Cynicism++;

[feren]

Here's a thought that'll undoubtedly keep me up tonight....

This guy has just been signed to a two year, $7.5 million dollar contract to be the pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles.

Think about that, people. $7.5 million dollars over two years to throw a ball over a plate. For a game. Meanwhile during the mid 1990s my hometown's school system was in a budget crisis so severe they couldn't afford paper for the photocopier so all classwork had to be done not off worksheets, but on our own paper while staring at a transparency that was projected onto the wall.

A quick bit of research for more current figures shows that the lowest salary in 2001-2002 for a public school teacher in Illinois is $24,616.

$7.5 million over two years to throw a baseball. $24,616 per year to educate our children.

Can anybody else say society has some skewed motherfucking priorities?

Sure, I knew ya could.

Comments

[lcremeans.livejournal.com]

Not only that, but a lot of the time, the people building the stadiums that seem to be necessary to attract these teams ask for public money to do so, and quite a bit of it. Can you say "pork"?

-lee

[feren.livejournal.com]

[Not only that, but a lot of the time, the people building the stadiums that seem to be necessary to attract these teams ask for public money to do so, and quite a bit of it]

Yeah, that really pisses me off. I've seen Minneapolis do it with the Target Center, I've watched a suburb do it with that godawful "Mall of America." I've watched Chicago do it with the new Soldier Field... it maddens me to no end that they get tax breaks and then get the local government to actually give them taxpayer's money!

It's like when Chicago was courting Boeing... they offered them such immense tax incentives to move to Chicago that we'll essentially never see a dime from that company for the next decade!