#Commercial Tax Assessments St Louis

[svninfinity]

SVN infinity is the leading Commercial Real Estate Firm St. Louis. SVN infinity St. Louis mo, we share the best property listings on our website with complete detail of location and price. Visit our website now.   

[floridaprelaw-blog]

Walt Disney World’s Special Tax District

By Theodros Fekade, University of Miami Class of 2024

August 19, 2023

The Walt Disney Company has garnered extensive acclaim in the collective consciousness of the world by virtue of its creation of iconic cinematic productions that include The Lion King, along with indelibly cherished characters including Mickey Mouse. While the Walt Disney Company’s prominence notably emanates from its perpetually treasured cinematic innovations and timeless characters, it manages an array of multifarious divisions that are aimed at maximizing the value of shares for investors. The Walt Disney Company is bifurcated into two discernible segments that orchestrate all of Disney's commercial transactions and daily operations for the purpose of advancing the corporation’s fiscal prosperity and entertainment acclaim. The Walt Disney Corporation is portioned into a distinct segment called Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products that exercises supervision over a worldwide collection of theme parks encompassing Walt Disney World, as well as magnificent vacation destinations exemplified by Aulani and maritime voyages under the subsidiary of Disney Cruise Line. In a similar fashion, the Walt Disney Company is demarcated into another segment named Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution that is responsible for the oversight of creation studios, including Lucasfilm Animation, and the administration of streaming platforms, including Hulu. The strategically diversified investment portfolio of the Walt Disney Company has fortified it to attain an unassailable market share while firmly establishing its presence across a myriad of business sectors. The triumphant performance exhibited by the two segments of the Walt Disney Company acts as a driving force in propelling the corporation to attain a formidable net worth that surpasses $100 billion and to merit its esteemed rank of 48 on the Fortune 500 list.

Following the triumphant achievements of Disneyland in California, the Walt Disney Company aspired to construct an enticing tourist destination in the eastern region of the United States. The Walt Disney Company conducted assessments of St. Louis and Niagara Falls, but these cities ultimately failed to materialize into concrete manifestations of theme park ventures. Due to the frigid climates in the winter months of St. Louis and Niagara Falls, the corporation was compelled to explore land options in Central Florida. (Emerson) Recognizing that acquiring over 25,000 acres of land openly might arouse suspicion and lead to unnecessarily inflated prices, the Walt Disney Company formulated a tactical approach. The strategic plan involved creating shell corporations, cultivating land trusts, and employing covert designations to discreetly procure the marshy terrain of Orange and Osceola counties over the course of the mid-1960s. (The Presser Law Firm, P.A.) In 1967, the Walt Disney Company and the Florida State Legislature created the special tax district of Reedy Creek Improvement District, which granted the corporation the authority to oversee its own building codes, permit distribution, bond issuance, and tax collection. (Reedy Creek Improvement District) With special tax districts totaling over 1,000, including the prominent Daytona Beach Racing and Recreational Facilities District, the mechanism of utilizing special tax districts in Florida is common, as the districts generate revenue through specialized taxation, allow greater autonomy for communities, and provide efficient governance. (Sampson)

In 1968, the State of Florida sued the Reedy Creek Improvement District on the grounds that the district lacked the power to plan for drainage of its own waterlogged terrain and to issue revenue bonds for financing of the drainage endeavor. The Supreme Court of Florida rendered a verdict deeming that the appellant's contention that the project predominantly catered to Disney's interests was "untenable" because the primary objective is a valid public purpose given that the project would "improve sanitation and pest control conditions while aiding in the conservation of natural resources." The Supreme Court of Florida also deduced that as "long as specific constitutional provisions are not offended," a special improvement district can be located within "more than one county and possess multi-purpose powers essential to the realization of a valid public purpose." The Supreme Court of Florida held that the legislation establishing the Reedy Creek Improvement District did not conflict with Article III Section 20 of the Constitution of the State of Florida because the Court previously held that it is permissible for the Florida Legislature "to impose state and county" officials with administrative duties "as an incident to the formation of a taxing district for governmental purposes in order to effectuate the purposes of the district." Ultimately, the Court concluded that the legislation establishing the Reedy Creek Improvement District conferred the district with the control to "issue general obligation bonds, revenue bonds, or any other bonds to pay all or part of the cost of construction," and that the Board of the Reedy Creek Improvement District "was reasonable" and "accordingly not arbitrary, unfair, or inequitable" in its imposition of fees. Therefore, the Supreme Court of Florida ruled in favor of the Reedy Creek Improvement District and solidified a case precedent that granted the Walt Disney Company with more than 5 decades of safeguarded authority. (State of Florida et al. v. Reedy Creek Improvement District)

In April 2022, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bill 4-C, which stipulated that any "independent special district" promulgated "prior to November 5, 1968" that "was not reestablished, re-ratified, or otherwise reconstituted by a special act" will be "dissolved effective June 1, 2023." The Florida Senate bill conspicuously directed its focus towards the dissolution of the Walt Disney Company’s special district, which could cause the special district to be absorbed into Osceola and Orange counties. Jerry Demings, mayor of Orange County, declared that assuming responsibility for "the first response" and ensuring the public safety of Reedy Creek would be "catastrophic for the county's budget" and "would be an undue burden on the rest of the taxpayers in Orange County." (Sampson) Governor Ron DeSantis, the Walt Disney Company, and the mayors of Orange and Osceola counties must collaboratively formulate a resolution to rectify the imminent fiscal upheaval that is poised to confront Osceola and Orange counties.

______________________________________

Emerson, Chad D. "Merging Public and Private Governance: How Disney's Reedy Creek Improvement District "Re-Imagined" the Traditional Division of Local Regulatory Powers." 2009. Florida State University Law Review. 19 August 2023.

Reedy Creek Improvement District. "About ." 2004. The Reedy Creek Improvement District. 19 August 2023.

Sampson, Hannah. "Disney’s special tax district in Florida, explained." 28 March 2023. The Washington Post. 19 August 2023.

State of Florida et al. v. Reedy Creek Improvement District. No. 37569. The Supreme Court of Florida. 27 November 1968.

The Presser Law Firm, P.A. "How Walt Disney Used Land Trusts to Purchase and Build Disney World." 2 December 2019. The Presser Law Firm, P.A. 19 August 2023.

[authorityappraisals]

The Importance of Commercial Appraisal Services in St. Louis

Introduction:

When it comes to buying, selling, or leasing commercial real estate in St. Louis, it is essential to have a thorough understanding of its market value. This is where Commercial Appraisal Services in St. Louis plays a crucial role. In this blog post, we will explore the significance of commercial appraisals and how they can benefit property owners, investors, and lenders in St. Louis. As one of the leading commercial appraisal firms in the area, Authority Appraisals is dedicated to providing accurate and reliable valuation services to clients.

Accurate Valuation for Informed Decisions:

Commercial appraisals provide an unbiased and professional evaluation of a property's market value. This information is vital for making informed decisions regarding various aspects of commercial real estate, such as buying, selling, financing, leasing, or property tax assessments. By conducting a comprehensive analysis, commercial appraisers in St. Louis can consider factors like location, property condition, comparable sales, income potential, and market trends to determine an accurate valuation. This helps clients avoid overpaying for a property or setting an unrealistic selling price, enabling them to make confident decisions that align with their financial goals.

Securing Financing and Attracting Investors:

When seeking financing for a commercial property, lenders require an appraisal to assess the collateral's value. A thorough appraisal report from a reputable St. Louis commercial appraiser like Authority Appraisals helps lenders determine the loan amount they are willing to offer. Additionally, potential investors also rely on appraisals to assess the feasibility of a commercial property investment. By presenting a well-documented appraisal report, property owners can attract more investors and negotiate better terms. Moreover, an appraisal report that highlights a property's potential for growth and income generation can increase its marketability, leading to a higher sale price or rental income.

Supporting Property Tax Assessments:

Property tax assessments in St. Louis are often based on the assessed value of commercial properties. A professional commercial appraisal can help property owners challenge an inaccurate assessment and potentially lower their tax burden. By providing evidence of a property's true market value, an appraisal report strengthens the case for fair taxation. Authority Appraisals works closely with clients to gather and analyze relevant data, ensuring the appraisal report is robust and supports their efforts to appeal a high property tax assessment. This can lead to significant savings in property taxes over time.

Mitigating Risk and Enhancing Due Diligence:

Commercial appraisals are an essential part of due diligence processes for real estate transactions. Whether you are buying, selling, or leasing a commercial property, an appraisal provides valuable insights into its potential risks and rewards. It helps identify any hidden issues, such as environmental concerns, zoning restrictions, or structural problems that may affect the property's value or usability. By conducting thorough research and analysis, St. Louis commercial appraisers ensure that clients are fully aware of any risks associated with a property. This empowers them to make informed decisions, negotiate better terms, and mitigate potential risks in their commercial real estate investments.

Conclusion:

Commercial appraisal services play a critical role in the St. Louis real estate market, providing accurate and reliable valuations for various purposes. From assisting in buying and selling decisions to supporting financing, attracting investors, and challenging property tax assessments, commercial appraisals are an invaluable tool for property owners, investors, lenders, and other stakeholders. By partnering with a reputable firm like Authority Appraisals, clients can gain confidence in their commercial real estate transactions and make informed decisions based on accurate market valuations.

[mattkennard]

African Governments Are Paying for the World Bank’s Mauritius Miracle

Published: Foreign Policy (18 October 2018) w/ Claire Provost

PORT LOUIS, Mauritius—The security guard at Malawi Mangoes’ registered address at an office at the St Louis Business Centre in downtown Port Louis is not sure if we’re in the right place. The staff at the front desk are bewildered by our request to speak to someone from the company. The otherwise modest office block has flat-screen televisions on the walls and glossy magazines with titles like Savile Row and Family Business on a table in a small waiting area.

After about 20 minutes, a woman in a suit appears, bearing apologies—she had been out to lunch. At first, she seems to mistake us for investors in Malawi Mangoes. We jump in to clarify: We’re journalists looking to talk to someone from the company, which in 2014 received a $5 million loan from the private investment arm of the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC). Our interlocutor appears confused, as if she knows little about the business, or why we might be attempting to learn more about it in Port Louis, Mauritius.

She confirms that Malawi Mangoes, a company whose plantations and juice-making operations are located over 1,500 miles away in Malawi, is indeed registered at this address, but she declines tell us anything else. There is no one from the company here to speak to, no one to interview, no pamphlets or brochures we can read.

Mauritius sits 1,200 miles off the eastern coast of southern Africa, in the Indian Ocean. It’s an isolated island, without an endowment of exploitable natural resources like oil or minerals. Simon Springett, the United Nations resident coordinator for the island, told us that when the country became independent from the United Kingdom in 1968, “economists basically said there’s no way Mauritius can survive as an independent nation-state.”

Sugar cane had been the country’s core crop for centuries. Sugar is still produced in Mauritius, but the island owes much of its modern prosperity to the development of another more controversial industry.

In 2018, Mauritius has an international reputation built around extremely low taxes—a flat corporate tax rate of 15 percent and an effective rate as low as zero to 3 percent for offshore companies—as well as high levels of financial secrecy. Global businesses registered in Mauritius have assets valued at more than $630 billion, almost 25 times the country’s own GDP of $26 billion. Its offshore financial industry includes more than 21,000 registered businesses —almost 70 times the number of primary schools in the country. However, these firms don’t take up a lot of space; many of them exist only on paper, set up to benefit from the island’s cut-rate taxes and its “ask no questions” attitude.

Since the early 1990s, Mauritius has remade itself into an African tax haven, where multinational corporations and ultra-rich individuals can stash their cash and profits and minimize their tax bills, away from the prying eyes of other governments and the public.

As the private investment arm of the World Bank, the IFC is tasked with investing in businesses in developing countries to help “end extreme poverty and promote shared prosperity,” while also making money to support the bank’s other programs. Despite its mandate to help the world’s poorest people, it seems to have largely turned a blind eye to the controversial role Mauritius plays in the global tax system—and, in some cases, it has likely profited from the country’s remoteness and opaque financial services itself.

The IFC has approved loans and investments in more than 1,600 companies since 2012. According to our analysis of their project disclosures, at least 50 of these were for companies registered in Mauritius but operating elsewhere. Many of these companies, including Malawi Mangoes, are based in sub-Saharan Africa, and their registration in Mauritius may be depriving African governments of much needed-tax revenue.

Last year, the African Business Review reported that nearly 60 percent of investments made by international companies registered in Mauritius were destined for mainland Africa. Mauritius has been accused by civil society groups such as Oxfam of draining public resources from poorer countries by allowing multinational investors to shift their profits here, enabling them to pay much less than their fair share of taxes in the countries where they actually operate. And in 2013, the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa criticized the island as “a relatively financially secretive conduit” that facilitates illicit financial flows across the continent.

