MLB Moves All Star Game From Atlanta

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

2 minutes ago, Auburnfan91 said:

And said business shouldn't be rewarded with tax breaks and tax exemptions from a state if they're going to throw a tantrum and take an event/business elsewhere. That's also a part of democracy. Taxpayers of GA shouldn't be giving corporate welfare to companies if they're going to turn around deprive them of their business as leverage to try to bully a state into doing what they want. Do voters in GA want to be run by big business or be run by their elected officials?

MLB made the decision, not the Atlanta Braves.

Georgia doesn't give MLB tax breaks.  The federal government does.

Helps to know these things before you make that argument.

[Auburnfan91 1,407]

7 minutes ago, Brad_ATX said:

MLB made the decision, not the Atlanta Braves.

Georgia doesn't give MLB tax breaks.  The federal government does.

Helps to know these things before you make that argument.

You're correct about MLB. Antitrust would have be taken up by the federal government. But my point still stands for other companies that have also whined publicly like Coke and Delta. Those companies both benefit from GA's corporate tax laws.

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

Just now, Auburnfan91 said:

You're correct about MLB. Antitrust would have be taken up by the federal government. But my point still stands for other companies that have also whined publicly like Coke and Delta. Those companies both benefit from GA's corporate laws. 

Yep, they do.  Like I said, Georgia can let those companies walk if they want to.  Elected officials will NEVER let that happen though because they, along with tens of thousands of Georgians, would all lose their jobs.

Easier for politicians to rile people up and yell "cancel culture" than to put their money where their mouth is, because they know the real world ramifications.

[SLAG-91 1,483]

4 hours ago, MDM4AU said:

I’m fine with MLB doing what they feel is best for them just don’t feed everyone a line of BS for why you are doing it. NY, with the exception of ID, has similar or more restrictive voting regulations. Even Biden’s home state requires an ID to vote, doesn’t allow “no excuse” absentee voting and early voting is only allowed for those who qualify for absentee voting. 
 

This debate has become such a farce and the very definition of intellectual dishonesty. 

This is the correct answer. There are more arcane, less "click-baity" provisions in the bill that are potentially problematic. The fundamental parts about the voting itself aren't really among them.

MLB is cutting their nose off to spite their face, imo, but they are free to do grandstand away and do what they want with their All-Star game.

Wonder if Rob Manfred is going to voluntarily cancel his Masters membership, since he's full of righteous indignation and all...👀

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

All Star Game likely moving to Coors Field per Buster Olney.  So, as a Rockies fan who loathes the Braves, I find this doubly fun.

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

57 minutes ago, SLAG-91 said:

Wonder if Rob Manfred is going to voluntarily cancel his Masters membership, since he's full of righteous indignation and all...👀

Of course not and nor should he.  His Augusta membership is a private thing affecting only him.  His role as Commissioner is to protect baseball, and particularly, the owners' financial interests.

[AUFAN78 3,894]

1 hour ago, Brad_ATX said:

Of course not and nor should he.  His Augusta membership is a private thing affecting only him.  His role as Commissioner is to protect baseball, and particularly, the owners' financial interests.

So practice NOT what thy preach? Great message Brad. Thanks.

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

8 minutes ago, AUFAN78 said:

So practice NOT what thy preach? Great message Brad. Thanks.

See if you can follow me here:

As Commissioner, he's not speaking for himself, but for baseball.  His employers are the owners of each franchise.

Just the same as me going to work every day but having different political views than my employers.

[AUFAN78 3,894]

2 minutes ago, Brad_ATX said:

See if you can follow me here:

As Commissioner, he's not speaking for himself, but for baseball.  His employers are the owners of each franchise.

Just the same as me going to work every day but having different political views than my employers.

I hear you, but disagree. A leader sets the example for the organization.

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

10 hours ago, AUFAN78 said:

I hear you, but disagree. A leader sets the example for the organization.

Then that goes to owners.  They pay his salary.

[AUFAN78 3,894]

3 hours ago, Brad_ATX said:

Then that goes to owners.  They pay his salary.

Perhaps he met with the owners and all agreed to this decision. If so, I have not seen this reported. But just say it did occur, I blame them all particularly given we now know the distorted facts in the case.

[alexava 6,973]

They just moved 100 million$ ( I hear) in revenue from a majority black city to Denver,  9% black. In protest of voter ID laws. Voter ID laws are tougher in Colorado. I finally found a real example of systemic racism. 

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

1 hour ago, alexava said:

They just moved 100 million$ ( I hear) in revenue from a majority black city to Denver,  9% black. In protest of voter ID laws. Voter ID laws are tougher in Colorado. I finally found a real example of systemic racism. 

To say its all over Voter ID is a gross over-simplification.

