the United States, making political contributions to him or personally welcoming him to Milwaukee even if the president is an African American Republicans hate.
Someone needs to assure the new owners of the Milwaukee Bucks that they haven’t arrived in a shamelessly corrupt political backwater where they will face ugly retribution as a result of the success of Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Republican legislators in the recent election.
Because that’s exactly what Assembly Speaker Robin Vos publicly threatened in a television interview discussing whether Republican legislators would support any state assistance for building a new basketball arena in Milwaukee.
There are lots of questions about using public funds to build multi-hundreds-of-million-dollar palaces for private sports franchises.
Especially when the Bucks are now owned by three of the richest men on earth, billionaire hedge fund managers Marc Lasry and Wes Edens, and a third billionaire recently joining them, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase. [Correction: the third major investor is Jamie Dinan, hedge fund manager of York Capital Management, not Jamie Dimon.]
But none of those legitimate questions were raised by Vos in a Milwaukee television interview on “UpFront with Mike Gousha.”
Instead Vos raised concerns about a totally illegitimate issue—that Lasry was among a group of prominent business and political leaders greeting President Barack Obama on the tarmac when he arrived in Milwaukee to campaign for Mary Burke, Walker’s Democratic challenger.
Vos said Lasry’s display of friendship toward the president “wasn’t the wisest decision.” Vos suggested “not picking the right team” would make it harder for Republicans to do anything at all to help the Bucks stay in Milwaukee.
|
|
It’s never been any secret that Lasry is a major Democratic donor. Right-wing talk show host Charlie Sykes regularly attacks Lasry for the heinous crime of being a Democrat even though his station, WTMJ-AM, broadcasts Bucks games and otherwise shamelessly shills for building a new arena.
Lasry has given nearly $300,000 to Democrats over the past 10 years, including to the Obama Victory Fund. Before the 2012 election, Lasry hosted a $40,000-a-person reception for Obama in his Manhattan home.
Lasry’s son Alexander, now a Bucks’ vice president, previously worked as an aide in Obama’s White House.
All that being said, it has absolutely nothing to do with whether the state should help keep the Bucks in Milwaukee. The previous Bucks owner also was a rather prominent supporter of Democrats as well—Democratic Sen. Herb Kohl.
After Kohl sold the Bucks to Lasry and Edens for $550 million, Kohl pledged $100 million and Lasry and Edens pledged another $100 million to build a new Downtown arena in Milwaukee.
That’s a pretty nice down payment, but a new multipurpose arena is expected to cost at least $450 million. The NBA has given Lasry and Edens a 2017 deadline to start building or the league will consider buying the team back and moving it somewhere else.
Threat Could Be a Felony
I consider the Brewers and the Bucks strong community assets and attend a lot of games. But I still object to sports teams, and now the NBA, extorting taxpayers to spend public money to subsidize private monopolies owned by billionaires.
Let billionaires finance their own playthings. But there’s a much bigger issue involved with Vos publicly threatening business owners because of their political contributions, party affiliations or personal views.
Vos’ televised threat to owners about choosing the right team if they want to get something out of the Republican-controlled Legislature also smacked of extortion—soliciting those billionaires to start throwing some of their big bucks to Republicans. In fact, it may very well be illegal.
Scot Ross, executive director of the liberal activist group One Wisconsin Now, wants Vos investigated for violating the state law forbidding public officials from threatening to either take or withhold political action based on political contributions. Breaking the law is a felony.
With all the ugly political smears and nuisance lawsuits state prosecutors already are enduring to conduct a John Doe investigation into possible criminal activity by Walker’s campaign, don’t expect district attorneys to dare to prosecute Vos any time soon.
But it says a lot about how common it has become under Walker’s administration for Republican bagmen to solicit bribes in exchange for political action on issues before the Legislature.
Republicans now think nothing of doing it openly in front of television cameras.
