What Mr. Schilling and Mr. Brownback Could Teach Us All
Earlier this month, I wrote about the rise and fall of Curt
Schilling’s 38 Studios. It is a topic
that keeps on giving. Just to review, Curt
Schilling, baseball star, wanted to be Curt Schilling, entrepreneur. Unable to raise money in the private arena,
he turned his charm on the gatekeepers of taxpayer funds. In May of 2010 he hosted a GOP fundraiser at
his Medfield, Massachusetts mansion (a house featured as an “Estate of the
Day”). There, he met and dazzled Rhode
Island Governor Donald Carcieri, who stepped up to the plate with a $75 Million
loan guarantee program.
The rest is history.
Schilling’s company turned out one videogame of indifferent success, and
then ran out of funds. Last week, after the great man himself met with Rhode
Island officials and failed to extract even more taxpayer money, he did the
graceful and humane thing. He fired
everyone on the spot. By email.
OK, so Schilling is an egomaniacal heel. So he took $4 million of his own money out of
38 Studios shortly after he received taxpayer largess. So no rational private equity investor nor
commercial lender was willing to touch 38 Studios-even non-partisan C-Net notes
that investing in this area is “known to be incredibly risky." And so we
can all derive the inevitable conclusion-if Schilling hadn’t been a famous
baseball player whose intellectual home was Fox News, he would never have
received the warm and lucrative embrace of Governor Carcieri. Host a fundraiser for the GOP, get $75
Million of taxpayer money. Excellent
return on investment.
And that’s where our story gets off course. Schilling-the-hypocrite
talking small government out of one side of his mouth while lapping at the “all
you can drink” taxpayer bar with the other side is fun to talk about, but it’s also
misplaced. He is a bum, but an enabled
bum.
The lesson of Schilling’s fiasco isn’t the appearance of mere
favoritism or even corruption. It is the
fact that, in the real world, politicians like Carcieri make choices, and those
choices don’t exist in a vacuum-they play out in the communities the rest of us
live in. It takes revenue to pick up the
garbage, or teach first grade, and when the revenues go, the garbage stays.
Rhode Island was such a place. In the summer of 2009, before the good Governor
Carcieri was overcome by the spirit of generosity to Mr. Schilling, he went to
people of his State, and demanded they make sacrifices in the name of fiscal
prudence. On August 24, his office
issued a self-congratulatory “Shutdown Day Press Release”. The release identified 12 days where the Rhode Island government would shut down (no pay for government workers, including schools)
and substantial cuts in State aid to counties and towns. Carcieri mouthed compassion “We are very well
aware of the impact shutdown days will have on state employees and state
services. For Rhode Islanders there will be inconveniences; for state employees
there is sacrifice. I am asking everyone’s patience, understanding, and
awareness that these steps are unavoidable if the State is to live within its
means.”
So, just how much money did the Governor’s press release
tout as a savings for all that sacrifice and inconvenience? $67.8 Million. Now, it is unfair to make the
linkage between that $67.8 Million of pain absorbed by the common folk, and $75
Million handed to Mr. Schilling for his private profit-the cuts and the gift
were not synchronized. What is not unfair,
however, is to ask why any elected official would choose to bring so much
economic discomfort to his constituents, and then turn around and act so
recklessly with the power (and money) given to him. Where’s the accountability?
And that brings us to Kansas, where the Republicans so
dominate state offices that every possible trace of liberalism has been stamped
out. Kansas is led by the formidable Governor
Sam Brownback, a Tea Party favorite and a social and fiscal conservative of
impeccable credentials. Brownback has been merciless-he’s cut aid to schools,
social programs, the elderly, the arts, and he’s even opened an “Office of the
Repealer” where “needless government regulations” are taken to die. And Brownback takes no prisoners. Nine “moderate” Republicans who expressed
concern about the scope of the cuts last year found themselves on the wrong
side of primary challengers supported by their Governor. Kansas has just passed yet another tax cut
bill, this one projected to result in a 12.8 % reduction in state revenues-all
of which will come out of spending at the local level, causing even the
Republican head of the State Senate to pause.
Kansas has become a laboratory of Tea Party ideas.
And I say, good for Kansas.
These aren’t choices I would make, but I don’t live there. This is what the electoral process is all
about, not some back door gift to a political friend at the citizens’ expense. If the voters of Kansas are happy with lower
tax rates on some people and a lower level of services for the rest, why
shouldn’t they have them? And, if they
are not happy, they can go to the polls the next time around and express their
discontent.
In the end, what is happening in Kansas should become part
of the national discussion-just like Mr. Schilling’s all-expenses paid Rhode
Island holiday.
As voters, we should demand it. And, with five months until the elections, there
is no time like the present to start.
MM