Malawi Mangoes is one of the companies in which the IFC has invested. It was founded in 2009 by a pair of British entrepreneurs, Jonathan Jacobs and Craig Hardie. From the Salima district in central Malawi, it produces mango and banana puree and fresh fruit for export around Africa, to the Middle East, and to Europe.

When the IFC approved its $5 million investment in Malawi Mangoes in 2014, it was described as an agribusiness project in the soft drink sector, with the loan going to support the company as it tried to establish itself in the country. This would create much-needed rural jobs, the IFC argued, “thus injecting money to the local economy through wages and benefits paid.” Economic growth in poorer countries like Malawi is being held back, the IFC contends, by “the lack of risk capital” needed to “build the dynamic, job-creating companies that drive prosperity.”

To even be eligible for its support, projects must be located in a developing country and “have good prospects of being profitable”—but also “benefit the local economy; and Be environmentally and socially sound.” And though the IFC’s investment location is listed as Malawi, the funds actually go to “Malawi Mangoes (Mauritius) Limited.”

Company records in Mauritius and the United Kingdom, where the owners have filed paperwork, reveal that Malawi Mangoes moved its business to Mauritius after it had already started working in Malawi. This is significant because it appears to contradict claims that Mauritius is encouraging investment in Africa that wouldn’t otherwise happen.

Malawi Mangoes was incorporated in the United Kingdom in 2009, according to financial records filed in London. This U.K. entity was dissolved in 2015. By then, Malawi Mangoes had incorporated two companies in Mauritius (in 2012 and 2013), under the island’s global business system. In other words: Mauritius didn’t facilitate the company’s entrance into Malawi. It had already happened.

This suggests that Malawi Mangoes was attracted to Mauritius by something else: not the chance to move into Africa for the first time, but more likely its low taxes, high secrecy levels, and what the World Bank touts as its “ease of doing business.”

Despite the IFC’s poverty-reducing mandate and its requirement that projects benefit the local economy, the institution, and the World Bank as a whole, has been criticized for years for investing in commercial projects with dubious impacts on poor communities, including five-star hotels, upmarket shopping malls, and even agribusiness projects that have displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

On its website, the IFC explains how potential investments are reviewed, with proposals that are supposed to contain information such as the company’s finances and expected profits. IFC teams assess whether projects will comply with environmental and social performance standards, which cover issues such as labor conditions, land acquisition, and biodiversity—but not taxation, let alone tax justice.

The IFC’s disclosure explains that Malawi Mangoes is majority-owned by BXR Group, a private investment group in Amsterdam, and that the second-largest shareholder is “well-known fund manager and philanthropist” Stewart Newton. The project’s environmental and social review says Malawi Mangoes (Mauritius) Limited is “a holding company that runs an operation in Malawi.” No explanation is provided in the disclosure, however, as to why a company structured like this was deemed a suitable investment for the IFC, or why the entity receiving IFC money would be based on the Indian Ocean island.

Because this company is registered in Mauritius, where such information is not disclosed, we could not determine its annual revenues, profits, or how much tax it pays. However, it was reported locally in Malawi earlier this year that the company had secured 1,700 hectares of farmland near its existing plantations to expand its operations, and that its mango exports so far have already been worth more than $1.4 million.

The IFC’s disclosures also hint at possible problems on the ground in Malawi. In 2014, it said Malawi Mangoes had more than 600 employees, with the lowest-paid workers making just $35 a month. Though this is described as 20 percent higher than Malawi’s minimum wage, the company has also subsidized maize purchases for its workers during periods of the year when they could not afford it. And while the company does buy fruit from small-scale farmers through so-called outgrower schemes, it does not appear that local farmers or the Malawian economy are the main beneficiaries of the company’s activities.

Last year, a report in Malawi’s Maravi Post claimed that a senior chief in the Salima district “made shabby land deals” with Malawi Mangoes for which she allegedly pocketed proceeds and left “affected families” largely uncompensated.

Vigils were reportedly organized for 18 days at Salima District Commission offices to demand her removal as chief. “This land was sold dubiously to foreigners, without consultations but only telling us that it was government which allocated it,” one of the demonstrators, Muhamad Chingomanje, was quoted as saying. “We are not against developmental projects on our land, but … we want to benefit from its proceeds.”

The U.N. Economic Commission for Africa says illicit financial flows from Africa could be worth as much as $50 billion per year—double the amount of official international aid budgeted for the continent—with impacts including drained foreign exchange reserves and worsening poverty. Tax havens enable this, it explains, by allowing for the creation of “disguised corporations, shell companies, anonymous trust accounts, and fake charitable foundations.”

The secrecy afforded in places like Mauritius may facilitate illegal practices—though the real story is how tax havens enable aggressive tax practices and legal tax avoidance on a massive scale, with companies taking advantage of gaps and mismatches in tax rules to shift their profits and declare them not where their real business is, but where they’ll pay less. This is part of a larger story about how countries have been sucked into competing with one another to offer the best deal to corporations, regardless of the impacts on their economy and their citizens. Then there is the impact on countries like Malawi, which is even worse for the public purse.

According to the IMF, developing countries’ revenue losses from what’s called “base erosion and profit-shifting” may exceed $200 billion.

This issue has been acknowledged at the very top of the World Bank as well. In 2015, World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said: “Some companies use elaborate strategies to not pay taxes in countries in which they work, a form of corruption that hurts the poor. More equitable taxation could easily eclipse official development assistance received by countries.”

Mauritius is an epicenter of this sort of profit-shifting. In addition to its flat tax rate of 15 percent, there is no capital gains tax and no tax on dividends or interest paid to nonresidents. Companies don’t even need to have a direct physical presence with staff on the island: This can also be outsourced to agents of financial services firms, whose employees may act as representatives for many companies at a time—just like those we met in Port Louis, at Malawi Mangoes’ registered address, who appeared surprised to be asked questions about the firm.

Once in Mauritius, it also helps for a business to have more than one subsidiary to take advantage of different incentives offered to different types of companies. Malawi Mangoes’ company records list two businesses in the country: Malawi Mangoes (Mauritius) Limited, incorporated in April 2012, and Malawi Mangoes Management (Mauritius) Limited, set up in January 2013. Both are incorporated as offshore companies within the island’s global business system and registered to the same address: “St Louis Business Centre, CNR Desroches & St Louis Streets, Port Louis.”

This is where we went in Mauritius, to ask about the company’s business and why it was running an operation in Malawi from an island so far away. But it’s just a care-of address, at the offices of a financial services firm called Rogers Capital, which helps its customers set up and manage offshore entities, lends its address for their registration forms, and keeps their details under wraps.

That pattern holds for other IFC investments in sub-Saharan Africa, made via Mauritius instead of directly in the countries of operation. In the capital of Port Louis, we had more Kafkaesque experiences. In one small office, on a narrow road in the city’s Chinatown, we found the registered office of CSquared, a broadband internet infrastructure business operating in several countries including Ghana and Uganda that counts Google among its investors. There, the man we spoke to would not even confirm the address of the building we were sitting in.

The IFC says clearly on its website that “tax evasion is unacceptable in any part of a transaction in which the World Bank Group is involved.” It insists that it “exercises due diligence to confirm that the structures in which it invests are chosen for legitimate reasons” and that it’s “committed to advancing the international tax transparency agenda.”

This sounds serious, but the language used also carefully limits the problem to illegal activity. Tax evasion is the illegal nonpayment or underpayment of tax. But for multinational companies, there are many strategies to limit tax bills that may be currently legal but still highly questionable—particularly for an institution, backed by the world’s governments, with an explicit mandate to help end poverty and boost “shared prosperity.”

Anti-poverty and tax justice nongovernmental organizations have argued for years that the IFC shouldn’t be investing in companies using tax havens at all, as such structures enable information on money made and taxes paid to be hidden from governments as well as the public. Legitimate reasons for companies to incorporate in tax havens may be a matter of interpretation, but it cannot be publicly scrutinized or debated if businesses’ information is never disclosed.

In 2016, Oxfam accused the World Bank of “turning a blind eye” to the use of tax havens by the companies that the IFC invests in. It also scrutinized IFC disclosure information and found that 25 percent of all of the organization’s investment projects in sub-Saharan Africa in 2015 were directly allocated to companies incorporated in tax havens, with almost 9 percent of the projects in Mauritius. What’s more, it found that a large majority of firms receiving IFC financing use tax havens, apparently unconnected to their core business, at some point in their corporate structure.

Oxfam demanded that the World Bank “ensure that its clients can prove they are paying their fair share of tax” and confirm that these businesses aren’t taking “advantage of the weakness of the system to reduce their tax bill to the minimum, especially through the artificial shift of profits” to countries like Mauritius. The organization suggested specifically that “responsible corporate tax considerations—beyond legal compliance” should be incorporated into the IFC’s environmental and social performance standards immediately and used to review and monitor their array of investments.

At the time, an IFC spokesperson responded by inaccurately characterizing the NGO’s criticisms as focused on illegal tax evasion, again stressing that “there are legitimate uses for offshore structures.”

This week, an IFC spokesman told Foreign Policy that the organization would only invest in a company if it was “satisfied with the integrity of the client and that the structure of the transaction is legitimate and not designed to be used for tax evasion.” The spokesman reiterated the argument that “Offshore Financial Centers can play a key role in cross-border investment,” especially when a host country lacks certain laws, contract enforcement mechanisms, or shareholder protections. “Appropriate use of intermediate jurisdictions,” he argued, “enables increased mobilization of private capital for investment that helps the poor.”

According to the spokesman, the IFC’s investment in Malawi Mangoes was “to support rural incomes through development of commercial production and processing of mangoes and bananas in a region where poverty is high” and that it was subject to the “policy on use of intermediate jurisdictions” and found to be acceptable. The IFC also pointed out that its performance standards “were developed before some of the public focus on tax and illicit financial flows” and that it was now updating its policies based on new and evolving international standards. It is unclear if Malawi Mangoes would qualify under the new standards.

According to the IFC, Malawi Mangoes has failed to ramp up its production and never generated any profits. This, of course, does not alter the nature of the tax arrangements the company set up for that eventuality.

Malawi Mangoes did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Last October, the prime minister of Mauritius, Pravind Jugnauth, revived the old narrative of the island’s dim economic prospects in an interview with the Financial Times. “We are a small island that is limited in many ways. We don’t have any natural resources,” he told the newspaper.

“We need to have an edge over others to be attractive,” Jugnauth added. “I think the advantage in taxation is important.”

At the World Bank office in Port Louis, the argument is much the same. Alex Sienaert, the country representative for Mauritius, said the offshore industry has benefited the island, providing a source of foreign exchange and encouraging kids to stay in school and work hard to get offshore office jobs. He said there is a sense among young people in the country that if “I can qualify as an accountant or a lawyer, there’s a good job for me, an office job, on the island. … That’s been going on for well over a generation now.”

But he acknowledged that “you do hear some concerns.” The offshore industry in Mauritius employs a surprisingly small fraction of the population—just 5,000 workers directly in a country of over 1 million people. And not all boats have been lifted equally by the island’s transformation into a corporate utopia. In March, the World Bank warned in a new 147-page report that inequality among Mauritians has “widened substantially” over the last 15 years, “threatening the standards of living of the poor.”

According to the report, the gap between the incomes of the poorest and the richest 10 percent of households increased by 37 percent from 2001 to 2015. One of the report’s authors attributed this to structural changes, including a “progressive shift from traditional and low-skills sectors to services, notably professional, real estate, and financial services,” which not all workers benefited from. Women, in particular, did not share in the gains, with only 57 percent of them in the labor force by 2015, and women in the private sector have been paid on average about 30 percent less than men.

Sienaert at the World Bank told us, “there’s no question that the tax appeal of Mauritius is an important part of the story,” acknowledging that this is “an increasingly less sustainable way to go.” It would be better for Mauritius to become “a conduit for international companies to come into Africa perhaps for the first time, facilitating new activity that wouldn’t otherwise exist,” he said. “Then you’re in win-win territory.”

“That’s not to say it’s going to be an easy transition,” Sienaert added. Like the March report from the World Bank, he had nothing to say about the IFC’s investments via Mauritius and gave the impression that he didn’t know they existed. And much like the staff at the office where the headquarters of Malawi Mangoes is registered on the island, he appeared surprised by our questions on the topic.

Last weekend, the World Bank brought together country delegations and development experts at its annual meetings in Indonesia. The IFC was there, too. At such conferences, grand statements are made while attendees tend to mill around banners bearing pledges to better the world.

