The Volokh Conspiracy

At Deadspin, Reuben Fischer-Baum has an interesting piece cataloguing the highest-paid state employees in each of the fifty states. Forty of fifty are coaches, all but one of them in either football or basketball.

As Fischer-Baum notes, this state of affairs is not quite as egregious as it may at first seem. Many of these Division I football and basketball programs generate a lot of revenue for their state universities, and the coaches are often paid out of that revenue rather than taxpayer funds. I would also add that NCAA coaches are among the very few state employees who face a serious risk of being fired for poor performance. Most Division I football and basketball coaches get fired within a few years of starting a new job.

On the other hand, as Fischer-Baum also points out, many of the coaches are paid far more than is justified by their marginal contribution to their universities’ revenue streams, even as the NCAA – supported by state and federal governments – continues to operate a cartel that tries to prevent all financial compensation for the players. I made the case for paying Division athletes here and here.

Finally, the state of Maine deserves special recognition from legal academics. According to Fischer-Baum, the highest-paid state official in the Pine Tree State is a law school dean.

UPDATE: In the original version of this post, I accidentally got Fischer-Baum’s first name wrong (I put “Robert” instead of “Reuben”). Perhaps I subconsciously confused him with the late Bobby Fischer. In any case, I apologize for the error, which has now been corrected.

Fans of rival teams, especially Red Sox fans, have long known that the New York Yankees are the Evil Empire, as well as major recipients of corporate welfare. But in a recent legal proceeding, the team has now officially admitted it [HT: Josh Blackman]:

A panel of trademark judges in Washington, D.C., earlier this month denied a request from a private entrepreneur, known as Evil Enterprises, Inc., to register the trademark for the phrase “Baseballs Evil Empire.”

Evil Enterprises wanted the exclusive right to market merchandise using that phrase, which was coined in regard to the Yankees by Larry Lucchino, the president and chief executive of the Boston Red Sox, back in 2002....

Evil Enterprises initially applied for a trademark back in July of 2008.

But the Yankees objected, arguing that they had the rights to the phrase—at least when used in connection with baseball.

Part of the Yankees’ argument: a concession that in the baseball world, they are, in fact, the “Evil Empire.” In its legal papers, the team referenced a number of articles from the past decade using the term in connection with the Yankees, and conceded that the team has “implicitly embraced” the “Evil Empire” theme by playing music from Star Wars during their home games.

Not only did the Yankees admit that they are an evil empire, but we now have a legally binding judicial ruling to that effect:

The panel of judges sided with the Yankees, ruling that the Yankees are strongly associated with the phrase. Allowing anyone else to use the phrase exclusively would likely cause confusion, ruled the judges.

“In short, the record shows that there is only one Evil Empire in baseball and it is the New York Yankees,” wrote the judges. “Accordingly, we find that [the Yankees] have a protectable trademark right in the term . . . as used in connection with baseball.”

Evil Enterprises is considering whether to appeal the decision. In the meantime, however, the Yankees have now officially admitted that they are the Evil Empire. Perhaps they will soon collapse, following in the footsteps of previous evil empires, such as the Galactic Empire of Star Wars and the Soviet Union.

UPDATE: I have not been able to find an online copy of the court’s decision. If anyone else does, please e-mail me a link.

UPDATE #2: The opinion of the Patent and Trademark Office Trademark Trial and Appeal Board is available here [HT: commenter Adam B]. Interestingly, the court also rejected the Yankees’ argument that allowing Evil Enterprises to use the term “Evil Empire” would be “disparaging” to the Yankees, because the Yankees have “succumbed to the lure of the dark side”:

The Smith declaration admits that opposer [the Yankees] has “implicitly embraced” the EVIL EMPIRE designation.
For example, opposer has played the ominous theme from the STAR WARS movies at baseball games. Opposer’s embracing the EVIL EMPIRE characterization, whether explicitly or implicitly, undermines its argument that use of BASEBALLS EVIL EMPIRE disparages the Yankees. In other words, having succumbed to the lure of the dark side, opposer will not now be heard to complain about the judgment of those who prefer the comfort of the light. We find that use of the term BASEBALLS EVIL EMPIRE is not disparaging to opposer.

There’s a bit of confusion about how a late season forfeit should affect seeding for the Ohio High School Athletic Association football playoffs, which are scheduled to start tonight. And so the confusion is being resolved in the typical fashion: A lawsuit. Make that multiple lawsuits that have already resulted in conflicting court rulings. According to this report, this one could end up in the Ohio Supreme Court.