[AUFAN78 3,894]

28 minutes ago, Brad_ATX said:

To say its all over Voter ID is a gross over-simplification.

I think Alex was trying to be funny. I laughed. 

[cole256 17,051]

11 hours ago, alexava said:

They just moved 100 million$ ( I hear) in revenue from a majority black city to Denver,  9% black. In protest of voter ID laws. Voter ID laws are tougher in Colorado. I finally found a real example of systemic racism. 

The area you say you from and you haven't ever seen systemic racism? That's PT type of posting right there. Wow

[TitanTiger 20,472]

13 hours ago, alexava said:

They just moved 100 million$ ( I hear) in revenue from a majority black city to Denver,  9% black. In protest of voter ID laws. Voter ID laws are tougher in Colorado. I finally found a real example of systemic racism. 

Colorado also has universal mail in voting (since 1994).  Around 90% of the state's citizens vote by mail.  They also allow voter registration up to and including on Election Day.  They also don't restrict people from giving water or food to people waiting in line to vote.

We can debate whether it was wise for MLB to do this for a various reasons, but acting like Colorado and Georgia's voting laws are similar simply isn't true.

[I_M4_AU 7,801]

1 hour ago, TitanTiger said:

They also don't restrict people from giving water or food to people waiting in line to vote.

In Georgia, it is illegal to provide food or water to people within 150 feet of the boundary of a polling place or within 25 feet of any voter standing in line.

Colorado’s law allows for giving voters food or water unless they’re within 100 feet of a polling place or wearing campaign gear or accessories bearing the name or image of a candidate, party or issue.

The rules are less significant in Colorado, as nearly all voters cast ballots by mail and long voting lines are seldom reported here.

https://www.denverpost.com/2021/04/06/colorado-georgia-voting-laws-fact-check-comparison-mlb-all-star-game/

[AU9377 4,927]

On 4/3/2021 at 11:17 AM, AUBwins said:

Thing that really urks me is, one the Braves don't even play in Atlanta lol.  Two, they are hurting the baseball franchise that had nothing to do with the legislation. Three, by punishing Atlanta, they are actually taking the millions of dollars away from a city that is majority of the population that wants the funding.  They are underfunding themselves.  I do think we need to know who is voting with identificaton. I also think the true efforts should be on how to fairly get people the identification required instead of saying it's not needed.  

I am not trying to be political with the conversation, just don't understand why changing something in baseball is the result for something that happened in election legislation.  

I also think athletes and entertainment people should stay out of politics unless they plan on running themselves. 

The new stadium's address is Atlanta, 30339. A man with one leg on crutches could walk to the city limits of Atlanta unassisted it is so close.  LOL  Personally, it is so much nicer to go to a game now than it was when you had to go downtown, find a place to park and be on guard from your car to the stadium.

[AU9377 4,927]

The problem with the Georgia bill, the real problems, have nothing to do with voter id.  The only real change in voter id requirements is when voting by absentee.  They removed the signature verification and replaced it with the requirement to send a copy of your id with your returned ballot.  Personally, I think that this is actually easier than signature verification.  After all, it doesn't impact the close to 3 weeks of early voting that still exist where anyone registered can go vote in person.  In my opinion, having 15 weekdays, plus 2 Saturdays and a Sunday to vote in ADDITION to election day is anything but suppression.

The PROBLEM with the bill is that, as retaliation for the Georgia Secretary of State standing up to former Pres. Trump and refusing to "find votes", the bill strips the SOS of powers.  The SOS is no longer head of the State Board of Elections.  They replaced the SOS with a political appointee.  Likewise, they expanded the authority of the newly established appointee's position as head of the Elections Board.  That appointee now has expanded power to remove local election officials for just about any reason they wish, over the objections of county election boards. There is no reason to have done of that if you were not preparing to use the powers to unduly influence election outcomes.

Had Trump won Georgia, none of this legislation would have been submitted to a committee, much less passed the legislature.

[AUBwins 10,075]

1 hour ago, AU9377 said:

The new stadium's address is Atlanta, 30339. A man with one leg on crutches could walk to the city limits of Atlanta unassisted it is so close.  LOL  Personally, it is so much nicer to go to a game now than it was when you had to go downtown, find a place to park and be on guard from your car to the stadium.

I knew they had moved it outside of downtown.  I thought it was further out.  My mistake.  I know what you are talking about with the downtown location though.  

[NolaAuTiger 3,295]

On 4/5/2021 at 5:28 PM, Brad_ATX said:

MLB Delta and Coca-Cola made the decision, not the Atlanta Braves.

[Auburnfan91 1,407]

28 minutes ago, NolaAuTiger said:

And if you want to get even more specific, it's unions that are pushing this woke capitalism.

