When Speedway Motorsports CEO Bruton Smith spoke about his company's new acquisition of Kentucky Motor Speedway six weeks ago, he sounded very enthusiastic about consumer demand drawing a major racing event to his new facility.
"We are extremely excited about the new opportunities this market is going to bring the company," said Smith. "Since we announced this acquisition in May, we have been overwhelmed with the response of fans expressing their support and desire for a Sprint Cup event at Kentucky Speedway."
"We will continue to work with NASCAR to bring a Sprint Cup race to this fine facility as soon as possible. We are going to do everything we can to bring the great people of Kentucky what they want and deserve."
That was on December 31, 2008.
What a difference six weeks makes. Today, Smith met with Gov. Steve Beshear in Frankfort and now it seems the Sprint Cup race can't happen without tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and proposed legislation expected to be filed Monday.
From Gov. Beshear's press release:
"Bruton Smith, chairman and CEO of Speedway Motorsports, Inc., owner of Kentucky Speedway, and Jerry Carroll, consultant to Speedway Motorsports, Inc. said today that passage of this legislation would put Kentucky in position to host the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, that sanctioning body’s top racing series."
""The impact of a NASCAR Sprint Series Cup race for Kentucky is undeniable," Gov. Beshear said. “NASCAR is the number one spectator sport in the United States and is broadcast in more than 150 countries and 30 languages. I’m excited about the potential of Kentucky joining these ranks.""
Sounds like a lot of money for taxpayers to spend for politicians to get photo-ops and for one business to complete an expansion it would likely do by itself without our money.
If our corporate taxes are too high, Gov. Beshear, why not just cut them for everyone instead of picking and choosing?
1 comment:
We don't seem to mind spending millions on college athletic programs including lucrative coaching salaries. Those coaches don't even have a class to teach.
At least they could teach a class on the fundamentals of a given sport and have their athletes serve as mentors to other class members who aren't a part of the team.
If Coach Kragthorpe were to teach a class, I'm sure that he would want to use the book, The Purpose Driven Life, by Rick Warren.
So why not have NASCAR? I'm not a NASCAR fan, but then I'm not a fan of other sports supported by Kentucky's taxpayers. What's wrong with government spending their money on something that gives them pleasure?
"The care of human life and happiness and not their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of good government." Thomas Jefferson.
If a NASCAR speedway in Kentucky gives happiness to NASCAR fans, then government is doing what it's supposed to do.
Besides, spending money is good for the economy. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist Paper 30,
"Money is, with propriety, considered as the vital principle of the body politic; as that which sustains its life and motion, and enables it to perform its most essential functions."
The people's happiness is an essential function of good government.
I realize that Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian economics don't fit in the the feudalist philosophy of BPB. Hamilton and Jefferson's economics don't fit in with your feudalist ideology--the same ideology that drives conservatism and Republicanism.
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