Seahawks cornerback and all-around good-opinion-haver Richard Sherman was talking politics on the radio yesterday, in a mostly jokey interview where he said that if he were elected President, he’d tap Doug Baldwin as his Secretary of Defense because “he’s an angry guy.” But this part wasn’t jokey:
“I’d get us out of this deficit,” he said. “I’d stop spending billions of taxpayer dollars on stadiums and probably get us out of debt and maybe make the billionaires who actually benefit from the stadiums pay for them. That kind of seems like a system that would work for me.”
I mean, that really is the only necessary argument against public stadium financing. It’s kind of baffling that it’s not enough for some people.
(CenturyLink Field, which cost $430 million, was paid for with $300 million in taxpayer money, a deal approved by 51.1 percent of the state in a referendum. They’re still paying it off through 2021. Paul Allen is the 45th richest man in the world, according to Forbes.)
In that same interview, Sherman said that if he had the power he’d make defensive pass interference a 10-yard penalty, just like offensive PI is now. Honestly, I might vote for him.