Rather than repeating tired mantras about job-creating companies bringing prosperity to the poorest corners of Africa, these powerful international institutions—whose mandates are built around expanding shared prosperity and alleviating poverty—should be asking about the mango farmers in Malawi’s Salima district, and who profited (or didn’t) from the IFC’s support.’

[kansascityhappenings]

A tale of 2 trolleys: St. Louis Loop Trolley struggling while KC Streetcar plans to expand

Kansas City Streetcar (Left) and St. Louis Loop Trolley

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — In Missouri’s two biggest cities, officials are looking to public transportation to help grow business and connect communities. These ideas were put into motion in similar ways: both cities now have rail-guided systems that ferry people between two points with multiple stops in between.

Although the similarities between the two systems are clear, the results have been strikingly different. While Kansas City’s Streetcar has seen overwhelming success with more than double their expected ridership, St. Louis’ Loop Trolley has seen underwhelming numbers and income.

Less than a year after the Loop Trolley started, the service is reducing its hours and asking for $700,000 in order to stay open through 2020.

Meanwhile, the Kansas City Streetcar voted in mid-2018 to extend the rail line to the University of Missouri – Kansas City, less than a year after they approved the initial Main Street project. The service has also added two new streetcars, bringing the total to six in order to meet high demand.

Here’s how they are similar

Both services relied on several sources of income, both federal and local, to get the cars up and running. The Loop Trolley used federal funds to pay for about two-thirds of the $51.5 million project, according to a report from the St. Louis Post Dispatch. The Streetcar also is looking toward federal grant money for the UMKC expansion, although voters already approved the $250 million project.

Each city also had to develop a special Transportation Development District, which consists of board member oversight and gives each entity the ability to create special taxes. Both cities set up a one percent tax on businesses within that district, which was drawn along the line of their respective transportation services.

Kansas City also set up special tax assessments on real estate and parking lots within the district. It’s unclear if St. Louis has a similar assessment in place.

Both services are also about the same length. The Loop Trolley is 2.2 miles long, and the Streetcar, according to its website, is 2 miles long. The Loop Trolley has 10 stops each way and the Streetcar has 8 stops each way.

Here’s how they are different

One of the biggest differences is apparent at the door. In addition to the tax generated through the TDD, the Loop Trolley costs money. The Streetcar doesn’t.

St. Louis riders can purchase a 2-hour ticket for $2, or an all-day pass for $5. Kansas City riders hop on the Streetcar for free.

It’s unclear how pricing has affected public perception of the new St. Louis transit, but ridership is lower than officials expected, according to the St. Louis Post Dispatch. They planned for the trolley to be self-funded through ticket sales.

The Loop Trolley brought in a little more than 2,000 tickets in June, which is a slight increase from previous months, but still lower than projected. It’s unclear how the number of tickets translates into the number of individual daily riders.

Kansas City officials originally hoped for 2,700 riders daily, since they don’t have tickets to count. In July, they had more than 6,000 riders each day, resulting in more than 200,000 riders throughout the month.

Location is also a big difference. The Streetcar runs north and south on Main Street along one of the busiest commercial areas downtown Kansas City.

The Loop Trolley actually runs between two cities, St. Louis and University City, a suburb just west of St. Louis. The east end stops in Forest Park, a massive recreational area on the west city of St. Louis. The west end stops at the University City Library. While the line goes along the Delmar Loop, a busy commercial area, spanning two cities has created problems.

When the trolley was first put in place, it was not allowed to cross into University City because the district had not gotten the right permit. This was eventually fixed.

Overall, the differences come down to funding. The Loop Trolley is struggling to find enough money to keep running, while the Streetcar is already expecting expansions. These differences will only grow in contrast if the Loop Trolley goes under and has to be dismantled.

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2019/10/16/a-tale-of-2-trolleys-st-louis-loop-trolley-struggling-while-kc-streetcar-plans-to-expand/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2019/10/16/a-tale-of-2-trolleys-st-louis-loop-trolley-struggling-while-kc-streetcar-plans-to-expand/

[thechasefiles]

The Chase Files Daily Newscap 3/28/2019

Good MORNING  #realdreamchasers! Here is The Chase Files Daily News Cap for Thursday 28Th March 2019. Remember you can read full articles for FREE via Barbados Today (BT) or Barbados Government Information Services (BGIS) OR by purchasing by purchasing a Daily Nation Newspaper (DN).  

PSVS: HIKE TOO HIGH – Some public service vehicle (PSV) operators are lamenting that the bus fare hike to $3.50 from next month is way too much at this time. But one group representing the owners said it had  arrived right on time, though another comprising operators said the hike was more to bail out the ailing Transport Board than assist them. At the Constitution River Bus Terminal in The City, some operators said they were sympathetic to the plight of the travelling public following Government’s announcement of a 75 per cent hike. During last week’s Financial Statement and Budgetary Proposals, Prime Minister Mia Mottley revealed that bus fare would be moving from $2 to $3.50, effective April 15. However, on Monday night, the Prime Minister said that frequent commuters of the Transport Board would save between 30 and 50 cents if they purchased ticket packages. (DN)

EXEMPT HOMELESS – The hike in bus fare from $2 to $3.50 will have a significant impact on the homeless. This assessment has come from the President and Founder of the Barbados Vagrants and Homeless Society (BVHS) Kemar Saffrey who is appealing to Government to exempt the homeless from having to pay bus fare. Saffrey told Barbados TODAY that his request was relevant since almost on a daily basis, the Society assists several clients with money to pay for transportation to and from various destinations to conduct personal business. He said clients often needed to travel to various Government departments to reapply for identification cards, seek health care, or collect medication among other necessary activities. Saffrey argued that the increase would put a dent in the finances of the organisation, which does not receive a subvention from Government, but depends on donations from private entities. “That would be on an every day basis, depending on who has to get ID cards, who has to get medication, who has to go for job interviews, who has to get to work for a week or two before they could support themselves, who has to go to look for rooms through the welfare system. People would come and tell us they have to go and look for a house today but they don’t have any bus fare. “And this has nothing to do with the other financial assistance that we give to people. When you could have given a guy $4 to run around, now you got to look to give him $7. It would have a serious impact on the less fortunate, and it would have a serious effect on the homeless.” During last Wednesday’s Budget  Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley announced the increase in bus fare and two days ago, she outlined a system in which frequent travellers on Transport Board buses could benefit from discounted fares by buying multi-fare packages. “I am not saying the Government should accommodate everybody and give away free for all rides. But again, we need to look at the times that we are in, and the fact that it would become problematic for some people to get around, especially those who are unemployed and have to go one place and that place for a stamp and the next. So we need to look at this in a serious way,” Saffrey said.  (BT)

SENATOR SLAMS ‘POOR BUS SERVICE HURTING STUDENTS’ – Students who spend an “unacceptable”, inordinate amount of time commuting to and from school are being seriously disadvantaged, according to Senator the Reverend John Rogers. Speaking during a wide-ranging presentation in the Upper House today, the Anglican cleric urged Government to improve its bus service in short order. “There is a link between education and transport at this time. While we understand that there is a shortage of buses I believe that every child in this nation should have an equal opportunity if not we cannot measure them by the same yardstick neither can we treat them the same way.” He cited instances relayed to him by a principal of students waiting at a bus stop up to three hours after school was dismissed. Senator Rev Rogers said: “I am concerned about the lack of transport of some children in our nation on evenings. I had a chat with a principal of a rural secondary school he was telling me that sometimes the children of that school, some who have to catch two buses are there at 7 o’clock at night because the bus hasn’t come. “Sometimes a private citizen has to take them in their car to a place where they can get a connecting bus. This is unfair to those children by the time they get home after 9 or 10. They have no time to reflect on homework. No time to do the things that children do. It is just time to sleep and get up to the grind of the next day. That is not good enough.” The Senator said while he understood there had to be an increase of bus fare, a quality service is also needed. “I know that we have heard much about the raise in bus fare and while I understand the raise and the need for the raise. I also believe that a person should receive a service commensurate with the rate being charged. I encourage the Government to get the buses here as soon as possible,” the Senator said.  (BT)

‘GO CASHLESS, GROW THE ECONOMY’ – A senator and a player in the digital economy here has argued for digitisation to become a driving force behind economic growth. Senator Rawdon Adams, chief executive of digital financial services firm, BITT, told the Upper House today during the Appropriations Bill debate that digitisation can increase productivity while at the same time reduce costs to Government. He said: “Digitisation speaks to another form of growth — that is productivity. When you have efforts to digitise payments or reduce the amount of cash in an economy that is a huge driver of productivity and a reducer of cost in your economy. There is a body of research: The Federal (Reserve) Bank of St Louis, the Bank of England also. “The Fed research says if you are able to substitute a third of the paper noted and coins in your economy for digital cash you can expect a permanent increase in your rate of growth of a three per cent point. If you substitute 30 per cent of your economy to digital you will push your growth rate up.” The Government senator said while he had no intentions of bashing commercial banks, there was a significant cost attached to carrying out simple bank transactions daily. Senator Adams continued: “Carrying cash is expensive. There is cost of convenience. You get in a car you go down to the bank to draw out your cash. There is a cost to that. Cost in terms of convenience cost in terms of time. Somebody has calculated that time spent per month doing that is 20 minutes. 20 minutes in your car or in a bus just to pull out your money . . . . Over time that could equate to a month. What if you could do that whole process digitally?” The Bitt Inc CEO said digitising the economy could also address the menace of companies collecting Value Added Tax and not paying it over to Government. The senator said: “There are quite a few ways you can imagine that digitising can help. I know there is a lot about people who aren’t paying VAT if it is digitised it is far harder for you to escape that method of taxation.” Saying that world trends, global studies and figures could prove how digitisation can enhance an economy, Senator Adams suggested that neighbouring economies had already recognised the need to go digital. “There are many savings you can extract through digitisation,” he said. “Some countries are putting their money where their mouths are. [The] Eastern Caribbean Central Bank intends to reduce the amount of cash in their economy by 50 per cent over four years.” (BT)

LIAT DEADLINE – The final decision on the future of cash-strapped LIAT is expected later this week as the regional airline came into focus during an all-day meeting at Hilton Barbados. Prime Minister Mia Mottley; Minister of Tourism Kerrie Symmonds; chairman of the LIAT shareholder governments, Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves of St Vincent, and trade union representatives were at the negotiating table for more than eight hours before calling it quits just after 5:30 p.m. THE NATION has been reliably informed that officials have been asked to come up with a number of proposals to present to Mottley before weekend. “A number of positions were explored and those present are to now get back to the governments later this week regarding the positions that were tabled,” a source close to the negotiations said.  (DN)

NO BIG DEAL – Former Prime Minister Owen Arthur is warning Caribbean leaders not to expect a major trade deal with the UK when it leaves the European Union (EU). “I do not think, based on history, that the region can expect any major benefits from England, the UK, when it exits the EU,” Arthur told a public lecture on BREXIT and the new Caribbean Trade Agenda at the Sagicor Cave Hill School of Business and Management on Tuesday night. With the opportunity to negotiate new independent trade deals, Britain would gravitate to more powerful nations and the region would be excluded, he argued. “The Caribbean can hardly occupy any special place on the UK’s agenda once it leaves the European Union,” he said. Instead, he is advising the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to ensure that any future trade deal brokered with the UK should be one of “a developmental corporation regime”. Pointing to uncertainties surrounding Brexit and pointing to past experiences under trade deals with the EU, Arthur said there was an urgent need for the region to “recalibrate its trade agenda to remove all of the constraints that is standing in the way of its enterprises penetrating and holding market access and sustained activity on a competitive basis”. The former Prime Minister told the gathering: “In short, the region needs to build a genuine export culture to be able to function successfully in a globalized economy where trade liberalization has become the dominant practice.” Arthur said the region failed to take full advantage of the ten-year-old Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), which was signed between the regional bloc CARIFORUM and the EU to promote trade between the EU member states and African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP)states. He said information sourced from the UK revenue and customs report showed that British imports from CARIFORUM countries declined from £662 million in 2008 to £449 million in 2017. “Only the middle income public seemed to have taken advantage of the generous market access offered by the EPA,” Arthur declared. Despite the “generous market access” for CARIFORUM under the EPA, “the region has not been able to significantly diversify its exports to the European market in any substantial way”, said the economist and former finance minister. The region’s tourism industry has also been unable to receive any “bounty” as a result of the EPA, he added. Arthur told the audience: “There is no reason to believe that there has been any radical improvement in the penetration of Caribbean service providers to the European Union or the European market. “In order for the region to have taken advantage of the provisions in the EPA for the movement of natural persons, the market access of the EPA would have to be supplemented by a mutual recognition agreement and visa application agreements between nations from the two groups of nations. “These matters seemed not to have received the requisite attention since 2008.”. He called on Caribbean nations to increase their capacity to export, adding that greater focus should be placed on services industries. But the senior statesman also took a swipe at the EU, accusing Brussels of  “launching an assault” on the Caribbean financial services sector through the creation of blacklists and threats of sanctions. Arthur said: “There is no basis in international public law for the European Union to first of all ask other countries to change their tax laws, and secondly, to do so on the threat that they would enforce sanctions.”  (BT)