The AP reports:

The New York Jets backup quarterback is trademarking “Tebowing,” the move in which he goes down on one knee and holds a clenched fist against his forehead while praying during games. . . .

The devout Christian says his representatives filed on his behalf not for financial gain, but “to just control how it’s used, make sure it’s used in the right way.”

Boston Red Sox legend Johnny Pesky passed away today. Gordon Edes of ESPN has a good obituary here:

More than anybody else, Johnny Pesky embodied the Red Sox. More than anybody else, Johnny Pesky loved the Red Sox. More than anybody else, Johnny Pesky shared that love with anyone who ever asked for a picture, an autograph, a smile, a story. And often, you didn’t even have to ask.

On Monday, just more than a month before his 93rd birthday, Johnny Pesky died in ... Danvers, Mass....

The Red Sox lost the greatest ambassador they ever had, and a damn good ballplayer too, a shortstop who had 200 hits in each of his first three seasons, a lifetime batting average of .307 and, like [Ted] Williams, might have put up even gaudier numbers if he hadn’t joined the Navy during World War II.

The rest of us lost one of our own, a guy.... who never embraced the notion that playing for the Red Sox entitled him to the prerogatives of royalty.

Pesky worked for the Red Sox for over sixty years and was one of the most important public faces of the franchise long after he retired.

Pesky was one of those players who lost a shot at the Hall of Fame by missing three years of playing time due to World War II. He posted HOF-worthy numbers in his first three seasons (1942, 1946-47), and likely would have done the same in the three years he missed in between. Modern sabermetric analysis strengthens his case somewhat, since his .307 batting average was backed by numerous walks, resulting in a lofty .394 on base percentage ( modern analysts consider OBP the single most important offensive stat).

Red Sox fans everywhere will miss Pesky.

Tonight’s opening ceremony for the 2012 Summer Olympics has been marred by the International Olympic Committee’s refusal to hold a brief moment of silence for the 40th anniversary of the murder of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. IOC president Jacques Rogge claims that the reason is that “the Opening Ceremony is an atmosphere that is not fit to remember such a tragic incident.” But, as various commentators have pointed out, the IOC has held commemorations for other tragedies at previous opening ceremonies, including for Bosnian victims of the siege of Sarajevo (1996 [update: possibly it was actually in 1994]) and the victims of 9/11 (2002). If the Opening Ceremony is an appropriate venue for acknowledging tragedies that have no connection to the Olympics, it is even more clearly appropriate for honoring the victims of the worst act of terrorism in Olympic history.

It’s pretty obvious that the real reason for the IOC’s refusal has nothing to do with appropriateness and everything to do with fear of offending Arab nations, as Rogge privately admitted to the widow of one of the Munich victims. This is not the first time that the IOC has been inconsistent in its political statements. For example, beginning in the 1960s, it understandably banned apartheid South Africa from participating in the Olympics. But it did not ban numerous dictatorships with comparable or worse human rights records, including communist regimes guilty of mass murder such as the USSR, North Korea, and Ethiopia. One cannot distinguish between these cases because South Africa’s racial discrimination violated the rights of athletes directly. Communist and other dictatorships also oppressed athletes, as well as many other people. Saddam Hussein’s regime even tortured athletes who didn’t perform as well as expected. North Korea also punishes failed athletes, sometimes to the point of sending them to prison camps. Yet Iraq and North Korea were not banned from the games.

The IOC was willing to take action against a pariah state with few sympathizers, but not against more powerful states guilty of comparable and sometimes much worse offenses. Similarly, the Bosnia and and 9/11 commemorations occurred because few if any powerful states objected, while the Israeli Munich victims will get shortchanged because of the influence of the Arab regimes.

I don’t believe the IOC leadership actually approves of what happened in Munich in 1972. But they clearly do have some of the appeasement mentality associated with Munich back in 1938. They denounce the evil ways of pariahs (Al Qaeda, apartheid South Africa), but not comparable evils that have powerful supporters (communist dictatorships, Palestinian terrorism).

What should IOC do going forward? It should replace hypocrisy with consistency.

One option would be a consistent policy of refusing to make any political statements whatsoever, on the grounds that the IOC is a sports organization with no official political commitments. Thus, any nation can compete, no matter how bad its human rights record. And no commemorations for anything even remotely political. The IOC would maintain the same kind of absolute political neutrality that Olympia did in ancient Greece, when all Greek city states were allowed to participate in the games, sometimes in spite of committing various atrocities that were widely condemned by contemporaries. If it adopted this approach, the IOC could credibly claim that it is above politics, and prefers to leave political issues to other organizations better suited to addressing them.

