A few weeks ago, ex-Denver
Bronco quarterback John Elway shared his political philosophy with Fox News’
Chris Wallace. “I don’t believe in safety nets,” declared
Elway — who is currently executive vice president of football operations for
the Denver Broncos. Elway seems like a really nice guy. But he should know
better.
The taxpayers of Denver paid $300 million for the stadium his team
calls home. Which is a whopping 75 percent of the cost of construction. As a
result, Elway’s team owns 100 percent of a beautiful stadium for which they
paid only a 25 percent share to build. The money the Broncos saved (courtesy of
Denver taxpayers) would have helped underwrite Elway’s $4 million-a-year salary
when he was their quarterback — 20 years ago.
Even now — by foregoing any
ownership interest in the stadium, those same taxpayers continue to subsidize
Elway’s executive salary — not to mention Peyton Manning’s $15 million annual paycheck. After fleecing
fans for $7 bucks a beer at Bronco home games, the least Elway could do is stop
adding insult to injury by begrudging unemployment insurance to the out-of-work
in Orange Crush nation.
Elway must also realize that
the “safety net” he’s dismissing (for people who actually need it) is currently
cushioning the corporate coffers of more companies than just his beloved
Broncos. The National Football League grossed more than $9 billion last year and paid zero
taxes. In fact the NFL has never paid any taxes at all
because it is a “non-profit” organization — unlike either the NBA
or Major League Baseball.
No doubt the NFL’s army of
expensive lawyers, lobbyists and PR flacks will insist that taxpayers are
supporting a worthy cause — like subsidizing the $44 million annual salary package of their
commissioner, Roger Goodell. He too seems like a really nice guy. They’re
all nice guys.
Few people have thrown a
football better than John Elway. God bless him. And Goodell — son of a U.S.
senator, three-sport athlete at Bronxsville High School, and graduate in
economics from Washington & Jefferson College — is probably worth every
penny of his $44 million taxpayer-subsidized salary.
Don’t get me wrong, they all
should earn as much money as their talent and initiative allows. But please at
least have the plain old-fashioned American decency to acknowledge that those
huge salaries are made possible because of a taxpayer-supported infrastructure.
Dare I say, a corporate “safety net”? Let’s just assume there are probably many
good reasons why millions of taxpayers should help pump up the
profits of a single company like the Denver Broncos. And let’s assume that it
also makes good public policy sense for hundreds of millions of
taxpayers to subsidize a non-profit corporation like the NFL.
Still, there’s something
downright creepy in the soft-spoken, aw-shucks manner of some people who —
while benefiting handsomely from taxpayer-subsidized businesses of their own —
go out of their way to decry taxpayer support for things like universal
healthcare and free public education which are essential building blocks of the
very “opportunity society” they claim to want for everybody else.
Let’s face it. The problem isn’t
Ted Nugent, or even Ted Cruz. Most people recognize insanity when they see it. The real problem comes when seemingly
reasonable guys like John Elway start popping off about people on Social
Security, or Medicare, or unemployment assistance, or public pensions.
Call me crazy but crapping on
teachers and cops just doesn’t strike me as a classy thing to do.
My father-in-law, Ed Worth, is
a rock-ribbed Republican and a very decent guy: retired Navy, devout Catholic —
the whole nine yards. A peaceful family get together at his house usually means
keeping the conversation focused on grandchildren and sports — that is, until
John Elway opened his mouth.
So earlier this month, we got
into it big time. And the results genuinely surprised me. I agreed with him
that welfare and pension abuse should be ruthlessly rooted out of the system.
He agreed with me that wealth should be taxed at the same rate as work. He even
went a step further. He proceeded to lay out for me the “Ed Worth Tax Reform
Plan.”
Whatever a family needs to
live on — call it the first $50,000 of everybody’s income — should be tax-free.
Every last dollar after that — whether from the sweat of your brow or the savvy
of your broker — should be taxed at the exact same rate (say 20 percent). No
caps. No exemptions. No exceptions.
Amen to that.
Now
if only John Elway was listening, maybe we could actually get somewhere.
