Posted on 05/20/2012 8:53:42 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
The Ricketts family saddens me.
I am sorry I ever said the city of Chicago or the people of Wrigleyville should sacrifice to help the owners of the Cubs build a better and more valuable team and Wrigley Field.
I advocated that as recently as last week. I never wanted folks to open their wallets and simply give the Rickettses their cash, but I thought that the public could make some concessions and that the neighborhood could put aside its desires and be helpful in building a stadium that could improve the Cubs and, perhaps, bring new revenue to the city.
But that was before patriarch Joseph ‘‘Smokin’ Joe’’ Ricketts, the fat cat who made a billion dollars by starting TD Ameritrade, one of those financial ‘‘helpers’’ that creates nothing but knows intuitively how to skim other people’s money, was revealed as a nasty old bird who, according to the New York Times, was ready to bankroll an ugly, multimillion-dollar racial and religious Super PAC ad campaign against President Barack Obama.
Everybody named Ricketts has been scurrying for cover since the bombshell dropped, with the conservative Ricketts kids semi-distancing themselves from their father and his right-wing dirty dealings.
But the Rickettses don’t come one at a time; they march as a group, and they’re right of center by design. They bought the Cubs with the family trust, so, as the saying goes when the dowry gets passed along, Own it, kids!
Did it ever dawn on this foot-in-rich-mouth family that Mayor Rahm Emanuel was Obama’s chief of staff and that they need Emanuel’s help to float any of the bonds and tax schemes they want to refurbish their own park?
This isn’t about me liking Obama. In my opinion, he has screwed up aplenty in one term. Nor is it about me disliking Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate for president and the Rickettses’ guy.
It’s about me being nauseated by hypocrisy and, yes, arrogant, conniving rich people.
Hey, if religion is now on the plate — Smokin’ Joe allegedly wanted to tar Obama with the nut-ball ravings of Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright — then shouldn’t Romney’s Mormon faith also be on the table? Do we need to bring up how recently it was that Mormons said black people carried the mark of Cain and could not rise to high levels in the church? Or how Mormon founder Joe Smith discovered those critical golden tablets near a cow pasture in upstate New York, tablets that just . . . disappeared?
Dirty, dirty pool is what this is. Is it how the Rickettses play? Is that what it means to be so rich that you buy a sports franchise the way the rest of us might buy a lawn mower?
How about the fact that Cubs co-owner Laura Ricketts is an out lesbian with a female partner and a child, that Obama has been called ‘‘The Gay President’’ for siding with gay issues and that conservatives haven’t been nearly as tolerant of homosexual demands?
Laura’s sexual preference was never an issue here in Chicago — until her father has made it one.
See, folks, these are the 1 percent — the one-thousandth of 1 percent, to be accurate. They don’t think like us. A billionaire can’t stomach any more taxes. His rich kids can’t stomach the concept of paying their way. They want taxpayers from a virtually bankrupt city, where employment, school and safety issues make every-day life difficult for normal people, to help their (last-place) entertainment business along. And they almost suckered us there.
The Rickettses own the Cubs. We don’t. Is that clear? If the Cubs’ value goes up, ours does not. Got it? I do.
Joe Ricketts, you are a fool. A rich fool, yes, but a fool.
And if Mayor Emanuel gives your family a dime, he’s worse than a fool.
† I WAS GOING to continue on with my Sunday Stew, but I’ve lost heart.
The problem is a philosophical one, not a sporting one.
How much money ought a person to have? To limit a citizen’s wealth flies in the face of everything that capitalism teaches us: Go out there, do something, make as much as you can.
But we all live in the same world, and those who can ignore the have-nots, saying that those on the lowest floor just didn’t try as hard as those on the top, must have seen that this isn’t true, that the deck often is stacked for and against folks the moment they’re born. Sometimes before. How would you like starting off your gestational period, for instance, with a mom addicted to smoking meth or one who is 15?
Democracy can’t make things equal. Total equality isn’t even something to wish for. It would be stultifying. But equal opportunity wouldn’t be.
I hear often from the very rich: ‘‘I pulled myself up by my bootstraps. Nobody helped me.’’
I wonder if they’ve ever heard of luck. And the charity of others.
“Joe Ricketts, you are a fool. A rich fool, yes, but a fool. “
Joe should answer “And I’m STILL more than YOU’LL ever be!”
The harder I work, the luckier I get.
Samuel Goldwyn
Care and diligence bring luck.
Thomas Fuller
Diligence is the mother of good luck.
Benjamin Franklin
Good luck is the willing handmaid of a upright and energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty.
James Russell Lowell
I say luck is when an opportunity comes along and you're prepared for it.
Denzel Washington
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
Seneca
I read and re-read Veeck – As in Wreck right after it came out in paperback. I loved it. Back then, I was a big sports fan. Not so these days.
It wasn't until a few years later, after I heard Veeck actually speak, that I realized how valuable your father's contribution was to that autobiography.
Thank you very much fornthose kind words.
Thank you very much fornthose kind words.
When I first heard that Cubs owner’s (technically it seems like the entire family owns the team somehow, but Joe Ricketts is not involved in it’s operation) father funded an anti-Obama ad I thought nothing of it. I knew at least some of the family was Republican (maybe not the lesbian sister), the brother was the GOP Senate candidate in Nebraska in 2006.
I was very surprised by this extreme reaction from the left. I shouldn’t have been.
Certain team owners have been big Obama boosters, Kraft the NE Pats owner comes to mind. Obama used his money to smear Republicans, sports media didn’t say a word.
“Certain team owners have been big Obama boosters...”
That’s why I detest the Red Sox ownership and like the Yankees. I remember the assholes offering their personal jets to Kerry for a possible recount in OH back in 2004. Theo Epstein had a ton of anti-Bush comments during his time and skipped one, of not both, WH ceremonies for the two RS WS-winning teams he was the GM of. Classless.
“...Kraft the NE Pats owner comes to mind.”
Kraft, who is a big supporter of Israel, is a schmuck to contribute to Obama (or any Rat for that matter). Money doesn’t buy brains.
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