It seems that we have lost our professional basketball team. My only reaction can be to say good riddance.

Professional sports are a business, a hugely profitable business.

Somehow we forget that. When the owners come to us the taxpayers seeking untold millions in subsidies too often we forget that the owners have the resources to pay their own way. Too often we cave to threats, we grant the subsidies.

This time our elected representatives did not. They told the Sonics to go to hell. Good.

I don’t often agree with Speaker of the House Frank Chopp, but in refusing yet another massive subsidy to the basketball business he did a very good thing, proved himself to be a responsible steward of our tax dollars.

Professional sports are emotional; I think that’s why we make such poor decisions when the ‘poor, struggling owners’ come begging for yet more millions. We need to take the emotions out of such decisions, to think about them in a rational manner.

When I built Studio Milliscent I didn’t have the opportunity to go begging to the taxpayers, asking them to pay the bill.

When the husband and wife who own the little grocery store in my town remodeled it last year they didn’t get the bill footed by the taxpayers because ‘the store is important to the city.’

I saved my money and built my studio. They saved their money and remodeled their store.

If the Sonics wanted a new arena, they should have paid for it. That’s the American way.

Unfortunately team owners, men who have made billions in our capitalist system suddenly embrace communism when it comes to their sports teams. Such disingenuousness rises to the level of immorality.

So Sonics, all I can say to you is don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out of Seattle.

So Clay Bennett, all I can say to you is that you are a bloodsucker who’s team received millions upon millions of dollars from the public purse while homelessness plagued Seattle and children suffered through poverty. I hope that there is a special place in hell for men like you who believe that the poor should support your lavish lifestyle and hobbies with their hard earned tax dollars.