CANDIDACY CONCERNS – Barbados Union of Teachers’ (BUT) presidential candidate Pedro Shepherd has refuted claims that he plans to use the post to boost his political agenda if he is elected in next month’s elections. A post being circulated to BUT members on social media, warns that Shepherd, who has publicly expressed interest in running for the Democratic Labour Party (DLP), would use his position as BUT president to attack Government if successful in the April 12 elections. “Please let Pedro Shepherd who has signalled his intention to run for party politics know that we will not allow him to use BUT as a forum for him or the DLP to attack Government,” the post states. However, in an interview with Barbados TODAY, Shepherd, who served as BUT president from 2012 to 2018, maintained that he was only interested in representing the interests of teachers. Furthermore, he said this was not the first time he had expressed an interest in representing the DLP, as he had done so on two previous occasions. In fact, Shepherd who was defeated by Shawn Spencer in last year’s BUT elections said he had agitated for teachers when the DLP was in power. “For a person to make those comments shows that person clearly does not know me because this is not the first time that I have expressed an interest in running for the DLP. I expressed an interest as far back as 2013 and then again in 2018 and now I’m doing it for a third time so it is not new. “And anybody who followed my trade unionism, as well as my political life, would know that the DLP was in office from 2008 until 2018 and I as the president of the BUT, was the most vocal person against Minister [of Education] Ronald Jones and by extension, other members of the Cabinet. So if it had anything to do with politics, I would have been the most quiet BUT president over the last six years,” Shepherd contended. He said he had been asked to run for president by the union’s members, because of his strong representation in the past. Shepherd said during his six-year stint as president, he had always put the needs of teachers first. “It is not about politics, it’s about teachers. Whoever is in power and there is reason for me to have to represent the interests of teachers that is what I am going to do. “It doesn’t matter if the BLP is in power, the DLP is in power, Solutions Barbados in power, the UPP in power or Atherley’s party is in power, as president of the BUT I am representing teachers,” Shepherd said. (BT)

EASTMOND STEPS DOWN AS UPP CHAIR – Three years in, the United Progressive Party (UPP) will have a new leader later this week. Founder and first-time chairman, attorney Lynette Eastmond, has stepped down. Eastmond confirmed yesterday she would not be offering herself for re-election when members vote for a new executive today. “Don’t get it confused with other parties. They may have one leader in because the leader might be in Parliament and is the Leader of the Opposition. But the chairman of the party is another thing,” Eastmond told the media yesterday. “But because we don’t have anyone in Parliament, we don’t have a leader; it’s different,” the former minister in a Barbados Labour Party Government said. “But amongst all the parties, you tend to change leadership over a period of time. The chairman does not remain the same person,” she added. Eastmond revealed that Ambrose Grovesnor, Everton Holligan and Wayne Griffith would be vying to replace her. A notice on the UPP’s website last night posted by public relations officer Griffith said: “The United Progressive Party is in the process of choosing its executive committee for 2019-2020. Nominations for positions are being processed via online nominations and voting which also help to facilitate our overseas membership. The names and positions of the new UPP executive will be made public on Friday, March 29.” Political scientist Peter Wickham said the decision would not have much of an effect on the political landscape: “I don’t know that it changes the world,” he said last night. “Lynette Eastmond’s showing at the polls left much to be desired. She scored just slightly more votes than [Independent candidate] Natalie Harewood (a former sex worker) and that speaks volumes to the extent of what is taken seriously by the public,” he added.  (DN)

NEW ‘SOCIAL JUSTICE GROUP’ IN PARTNERSHIP – Sex workers, members of the lesbian, gay and bisexual community and people with disabilities have been given a place at the table of the Social Partnership in a new body alongside faith-based and a raft of non-governmental organisations. With the decision, the Labour Party Government has moved to keep a campaign promise to introduce a “Social Justice Committee” to broaden the membership of the tripartite Social Partnership to include a wider range of interest groups. Introducing the committee on Wednesday, Minister of Labour and Social Partnership Relations Colin Jordan said the committee was in line with the principles of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Jordan, who is the social justice committee’s chairman, said its main objective was to consider and make recommendations to Government, directly through the Social Partnership and Cabinet, on social justice issues. The committee’s remit includes poverty alleviation; the role of the family in fostering cultural and social norms and values; discrimination; access to education; integration of people with disabilities; access to employment; safety and security and the environment. “It is not intended for this committee to be a talk shop,” said Jordan, who added that the time had long come for civil and non-governmental organizations to be involved in discussions with Government on issues affecting residents. The committee is made up of 23 individuals, 19 of whom are appointed by the Labour Minister. Each member is to serve for a period of two years. The deputy chair of the committee is the Minister of People Empowerment and Elder Affairs Cynthia Forde. Other representatives on the committee come from trade unions, the Rastafarian community, women and men organizations, the media, youth development organisations, the credit union movement, parent teachers associations, social workers, the private sector and the Family Planning Association. The committee will meet once per month and will report to the Social Partnership and Cabinet quarterly and also annually within three months of Government’s fiscal year, which ends on March 31. Jordan said: “A social justice committee, from its name, has to do with ensuring that people across the country can function…. So feel free to share your views as strongly as possible always being respectful to the rest of us. “What we want to do is to speak from our perspectives as representing organizations. We know what is happening in our organisations, we know what is happening on the ground. Sometimes though, we are going to need to have some research to drive that discussion and decision making.” He pledged to call on the University of the West Indies and other institutions to provide research support. The representatives of the various groups told the convening of the Social Justice Committee they welcomed the opportunity, expressing the hope that their members’ concerns would be adequately addressed through the new framework. (BT)

CONCERN OVER MULTIPLE PARTNERS - Barbadians are having sex with multiple partners at the same time, but using condoms less and more are refusing to get tested for HIV. These were some of the major findings of the most recent study by the National HIV/AIDS Commission, released at the Warrens Office Complex, St Michael. Assistant director Nicole Drakes said the Report On Knowledge, Attitudes, Beliefs And Sexual Practices Survey Among Adults Ages 15 to 49 In Barbados 2016-2017, was of major concern. “The fight is not over. We still have a lot of work to do in terms of behavioural changes . . . . “Because of stigma and discrimination, a lot of people don’t get tested – a lot from key populations like sex workers, persons with disabilities and men who have sex with men who are not going to get tested and put themselves at risk,” she said.  (DN)

STIS ON THE RISE – While cases of HIV have declined marginally over the past decade, health authorities are struggling to combat outbreaks of other Sexually Transmitted Infections and diseases (STIs/STDs) including chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis. Senior Medical Officer, Dr Anton Best said health officials recorded a sharp increase in sexually transmitted diseases, revealing that the ministry had since been unsuccessful in bringing the troubling outbreak under control. Dr Best was delivering the feature address at the National HIV/AIDS Commission’s report on the findings of the Knowledge, Attitudes, Beliefs and Sexual Practices Survey. “Data is showing us that we have sustained high rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea and then there has been an outbreak of syphilis and since then the annual rates of syphilis have remained high. “These observations are further indications that behavioural campaigns have not been as effective as we would have liked,” Dr Best revealed. He said while public awareness campaigns, studies and other forms of research focus mainly on the transmission of HIV, other STIs could not be ignored. “Please appreciate that our goals and objectives of our national HIV program also speak to the need to prevent and control the spread of other sexually transmitted infections in Barbados. “So while this survey is an integral part of the research agenda for HIV, we must utilize these findings in conjunction with others in teaching information to design and implement evidence-informed interventions and policies to better control and prevent HIV and STIs in Barbados,” he said. Frowning on the seemingly nonchalant attitudes displayed by some Barbadians to the transmission of STIs, Best argued that a tremendous amount of work was needed to combat the infections and diseases. He was responding to new information which indicates that a lack of condom use, reduced STI testing and numerous sex partners have stifled the efforts of authorities. “Our behaviors and sexual practices are the result of our cultural norms and social structures. Social research is therefore key for us to have the best possible understanding of the local context of HIV vulnerabilities. “Best available evidence is indicating that this is due to the use of antiretroviral therapy rather than the alteration of sexual habits of people in Barbados. So we are faced with a conundrum and need to find more effective ways to modify people’s attitudes and their behaviours,” said the senior medical officer. He further expressed hope that some of the strides made in the reduction of HIV would be transferred to other sexually transmitted diseases. (BT)

MARSHALL LAW – With mounting public frustration over the matter of bail being granted to persons accused of murder, Government may be seeking to make adjustments to the 1996 Bail Act, in response to this issue. This revelation was made by Attorney General Dale Marshall, who told Barbados TODAY that while he was not in a position to state the nature of the proposed changes, as the measures have not yet received Cabinet’s stamp of approval, it was clear that it could not be business as usual. “While an individual will have his personal views on who should or should not get bail, our 1996 Bail Act allows for every defendant to receive bail. The whole idea that a murder accused can’t get bail is not now supported by our law,” he said noting that even though the law has been in existence since 1996, it was not until 2007 that a murder accused was first granted bail. He added: “There are a number of things which we have to do including making amendments to the Bail Act so as to tighten up on the system of bail.” However, the AG made it clear that any tightening of bail granted to murder accused must be accompanied by speedy trials for these persons. “We can’t just deal with bail and tightening the grant of bail unless we also deal with the speed at which justice is dispensed. Every accused also has rights and to delay trials for five and ten years does not benefit the society. In some cases, witnesses’ memories will go dim and persons who are innocent would be left with this [Sword of] Damocles over their heads for over a decade,” he explained. In addition to the proposed revisions to the Bail Act, Marshall told Barbados TODAYthat Government was seeking to implement measures to take out some of the discretionary components to sentencing and replace them with a system similar to that of the US with mandatory minimum sentencing for certain categories of crimes. “Another measure that we are seeking to put in place is a practice direction issue as it relates to sentence indicators. The whole idea is to create a logic to sentencing and not a case where a judge decides to give one individual five years and give another ten years for the same crime. That is not how sentencing works. There has to be a structure to sentencing so that the law is consistent. Individuals with similar charges and similar circumstances should be able to expect a similar sentence. That is what justice is, it has to be equal across the board,” he explained. The Attorney General argued that this system would also be helpful in moving the judicial system along faster, as perpetrators would be more inclined to plead guilty since they would be able to gauge their length of stay in prison. “The system of minimum sentencing indicators would allow for an accused person to make a determination as to the kind of sentencing regime he would be subject to if he pleads guilty. We have already seen some of this bearing fruit as we see those who will say ‘this is the type of sentencing range I would get, so maybe I should consider pleading guilty.’ This would be in cases where the evidence is strong,” he contended. (BT)

JOCKEY HIGH COURT BOUND – A 54-year-old jockey is headed to the High Court for sentencing. Magistrate Kristie Cuffy-Sargeant committed the case against Ray Anderson Herbert, of no fixed place of abode, to the criminal assizes today. “Ma’am I want to go and plead guilty in the High Court,” he stated from the docks when his matter was called. Herbert is accused of committing an indictable offence when he allegedly entered the home of a woman on January 21, 2018 as a trespasser with intent to assault another female in the house. The accused has been on remand since his first appearance before the District ‘A’ Magistrates’ Court in January last year. He is now waiting his day in the High Court. (BT)

HIGH COURT APPLICATION – Queen’s Counsel Michael Lashley today revealed that he had made a bail application in the High Court for a female murder accused. The defence attorney was addressing Magistrate Kristie Cuffy-Sargeant as he appeared on behalf of 34-year-old fish boner Verna Isilma Vasilka Cuffy and 24-year-old labourer Dave Fedel Aristide James, both of Wavell Gardens, Black Rock, St Michael. The two are charged with the September 7, 2018 murder of fish vendor Stephen “Molly” Small. The accused have been on remand at Dodds for the past six months since their first appearance before the magistrate. Lashley told the magistrate that he and his team of Dayna Taylor-Lavine and Kadisha Wickham will return to the High Court on May 10, 2019 in relation to an application made on accused Cuffy’s behalf. Following the announcement the magistrate again remanded the two for a further 28-days. Cuffy, is also facing September 8, 2018 charges of possession of cannabis and cultivation of the plants. The accused will return to the No. 1 District ‘A’ Magistrates’ Court on April 25. (BT)

