December 7, 2002
Annals of Sports:
Who is Mark Hamister's other secret partner in the Buffalo Sabres deal?
You, you sucker! And you over there—you too!
Why did the National Hockey League decide that Mark Hamister and his associates would be a better owner of the Buffalo Sabres than Tom Golisano? Because Mark Hamister and his associates offered to pay more money for the Buffalo Sabres than Tom Golisano did. From the point of view of the NHL, going with Hamister and his associates was just good business sense.
Whose money is Mark Hamister and his associates using to buy the Buffalo Sabres? That is of no concern to the National Hockey League. Where Hamister et al get their money is, to the NHL of infinitely less significance than the amount of it.
Now, Tom Precious and Sharon Lindstedt tell us in the Buffalo News, we learn that Mark Hamister and his associates want the public to underwrite his purchase to the tune of $35 million dollars. They want tax concessions, debts forgiven, reduced rent and a handout.
"It would be ridiculous to think that anyone would buy the Sabres without some sort of government support coming," said Erie Council Joel Giambra, according to the Buffalo News.
Does that mean Joel Giambra thinks Tom Golisano was a ridiculous person? Golisano, if memory serves me right, offered the NHL a few million less than Mark Hamister and his associates, but he wasn't asking anybody to underwrite anything. The only writing—over or under—I heard him talking about was him writing a check on his bank account, which has enough funds on deposit to buy the NFL.
It was only last week that Giambra came up with the idea of increasing the sales tax from 8% to 9% (a tax increase of 12.5%). I assume he'd underwrite his good friend Mark Hamister's hockey team purchase with some of that money, if it goes through. If it doesn't, he'll take it from something else the county would otherwise have spent it on.
Sales taxes are the most cynical and regressive taxes there are: the poor pay a greater portion of their income into sales tax than anyone else, so increases in sales tax hit them harder than anyone else. The poor have no discretionary income at all. That's what being poor is. A middle-class or wealthy person pays the same sales tax rate, but middle-class or wealthy persons get to choose whether they'll get the extremely large SUV or just the very large SUV, whether they'll have the $50 bottle of wine when they go out or the $25 bottle of wine. (The very rich buy bigger things, like hockey teams.) The wealthy complain about high sales taxes because they make expensive luxuries a little more expensive; the poor have no one to complain to about having less food to eat or being able to afford fewer needed medications or clothes for the kids.
Buffalo Mayor Anthony Masiello immediately went into the multiple passive voice: His advisers were told, he said, that "it appears government assistance is going to have to happen to make this thing work." That sentence translates into this: "Now that the NHL gave him the team Hamister is blackmailing us for $35 million of public money." You can almost always tell how deep the bullshit is in a situation by the frequency with which politicians use the passive voice to distance themselves from what's going on. Tony's been crawling into bed with Giambra on a lot of issues lately but this one apparently it far too rancid.
A lot of dumb things happen around Erie County. That's what keeps Buffalo Report, PoliticsWNY, Buffalo Beast and the rest of the alternative press going. But this isn't just dumb. It's really cynical and vicious. It's a move to reward a rich and powerful friend for nothing other than being a rich and powerful friend, and an attempt to do it on the backs of the folks who can afford the burden least of all.
Is this right up there with Governor George Pataki announcing two weeks after the election that the state is facing a $16 billion budget shortfall, which will, uh, um, maybe compromise some of those spectacular promises of bounty to come he made whenever he found a microphone in those sweet days before the election,when the $16 billion shortfall didn't yet exist? More or less.
One difference is, we got to vote on Pataki, so if we fell for his sleight of hand we have nothing to blame but our own naivete. We didn't get to vote on the Sabres deal. They didn't ask any of us whether the team should go to Tom Golisano, who was ready to write a check, or Mark Hamister and his friends, who were ready to write a check—but on our bank account.
So when does Joel Giambra come up for reelection?
—BJ