I was just listening to the radio show online, and figured my next stop would be Bojack.

Both guys embarrassed themselves. Sam really had nothing to say, and Canzano's attacks were broad, and he didn't really have any facts to substantiate them. But I have to admit it was somewhat gratifying to hear someone call Sam Adams a weasel to his face.

I honestly can't believe Sam agreed to go on the show while seeming so totally unprepared for what was coming.

Canzano spoke the bald faced truth. He did it with courage. Sam was evasive and manipulative and just repeated his talking points.

While I disagree with Canzano about tearing down Memorial Park, he's spot on regarding "largely impractical mass transit and urban renewal projects that are backed by the elites in this city that are vocal."

Great news. Major League Kickball will be coming to Portland.

I'm sorry that we lost the Beavers, but I'm not sorry that cooler, courageous heads withstood the wheedling from the Mayor and LLP and the withering bombast from Randy and refused to tear up Memorial Coliseum or Lents Park to benefit a private businessman. Papa Paulson must be proud - just as the father did for years at Goldman Sachs, Junior has lined up dumb money to minimize his downside risk. Unfortunately, the dumb money this time is tax dollars that are sorely needed elsewhere, and the "investors" were never given a chance to vote on letting their dollars be spent this way.

Canzano just wants more sports to write about. Sure the city has made bad choices regarding "urban renewal" and mass transit but buildign a new baseball stadium would have been a much worse decision.

"No new stadiums."

We should make that Portland's catchphrase.

I thought the radio audio was depressing and hilarious at the same time. It amazes me how bad our media is on this story, but not about Sam - about the Paulsons and the damage Henry and Goldman Sachs did to America.

The minority owner of the Timbers is the economic version of Dick Cheney, and yet Canzano can't kiss enough Paulson butt.

My theory all along is that we are seeing a microcosm of what's happened to America with this soccer thing and it was eery when Sam brought up the Tea Party reference. Just as the national debate is focusing on the different political factions fighting it out as our Wall Street rulers sit back and smile, we have our radio people fighting it out with our politicians as the Paulsons sit back and smile.

Just as our Congress works to extend tax cuts for the rich, we have both our politicians and our radio people working to extend giveaways to the Paulsons. It's beyond classic.

Canzano even says that Sam is working for elitists when we have the poster family for elite rule here. Canzano has no clue how ironic he's being. He is so stupid, he gets swayed by one little trip to the Paulson home where he sees Merritt barefoot, and falls in love.

Wake up, John! You're getting played big time here! Maybe Canzano will get it with this comparison: Merritt Paulson is Sam, and John, you are the Beau Breedlove in this equation. Snap out of it and quit the phony radio courage.

Go back to collecting bodily fluids from Blazers. That was the last time you came off this dumb.

I expect a nativist "If you build it, they will come" movement in the not to distant future.

Fresh off the press, NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/08/sports/08stadium.html?src=me&ref=general

As Stadiums Vanish, Their Debt Lives On

. . .The financial hole was dug over decades by politicians who passed along the cost of building and fixing the stadium, and it is getting deeper. With the razing of the old stadium and the Giantsand the Jets moving into their splashy new home next door, a big source of revenue to pay down the debt has shriveled. .

. . .How municipalities acquire so much debt on buildings that have been torn down or are underused illustrates the excesses of publicly financed stadiums and the almost mystical sway professional sports teams have over politicians, voters and fans.
Rather than confront teams, they have often buckled when owners — usually threatening to move — have demanded that the public pay for new suites, parking or arenas and stadiums. . .

Much more and interesting read.

Is there a transcript? I can't stand to hear Adams, after Canzano's foot massage of the Little Lord I don't think I'd want to hear him. I'm picturing a slap fight between two middle schoolers -- not sure I could stand listening. How long does it go on?

If the building in question was a new theater no one would dare utter a word of indignation. After all, it for the Arts. I wonder how much the city subsidizes the Schnitz, Performing Arts and the Keller. Not to mention the bill on the armory redo and the Eastbank Esplanade.

Well, for one thing, there's not a wealthy centimillionaire owning any private for-profit businesses in the arts to play in those venues.

The better comparison to sports is movie theatres or bowling alleys: how many of those has the city built so that a private, for-profit tenant can have a home? None. And that's fine--the market is happy to provide all the bowling alleys and movie screens we can handle. Same with sports; no reason to subsidize it.

Was that a beatdown or what?

I guess Sam won't be helping Canzano and Paulson pick out furniture.

There should be a rule that radio/TV sports people should never,ever talk politics. They come off shallow and uninformed, just like Canzano did. It is unbelievable he didn't hold Paulson accountable for what happened to the Beavers. I wouldn't be surprised that the folks at Alpha told him he needs to be more strident and partisan. Lately, his show seems to have lost its edge.

