Here we go again: Howard Schultz, billionaire owner of the Sonics, threatens to move his team unless we submit to his attempt to extort $200 million dollars from taxpayers to renovate his basketball facility. This blatant blackmail - but very familiar, blackmail used, shamefully, by both the billionaire owners of the Seahawks and Mariners before him.

Hopefully you will recall that taxpayers rejected the Mariner's demands to build a multimillion dollar baseball stadium, only to have their will overturned by pressure exerted by Slade Gorton, who convinced state legislators to disregard our vote and appropriate public funds for the stadium. The result was taxpayers being stuck with, and paying for, a $500 million baseball stadium.

Next came the Seahawks, who demanded taxpayers build a separate football stadium, another $500 million debt. Legislators knew they could not get away with appropriating millions for another stadium, so (in) an attempt to escape a public outrage, they allowed Paul Allen, another Seattle multimillionaire to get public support. After Allen spent millions of dollars promoting the stadium (outspending opponents 50 to 1) and a constant barrage of almost daily newspaper editorials (the Herald was one of them) extolling the benefits of the Seahawks, 51 percent of voters were tricked into approving this gross misuse of public funds.

It is argued that professional sports provide economic benefits for a city and pay for themselves. This not true: every dollar spent to attend these events is money that would have been spent for other entertainment, but without the attendant interest costs of stadium building. If they truly are of economic benefit, why is King County withholding documents relating to the economic impact of sports teams?

Professional sports should be private enterprises and should be paid for by private investors, not money extorted from overburdened taxpayers. Financing stadiums is not a legitimate use of taxpayer funds. Seattle doesn't need professional sports to be a great city, it does however, need politicians, who can see how morally wrong. It is to force taxpayers to subsidize private enterprises, and who can prioritize where taxpayer funds should be invested.

Men like Paul Allen and Howard Schultz are not benefactors. They are exploiters who have economically raped the citizens of this city and state. If they cannot make money with their teams, they should investigate why - a good place to start would be the exorbitant salaries they pay their players.

Hopefully, legislators will not surrender to Mr. Shultz's blackmail and if he decides to move or sell his team then we should be happy to see him, and his attempted grab for public funds, go.

H. E. B. Shasteen

Fauntleroy