Meet Joe Ricketts.
He's the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade and patriarch of the Ricketts clan that assumed ownership and operation of the Chicago Cubs a little more than a year ago.
In addition to investing in sports teams, Ricketts also enjoys investing in Republican political causes.
(I wonder if Sharron Angle sent Joe flowers like she did to Joy Behar when he dropped $600,000 into her campaign?)
And boy does Joe Ricketts hate EARMARKS!
At least when they're for other people.
You see Joe Ricketts founded a group called Taxpayers Against Earmarks.
Really, he couldn't be more clear about his personal feelings on spending on pork barrel projects...
"I think it's a crime for our elected officials to borrow money today, to spend money today and push the repayment of that loan out into the future on people who are not even born yet."
So if that is a crime, why was Joe silent on his family shaking town Mesa, Arizona taxpayers for $100 MILLION for a new spring training facility in the November elections?
And why was his family today asking the state of Illinois (currently an estimated $15 billion in deficit) to approve a complicated financing scheme that amounts to a $200 MILLION tax break to pay for improvements to the Ricketts-owned Wrigley Field?
I mean for Pete's sake, the American Enterprise Institute, on whose board Ricketts serves has even come out against public financing of stadiums as an economic loser for taxpayers.
It is clear that not all citizens in a community benefit equally from the presence of professional sports franchises in their city. Indeed, because the tax revenues used for the subsidies are often generated from lotteries and sales taxes whose burden falls disproportionately on the poor, while the consumption benefits go mostly to relatively wealthy sports fans, the net benefits are distributed regressively.
Hat tip: Rich Miller, The Capitol Fax Blog
Joe Ricketts's children may be the ones with control and day-to-day operation of the Cubs but their funding came from him when they led the ownership group that paid up about $1 billion to assume control of the team and its home.
So why are they ignoring Dad's pleas against taxpayer-funded sweetheart deals and not turning to him, instead of taxpayers, for cash to fix up Wrigley?
The only explanation is teabagger hypocrisy.