Alternatively, the IOC could adopt a human rights standard that is consistently applied. Any nation will be banned from the Games if it, say, engages in mass murder or other massive human rights abuses. The offending state will be excluded no matter how influential it is. And it goes without saying that such massive human rights violators will be ineligible to host the games. There would be no repeat of Berlin 1936 and Moscow 1980. Under this approach, the IOC could also hold commemorations for all human rights abuses that are closely associated with the Games themselves in some way; and perhaps also for unrelated abuses that are sufficiently large-scale in nature. One can debate how high the human rights floor should be or how closely a tragedy has to be related to the games before it gets its own moment of silence. But whatever rules are established should be consistently applied.

Either consistent approach would be a big improvement over the hypocritical status quo.

UPDATE: I should add that a professional organization, as per my first option for the IOC, that maintains strict neutrality on political issues need not be immoral or relativistic. Such neutrality could be motivated by a belief that the organization can do the most good by sticking to its narrow field of expertise rather than opining on issues better addressed by other institutions. In some cases, addressing tangentially related moral and political issues could even detract from that mission. For example, I don’t want the American Association of Law Schools to take positions on gay marriage and other controversial political and legal issues – not because these issues aren’t important or don’t have right answers, but because opining on them would undermine the AALS’ primary purpose. But if the IOC is going to be neutral, it must maintain that neutrality consistently, not selectively.

UPDATE #2: Jeremy Stahl of Slate points out that the Olympic opening ceremony actually included not one but two moments of silence, including one for the victims of the two world wars and other international conflicts. This further undercuts Jacques Rogge’s ridiculous claim that the IOC could not hold a moment of silence for the Munich victims because the opening ceremony is not an appropriate venue to commemorate tragedies. As Stahl puts it, “[i]t’s now clear that Rogge wasn’t telling the whole truth. It’s not that the opening ceremony wasn’t fit to remember tragedies. It’s that the IOC wanted to pick and choose which tragedies to remember.”

Richmond-Times Dispatch columnist A. Barton Hinkle describes a massive corporate welfare handout that the Washington Redskins just got from Virginia’s state and local governments:

The announcement that the Washington Redskins will move their training camp to Richmond was met with mixed emotions, as they say. It’s certainly great news for Virginia’s capital city. Virginians across the state are happy the Skins will not decamp to Maryland. On the other hand, a fair number are shocked at the public funds being lavished on the team.

The Old Dominion will give the Skins $4 million; Loudoun County (home to the team’s headquarters) will give them another $2 million, and Richmond will kick in $400,000. All this for “the third-richest sports franchise on the planet behind British soccer giant Manchester United and the Dallas Cowboys,” as Richmond Times-Dispatch columnist Jeff Schapiro noted a week ago....

Football fans will be delighted to have the Skins in town a few weeks out of the year. But when it comes to the subsidy, even some longtime fans can’t help agreeing with State Sen. Chap Petersen—a season ticket holder—when he called it “corporate welfare at its finest.”

The official rationale for the huge subsidy is promoting economic development. But, as Hinkle points out, studies overwhelmingly show that sports team and stadium subsidies don’t actually produce any net development; they mostly just transfer wealth away from other, often more productive, activities.

The only thing that can be said for the Redskins is that they still have a long way to go before they get as much corporate welfare as the New York Yankees.

University of San Diego Law professor Michael Rappaport has written a response to my post arguing that, under a retributive theory of punishment, LA Lakers player Metta World Peace did not deserve to get extra punishment for his brutal elbowing of James Harden as a result of his previous offenses:

As a consequentialist, I might be the last person to ask about retribution, but I wonder whether this is right. Yes, World Peace has been punished for offense 1 already. But when someone commits offense 2, we need not think he is only being punished for offense 2. Depending on how the NBA rules are understood, he might be thought of as being punished for offense 2 by itself, plus for committing offense 2, having already committed offense 1. Put differently, one might think there was one offense — offense 2 — and another offense for having committed two offenses. In this respect, this latter offense is similar to the three strikes rule.