[CoffeeTiger 5,102]

NFL, Potato head toy, Target, Dr. Seuss,  Coke, Delta, MLB. 

 

Pretty soon Republicans wont have anything to do but sit in an empty room drinking water and eating ice because they are boycotting everything else. 

[homersapien 11,367]

1 hour ago, CoffeeTiger said:

NFL, Potato head toy, Target, Dr. Seuss,  Coke, Delta, MLB. 

 

Pretty soon Republicans wont have anything to do but sit in an empty room drinking water and eating ice because they are boycotting everything else. 

 

How are the boycotts going so far?

Don Moynihan @donmoyn

Trump called for a ban on Coke 3 days ago. How is that going?

April 5th 2021

 

[homersapien 11,367]

Here's an interesting take.   Sounds complicated, but maybe if they had teamed up with Stacey Abrams and Democratic Legislatures?

Why Baseball Should Keep the All-Star Game in Georgia

If the MLB cared more about actual voting than virtue-signaling, here’s a plan for what it could do.

By JEFF GREENFIELD

04/05/2021

"Congratulations to Major League Baseball for taking a stand on behalf of voting rights for all citizens,” former President Barack Obama said. “There’s no better way for America’s pastime to honor the great Hank Aaron, who always led by example.”

That view, shared by President Joe Biden, is an understandable response to baseball’s decision to pull its July All-Star Game out of Georgia, after Georgia adopted a series of restrictive rules clearly designed to depress Black turnout.

It’s also decidedly shortsighted. If MLB was truly worried about protecting the ability to vote in Georgia—and making sure Georgia’s disenfranchised voters weren’t silenced—there was a much, much better way to act: Bring the full force of baseball’s celebrity power to bear on Georgia itself.

At the purely symbolic level, it’s understandable why MLB made its decision, and why liberals around the country were high-fiving each other about it. Though Georgia’s new law did not embrace the most draconian proposals of some of its Republican legislators—and there are actually bright spots, such as expanded early voting days, including some weekend—the cluster of new rules and tougher ID requirements are aimed at one goal: making it harder for likely Democratic voters to exercise their franchise. What’s worse is that the Legislature has effectively given itself the power to overrule local and county officials, and in effect decide for itself who has won. Had such laws been in effect last November, the Legislature could have, and likely would have, awarded the state’s electoral votes to Donald Trump.

So the decision of MLB to act was right, in an abstract, pro-democracy moral sense. But politics isn’t just about parading your virtue. It’s about real outcomes—getting real people to really vote—and by that standard, what the league did was to ignore a heaven-sent opportunity to actually do something concrete.

This isn’t about the economic damage to rank-and-file Georgians, although that’s not trivial; Cobb County’s tourism CEO says it will cost the region $100 million. It’s about a missed opportunity to make a difference. There’s a reason that Georgia’s notably successful grassroots Black Democratic political figures, Stacey Abrams and Senator Raphael Warnock, both were cool to the boycott. The real loss is what the All-Star Game could have meant to the effort to mobilize against that law.

Consider this alternative: The All-Star Game stays in Georgia. But the event—a three-day affair—is built around a multifront campaign to address the restrictions imposed by the new law. None of it would need to be framed as partisan. It would be purely pro-voting, pro-democracy—an equal-opportunity push to be sure the good old-fashioned American election process worked.

The example of Wisconsin in 2020 suggests that voter-restriction efforts can trigger huge blowback if they’re sufficiently publicized—and there’s almost no organization that could shine more sunlight on the situation, and reach more people, than a major sports league. The players fan out across the state, holding rallies to highlight the restrictions in the law, if possible at locations near voter registration offices. People attending are given detailed instructions about how to apply for government-issued IDs. A series of speeches and panels, much like the National Basketball Association offers during its All-Star event, highlights exactly how Georgia’s new law in fact imposes serious burdens on the franchise.

Along with these programs, fundraising events featuring the players could have raised serious sums of money to fund nonpartisan efforts to get prospective voters registered, and to pay for broadcast and digital advertising spelling out the malevolent intent and effect of these new rules. And across the state, in urban, suburban and rural neighborhoods, election law experts would let Democratic and Republican voters alike learn how the state Legislature has effectively gutted the nonpartisan machinery of vote-counting, giving itself the power to overturn the will of the voters and declare winners and losers on its own.

That kind of response would have avoided the ill will of a pullout, which is going to make life harder for Georgia Democrats like Abrams and Warnock without actually doing anything to counteract the law. It would have spared the Atlanta region the economic hit, preserved the planned tribute to Atlanta Braves great Hank Aaron, and, most important, would have used the media focus on the game as a way to educate and to take direct action without turning a baseball game into a political football. It also could have spurred institutions in Georgia and in other states where legislatures are taking similar steps to gut the right to vote.