TEEN CHARGED WITH ASSISTING SUSPECT GRANTED BAIL – Nineteen-year-old Akela Keanna Gittens was granted $8,000 bail when she appeared in the Holetown Magistrate’s Court today on a charge of assisting a man who is suspected to have committed a capital offence. It is alleged that Gittens of 5F Madison Terrace, St Michael, believing that Kadeem Clarke had committed murder, provided accommodation and financial assistance to him with intent to impede his arrest. She was not required to plea to the indictable charge, which is alleged to have occurred between February 16 and March 23, 2019. As part of her bail conditions the accused must now report to the Black Rock Police Station every Monday and Friday before 9 a.m. Gittens will reappear before Magistrate Wanda Blair on September 17, 2019. (BT)

RILEY BACKS SKERRITT – Barbados Cricket Association (BCA) president Conde Riley has vowed unstinting support for new Cricket West Indies (CWI) president Ricky Skerritt.  “This is not about Skerritt, Cameron or Riley, it is about cricket. The elections are over and it is time to move on. “I am very comfortable and committed to regional cricket. I have to get help from Skerritt right now as we are negotiating for a (financial) facility, and we need to be calm and focused as to where we are going to take West Indies cricket,” said Riley. The CWI director was speaking on the aftermath of the CWI presidential elections on Sunday when Skerritt defeated incumbent Dave Cameron 8-4 for the top post. Riley defended the BCA’s decision to support the 47-year-old Cameron, who was seeking a fourth term as president. (DN)

REGISTRATION DEPARTMENT REOPENS ON APRIL 1 – The Registration Department will now reopen on Monday, April 1, at the Whitepark Road, St Michael complex, and not tomorrow, March 28, as previously announced. However, urgent applications for births, deaths, the registering of deaths, marriage certificates and the registering of marriages where the parties are non-resident will continue at the Whitepark Road, St Michael complex. Meanwhile, certificates that were to be collected on or before March 21 may be collected up to Friday, March 29, at the complex. Court will continue to be heard at the Manor Lodge Complex and the Cane Garden Complex until Friday, April 5. (BGIS)

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The Future of Commercial Real Estate

Though severe supply-demand imbalances have continued to plague real estate markets into the 2000s in many areas, the mobility of capital in current sophisticated financial markets is encouraging to real estate developers. The reduction of tax-shelter markets emptied a substantial amount of funds from property and, in the brief run, had a catastrophic effect on segments of the business. However, most specialists agree that many of those driven from property development and the property fund industry were unprepared and ill-suited because investors. In the long term, a yield to real estate development that's grounded in the fundamentals of economics, real demand, and real profits will benefit the industry.

Syndicated ownership of property has been released in the early 2000s. Because many early investors were hurt by collapsed markets or by tax-law changes, the idea of syndication is presently being applied to more efficiently sound cash flow-return property. This return to sound economic procedures will help ensure the continuing growth of syndication. Real estate investment trusts (REITs), which suffered greatly in the real estate recession of this mid-1980s, have recently reappeared as an efficient vehicle for people ownership of property. REITs can own and run real estate efficiently and raise equity for its own purchase. The shares are more readily traded than are stocks of other syndication partnerships. Therefore, the REIT is very likely to provide a good vehicle to satisfy the people desire to have real estate.

A final review of the aspects that resulted in the problems of the 2000s is vital to knowing the opportunities that will arise in the 2000s. Real estate bicycles are fundamental forces in the business. The oversupply that exists in many product types will constrain development of new products, but it creates opportunities for your commercial banker.

The decade of the 2000s witnessed a boom cycle in real estate. The normal flow of the actual estate cycle wherein demand exceeded supply prevailed throughout the 1980s and early 2000s. At that point office vacancy rates in most major markets were below 5%. Faced with actual need for office space and other types of income property, the development community simultaneously experienced an explosion of accessible capital. Throughout the early years of the Reagan government, deregulation of financial institutions increased the supply availability of funds, and thrifts added their funds to an already growing cadre of creditors. At the same time, the Economic Recovery and Tax Act of 1981 (ERTA) gave investors raised tax"write-off" through accelerated depreciation, reduced capital gains taxes to 20 percent, also permitted other income to be sheltered with property"losses." In a nutshell, more equity and debt funding was available for property investing than ever before. To know more information click new homes in st louis mo

Even after tax reform eliminated many tax incentives in 1986 and the subsequent loss of a equity capital for real estate, two factors maintained real estate growth. The trend in the 2000s was toward the development of the significant, or"trophy," property projects. Office buildings in excess of one million square feet and resorts costing hundreds of millions of dollars became popular. Conceived and begun before the passage of tax reform, these huge projects were completed in the late 1990s. The second factor was the continued availability of funding for construction and development. In spite of the debacle in Texas, lenders in New England continued to fund new projects. After the collapse in New England and the continued downward spiral in Texas, creditors at the mid-Atlantic region continued to lend for new structure. After regulation permitted out-of-state banking consolidations, the mergers and acquisitions of banks generated pressure in targeted areas. These expansion surges contributed to the continuation of large scale commercial mortgage lenders [http://www.cemlending.com] moving past the time when an evaluation of the real estate cycle could have suggested a slowdown. The funds explosion of the 2000s for real estate is a funding implosion for the 2000s. The thrift industry no longer has funds available for commercial real estate. The major life insurance company creditors are fighting with mounting real estate. In associated losses, while most commercial banks attempt to reduce their property exposure after two years of construction loss reserves and carrying write-downs and charge-offs. Thus the excess allocation of debt available from the 2000s is unlikely to create oversupply from the 2000s.

No new tax legislation which will affect real estate investment is predicted, and, for the most part, foreign investors have their particular problems or opportunities outside of the United States. Therefore excessive equity capital is not anticipated to fuel recovery property too.

Looking back at the real estate cycle tide, it seems safe to suggest that the source of new development won't occur in the 2000s unless warranted by real need. Already in some markets that the demand for apartments has exceeded supply and new building has begun at a reasonable pace.

Opportunities for existing property that has been composed to present value de-capitalized to produce current acceptable return will gain from improved demand and restricted new supply. New growth that's justified by quantifiable, existing product demand could be financed using a sensible equity contribution by the borrower. The lack of ruinous competition from creditors also eager to make real estate loans will allow reasonable loan structuring. Financing the purchase of de-capitalized present real estate for new owners can be an excellent source of property loans for commercial banks.

As real estate is stabilized by means of a balance of demand and supply, the speed and strength of the restoration will be dependent on economic factors and their impact on demand in the 2000s. Banks with the ability and willingness to undertake new property loans should undergo a few of the safest and most productive lending done in the previous quarter century. Assessing the lessons of the past and returning to the fundamentals of good property and great property financing is going to be the secret to property banking in the future.

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The St Louis Post Dispatch reports that amongst others “Matthew David Fry, a lawyer with the Clayton law firm helmed by high-profile defense attorney Scott Rosenblum. Fry, representing a business named Green Care, is applying to grow marijuana in Hillsdale and sell it in St. Louis.”

Don’t worry he’s not alone though………..

A retired cardiologist. An attorney with a high-profile Clayton law firm. An Arnold city councilman. Two Missouri hemp growers that own high-tech greenhouses. Large multi-state marijuana sellers from outside Missouri.

They are among the more than 500 names on applications to sell marijuana in Missouri released to the Post-Dispatch on Tuesday afternoon by state officials. Missouri will no longer keep secret the names of those who want to sell marijuana and the cities in which they want to open up shop, after a Cole County judge sided with the Post-Dispatch in a lawsuit challenging the state’s authority to keep the records closed.

Dr. Randall Williams, director of the Department of Health and Senior Services, said Tuesday that the department would not appeal a Cole County judge’s order to release the records. The department emailed to the Post-Dispatch a spreadsheet with the names of those who pre-filed applications to open more than 500 businesses that would grow marijuana, make infused products and sell the drug at locations across the state.

Williams and his department are in charge of regulating an industry expected to top $100 million in sales by 2025. Missouri has raked in more than $3.9 million in fees from applicants, ahead of accepting formal applications on Aug. 3. The state expects to license businesses by the end of the year.

Many applicants have been long at work on their business plans, anticipating a competitive process to gain entry to the regulated industry. DHSS released formal application forms June 4 and will accept business applications Aug. 3-17. The state expects to start licensing businesses in December. Applicants need hundreds of thousands in cash and must describe details of their business plans, including odor control, security and economic impact. Companies have retained lobbyists as the application process intensifies.

The state has said it will use a blind scoring process to assess the applications. But because of the competition associated with the burgeoning industry, lawsuits could follow if the state rejects licenses. Some applicants have concerns the licensing won’t be equitable — women and minority business owners, for example, have said they’re concerned that Missouri’s marijuana industry will be disproportionately white and male, as it has been nationwide. Locals have expressed concerns that marijuana industry insiders from other states could cut locals out of a large share of the market, despite state law requiring that at least half of any state-approved marijuana business be owned by Missouri residents.

A first look at the records released Tuesday show applicants want to open 175 businesses across the St. Louis metro area. 

Two groups among the applicants vying for the highest numbers of licenses already grow a form of the cannabis plant: hemp, marijuana’s botanical cousin. Noah’s Arc Foundation and Beleaf Medical are the only two companies licensed by Missouri to grow the plant for production of CBD, a non-high-inducing ingredient that is marketed as a medical treatment.

Each group applied for 11 licenses at their locations in Chesterfield and Earth City. Both grow the plant in large, high-tech greenhouses — the type of facilities that most commercial marijuana growers prefer, and that can cost more than $1 million to build.

There aren’t only locals applying to open marijuana businesses in Missouri — there are at least nine representatives of businesses from outside of the state listed in the records.

The groups from outside Missouri applying for licensed marijuana operations come from Kansas, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Arizona and Tennessee. Altogether, they’re applying for at least 25 licenses to grow or sell marijuana. One of them, Curaleaf, a Massachusetts-based giant in the industry, wants to open up shop in eight locations across Missouri.

A local group, MoFarma 21, also wants to open eight locations around Kansas City — and it’s run by a doctor: Paul Callicoat, a retired cardiologist in Seneca. 

One of the business applicants is a local government official — state law allows local governments to set zoning ordinances, odor control and other requirements for state-approved marijuana businesses applying for permits.

Arnold Councilman Jason Fulbright wants to open two dispensaries, a growing operation and a facility that makes marijuana-infused products in Pevely and Imperial. He spoke to the Post-Dispatch about his plans at a marijuana conference in St. Louis in March.

Other St. Louisans wanting to grow or sell marijuana include Matthew David Fry — a lawyer with the Clayton law firm helmed by high-profile defense attorney Scott Rosenblum. Fry, representing a business named Green Care, is applying to grow marijuana in Hillsdale and sell it in St. Louis.

Bradford Goette, a board member of the Missouri Medical Cannabis Trade Association, wants to open a marijuana-infused products manufacturer in Fenton and five dispensaries in Fenton, Festus, St. Peters, Troy and Cape Girardeau.

Missouri became the 33rd state to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes after 65% of voters in November approved Amendment 2, starting a stampede of business owners looking to capitalize on the new market. Sales of the various forms of the products are to start early next year. Tax proceeds and licensing fees are supposed to go into a new veterans’ health care fund, and are expected to generate about $20 million a year.

The state is required by law to approve at least 60 commercial growers, 86 facilities that manufacture marijuana-infused products and 192 dispensary licenses. That’s 24 dispensaries for each of Missouri’s eight congressional districts.

The St. Louis metro area should see at least 48 dispensaries. Two congressional districts cover St. Louis and St. Louis County and parts of St. Charles and Jefferson counties. Other Missouri counties in the metro area will likely get some of the dispensaries allocated to two districts that stretch west to Jefferson City and south to the state border.

Source:  https://www.stltoday.com/business/local/who-is-applying-to-sell-marijuana-missouri-releases-names-of/article_8d96c0b3-ed3d-5373-ad05-26c582ffd252.html

The post Lawyer Applies For License To Sell Cannabis In Missouri appeared first on CBD Oil Vape Liquid Spray - Cbd Pain Relief Capsules - Weed Consortium.