I don’t think the above logic works. If World Peace has already been punished adequately for offense 1, then there is no retributive justification for punishing him for it some more after he commits offense 2. If the punishment for offense 1 was insufficient, then perhaps he should get additional punishment for it; but that would be true regardless of whether he later commits offense 2. To put it a different way, there is no retributive justification for creating an “offense for having committed two offenses” if one of the two is a crime for which the perpetrator has already been adequately punished. The occurrence of offense 2 does not make offense 1 any worse or any more blameworthy than it was before.

Obviously, as I explained in my original post on this subject, there may well be good non-retributive reasons for inflicting extra punishment on repeat offenders, such as deterrence and incapacitation. But that’s a different issue.

Regardless of this disagreement, Mike and I agree on the far more important point that the 7 game suspension imposed by the NBA on World Peace was too lenient. No justice, no World Peace!

On Sunday, LA Lakers forward Metta World Peace (formerly known as Ron Artest) viciously elbowed James Harden of the Oklahoma City Thunder. Because of his previous history of on-court violence, many commentators are urging the NBA to give Peace a chance to experience a severe punishment greater than would normally be imposed for such an offense. ESPN columnist Jemele Hill writes:

It would be much easier to forget Metta World Peace’s turbulent past, if he didn’t so often provide present-day reminders.

With a vicious elbow to James Harden’s head during Sunday’s Lakers-Thunder game, it became 2004 all over again — when Metta World Peace (then known as Ron Artest) engaged in a brawl that spilled over into the stands and remains the most embarrassing incident in NBA history...

Was his elbow as violent as the one Karl Malone gave Isiah Thomas in 1991, which resulted in 40 stitches for Thomas? Was it as deliberate and dirty as Andrew Bynum clotheslining J.J. Barea in last year’s playoffs?

No, but World Peace must be held to a higher and different standard. He needs to be suspended at least 10 games, and league officials would be justified if they decided on an indefinite suspension.

If you think that’s too harsh, keep in mind World Peace has been suspended 13 times in his NBA career for a total of 111 games — 86 of which were related to the brawl.

Should World Peace’s previous offenses lead to harsher punishment this time? It depends on your theory of punishment. If the goal is deterrence, than extra severity probably is warranted. World Peace’s previous record proves that he is an unusually difficult guy to deter, which suggests that greater severity is needed for him to get the message. Moreover, he is notorious around the league and the sports community generally. So punishing him is likely to have a strong example effect, because the punishment will be so widely publicized. It would thereby achieve general deterrence, as well as specific deterrence.

On the other hand, if the goal of punishment is retribution, then Peace’s past offenses are irrelevant. Yes, he was at fault for the 2004 brawl at Auburn Hills and other incidents. But he has already been punished for them, and should not be penalized for them again. For a retributivist, what matters now is the appropriate punishment for offense currently at issue. And the latter should be determined solely by the seriousness of the rule violation, not by what we think of the offender’s past record.

Whatever theory of punishment the NBA prefers, perhaps they should reduce World Peace’s suspension by a few games if he agrees to change his annoying and clearly inappropriate new name. Many have suggested “Metta World War.” But perhaps “The Artest Formerly Known as World Peace” would be even better.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST WATCH: As a Boston Celtics fan, I don’t much like either World Peace or the Lakers. However, I would never let that influence my judgment on important questions of legal theory!

UPDATE: The NBA just announced that World Peace will be suspended for a total of only 7 games. That punishment seems too light under any plausible normative theory. No justice, no World Peace!

The National Football League has been the most successful professional sports league in the US over the last several decades. But economists Tyler Cowen and Kevin Grier argue that tort suits over concussion injuries might lead to its downfall:

Before you say that football is far too big to ever disappear, consider the history: If you look at the stocks in the Fortune 500 from 1983, for example, 40 percent of those companies no longer exist.... Sports are not immune to these pressures. In the first half of the 20th century, the three big sports were baseball, boxing, and horse racing, and today only one of those is still a marquee attraction.

The most plausible route to the death of football starts with liability suits. Precollegiate football is already sustaining 90,000 or more concussions each year. If ex-players start winning judgments, insurance companies might cease to insure colleges and high schools against football-related lawsuits. Coaches, team physicians, and referees would become increasingly nervous about their financial exposure in our litigious society. If you are coaching a high school football team, or refereeing a game as a volunteer, it is sobering to think that you could be hit with a $2 million lawsuit at any point in time. A lot of people will see it as easier to just stay away.... The end result is that the NFL’s feeder system would dry up and advertisers and networks would shy away from associating with the league, owing to adverse publicity and some chance of being named as co-defendants in future lawsuits.

