This comes from an interview with former Seattle City Council member Nick Licata, with the indispensable FieldOfSchemes.com, Neil DeMause's fantastic website covering, in-depth, how sports teams fleece cities in direct subsidies from "everyone else" to The Very Rich, via the use of tax dollars to build stadiums.
This is the thing: I’m somewhat of a believer that we’re never going to live in nirvana, okay? There will always be challenges; there will always be things that are not right; there will always be shortcomings to people that you elect to office. But the moment you believe that it’s not worth trying, then it’s like walking away from the game, because the people left at the table playing the game are totally going to get their way, because they’re not going to look out for your interest.
So two things I keep in mind is: One, you have a choice — you have to participate in the game of politics and the game of democracy, because if you don’t someone else is going to run your life. And secondly, you should enjoy that game. It’s like sports. You got to think about it as: This is not just good for everyone and yourself, and not only does it create good, but it’s a good process to go through. That’s why I’m a strong believer in democracy and argue that we have to, if nothing else, protect the vibrancy of our democracy.
Amen sir. Amen.
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