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American Companies

American Companies, Kansas City American Companies is a success story of bold business modeling, spectacular diversification, and logistical genius. For professionals in the liquid waste industry, look here for inspiration, fresh ideas, supreme industry training, and an exhilarating story of the building of a site services empire—portable toilets of various types throughout the region—all starting from one sweeper truck in 1984. American Sweeping Inc. and American Waste Systems Inc. have been operating in Kansas City MO for almost 35 years. Now American Companies provides a one-stop-shop for street sweeping, power washing, roll-off containers, rear loaders for commercial and residential, day portering service, portable toilets for construction, special event toilets, luxury toilet trailers, event clean-up, trash boxes, stage rental, and other site services needs. An additional subsidiary, American Pavement Maintenance, provides asphalt, sealcoating, striping and introduced the first infrared machine in Kansas City. Gale Holsman, founder and owner of American Companies is a force of nature. He founded the company in 1984, after working as a local sales manager for Waste Management. He had an opportunity to buy a sweeper truck, bought it, and started sweeping Kmart and Wal-Mart parking lots. His first weekend job in the industry was with The Michael Jackson Victory tour, sweeping the parking lot throughout the three-day Arrowhead Stadium concert stay was an exciting start. “They liked me. And, today we have hundreds of toilets in the parking lots there. Crazy how much business can grow from a simple, but great start.” Holsman went on to build up an array of sweeping companies, expanding into Atlanta, St. Louis, Columbia and other markets. In 2006 he sold the last of his parking lot sweeping companies. American no longer services parking lots, and now focuses on much larger civil street sweeping contracts for municipalities and highway work. Gale explains that his toilet business started growing as more of his roll off customers began reasoning that since his company was picking up roll offs at their sites, it would be convenient if American could provide the toilet services as well. The special event services also offer a unique opportunity for event planners to make one call for several behind the scene event services. This along their exceeding customer service gives them an edge over the competition as a one stop event shop.

American’s Plans for Growth Asked about plans and expectations for growth and foreseeable challenges, Gale characteristically keeps it simple while expressing his thoughts in broad industry-wide conceptualizations, “Yes, companies want to grow, because that’s the reward—growth in equipment, employees, benefits, buildings to house your equipment and operations. Everything has to do with growth. But, growth requires a business plan that includes a roadmap. Business owners need to map out a plan of progress that takes you from where you are, to where you want to be within a given timeframe.” The plan and its roadmap must be shared with the entire team, bringing everyone on board. Part of the discussion at our weekly Wednesday managers’ meetings is focused on where we are, where we want to go, and how we’re going to get there. We consider each manager’s wish list for projects and then match it with the numbers, to determine feasibility, modify if possible and make decisions for the way forward. However, central to happiness, per Gale’s winning business philosophy is a fundamental tenet—”Being big is not the ideal; being big is not the program. Growing…growing…gone is a business cliché. Our objective is to provide service for the book of work we have, so that we have good account retention. We spend our time on account retention. We want to provide the best service, so that our clients have no reason to go to our competitors.” Gale quickly adds, “But, we also charge enough to do well in business. Charge for your services. Don’t be afraid to charge for your services. If you don’t get paid sufficiently, you can’t provide good employees and services. If you can’t afford to do business, then your customers can’t stay with you.” Gale offers a universal concept of branding, “Our growth depends upon our reputation. Our reputation rides on the perception of our company, our containers, trucks, uniforms, and everything that presents us to our current and prospective clients. It has to be first class. Perception is everything. What you have left at the end of the day is your reputation, which relies on those critical perceptions of your business and your team.”

An Industry Icon of Energy and Talent Asked about the company’s sales system for new customer acquisition, Holsman explains, “Word-of-mouth between business owners and property managers is an important source of new business for us. Longevity naturally brings customers through those sources. Our website is also one of our #1 24/7 sales people.” “However, our actual sales people do a great job going out and biding for new jobs. Our sales team provides bids to parks and recreation departments, cities, events, and various entities, to make sure we have that good live communication going.” Gale also has other companies, outside of the industry. He explains that the cars, as well as his offshore race boat, the 57 horses on his ranch, along with his fiancé Gail’s 2 Harley-Davidson dealership and Shawnee Mission Cycle Plaza are all separate entities in which he stays active and that serve his need to have his range and extent of business activities rise to his personal energy level. However, based on our interview with this extraordinary industry leader, it seems that Gale would need even more businesses and larger sets of complex challenges ever to approach his limit of ability to efficiently manage activities that reach in even the most widely diverse of professional directions.

Caveats for New Market Entrants Gale offers some necessary facts for industry newcomers to know about certain challenges site services companies face today. “It’s a very expensive business. One air sweeper truck is about $115,000. A toilet truck is around $80,000. Wages have nearly doubled, and it can be tough to get good drivers these days. Fuel is going over $3.00 per gal this year. Truck costs have doubled. Insurance rates are off the charts. Customers must pay for these costs in order for service providers to stay in business. You need sound revenues. (Yet, some companies try to operate offering 1980s pricing.) Further, companies like American and other established providers may have comparatively very little debt now, which allows a major competitive edge. So, it can be a tough business to get going in.”

Team Motivation, American Style In such a large organization, the total number of employees on staff, of course, fluxuates seasonally, and with special projects and new accounts. American staff includes managers, sales staff, administrative employees, day and night drivers, truck mechanics, technicians, night supervisors, porters, and mechanics. After the initial three-months, the company offers health insurance, yearly raise reviews, vacation time, and annual bonuses, among other benefits. They also offer quarterly team building activities such as; Worlds of Fun, Bowling, a day on the lake, and parties at the ranch to name a few. Boosting efficiency and employee engagement are both hands-on imperatives for Gale. He provides his organization with monthly training seminars, and training is conducted throughout the company on an ongoing basis. (A well-recognized motivator and industry expert, Gale Holsman has also been called on to present talks to various professional groups throughout the country.) Employees are also provided with a company training manual. And, the company’s Safety Director provides necessary training and guidance to ensure that drivers are safe and that equipment is operated safely.

Holsman’s Assessment of Industry Challenges Going Forward Gale advises that maintenance on trucks can be expected to become an increasing issue as truck manufacturers continue to make service vehicles lighter. He has observed that the problem is already creating a serious strain on some less well-funded companies. Staying up with truck maintenance is an even more imperative priority. He notes that American buys its trucks and equipment from Satellite. And, true to his form, as a leader who consistently acknowledges talent and good work that he finds benefits his company from any source, Gale asks to include a mention of Gene Clay, Satellite’s account service rep to American, if possible (though he realizes it��s probably unprecedented for this sort of business article to praise a supplier’s rep by name). He gives the supplier his highest recommendation, “They actually teach you the business and the right equipment to use. They have the best-made equipment in the industry, and they don’t oversell.” This referral seems to provide good advice for any industry participant, so we will leave it in. Gale views regulations, taxes and other governmental issues as perhaps one of the most concerning potential impactors of his company’s maximal future success. He emphasizes that he appreciates the need for change, but is concerned about over-regulation and wasteful execution of change for the sake of change. Finally, he reminds providers once again, “You’ve got to be smart enough to know what your cost are and that profit is not a nasty word. Remember to sell customer service and benefits, not price.”

Future Projections for American Companies Looking ahead over the coming years, American plans to compete profitably over the next decade in the medium-sized KC sweeping market? Gale explains that “There are guys occasionally coming in and going out quickly, trying to break in. We do have a couple of very good competitors. There are good competitors in the toilet business in Kansas City. We compete against each other, and we help each other.” Gale’s plan is to keep current on customer needs, industry advancements and legislative considerations, and otherwise to keep doing what his company has been doing—focusing on elevated service quality and cultivating customer retention. “One of our great strengths is in actually providing one-stop-shopping for our customers. We don’t just pick up the phone for them and order the work from our competitors.” We rely on our stellar team to handle our businesses with confidence and care; and to continue to take us into the ever-changing future in our industries. Glen Hockemeier, AC’s IT wizard watches for the latest and greatest in tech innovations. Gale’s daughter, Shannon Holsman-Lock, Marketing and Event Sales Director, keeps the management team apprised of marketing advancements. Robert Felton American’s Operations Director organizes, schedules and oversees our events to ensure everything arrives promptly and on time. Our shop, led by Tony Reynolds stays on top of our trucks upkeep under the hood and appearances out on the road. And, our wonderful office staff ensures that our billing and invoices are correct and on time—an important part of our success and keeping our customers happy.” These are just a few members of the excellent team that makes American run smoothly, day in and day out. Gale emphasizes, “Your future success is found in your employees and management team and ours is fantastic!” GPS allows us to keep control of what our drivers are doing on the job at all times. I know exactly where my trucks are, how fast they’re moving, where they’ve been at any given time, where they were yesterday. This convenient and optimally efficient kind of micro-managing is central to our quality assurance system. Talking to Gale, it becomes clear to see why he’s been called “the Sweeper Preacher” of site support services. He does what one with such a large industry reputation would be expected to do—he generates the systemic innovations—the thought leadership that guides the field toward ways of doing business that are evolving the industry into its future form. It also becomes increasingly clear that Gale Holsman is that kind of leader who doesn’t fail to consistently show genuine appreciation and respect for every employee and other person, inside and outside of the business¬—which is the hallmark of leaders with elevated business philosophies. It further well accounts for the degree of team cohesion necessary for the sustained success of American’s quality management—a long-term record that is only possible in companies under such leadership.

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from Septic Tank Pumping Pros https://septictankpumpingpros.wordpress.com/2018/08/11/american-companies/

[investmart007]

CANBERRA, Australia | Amazon to block Australians from global websites due to tax

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CANBERRA, Australia | Amazon to block Australians from global websites due to tax

CANBERRA, Australia — Amazon will block Australians from buying from its international e-commerce websites and restrict them to a smaller local platform from July in response to new tax rules that consumer advocates fear will reduce the range of choice for customers in Australia.

Shoppers visiting the U.S. store Amazon.com will be redirected to the Australian version, Amazon.com.au, from July 1 when Australia starts applying new tax rules, Amazon said in a statement on Friday.

From that date, Australia will impose a 10 percent consumption tax on online retailers for goods bought from overseas sites and shipped to Australia. The tax currently only applies to purchases above AU$1,000 ($757).

Amazon said it regretted the change which it blamed on the new tax rules.

“While we regret any inconvenience this may cause customers, we have had to assess the workability of the legislation as a global business with multiple international sites,” Amazon said. “This will allow us to provide our customers with continued access to international selection and remain compliant with the law.”

The Australian Amazon site provides access to the more than 60 million products. Amazon offers 480 million products in the United States.

Treasurer Scott Morrison ruled out doing any “special deal” for the second biggest company in the world run by the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos.

Morrison doubted Amazon had difficulty with Australian taxes when it had the technology to cope with different tax regimes in Britain and Canada.

“It’s disappointing that Amazon would take this out on consumers in Australia, but that’s their commercial decision,” Morrison told reporters. “If someone takes their bat and ball and goes home, well, Australians will form a view about that.”

The government would not back down on the new tax rules, which would raise AU$300 million a year, Morrison said.

Consumer campaigner Christopher Zinn said Australian shoppers will notice a significant reduction in options when browsing the internet for goods.

“Online shopping has put the world at your fingertips but now that world has shrunk,” Zinn told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Another U.S. online retailer, eBay, said it was changing its global systems so that Australian shoppers could still buy items from anywhere in the world.

“We won’t block Aussie buyers, redirect them or require them to pretend they are located overseas. Australians will continue to be able to buy from any eBay site,” eBay said in a statement.

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By ROD McGUIRK, By Associated Press – published on STL.News by St. Louis Media, LLC (Z.S)

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[peterboumgarden]

Orthodox Pluralist or Benedict Option?

Writing in GQ a number of years back, John Jeremiah Sullivan penned one of my favorite essays on the Christian subculture. Set at the CrossOver Festival in the Lake of the Ozarks, Sullivan’s piece focused on idiosyncrasies in the Christian music scene. The essay is brilliantly constructed from wellhead to burner tip, but I want to focus on a specific part in the middle. This is where Sullivan provides his assessment of the music quality:

The fact that I didn't think I heard a single interesting bar of music from the forty or so acts I caught or overheard at Creation shouldn't be read as a knock on the acts themselves, much less as contempt for the underlying notion of Christians playing rock. These were not Christian bands, you see; these were Christianrock bands. The key to digging this scene lies in that one syllable distinction. Christian rock is a genre that exists to edify and make money off of evangelical Christians. It's message music for listeners who know the message cold, and, what's more, it operates under a perceived responsibility—one the artists embrace—to "reach people." As such, it rewards both obviousness and maximum palatability (the artists would say clarity), which in turn means parasitism. Remember those perfume dispensers they used to have in pharmacies—"If you like Drakkar Noir, you'll love Sexy Musk" Well, Christian rock works like that. Every successful crappy secular group has its Christian offbrand, and that's proper, because culturally speaking, it's supposed to serve as a standing for, not an alternative to or an improvement on, those very groups. In this it succeeds wonderfully. If you think it profoundly sucks, that's because your priorities are not its priorities;

Sullivan’s piece came to mind this last week as I read a number of writers at the New York Times engage with the argument of Rod Dreher’s newest book, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation.  At its core, Dreher’s thesis is that if Christians in the West see a deep and destructive misalignment of their worldview with contemporary culture (and they should!), they ought to explore forms of resistance and creative communities set apart from these forces.