Of course, there’s an argument that the MLB’s pullout isn’t about Georgia: It’s more effective as a warning to Republican legislatures in other states not to ram through their own versions of the Georgia voting law. But if that’s the point of the All-Star game pullout, then it’s a double-edged sword. Boycotts may work for movie companies that won’t shoot in states with restrictive laws, or for conventions and gatherings that can move their events elsewhere. But there are clear limits: Coca-Cola will not shut down its Atlanta operation; American Airlines will not move its major hub out of Dallas; and issuing statements really doesn’t change the terrain. Further, as Georgia has showed with its cancellation of a $50 million tax break for Delta after the airline had criticized the new law, legislatures have powerful retaliatory weapons.

By contrast, major corporate players across the country could throw serious money into voter registration efforts; they could assist voters in obtaining IDs, as they now do with blood drives and charitable giving. It would be very hard for Governor Brian Kemp, Trump and other worthies to attack such efforts, or for legislatures to punish companies for launching nonpartisan voter assistance, unless they were willing to drop the mask and say (as some GOP officials have): We really don’t want the wrong kind of people to vote.

But maybe the league felt that it would face attacks from the left for anything other than boycott. Maybe it feared that many of its stars wouldn’t embrace the idea of using the game as a launch pad for a push for new voters. Or maybe the urge to make a hasty gesture—something that saved face for MLB without forcing it any closer to the issue—was too tempting. So, faced with a hanging curve, baseball whiffed.

Consider this alternative: The All-Star Game stays in Georgia. But the event—a three-day affair—is built around a multifront campaign to address the restrictions imposed by the new law. None of it would need to be framed as partisan. It would be purely pro-voting, pro-democracy—an equal-opportunity push to be sure the good old-fashioned American election process worked.

The example of Wisconsin in 2020 suggests that voter-restriction efforts can trigger huge blowback if they’re sufficiently publicized—and there’s almost no organization that could shine more sunlight on the situation, and reach more people, than a major sports league. The players fan out across the state, holding rallies to highlight the restrictions in the law, if possible at locations near voter registration offices. People attending are given detailed instructions about how to apply for government-issued IDs. A series of speeches and panels, much like the National Basketball Association offers during its All-Star event, highlights exactly how Georgia’s new law in fact imposes serious burdens on the franchise.

Along with these programs, fundraising events featuring the players could have raised serious sums of money to fund nonpartisan efforts to get prospective voters registered, and to pay for broadcast and digital advertising spelling out the malevolent intent and effect of these new rules. And across the state, in urban, suburban and rural neighborhoods, election law experts would let Democratic and Republican voters alike learn how the state Legislature has effectively gutted the nonpartisan machinery of vote-counting, giving itself the power to overturn the will of the voters and declare winners and losers on its own.

That kind of response would have avoided the ill will of a pullout, which is going to make life harder for Georgia Democrats like Abrams and Warnock without actually doing anything to counteract the law. It would have spared the Atlanta region the economic hit, preserved the planned tribute to Atlanta Braves great Hank Aaron, and, most important, would have used the media focus on the game as a way to educate and to take direct action without turning a baseball game into a political football. It also could have spurred institutions in Georgia and in other states where legislatures are taking similar steps to gut the right to vote.

Of course, there’s an argument that the MLB’s pullout isn’t about Georgia: It’s more effective as a warning to Republican legislatures in other states not to ram through their own versions of the Georgia voting law. But if that’s the point of the All-Star game pullout, then it’s a double-edged sword. Boycotts may work for movie companies that won’t shoot in states with restrictive laws, or for conventions and gatherings that can move their events elsewhere. But there are clear limits: Coca-Cola will not shut down its Atlanta operation; American Airlines will not move its major hub out of Dallas; and issuing statements really doesn’t change the terrain. Further, as Georgia has showed with its cancellation of a $50 million tax break for Delta after the airline had criticized the new law, legislatures have powerful retaliatory weapons.

By contrast, major corporate players across the country could throw serious money into voter registration efforts; they could assist voters in obtaining IDs, as they now do with blood drives and charitable giving. It would be very hard for Governor Brian Kemp, Trump and other worthies to attack such efforts, or for legislatures to punish companies for launching nonpartisan voter assistance, unless they were willing to drop the mask and say (as some GOP officials have): We really don’t want the wrong kind of people to vote.

But maybe the league felt that it would face attacks from the left for anything other than boycott. Maybe it feared that many of its stars wouldn’t embrace the idea of using the game as a launch pad for a push for new voters. Or maybe the urge to make a hasty gesture—something that saved face for MLB without forcing it any closer to the issue—was too tempting. So, faced with a hanging curve, baseball whiffed.