I agree that the stadium and sports shouldn’t be subsidized. George, but why should the theater be subsidized? Your reasoning is because it can’t make a profit. Isn’t live theater more like a movie then a ballgame? Basically, they are all different forms of entertainment and none should be subsidized. Especially if the reason is they don’t have a deep pocketed owner and can’t turn a profit. For the record I don’t agree with the remodel of PGE Park either. You need to pay to play and if you can’t make it on your own then get out, regardless of your form of entertainment.

Where was Canzano months ago? Why all the outrage suddenly? So he got choked up seeing a packed house for a Beavers game (finally) and needed to lash out?

AAA baseball really only 'works' in medium-sized cities that serve rural communities. The stadiums in these cities are proportionally smaller than PGE, and are designed for baseball specifically... 9K-13K capacity. When the Beavers only draw a few thousand for a game, those 19,000 seats look ridiculous. So how is it that Canzano feels we need this to "act like a big city"?

The Canzano-Adams debate boils down to two boys accusing the other of wanting toys... different toys. JC complains about SA's pet projects, then says it's worth using public money to tear down the Memorial Coliseum and build a small-time baseball stadium next to the Rose Garden. That process would be better suited for a major-league park, but who wants either money pit when interest in baseball is declining nationwide?

I loved playing and watching baseball in my youth. But I can admit it's an increasingly tough sell in America... it's rarely profitable, especially for municipalities held hostage by stadium deals. Stick to your patronizing columns, Canzano.

Mr Tee..Canzano spoke the bald faced truth. He did it with courage. Sam was evasive and manipulative and just repeated his talking points.??
Its hard to hold a discussion when somneone is screaming in your face. You don't even try. Whatever you believe about the way the City is run, doing a Lars on the Mayor, or for that matter, anyone, is pretty poor form. And rude to boot.
Another point, dragging the bike master plan into the discussion.. Canzano claims they are just another city excess. A pretty well used excess, judging from the use they get. Each of those riders is one less car on the roadway, less wear and tear on already stressed streets. The cost is minimal...that $613 million he talks about is a vision, not a line on your tax bill. The average citizen stands to benefit from those bike facilities, if and when they are built. $30MM for a stadium I won't ever use, and when I do, will cost me the price of a ticket, going to Paulson is not economic development or anything. its just another dig at our pockets.
I look forward to Canzano taking a job in Cleveland, or elsewhere.

Gil, I'm not necessarily arguing for public funding of the arts either, though I think the arguments for doing so are much, much stronger than for funding sports. I'd put it this way: It should be a necessary condition that no public funds are given to rich bastards to fund their private toys (whether that be Jerry Jones or Little Lord Twinkletoes).

I'm not saying that the absence of the rich bastard with his hand out is _sufficient_ to make public funding for arts a good idea.

It's the kind of argument that can get twisty -- after a while, it can seem to boil down to "If not enough people like it, then we give it money," but that's not always the case. Some market failures are where the goods in question are clearly valuable but, as public goods, will not be provided by private actors in the marketplace. We know this is not the case with sports, which we are drowning in. There's a better argument that "the arts" are public goods that will disappear entirely if we rely solely on the market to provide them.

What was the O's role in all this? I've only lived here less than a decade but the O hardly covered the Beavs. They were almost always relegated to an inch on page three. I think if the O had treated the Beavs like professionals maybe Portlanders would have too and come out more often.

I guess they have summer Blazer stories or Duck/OSU spring practice or high school swim meets to cover instead of Portland's baseball team. :( Maybe WW or the Merc will bring that up.

"Canzano spoke the bald faced truth."

Puh-leeze, Canzano seemed to forget a few things:
1) We spent $38M re-habbing PGE Park for PFE/The Beavers 8 years ago
2) Attendance this season is like 3-4000/game still
3) Canzano never talks about the Portland Beavers until he had a platform to stand on.
4) The reason the Beavers are moving is because Paulson needed it to be this way.

Paulson totally escaping any blame in this seems pretty well designed.

In addition, I loved how the BFT paints anyone opposed to throwing another $12M at PGE Park as a small group of well-organized whiners with no point at all (whereas the Timbers army are painted as a small group of well-organized intelligent people who care about Oregon.)

Sam never looks good, but Canzano looked just as bad outside of being louder.