This is a plausible scenario for the demise of professional football. But Cowen and Grier ignore an important countervailing factor: If tort lawsuits start to pose a serious threat to college and professional football, the NFL and other powerful interests that benefit from the sport won’t take it lying down. They will use their considerable lobbying clout to push for changes in tort law. Majority public opinion could well be on their side. Football is an extremely popular support, and many people might reason that the threat of concussion is just one of the risks that players voluntarily take on when they choose to participate in the sport.

Over the last twenty years, many states have enacted strong tort reform laws in order to curb dubious lawsuits that threaten the business climate in their jurisdictions. The reformed states include even the once-notorious “tort hellhole” of Alabama. If tort lawsuits start threatening the NFL, big-time college football, or even high school football in states like Texas, we might well see a new round of reform laws.

It’s possible, of course, that concussion injuries could lead to such a wave of public outrage that the NFL and Division I college football programs will be unable to resist the tide. But I am skeptical. Most fans already know that football is a dangerous sport, and that doesn’t seem to bother most of them much.

Earlier today, the Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins visited the White House. But playoff MVP goaltender Tim Thomas chose not to attend. He issued a very libertarian-seeming statement explaining his reasons:

I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People.

This is being done at the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial level. This is in direct opposition to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers vision for the Federal government.

Because I believe this, today I exercised my right as a Free Citizen, and did not visit the White House. This was not about politics or party, as in my opinion both parties are responsible for the situation we are in as a country. This was about a choice I had to make as an INDIVIDUAL.

This is the only public statement I will be making on this topic. TT

For reasons I described here, I don’t think we should attach much weight to the political views of sports and entertainment celebrities. That holds true even in the rare cases like this one where a celebrity makes a political statement I agree with. Still, I thought Thomas’ decision was interesting, if only because there are so few libertarian celebrities out there. I don’t know if I would have rejected the invitation to the White House were I in Thomas’ position. But I certainly sympathize with his reasons for doing so, including the point about both parties bearing responsibility for today’s overgrown federal government.

UPDATE: Various media reports indicate that Thomas is a fan of Glenn Beck, who is far from uniformly libertarian, and occasionally endorses ridiculous conservative conspiracy theories. So Thomas may well be more of a conservative himself. That said, the reasons he gave in his statement are ones that most libertarians would agree with.

It’s arguable that Thomas should have gone to the White House anyway, on the grounds that events like this are really about paying tribute to the office of the presidency rather than the policies of the present occupant of it. On the other hand, presidents of both parties do these sorts of events in part because they see a political advantage in it. On balance, if I were Thomas, I would probably have gone to the event anyway, since it doesn’t imply endorsement of the president’s agenda or of the general course of federal policy over the last few years. But I can certainly understand Thomas’ reasons for making the opposite decision.

An Englishman makes a confession: He prefers American football to soccer.

In its energy and complexity, football captures the spirit of America better than any other cultural creation on this continent, and I don’t mean because it features long breaks in which advertisers get to sell beer and treatments for erectile dysfunction. It sits at the intersection of pioneering aggression and impossibly complex strategic planning. It is a collision of Hobbes and Locke; violent, primal force tempered by the most complex set of rules, regulations, procedures and systems ever conceived in an athletic framework.

Soccer is called the beautiful game. But football is chess, played with real pieces that try to knock each other’s brains out. It doesn’t get any more beautiful than that.

I have an occasional series of posts highlighting issues where Barack Obama and I agree. So far, the list includes creating a playoff system for college football, allowing gays in the military, ending the home mortgage interest deduction for high-income taxpayers (though I would go further and abolish the deduction for everyone), the president’s right to forego defending federal statutes he believes to be unconstitutional, and that the Obama health care plan’s individual mandate is not a tax.

I am happy to announce that we have another addition to this distinguished list. Both Obama and I are happy that the NBA lockout seems likely to end soon:

NBA owners and players reached a tentative agreement early Saturday to end the 149-day lockout and hope to begin the delayed season on Christmas Day.

Neither side provided many specifics but said the only words players and fans wanted to hear.

“We want to play basketball,” NBA commissioner David Stern said....

President Barack Obama gave a thumbs-up when told about the tentative settlement after he finished playing basketball at Fort McNair in Washington on Saturday morning.