Where Dreher sees potential, I fear Christianrock.

But let’s hear him out. What might these forms of community look like, and when does ‘resistance’ make sense? In an astute analysis of the book at Comment, philosopher Jamie Smith quotes the following from Benedict:

In a chapter on employment and work, Dreher takes the commitment to stability in the Benedictine Rule and turns it into a counsel of despair: "We may not (yet) be at the point where Christians are forbidden to buy and sell in general without state approval, but we are on the brink of entire areas of commercial and professional life being off-limits to believers whose consciences will not allow them to burn incense to the gods of our age." These professions, by the way, turn out to be "florists, bakers, and photographers" as well as public school teachers and university professors.

Like Jamie, though perhaps for different reasons, I can’t help but read Dreher and start to feel a bit uncomfortable. At the Times, David Brooks agrees and frames an alternative:  

The right response to the moment is not the Benedict Option, it is Orthodox Pluralism. It is to surrender to some orthodoxy that will overthrow the superficial obsessions of the self and put one’s life in contact with a transcendent ideal. But it is also to reject the notion that that ideal can be easily translated into a pure, homogenized path. It is, on the contrary, to throw oneself more deeply into friendship with complexity, with different believers and atheists, liberals and conservatives, the dissimilar and unalike.

My own wrestling with the tension between a religious worldview and modern culture is deeply personal. I am the son of a midwestern Presbyterian pastor. Much of my youth was spent in the evangelical subculture -- shifting between forms of church and para-church ministry. For college, I went to a school with a conservative bent to theology, though one rooted in a deep belief in the intellectual power of the Christian tradition. Many of my professors believed that their reformed theology implied particular policies in the public square. It is a perspective that has exposed one of its graduates, Betsy Devos, to critique over the last few months. In graduate school at Washington University in St. Louis, my intellectual life continued to evolve. I grew in a desire to pull from my tradition while simultaneously setting it into dialogue with other ways of thinking and seeing the world-- frameworks from empirical social science, evolutionary psychology and biology, and cultural artifacts. And in the “friendship with complexity,” I found companionship. 

The other day, my friend Robert sent me a dialogue between two famed philosophers: Richard Rorty and Nick Wolterstorff. Rorty is the late philosophical pragmatist from Stanford and Wolterstorff a retired reformed epistemologist who spent much of his career at Yale. Taking aim at Rorty’s view that religion is an unhelpful conversation stopper, Wolterstorff reframes an alternative model around the life of Martin Luther King Jr. In King, Wolterstorff finds a man whose viewpoints are deeply informed by faith, but he remains just as conversant across traditions as he is within. In other words, you can’t remove the Christian from King without losing the foundation of his argument; but, nor do you have to leave your alternative assumptions at the door to engage with its essence.

King’s vision is one that I find compelling.

But to see the potential pitfalls of linking worldview to public response, it is helpful to take a step back. Put simply, everyone has a normative view of the world-- an intuitive sense of what is good, true, real, and beautiful. These views are a mix of our cognitive hard wiring towards specific moral responses, as can be seen in the work of Jon Haidt. They are also formed by the cultures we sit within. Some people’s views are shaped within a particular religious community, but perspectives can come from political frameworks like neoliberalism or philosophies like secular humanism. It could even be the “American Sublime” preferred by Rorty. In the end, the key point is that these views rest upon a set of metaphysical assumptions that are not easily amenable to rational argument. As Wolterstorff concludes in step with Rorty, “I view our human condition as such that we must expect the endurance of such fundamental disagreements.”

When it comes to the public square, these “private” views often hold implications for how a society should be ordered. They are endowed with certain value priorities which bear upon its citizens. They imply a set of policies to drive the world toward those ends. Where it becomes interesting is when these views-- whether foundation, or implication-- start to diverge. Two people look at the sexual revolution-- one sees an empowerment of women, another sees the undermining of important societal structures. So, where do these points of tension bubble up?

PROBLEM 1: DIFFERENT START- SHARED CONCLUSION: Let’s say I have a worldview that leads me to understand a specific kind of behavior as morally right. Maybe this is my view of the nuclear family, an understanding of how we should design prisons, or a perspective on privatization of schools and tax breaks for religious institutions. And then I meet you. You start from a very different beginning, but we end up with the same conclusion.  While many might see this as a win, if my worldview is exclusivist, I might start to wonder whether I need to hold my starting perspective at all. Commence existential crisis. 

PROBLEM 2: SAME START: DIFFERENT CONCLUSION: Another point of tension is when two people from a shared worldview reach drastically different views. You can see this in the fragmenting of religious institutions over issues of LGBTQ rights and gay marriage. You and I being in the same tradition, but end up concluding that very different behaviors are justified. Unlike the first problem where I wonder if my foundation is relevant, this crisis is about whether a particular tradition holds enough ambiguity to bear disparate conclusions.

PROBLEM 3: FOUNDATION POLLUTION / DILUTION / SUPPRESSION: The core of the third problem is how to maintain “orthodoxy” in the midst of pluralism-- to borrow from Brook’s language. In this case, I might worry that my worldview will be polluted, diluted, or suppressed by dancing amidst competing perspectives. Sure your view of relationships is shaped by specific sacred texts, but might there a little HBO mixed in there as well?  Worries about “losing the culture war” seem to rest squarely within problem 3. 

PROBLEM 4: FUTURE CONCLUSIONS LOST: Finally, to the extent that unique perspectives on future problems only emerge out of specific worldviews, the third worry is that in losing a distinct tradition we might negate creative responses to future issues. In other words, maybe we need a distinctly Christian, Muslim, Neoliberal, or Secular Humanist response to the singularity. Something might be lost if we don’t have these views weigh in on AI, the driverless car, and healthcare reform. If these views are polluted, then their response might be as well.

Looking over this landscape, there are a number of reasons why I stand more with Brooks than Dreher, aligned more fully with Wolterstorff than Rorty. On the first point, I don’t think a particular community has to hold the sole intellectual foundation for a specific policy for it to be justified. I am a pragmatist in this way. If we start on different paths but end up together, we should be able to celebrate. Specific to the second worry that our traditions will fragment into multiple conclusions, I think this inevitable divergence should give us pause about what we can know with certainty regarding metaphysics. This is not a move into nihilism, but rather a call to engage with big issues with loosened grips on our perspective and an openness to dialogue. And as for the third point, while I can see why we might fear the dilution of our traditions, I would rather aim for MLK cross-pollination than be set apart without an ability to dialogue.

Just the other week, Andrew Sullivan wrote an astute piece at New York Magazine assessing the reaction of Middlebury students to Charles Murray’s impending visit. As Sullivan’s work highlights, it is not only religions that struggle with this kind of open conversation. Speaking of growing intolerance within the academic “intersectionality” movement, Sullivan writes:

It is operating, in Orwell’s words, as a “smelly little orthodoxy,” and it manifests itself, it seems to me, almost as a religion. It posits a classic orthodoxy through which all of human experience is explained — and through which all speech must be filtered. Its version of original sin is the power of some identity groups over others. To overcome this sin, you need first to confess, i.e., “check your privilege,” and subsequently live your life and order your thoughts in a way that keeps this sin at bay. The sin goes so deep into your psyche, especially if you are white or male or straight, that a profound conversion is required.

...

It operates as a religion in one other critical dimension: If you happen to see the world in a different way, if you’re a liberal or libertarian or even, gasp, a conservative, if you believe that a university is a place where any idea, however loathsome, can be debated and refuted, you are not just wrong, you are immoral. If you think that arguments and ideas can have a life independent of “white supremacy,” you are complicit in evil. And you are not just complicit, your heresy is a direct threat to others, and therefore needs to be extinguished. You can’t reason with heresy. You have to ban it. It will contaminate others’ souls, and wound them irreparably.

So we are left with a dilemma. We need our unique perspectives, but we also benefit when they are in real dialogue with others. In contrast to Rorty’s view, I believe our traditions can give us unique insights into reality that might creatively color (versus color-over) what we are able to see. Like a language system whose particular words and grammatical structures enable us to pick up on the unique features of the world around us, so too worldviews enable us to see things that are missed with views that start with different aims. Here is Wolterstorff again, on this very point:

Yes indeed, religion is sometimes a menace to the freedoms of a liberal society. But the full story of how we won the freedoms we presently enjoy would give prominent place to the role of religion in the struggle; the good that religion does is not confined to providing, in Rorty's words, comfort "to those in need or in despair." Has the prominent role of religion in the American civil rights movements already been forgotten? Has its prominent role in the revolutions in South Africa, Poland, Romania, and East Germany already passed into amnesia? Then too, a full and fair narrative would have to give prominent attention to the great murderous secularisms of the twentieth century: Nazism, Communism, nationalism. The truth is that pretty much anything that human beings care deeply about can be a menace to freedom - including, ironically, caring deeply about freedom.

This is not to suggest that these views would not have come about otherwise. It is, however, to highlight that the starting points for these policies and perspectives came from particular worldviews. In this way, I think “intersectionality” should exist just as much as Judaism, Liberal Protestantism, Conservative Evangelicalism, and the American Sublime. But I will hold much stronger to that perspective is I think the views that come out of such starting points are both creative and open to dialogue. You can’t reason with heresy, Sullivan reminds us. Going back to Dreher, I wonder if in being set apart, the list of what counts as heretical grow longer and longer?

And still, I can’t shake my fear of the diminished quality from a world set apart. How close is the Benedict Option to John Jeremiah Sullivan’s experience at the CrossOver Festival? Here, Smith puts it well:

When Dreher encourages "bold" and "entrepreneurial" responses to these realities, the examples sound like a replay of subcultural production—little cottage industries that function as what James Davison Hunter has described as "parallel institutions"—coupled with the tribal admonishment to "buy Christian" (which is why in the United States you see little icthuses on business listings in the Yellow Pages—well, when we used to have Yellow Pages!). Dreher seems to think these are suggestions that are fresh and forward-looking, but a lot of us have already seen this movie. And we know how it ends.

Set apart to create a unique music footprint, an industry creates Christianrock. This should give us all pause.

Maybe in serving only the needs of a particular segment we end up with buttoned-up conclusions, a shift away from dialogue, and a resulting diminishment of quality. Christianrock does not need to be quality, Sullivan argues, in large part because that is not the primary thing the audience is looking for. They are looking for safe. They are looking for good enough. Sullivan concludes with the dagger: “So it's possible—and indeed seems likely—that Christian rock is a musical genre, the only one I can think of, that has excellence proofed itself.”

While we need unique communities and particular traditions to see the world with fresh eyes, we need to be equally concerned about the quality of their vision. We need to pay attention to patterns that make us excellent-proof. If the Benedict Option moves a specific tradition in the direction of a creative and helpful distinctiveness, then it should be celebrated. If it doesn’t, it runs the risk of preaching to a choir that is less and less engaged with any other comparative voice. In the end, I am less optimistic than Dreher that the positive vision will come to be.  For that reason, keep me in the Orthodox Pluralist camp. Let me build “friendship with complexity,” and learn to deal with the risk.

[double-birds-blog]

Bill DeWitt Is Not Your Friend

By Chase Woodruff

One year ago next week, St. Louis sports fans had their hearts ripped out of them by a grotesque Thomas Nast cartoon of a team owner. Stan Kroenke, a wigged weirdo who’d lucked into his fortune as a tapeworm in the intestines of the Walton family, persuaded a roomful of equally talentless and vicious old men—silver-spooned dilettantes, gout-ridden oligarchs, adjudged fraudsters, Dan Snyder—to let him do it. They did it out of greed, they did it because they could, and they did it with a sociopathic disregard for the people they’d lied to, extorted, and spat on in the process.

Not long afterwards, the Blues played the Hurricanes, and before the game Bill DeWitt III, president of the Cardinals and son of majority owner Bill DeWitt Jr., joined Blues chairman Tom Stillman for a ceremonial puck drop. Fans cheered, but mostly they chanted: “Kroenke sucks, Kroenke sucks, Kroenke sucks.” It was a cool moment.

It was also the beginning of a deeply bizarre consequence of the civic trauma that Kroenke and his fellow NFL owners had put St. Louis through: a renewed, unconditional reverence for the men who owned the city’s two remaining franchises. Stillman and the DeWitts were suddenly “the Anti-Kroenkes.” Local media hailed their “show of solidarity,” their “St. Louis pride,” their “support for St. Louis and its fans.” On Twitter, the praise went on and on: “classy owners,” “class acts,” “pure class,” “world class,” “the definition of CLASS,” “more class in their toenail clippings than Stan Kroenke & Jerry Jones ever dreamed of having.”

