Durts McGlurp

Father, Husband, glow in the dark Navy vet. Here for a laugh. It's a joke, not a dick: don't take it so hard.

[Durts McGlurp @REEckert]

Sometimes it's better to bend before you break, and sometimes you need to break to rebuild stronger.

[Amelia @amelia_tweetz]

Hot take: No professional sports team should ever receive a single cent of public taxpayer money to build a stadium. If a team can afford a billion-dollar roster, they can afford their own real estate. Why are we still subsidizing billionaires?

[Durts McGlurp @REEckert]

Replaying an almost 20 year old game.

[Durts McGlurp @REEckert]

@TahraHoops

[Durts McGlurp @REEckert]

False, Vance Law is.

[OldTimeHardball @OleTimeHardball]

True or False

Mike Schmidt is the greatest Third Baseman of all-time

[Durts McGlurp @REEckert]

The State of Illinois, City of Chicago, and Cook County are poorly run and prioritize identity politics as a reason to tax you more while providing sweet deals to government unions to curry their vote.

[Yogi @Houseofyogi]

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.

[Durts McGlurp @REEckert]

@UnbalancedMemes I handled a dirty hole.

[Durts McGlurp @REEckert]

@One4Funz525 The other pattern is that the sum of those numbers does not equal the answer provided.

[Durts McGlurp @REEckert]

@One4Funz525 My parents smoked Salems, my grandfather did Chesterfields.

[Durts McGlurp @REEckert]

@One4Funz525 But it means tax revenue losses and we'll just be taxed harder because the blue voters like to make the middle class put on their gimp suits and pay more. Either way, Illinois residents are fucked if we do, fucked if we don't.

[Durts McGlurp @REEckert]

... in the interest of our residents*.

*Tax money

#ChicagoBears

[Mayor Brandon Johnson @ChicagosMayor]

Statement from the Office of the Mayor:

[Durts McGlurp @REEckert]

@One4Funz525 Between the ineptness of state/local government, greediness of inbred family ownership, and the less than adequate product in question, I am against increased taxes or the government/taxes paying for a stadium. If they want to leave, then go.

[Durts McGlurp @REEckert]

@TVietor08

[Durts McGlurp @REEckert]

Alaska is blue, not because of politics, but because it's fucking cold.

[Isaiah Walker @walkeri141]

Alaska is not a red state. Alaska is a blue state with some red exurbs

[Durts McGlurp @REEckert]

@TNTantrum Shipping an incomplete game then adding DLC.

[Durts McGlurp @REEckert]

Based on the casting and there being no Greek people in a 5,000 year old Greek story, I think it's already spoiled.

[claire @CineClaire]

Tom Holland spoiling The Odyssey is career suicide with Nolan

[Durts McGlurp @REEckert]

A portrait on the occasion of my dog turning 12 and my turning 40 again.

[Durts McGlurp @REEckert]

Jim Gordon, Steve Gadd, and Jon Bermuda Schwartz

[Guitarbizon @Guitarbizon]

Who did I miss?

[Durts McGlurp @REEckert]

We have 50 of them and we call them states.

[Vincent @dvb_eck]

The American mind cannot comprehend being able to travel to 31 countries without a passport

[Durts McGlurp @REEckert]

Happy Pride Month, here is a rainbow of Battletech miniatures.

[Durts McGlurp @REEckert]

@midwestern_ope