Welfare for millionaires and billionaires look ridiculous when the St. Louis area is experiencing record-setting flooding and the need for assistance is great.
Thousands of people in and around the St. Louis area will be affected by flooding. Many will lose their possessions and homes, others will be out of work and some businesses may closed down completely unable to reopen.
Public dollars should be reserved for public need! This is when public tax dollars are most needed, in emergency and catastrophic situations. However, since so much public money is tied up in pledges to private projects of millionaires and billionaires, many of those truly in need will find scarce resources available to them.
Levees are in danger of failing and I suspect some of them have not received the attention and allocation of public money they should have received because we were more concerned about providing subsidies to the rich.
To add insult to injury, the proposed stadium would be located even closer to the river, adding to future flood damages that will have to be paid for by tax payers.
Flooding affected almost every major artery into St. Louis; highways 44, 55 and 70 have been partially closed because of flooding. Even before flooding, MoDot had already expressed they didn't have the necessary funding to do required maintenance and repairs. Major roadways and highways will certainly be damaged by flood water adding additional repairs to MoDot's strained budget. See: List of area roads closed due to high water
As I've stated previously, paying hundreds of millions of dollars for private projects for the rich do not make sense. Some ordinary hard-working people will lose everything they own and unfortunately many of them will discover that there are no available public funds to assist them; because we have committed so much to make certain that wealthy sport franchise owners get their share of public money through a reverse Robin Hood tax scheme.
I wonder if the governor, legislators and aldermen who fought so hard for stadium financing will fight as hard to find public money to assist those the ordinary people, that elected them into office, who are affected by the flood.
I suspect that low-interest loans that must be paid back will be available, but many flood victims will not receive the same sort of non-repayable subsidies that is proposed to be given to the wealthy.