Canzano may be an idiot and a blowhard, but I give him credit for "speaking truth to power", as the ethnic-studies crowd likes to say. Sam spends all day hanging out with his sycophantic entourage cutting backroom deals with developers and other connected insiders, then holds public meetings at 2:00 on weekdays that no one can get to and interprets the lack of turnout as signs that the public's behind him. Canzano's impolite outburst maybe the only chance us beaten-down schmucks get to tell the Emperor he has no clothes on this soccer/baseball fiasco, and I, for one, bless him for it.

gd:

Canzano just wants more sports to write about.

Bob T:

Yup -- so he can feel more important.

I haven't looked at any of his "most influential people in Oregon sports"
list in years, but the last time I had done so it was silly to see that by the time he got down to person # 12 it was the owner of an athletic shoe store. Golly! What a world class city!

Bob Tiernan
Portland

I think Portland should strive to be the only world-class city to not have a major professional athletic team. I think that singular attribute would be a requirement for Portland qualifying as 'world-class'.

godfry, apparently a person maintains loyalty to the baseball team of his childhood, an allegiance that football, for example, does not command. Baseball team loyalty remains intact despite a person's relocation. Since the Portland of the future will be populated by young creatives relocated from who-knows-where, it would be futile to expect them to have much interest in a Portland squad.

Godfrey:

I think Portland should strive to be the only world-class city to not have a major professional athletic team. I think that singular attribute would be a requirement for Portland qualifying as 'world-class'.

Bob T:

Godfrey, my remark about "world class" has more to do with the fact that Portland is not world class because it's not big enough to have some of its sneaker store owners not appear on the top 20 list of most important sports figures in the whole state. I don't believe in giving welfare to millionaires or anyone else in order to have a sports team here. I'd like to think that Portland has enough anti-fat cat people to make sure that we'll never play the subsidized sports game ever again (to set a great example), but it's hard to do when the progressive establishment is always tripping over itself trying to come up with plans to show how important Portland is by getting professional sports teams here, I suppose as part of the New Urbanist agenda of providing all these wonderful things for the population so they'll be happy in their yardless homes while planners live on acreage outside the UGB.

Real free enterprisers are willing to say bye-bye to sports if that's the price to pay for refusing to play the sports-government complex game. The first to squeak, I notice, are the progressives who are preoccupied with the city's image.

Economic illiterates are people who think that there'll be no professional sports without the subsidies.

Bob Tiernan
Portland

Bob T - I got some big news for you... my "progressive" friends would rather eat ground glass than support stadium subsidies... don't generalize so much.... there are dorks on both sides of the political spectrum that drool at the thought of major league this or that and don't mind making those will aren't interested and will never be involved pay for it.

Bob Tiernan: . . I suppose as part of the New Urbanist agenda of providing all these wonderful things for the population so they'll be happy in their yardless homes while planners live on acreage outside the UGB

Thanks for pointing this out.
When do you think we will be crammed in so tight that the Coalition for the Future will have had enough?

When Paulson was new in town and trying to 're-brand' the Beavers, he considered naming them the 'Green Sox' or the 'Wet Sox', among others.

I figured he could have changed the name to the 'Portland Linchpins'.

Count me as one Portlander who agrees 100% with your commentary on this, Jack.

LucsAdvo:

Bob T - I got some big news for you... my "progressive" friends would rather eat ground glass than support stadium subsidies... don't generalize so much....

Bob T:

I've got some news for you -- I made no implication that it's all progressives, or that it's only progressives. But we are talking about Portland here and it's sad that, considering the alleged opposition to corporate welfare, this would be the last major city to be corporate welfare friendly. But that's not the case.

There are several reasons for this.
One is that providing such a subsidy gives the market haters an example to point to so they can say ya see, capitalists like to get their subsidies and they need it in order to get something done. Also, decades ago the sports-government complex brainwashed enough people into thinking that sports stadiums are "infrastructure" like water pipes and roads and bridges. hardly. They are more like Safeway buildings and movie theaters. They like to micromanage the stadium deals so that people think that government is needed for these business to exist. Not so. Pro sports will exist, as it had before, without subsidies. There'll just be smaller stadiums, and lower salaries.
Despite what Sam Adams says (because he's an economic illiterate), sports stadiums do not have to be as large and as expensive as he says they do.

But let me make one thing clear: While I hate people like Paulson for even trying to get the money (and getting it for soccer at least), it needs to be pointed out that neither he nor any other sports team owner can get even one penny from tax payers without the government taking it for him. Thus we are talking about the power of government, and not of the fat cat millionaire. But the left prefers to warn people about the power of "corporations" and "corporatists", and never of the government. So Sam Adams really tried to give Paulson taxpayer dollars to keep baseball here, and did provide some so he could have his soccer team here, and the progressives overwhelmingly support this schmuck.

You're not setting a good example.

Bob Tiernan
Portland