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| View of O.co Coliseum from the parking lot. |
OAKLAND | Under the NFL’s bylaws, franchises that want to relocate to another city must first allow fans to have their voices heard. The practice of the NFL, however, when it comes to building costly stadiums, is to leverage fans’ fears about a team leaving to pressure municipalities into funding stadium construction with taxpayers’ money. However, if NFL executives on Thursday night at Oakland’s Paramount Theatre were expecting citizens of Raider Nation to provide that leverage, and help pressure Oakland city officials into such a deal, they must be sorely disappointed.
Raiders’ super fan Ray Perez, aka “Dr. Death,” may have best summed up the night when he told team owner Mark Davis: “When I want a house built, I don’t ask the City of Oakland to give me a check.”
Although Davis never directly asked for public money at last night’s event, it seemed clear that he wants it — and needs it. The Raiders are proposing to build a $900 million stadium at the Coliseum, but only have identified $500 million in private funds to get the job done. “We need help from the community as well to get something that our fans and the NFL can be proud of,” said Davis. “We don’t have that right now. We’ve been trying for at least the past six years, every day, hundreds of hours, people in this organization trying to get something done.” He later added, “It could be done in Oakland if everybody pulls together.”
But during the three-hour town hall, there was barely any reference made by fans of using public funding to help close the Raiders’ $400 million funding gap. Instead, many of those decked out in silver and black had alternative funding proposals for Eric Grubman, the NFL’s point man in the race by three franchises, including the Raiders, St. Louis Rams, and San Diego Chargers, to move to the long-vacant Los Angeles market.
A few fans proposed to crowdsource funding for a new stadium. Grubman called the idea “awesome,” but kindly dismissed it. “I don’t think it would be fair for us to ask you to do that,” he told a speaker. Another asked whether ownership of the team could be divvied up in public stocks and sold to fans, an ownership structure used by the NFL’s Green Bay Packers.
ebcitizen.com 
By MW:
1. According to what I very recently read in another Bay area publication, in the last few days Libby Schaaf has done a total about face and has now agreed to provide considerable funding from the city of Oakland towards building a new stadium for the Raiders.
Imagine that, a politician, and especially a Bay area liberal politician, doing a total about face and stabbing the general public in the back.
NOTE: In addition to being a “liberal” politician, Libby Schaaf is also a lawyer, and according to various organizations composed of lawyers, and such as for instance the California State Bar, most lawyers are honest. In fact, there are a lot of paid off political hacks in judges' robes who automatically believe, or at least pretend to believe, any lies and garbage, and no matter how farfetched, a politically connected lawyer tells them, since they “know” lawyers are “honest” and that a lawyer wouldn't lie.
(Most judges are lawyers, and since the so called “legal profession” is actually a sleazy mafia whose members help, assist, and protect each other, AND WHILE GENERALLY STABBING THE PUBLIC IN THE BACK, therefore a lot of judges pretend to believe any lies and garbage, and no matter how totally ridiculous, a lawyer tells them, and especially if the lawyer is politically connected.)
2. I believe Libby Schaaf is a graduate of the same law school as Nadia Lockyer. Some law firms, and especially if one or more of the major lawyers in the firm is a politician and/ or former high ranking public official, do not just practice “law,” but also have a considerable portion of their business devoted to charging high fees for so called “consultations.” and which generally means accepting payments in exchange for using their political contacts to put the fix in.
Perhaps when Libby Schaaf retires as mayor, or even now while she is still the mayor, she could open up such a “law” firm with Nadia Lockyer. However rather than naming the firm “Lockyer and Schaaf,”: instead they could name it “Wishy Washy Lies, Garbage, and Nonsense, Inc.”
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No public money should be spent on this. The NFL, Raiders and developers should put up the money.
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