Rather than come away from the Rams ordeal with a vivid understanding of the ugly truth about the relationship between fans and owners, many in St. Louis seemingly just wanted to feel good again—to believe that the experience revealed nothing at all, to be comforted by the idea that Kroenke was just an anomalous supervillain and that nothing bad would ever happen again. The Cardinals’ and Blues’ PR departments, along with plenty of local journalists, were happy to oblige. This went on all year, most notably throughout the announcement, promotion, and staging of last week’s Winter Classic; it will certainly last through Sunday’s closing-ceremonies event at Busch Stadium, and probably for a long time to come.

Even if this instinct is understandable, it’s also wrongheaded and dangerous. The unlikelihood that Bill DeWitt will ever do something as deceitful and as damaging as Stan Kroenke did doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hold him, and all other team owners, to a higher standard than simply not being Stan Kroenke. Whether it’s the Cardinals, the Blues, a future MLS team, or anything else, it’s our responsibility to assess individual owners on their own merits—to look at facts, data, and the historical record, and judge them on the evidence.

Major League Baseball was in rough shape in 1995. A quarter century of labor strife, set against the backdrop of widespread doomsaying prompted by the rise of the NFL, had culminated in the costliest work stoppage in the history of professional sports. Television networks, bitter over lost revenue, deserted the league. When play finally resumed, fans took their anger out on owners and players alike. Ratings and attendance plummeted.

The situation in St. Louis, one of the game’s traditional strongholds, was especially dire. The Cardinals hadn’t made the playoffs in eight years and, as a small-market team highly dependent on gate revenue, had been hit particularly hard by the post-strike attendance drop. In October, Anheuser-Busch shocked the city with the announcement that it planned to sell the team after more than forty years of ownership. The brewery, which claimed the Cardinals were losing tens of millions of dollars annually, pledged that it would sell only to buyers who were committed to keeping the team in St. Louis, but many fans weren’t convinced.

Within a few months, however, their fears were assuaged. A new ownership group with local roots swept in to purchase not only the team but also Busch Stadium II and its surrounding parking garages for a total of $150 million—a price tag that fell significantly below expectations, which had already been low given the league’s financial woes.

Perhaps quite purposefully, the ownership group was initially presented as a triumvirate of sorts, with Drew Baur, Bill DeWitt Jr., and Fred Hanser comprising the principals. Baur, a local bank executive, and Hanser, a partner at Armstrong Teasdale, were established members of St. Louis’ elite; DeWitt had been raised there but made his home (as he does to this day) in Cincinnati. His father had been an executive and owner of both the St. Louis Browns and Cincinnati Reds, and DeWitt fils had himself owned minority stakes in the Reds, Texas Rangers, and Baltimore Orioles, which he’d narrowly missed out on buying a few years before Anheuser-Busch put the Cardinals up for sale.

Even at a cut-rate price, many investors cast a skeptical eye towards the deal, citing baseball’s “downhill slide” and declining real estate values in downtown St. Louis. The new owners seemed to lean into this idea, declaring themselves “fans…interested in owning one of the great franchises in history,” rather than businessmen simply out to make money. “Each member of this group,” Hanser told the Post-Dispatch in January 1996, “could find a better economic investment than the St. Louis Cardinals.”

Whether or not Hanser was sincere, it wasn’t long before that sentiment began to look absurd. Less than a year after agreeing to terms with Anheuser-Busch, the team’s new owners struck a deal to sell the stadium’s four parking garages for just shy of $100 million, thereby recouping two-thirds of the group’s original investment.

Naturally, the new regime also went about looking for costs to cut. Heading into the 1997 season, that turned out to include a plan to force Busch Stadium’s cleaning staff to accept a huge reduction in their hourly pay; when the employees refused the new contract, they were fired. The Post-Dispatch’s Bill McClellan captured some of their stories:

“We’re out there in the rain, and at night, and even at our old wages, we were barely keeping our heads above water,” said Duane Garry. He is 33 years old and the father of 10-month-old twins.

“If I lose this job, I might have to go on welfare,” said Caroline Haywood. She’s 35 and the mother of two. “It isn’t like we had it easy. Sometimes the team is gone on a trip for two weeks, and we’ve got to stretch out money out.”

Florence Pulley seemed shellshocked. She’s been on the Cardinals’ cleaning crew since 1955. Her mother and sister, both now deceased, were on the cleaning crew before her. …

“This isn’t fair,” she said of the decision to terminate the cleaners.

After a public backlash and union intervention, negotiators eventually settled on a contract that included a less severe pay cut but slashed the employees’ benefits entirely.

That same spring, the club’s new owners signaled an abrupt about-face on their previously announced intentions to keep the Cardinals in the 30-year-old Busch Stadium II. “We were really novices at first,” Baur would later tell the Post-Dispatch. “We really didn’t realize how outmoded Busch Stadium was.”

A trip to Jefferson City in early 1997 began a five-year effort to secure public funding for a new stadium. The Cardinals entertained proposals from no shortage of communities in and around St. Louis, playing them against each other and threatening to leave the city for the first time in the club’s hundred-year history if its demands weren’t met—a move that, make no mistake, would have been devastating to downtown St. Louis and therefore, according to basic principles of urbanism and economic development, badly damaged the metro area as a whole. When a preliminary deal fell through in May 2002, city officials sounded desperate:

The Cardinals hope that they’ll benefit by a bidding war between area communities eager to be the site of the team’s planned new ballpark to replace 36-year-old Busch Stadium. …

[Mayor Francis] Slay and his aides fear that the Cardinals’ departure could touch off a new urban exodus that could derail already precarious efforts to resurrect downtown and rescue city neighborhoods. Losing the Cardinals “would be a terrible, terrible blow,” [Jeff] Rainford said.

Unable to contribute funding in a more direct manner, the city ultimately agreed to a massive concession: the full and permanent abatement of the five-percent amusement tax previously applied to Cardinals ticket sales. Assuming even a modest rate of growth in ticket prices over Busch Stadium III’s first few decades of operation, that’s a tax break on the order of several hundred million dollars. When added to a package of various other tax credits, abatements, and subsidies totaling about $107 million, that means the vast majority of the stadium’s cost was ultimately shouldered by the public—in spite of the team’s ludicrous insistence that it was 90% privately financed.

Support for public funding among city officials and the public hinged on ownership’s fulsome, repeated assurances that the new stadium would be accompanied by “Ballpark Village,” which the team described as “an entire residential, business and entertainment district that will help spur economic revitalization in downtown St. Louis.” Approval of the stadium deal, said the Post-Dispatch as the club and city continued to negotiate in 2002, “depends heavily on the prospects for Ballpark Village.”

After years of delays and downgrades, the first phase of Ballpark Village finally opened in 2014; a second phase, which will add residential and commercial developments but still fall short of the vision the team publicly touted during stadium negotiations, is scheduled to begin construction later this year. The Cardinals and their development partner, Baltimore-based Cordish Companies, obtained tens of millions of dollars in additional tax breaks for each phase.

But even as ownership has justified those tax breaks by emphasizing Ballpark Village’s positive economic effects on downtown St. Louis, some city leaders have criticized it for just the opposite. Phase One’s handful of dining and entertainment options, say critics, have done little more than funnel money that would otherwise be spent in surrounding bars and restaurants into the Cardinals’ pockets.

The team didn’t exactly help to counteract this perception when, late last year, it refused to waive a height restriction on the BPV-adjacent property owned by longtime Cards broadcaster Mike Shannon, blocking a rare potential new development in a city center that badly needs it. The feud has reportedly been resolved, but the message was clear: Cardinals ownership is happy to “help spur economic revitalization” downtown, as long as it’s on their terms, and in their interest.

In the years following its acquisition of the Cardinals, the “Baur-DeWitt group,” as the Post-Dispatch had initially dubbed it in December 1995, began to take on a decidedly more singular shape. Hanser’s official role gradually diminished, first from chairman to vice chairman and then, in 2010, from vice chairman to director. Baur served as the club’s treasurer, but he, too, became a less visible part of the organization as the years went on; when he died in 2011, longtime St. Louis journalist Alvin Reid eulogized him as the co-owner who “fell silent” during stadium negotiations and “never got his due.”

DeWitt, meanwhile, quickly asserted himself as the managing partner and public face of the club. He appointed his son, Bill DeWitt III, the team’s Senior Vice President of Business Development, and in 2008 installed him as its President. While information about ownership shares and how they may have changed over the years is exceedingly scarce, news reports have identified DeWitt as majority owner since at least 2000.

Whatever the ownership group’s exact composition, the investment it made in 1996 has been an astoundingly successful one. The franchise DeWitt and company bought for a bargain price of $150 million—essentially reduced to $50 million by the sale of the parking garages—was last year estimated by Forbes to be worth more than $1.6 billion, good for an annualized return of nearly 19 percent.

Despite playing in a small market, the Cardinals, buoyed by stellar home attendance, regularly rake in some of the highest revenue totals in the league, according to independent estimates. When measured as a percentage of total metro area personal income, per figures released by the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the team’s average annual gate receipts are the highest in the league. Put another way: the people of St. Louis spend a higher proportion of their money on the local nine than any other fanbase in Major League Baseball.

Particularly in the last few years, however, the Cardinals’ virtually unrivaled levels of fan support haven’t been matched by ownership’s investment in the on-field product. In 2015, the team’s opening-day payroll represented only 41% of the previous year’s total revenue—a ratio that ranked 23rd in the league, a few spots above the Madoff-crippled Mets and a few more above Jeffrey Loria’s notoriously parsimonious Marlins. Figures released by Forbes and other sources may not be accurate to the dollar, but the broad-strokes picture they paint is of a Cardinals organization that has gotten cheaper and cheaper over the last decade or so—from a 56% payroll-to-revenue ratio in 2008 to barely above 40% heading into the 2017 season. That’s a far steeper decline than the league-wide ratio’s two- or three-point drop over the same period.

The gap between the Cards’ top-tier fan support and low- to mid-tier spending levels has made them one of the most profitable clubs in baseball. Their 2014 operating income of $73.6 million was the league’s highest; the paltry $59.8 million they made in 2015 ranked third. In those two years alone, then, the franchise earned DeWitt and his ownership group nearly three times the amount they had paid for it twenty years earlier. A few more years at that clip, and the team that claimed it needed several hundred million dollars in public assistance to finance the construction of a new stadium will have turned a profit equal to that sum in all of a half-decade.

Cardinals ownership is swimming in cash, and the pool is only going to get deeper. Not only will a new broadcast-rights deal that begins next year raise TV revenues to an annual average of $67 million over its 15-year term—more than double the figure the team received in the last few years of its current deal—it also gives the team a 30% ownership stake in Fox Sports Midwest, income from which isn’t subject to MLB revenue-sharing system. DeWitt, who is influential among his fellow owners and close to commissioner Rob Manfred, also stands to make further truckloads of money via his share in MLB Advanced Media and its spinoff BAMTech, which landed a billion-dollar investment from Disney last year.

The Cardinals are, in short, an outrageously lucrative business venture—a fact that seems to be an open secret everywhere but in St. Louis, where great care is taken to present an image of the club as a plucky underdog that can only succeed on the field by avoiding high-dollar free agents and only remain viable off the field with ample amounts of public funding.

Bill DeWitt is not your friend. You may, having read some flattering profiles of him over the years or seen him wave smilingly in your direction at a World Series parade, feel a certain friendly affection for him, but he is not your friend. Your interests and his are rarely aligned, and they are often entirely at odds with one another.

It’s probably true that you would both like the Cardinals to win baseball games, but that’s pretty much where it ends. You’d like to buy tickets, concessions, merchandise, and TV subscriptions at the lowest possible prices and enjoy the highest-quality possible products in return; DeWitt and his ownership group would like to turn the largest possible profit by maximizing revenues and minimizing expenses, a goal that is materially, fundamentally, definitionally contradictory to your goals as a fan.

None of this is to say that Bill DeWitt is a bad person, or even that he’s a bad owner; it’s simply to accurately describe the fan-owner relationship, which is far more adversarial than it is collaborative. That’s fine—at least, fine insofar as this is the system to which we as a society have consented—as long as this reality is clearly understood.

To obfuscate that reality, though—to lionize Bill DeWitt as the Anti-Kroenke, an omnibenevolent caretaker motivated only by a desire to bestow good baseball upon St. Louis and reinvest all the money we give him in the team and community, in the face of so much evidence to the contrary—is not fine. And while it’s natural to expect that the Cardinals themselves would want to advance that narrative, when you see anyone else do it, it’s worth asking yourself whose side they’re really on.

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