The shortened season might end up helping veteran teams like my Boston Celtics against younger ones like the Chicago Bulls (Obama’s favorite team). Our agreement on basketball issues might collapse if the president again tries to undermine the confidence of Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo:). Hopefully, Obama won’t want to alienate Celtics fans during an election year.

In order to compete in the Olympics, a horse has to be more than just a horse [HT: Tyler Cowen]. It also has to have the right “nationality”:

Their bond was a gold-medal partnership years in the making — and practically impossible for Canadian equestrian Eric Lamaze to duplicate.

When Lamaze’s horse Hickstead collapsed and died at a competition in Italy on Sunday, it left the world’s No. 1 show jumper mourning his longtime teammate. He also could be without an Olympic-calibre mount less than nine months before the London Games....

“It’s fair to say there certainly isn’t another Hickstead in the world, and that will be a misfortune for Eric,” said Akaash Maharaj, CEO of Equine Canada.

Much like a human athlete who must be a citizen of a country for a required period of time before representing that country in the Olympics, a similar rule applies to horses.

“A horse can only represent a country at the Olympics if he has been owned by his country or a citizen of his country for the requisite amount of time,” said Maharaj.

That deadline is January.

Although I’m no fan of nationalism, it is fun to watch national rivalries play out at the Olympics. And it makes at least some sense to attribute national loyalties to people. When it comes to horses, it seems silly. Olympic equestrian competitors should be able to ride whatever otherwise eligible horses they want, regardless of their “nationality.”

Manhattan Institute scholar Nicole Gelinas has an interesting column about a massive financially dubious parking lot at Yankee Stadium, which Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. claims requires a government bailout to prevent a local financial crisis:

If the Zuccotti kids want to protest Wall Street bailouts, they should go occupy the Yankees’ luxury parking garages in The Bronx. Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. wants to give the garages’ private investors a fat-cat rescue at the expense of Gotham’s Main Street mice.

Four years ago, the Yankees wanted a souped-up parking “system” for their new ballpark, and Mayor Bloomberg obliged. City Hall helped a previously unknown outfit, the Bronx Parking Development Co., borrow $238 million to build and run a $300 million parking paradise on city land under a long-term lease. (The state supplied the balance of the cash.)

ut the mayor didn’t put the city’s credit on the line. Instead, the city’s Industrial Development Agency — which is not guaranteed by city taxpayers — sold the debt to bondholders.

No one ever said so outright, but bondholders were plainly supposed to assume that, because Bronx Parking’s board is stacked with city officials and city officials talked up the bonds, that the city was there should the deal run into trouble.

It sure didn’t make sense on the merits. The old parking lots generated $7 million a year, but the new lots were supposed to pay twice that in annual debt costs. And Bronx Parking can’t just raise prices to fill the gap. Not many folks will pay $35 to park when there’s a new Metro North station right there.

Reality has caught up. Last week, Bronx Parking made its payment to bondholders only by tapping an emergency fund. The firm must make two more payments by next October — and it doesn’t have the cash.

There’s no mystery about what should happen: The bondholders should take their losses.

But not if Diaz gets his way. Last month, the beep issued a call to build a “world-class” hotel and conference center where one of the garages stands. The hotel would pay Bronx Parking for the space — “stabiliz[ing] the financial situation we face so that we can ultimately meet our obligations to the bondholders,” the company said....

Diaz’s proposal relies on fear of a bond-market panic, which would force another 2008-style bailout of sophisticated investors. Apparently, such bailouts are OK as long as they come in the form of useful goodies, like the promise of taxpayer-subsidized construction jobs for Bronx voters.

But bondholders need to be taught a lesson. It’s bad enough national taxpayers have too-big-to-fail banks. Local taxpayers don’t need too-big-to-fail parking lots.

If the bailout does happen, it will add to the already record-breaking figure of over $1 billion in government subsidies for the construction of the new Yankee Stadium and related facilities.

Fortunately, there is an easier solution. Yankees’ co-owner Hank Steinbrenner has recently denounced “socialism” in baseball in very strong terms. It’s clear that he doesn’t want his business dealings tainted by even the slightest whiff of socialistic subsidies.

The parking lot situation gives the Steinbrenners an opportunity to live up to their own principles. They can take some of the $1 billion they got in public subsidies for the stadium and use it to bail out the parking lot project, which, as Gelinas notes, the Yankees helped instigate in the first place. That would obviate the need for further “socialistic” subsidies for the lot and also remove some of the taint created by the original government subsidies for Yankee Stadium.

Hank Steinbrenner, a lonely parking lot turns its eyes to you!