By all means moan that Chelsea and City spent without restrictions, bankrolled by their owners before ffp arrived. But bemoaning Spurs spending money after being frugal, building a stadium and maximising commercial revenue seems off the mark. We need to do something similar #avfc
Chicago lost the Bears this week. A team that's been in the city since 1921.
They didn't lose them to a bigger market or a better deal. The Bears decided they'd rather be a tenant in Indiana than deal with Illinois for one more year.
Think about how badly you have to run a place for that to be the smart move.
They lost them for two reasons.
The people running Illinois would rather villainize a builder than keep one. And they're bad at their jobs.
In 2021 the Bears spent $197M on the old Arlington Park racetrack.
Before they could break ground, Cook County valued the empty lot at $192M (Bears said $60M). They were salivating at the chance to extort a building that didn't even exist yet.
That fight dragged on for years.
The Bears were ready to put $2B into the stadium. All they wanted was a promise the county wouldn't reassess them into oblivion, plus $855M for infrastructure everyone uses. Roads, transit, utilities. A $3B project, two thirds of it private money pouring into Illinois.
Springfield had since 2021 to get this done. They dragged it to the final night of session, passed it through the Senate at 3:39AM, and the House went home without voting.
So now it's all gone.
The funniest part? This started because Cook County tried to grab the tax early. They knew a built stadium would pay $53M a year. Now they get under $4M on a vacant lot. No jobs, no buildout, no new anything.
Congrats on fighting for scraps and losing the whole prize.
Pritzker: they're "an $8.5B valued business" that doesn't need propping up.
But be smart for a second. Almost every NFL city throws in public money for a stadium. Not charity. The return is real. Tourism, hotels, restaurants, jobs, game days, property tax on a huge development. The math works.
Indiana did the math. While Illinois sat on it for years, Indiana passed a bill in months, put up $1B, and took the team.
And the Bears took a worse deal to get there. In Illinois they were going to own their stadium. In Indiana they rent it from the state. A team that wanted to build its own home gave up ownership just to escape Chicago.
Nobody won but Indiana. The Bears lost their stadium. Illinois lost the team, the $2B, and $53M a year in taxes.
Pritzker after they left: "I wasn't willing to give up billions of dollars of taxpayer money to give it to a billionaire-owned family or team."
There it is. "Billionaire-owned."
That's how Democrats talk about any business right before they run it out of town. Call them a billionaire, act like you're saving working families, take a victory lap while the tax base drives across the state line.
Meanwhile they're running the whole state into the ground. And you already know how this ends. You're living in it.
Pensions are $143B in the hole, worst in the country and not close. You pay $6,285 a year in property taxes, double the $2,969 national average, for a city that's $1.15B in the red. The mayor called its finances "the point of no return."
When you run things this badly, you sell what's left.
They leased the parking meters for 75 years to Morgan Stanley and a sovereign wealth fund in Abu Dhabi. Took $1.15B and burned through it in two years. The investors already made it all back, with 58 years left to collect.
Sold the Skyway. Sold the downtown garages. Every asset that made money, gone for one check.
But a fixed property tax rate for a team that's been here 106 years? That's "propping up billionaires."
Companies are leaving. Boeing for Virginia. Caterpillar for Texas. Citadel for Miami. In 2023 alone Illinois lost 56,000 people and $6B in income to other states. The ones who left earned a third more than the ones who moved in.
Indiana didn't outbid anyone. AAA credit, 16 years straight. A $676M surplus. Fourth-lowest debt per person in the country. They just weren't a disaster.
Illinois could have collected $53M a year. It chose zero. Ignore all the bad management but make sure to stick it to those evil, pesky billionaires.
“I CAN’T BREATHE”
Hampshire Police has issued a public apology:
"We apologize that Henry was handcuffed and arrested at the moment he was losing consciousness.
“We were lied to by the perpetrator”
Sorry doesn’t cut it. Sorry isn’t good enough.
Still, neither the court nor the police have yet released the camera footage.
The Indian killer; Vickrum Digwa, called the police instead of an ambulance & lied, saying that it was Henry who attacked him, that he was drunk, insulted him with racist remarks & knocked off his turban.
Hampshire Police arrived (three female officers) & immediately handcuffed Henry, even though he was lying in a pool of blood with stab wounds to his chest and legs.
Henry repeatedly said: "I’ve been stabbed, I can’t breathe".
On the body camera footage, an officer’s voice is heard: "I don’t think you have, mate".
The officer who handcuffed Henry laughed when he said he’d been stabbed.
Then they dragged him across the gravel and kept him restrained as he bled out.
Only when he lost consciousness did the officers remove the handcuffs & begin resuscitation.
Henry died at the scene.
This is a result of systemic racial discrimination against White people, two tier policing & a completely broken Police & justice system.
The Police instantly took the word of a foreign killer over a native White victim due to his race.
Henry never stood a chance.
None of us do in the West where White people are treated as 2nd class citizens & have less rights & legal protections than EVERY other race of people in our own homelands.
There were massive international protests over George Floyd and those police involved were severely punished with long prison sentences, yet the police responsible here did not even lose their jobs!
An incredibly unjust double-standard!
An 18-year-old kid gets stabbed in the street. He’s running for his life, begging for help, and instead of saving him, the police handcuff him while he bleeds out because the attacker claimed “racism.”
They let him choke on his own blood. No urgency. No humanity. Just cold, ideological policing.
Months later? Still no names. Still no suspensions. Still no accountability.
Meanwhile, the same UK police have arrested over 12,000 people for social media posts.
They move at lightning speed to jail citizens for tweets and online comments, yet they can’t even name or discipline the officers who allegedly let a stabbing victim die in handcuffs on the street.
This is the definition of two-tier policing: aggressive against ordinary people speaking online, but protective when it comes to their own failures and protecting the narrative.
The British people deserve real justice, not another cover-up.
Justice for Henry Nowak.
Really good thing he only elbowed Spence in the face and his hand didn’t brush through Spence’s hair otherwise he could’ve been sent off for violent conduct.
If this loss today means Tottenham Hotspur stay in the league, then we've done our part to preserve football heritage. Proper club and proper history. Some things are bigger than 3 points.
@RudolphN17 This makes sense, especially the Villa game. Really comes down to us at end of the day. This weekend will be telling… if we don’t win its going to be very difficult. You have us with a 5 point cushion at the end so we have some breathing room if WH pick up more pts than expected
Why is Yaxel Lendeborg always doing this I’m-holding-back-laughter gimmick when talking about freshman competition?
Like my dude, you’re in your sixth year of college basketball. If you want to make sure people your age are guarding you, there’s options.
I watched every assist of @BoilerBall PG Braden Smith’s career and then watched some of the best ones with him. See the game like the soon-to-be all-time NCAA assist leader (free to read): https://t.co/z0irWFIRJ0
Is this what the so called beautiful game has come to, a player dancing with joy at a red card to another professional.
And then Sky Sports is promoting it.
The game is dead!