Intro: Two stories for your interest - one is hyper-localized
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Football ignored the truth about Roman Abramovich’s oligarch money for too long
The facts about the Chelsea owner’s assets have always been there to see for anyone who cared – but too few in the game did
Thu 10 Mar 2022 15.30 EST
Last modified on Fri 11 Mar 2022 05.10 EST"It must have been a bracing morning call at Stamford Bridge, with the news that Roman Abramovich is now considered so toxic that the government has slapped him with sanctions after 19 years in which he has been garlanded as the Chelsea benefactor.
For the UK, the Premier League, for football – for all of us – it would feel a little better if we could say this has come as a terrible shock, that nobody has known enough about Abramovich all these years. But sadly that kind of reassurance would be just more self-delusion, and the times we are in surely demand a bit of straight talking
Of course it was stunning to see the government actually freeze Abramovich’s assets, overthrowing his and Chelsea’s complacency with one closely typed paragraph damning his closeness to Vladimir Putin. But really the shock was mostly of recognition, pointing past the emperor’s clothes – and trophies, in Abramovich’s case – to some naked truths in plain sight all along.
The court proceedings referred to by the Home Office, in that document Chris Bryant read out to such dramatic effect in the Commons two weeks ago, took place in 2012. By 2019, after the novichok poisoning of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in the everyday English city of Salisbury, the government took the view: “Abramovich remains of interest to HMG [Her Majesty’s Government] due to his links to the Russian state and his public association with corrupt activity and practices … An example of this is Abramovich admitting in court proceedings that he paid for political influence.”
The court judgment by Mrs Justice Gloster stated that it was Abramovich’s own case that the political lobbying activities of his former oligarch partner, Boris Berezovsky, providing him with political krysha (protection) were: “Inherently corrupt, and that likewise, the deal between the two men, whereby Mr Abramovich agreed to pay Mr Berezovsky for his krysha services, was also corrupt.”
The judgment also noted that Abramovich had “very good relations” with Putin, including “privileged access” to the Russian president.
How the money was made was known and well-reported by 2003 when Abramovich bought Chelsea, and the club’s successes have been funded with his oligarch money. Players were bought in waves as never before, and he bankrolled transfer fees and wages the club could otherwise not have paid. In that way he bought the Premier League, the Champions League and, just days before Putin invaded Ukraine, the Club World Cup.
It could also be comforting to lay blame for the reverent indulgence of Abramovich at the doors of just the Premier League, the Football Association or a succession of governments more than happy for Britain to soak up cash from anywhere. But that would be a cop-out too: the facts have been there for anybody who could be bothered to care."
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Bernie Sanders Slams Billionaire 'Baseball Oligarchs' Following MLB Deal
“We are dealing with an organization controlled by a number of billionaires who collectively are worth over $100 billion,” the Vermont senator said.
"Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) slammed Major League Baseball team owners as “baseball oligarchs” on Thursday after they took nearly 100 days to reach an agreement with the players union.
“We are dealing with an organization controlled by a number of billionaires who collectively are worth over $100 billion,” he said in a statement after the lockout ended. “It should be clear to all that these baseball oligarchs have shown that they are far more concerned about increasing their wealth and profits than in strengthening our national pastime.”
In his lengthy remarks, the Vermont senator said the MLB “negotiated in bad faith” in “a blatant attempt to break the players’ union.”
These are baseball oligarchs who, over the last year, eliminated their affiliation with over 40 minor league teams, not only causing needless economic pain and suffering, but also breaking the hearts of fans in small and mid-sized towns all over America. These are baseball oligarchs who continue to pay minor league players totally inadequate wages and want to eliminate the jobs of another 900 minor league players. These are baseball oligarchs who receive billions of dollars in corporate welfare from taxpayers to build expensive stadiums. These are baseball oligarchs who, in many cases, charge outrageously high prices for tickets that many working class families cannot afford.
The MLB and the players association reached an agreement over the players’ contracts that will allow the season to start April 7, about a week after the originally scheduled opening day. The negotiations lasted 99 days, with players pushing for more control over their contracts and higher minimum salaries after payroll declined 4% last year to 2015 levels.
The agreement will raise players’ minimum salaries from $570,500 to about $700,000, among other financial changes, while the MLB secured an expanded post-season with more teams participating in the playoffs.
Sanders says he plans to introduce legislation in Congress that would end the MLB’s 100-year-old antitrust exemption, which went into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the league could suppress wages and make other business decisions that would typically violate anti-monopoly rules."
RELATED CONTENT ON THIS BLOG
Here are former mayor Scott Smith and current city manager Chris Brady in 2012 making a sales-pitch to get the Cubbies Spring Training Facility financed on-the-backs of Mesa taxpayers to the tune of over $200,000,000 for the Billionaire-Ricketts Family who bought the sports franchise in 2009.
From what we know now it was a shake-down [Use the search box on this blog for more]
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– “It’ll be totally fine if our family gets involved in politics. No one will ever find out about it so it won’t be controversial at all.”
– “Now that we own the McDonald’s across the street from Wrigley, I’m going on an all Quarter Pounder diet. Please don’t tear that place down Tom. I’m sure any hotel we put up there won’t do nearly as much business as the McDonald’s. Plus, where will all the rats go?”
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The story broke 9 days ago in Splinter News .
(The post was produced by the Special Projects Desk of Gizmodo Media. )
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City Manager Chris Brady
[Image credit AZ Central Picture Gallery 09.20.2018]
We need a scandal to throw some light on these schemes
Here it is:
During the 2012 elections, Joe Ricketts spent an obscene amount of money trying to unseat Obama, who, he wrote in an email, was an “ideologue” and a “cheat.” He was also, concurrently, reading and ruminating on the sorts of chain emails that would foreshadow our current political apocalypse: hysterical birther memes, anti-Muslim screeds, frustrated takes on the “Multicultural and Diversity aspects of our culture.”
When initially contacted by Splinter, Joe Ricketts chose not to comment on the emails that appear below. However, shortly after this story published, he posted a statement on his personal website, writing:
I deeply regret and apologize for some of the exchanges I had in my emails. Sometimes I received emails that I should have condemned. Other times I’ve said things that don’t reflect my value system. I strongly believe that bigoted ideas are wrong.Ricketts is one node in the establishment that created the Republican Party in its current form: Obsessed with tax cuts for the rich and wary of the impending “welfare” state, savvy enough not to cop to racialized terror in public, but fearful of what it considers a hostile takeover of Christian culture. Any other elderly Nebraskan might take this all-caps xenophobia and half-truth, mix it in with their existing political ideas, and take it to the voting booth.
Guys like Joe Ricketts take their ideas somewhat further.
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